2024-07-27 12:33:25
Co-founder and director of the Momentum Institute, a laboratory for reflection on the consequences of environmental crises, Agnès Sinaï is the author of Live again. For the policy of bioregions (Level, 2023). It traces the history of this idea, born from the competition of important river development projects in California in the 1960s, and which proposes to rethink the local work based on the resources available to it, especially some water.
The concept of bioregion was born in California in the 1970s Under what conditions was it formed?
In the 1960s and 1970s, the big cities of the American West were the intersection of the hippie movement and the counterculture, which criticized American society and capitalism. The Vietnam War left its mark. In California universities in particular, the American model is competitive. Another war over water is also taking place in California. Since the coastal towns do not have their own facilities, they have developed thanks to the large water transport from the rivers in the north of the State. As early as 1904, a large aqueduct was built across the Mojave Desert. Then the Colorado River had to be diverted to provide taps in Los Angeles.
Urbanization increased after World War II, and new major utility projects were launched in the 1960s, as part of the California State Water Project. They planned to divert water from northern California rivers to the south through a vast network of dams, aqueducts, canals and pipelines, to power the industries of San Francisco Bay, and irrigate the valley. the center where agriculture flourished.
In what ways do bioregionalists oppose these projects?
They oppose the violence of this work, increased tenfold by the use of technological methods and fossil fuels. In his work Destruction of California (Collier, 1966), Raymond Dasmann criticized this aggressive relationship with the region, without respect for the natural environment, and to the detriment of the inhabitants below, especially the Mexicans, who do not have water from the Colorado.
Bioregionalism proposes to rethink the function of a region based on the resources available to it, and first of all water, essential to all life. Instead of dividing cities and states like the United States, this involves reorganizing states according to their rivers and watersheds, that is, the areas they are located in and are able to feed. naturally.
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