Bioregionalism for Beginners

By Nereo C. Lujan
Project Officer, CUI Philippines

We Filipinos live in regions, like the Cagayan, Southern Tagalog or Western Visayas regions. That is our common idea of a region, one that is defined politically. These regions were created in 1972 by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 1 issued by then President Ferdinand Marcos that organized the then 81provinces for administrative convenience.

The key word there is “convenience.” We sometimes segregate things so we can manage them conveniently, like garbage where we separate the recyclables from the non-recyclables for easy disposal. That can be done too for provinces, as what Marcos did. He grouped together provinces that share common culture and language for administrative convenience.

But of late, a new concept of a region has evolved. This is called a bioregion. It simply refers to the bio or life of a region. As opposed to a politically defined region, a bioregion is defined by the geographical limits of human communities and ecological systems.

Yes, human communities have geographical limits. We often hear the term “Ilonggo nation” because the Ilonggo community has one cultural identity – history, language and behaviors, among others. That Ilonggo nation, therefore, is a human community.

Ecological systems also have geographical limits. This refers to topography as well as animal and plant life. Take the case of Palawan Island; according to scientists, the plants and animals that can be seen in Palawan cannot be seen in any of its neighboring islands in the Philippines. However, these same plants and animals can be found in Indonesia, and so they are saying that Indonesia and Palawan belongs to one bioregion as far as animal and plant life is concerned.

Simply put, bioregions – small or large – are those that are defined by the people themselves and the ecology in which they live.

For example, the area affected by the flood wrought by Typhoon Frank in June 2008 is a bioregion. But such bioregion is not only composed of the towns that were flooded but also of the towns where floodwaters came. This means that the towns of Alimodian, Leon and Maasin where river originate are part of a bioregion composed of Cabatuan, Pavia, San Miguel and Santa Barbara, and of Iloilo City.

Another example is the area affected by the oil spill of August 2006 which does not only include Guimaras but also part of Negros Occidental and Iloilo. In other words, it is the area that share the adjoining Iloilo and Guimaras straits, which has become a source of marine products for those living in this particular bioregion.

Because of this bioregion concept, there is now a movement known as bioregionalism – the call to become knowledgeable guardians of the places where we live. It is a call to know our local land and water, our local weather and sky, our local plants and animals, our local neighbors and communities.

But like any other regions, bioregions face many challenges. We often experience these challenges but we thought we can address them by palliatives without considering the bioregion. Take for example the problem of flooding in Metro Iloilo where there is now a flood control infrastructure being built covering Pavia, Jaro and Lapaz. These flood-prone areas can be considered one bioregion but its geographical limits should be extended up to the source of Tigum and Aganan rivers.

Therefore, if a plan is to be drawn up to comprehensively address flooding, it should consider this larger bioregion, not just a small area defined by political boundaries. And such process is what we can bioregional planning.

Bioregional planning, therefore, means charting how we want our bioregion to survive and to take shape. It also means changing our mindset that has, for a long time, been mold to think that a region in one that has been defined politically. Nowadays however, a region can be defined by local governments or communities because they share a common interest, as in the case of Metro Iloilo which was formed to address urban challenges.

With bioregional planning on the other hand, it means addressing challenges posed by nature and those that threaten the survival of people living in that particular bioregion. Examples of these are the Lipasecu (Libertad, Pandan, Sebaste and Culasi towns) arrangement in Antique that was formed to protect and preserve the Pandan Bay, or the Banate Bay council of Anilao, Banate, Barotac Nuevo and Barotac Viejo towns in Iloilo that was established to protect and preserve the Banate Bay.

The great flood in 2008 and the devastating oil spill in 2006 are telling us that we need to define a new region – a bioregion – within or outside of the regions that we have earlier defined. It may mean expanding or shrinking what we already have. If we have a Metro Iloilo-Guimaras region already, it does not mean we can’t expand it to include Negros Occidental if we talk about the waters that we share, or shrink it a bit to only include Metro Iloilo but stretching it up to the mountains in the west if we talk about flood control.

Bioregionalism, therefore, is an idea whose time has come.