In recent weeks, the concept of ecoregion has burst into the media landscape and this is not to displease supporters of prosperous degrowth. The Insoumis candidate for the presidential election brought to the forefront this notion proposing to redraw the map of France to make it “the first ecological Republic in the world”.
The idea of ecoregions draws on the sources of older thinking: that of bioregionalism, which invites us to rethink our way of inhabiting territories. A welcome inspiration which places a strong environmentalist imagination at the heart of the debate. It now remains to give full depth to this idea by thinking of these “ecoregions” as a political project carrying an emancipatory vision.
Guarantee the conditions for a good life
Bioregionalism is a movement born in the United States in the 1970s, which invites us to think about borders based on ecological realities rather than administrative divisions inherited from history. It is not just a matter of redrawing maps: this way of thinking about the territory is also accompanied by a reflection on local democracy, which we find in municipalism.
Theorized in particular by Murray Bookchin, municipalism draws its inspiration from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. The insurgents then defended an organization based on the autonomy and association of communes, to the point of imagining a confederation of towns capable of replacing the Jacobin state. In this imagination, the city and the countryside are not opposed, but complement each other for a fair organization of territories.
This change of outlook is essential. It is no longer a question of organizing the territory with a view to its capacity to maximize economic growth, but around its ability to guarantee autonomy, freedom and the conditions for a good life. The nature of the success indicators is changing: they no longer focus on describing economic activity as a priority, but rather ecological resilience, social ties and the ability to meet the essential needs of residents.
Promote territorial specificities
As the Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi wrote, the market economy is not a natural order, but a historical construction. Faced with the paradigm shift imposed by the ecological crisis, we must make a radical political break. At the time of the Capitalocene, bioregions can carry the hope of putting the economy at the service of social and ecological realities.
Democratically, bioregionalism carries a strong promise: that of a society where inhabitants would no longer only be administered, but also decision-makers on their territory. Without going so far as to call into question the central State, he calls for a rethinking of institutions around greater decentralization and power more anchored in local realities. Responding to the legitimate desire of citizens to have control over their living environment, it makes it possible to promote territorial specificities and to build more adapted and better accepted policies.
This concept, however, calls for great vigilance. As history has taught us, thoughts about rootedness can be diverted when attachment transforms into a closed identity. The risk would be to move from a sensitive relationship with the Earth to a naturalizing vision of human societies where difference would become a justification for exclusion. This is the challenge: to rediscover an attachment to the places we inhabit without pitting the local against the rest of the world, and to escape economic neoliberalism without renouncing the rights linked to political liberalism.
A living link between the individual and the community
Bioregions do not constitute a return to a fantasy community or to a fixed nature. They must remain an open process, capable of welcoming the diversity of paths, migrations and the convergence of ecological and social struggles. To do this, the left must also be able to consider the territorial question by drawing inspiration from the thinking of intellectuals like Simone Weil.
In a book dedicated to the subject, the philosopher writes: “rooting is perhaps the most important and most overlooked need of the human soul.” Far from drawing on the nauseating thinking of the far right, its roots consist in connecting individuals to a history in order to allow them to understand their place in the world. Being rooted has nothing to do with origin, skin color or gender: it is belonging to a certain tradition without being locked in the past. It is a living link between the individual and the community, which evolves thanks to new cultural contributions.
It is this paradigm break that prosperous degrowth carries: an invitation to reinvent our way of inhabiting the Earth, by placing mutual aid and decolonial approaches at the heart of our collective choices. An emancipatory ecology must refuse any form of domination, whether economic, social or cultural. Conceived in this way, bioregions can offer a precious horizon: that of a society based on autonomy, freedom and conviviality.
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