Welcome to Appalachian Future
Based in the Upper New bioregion, Appalachian Future is a bioregional learning, planning, and building network for grassroots collaboration in circular economies based on massive shifts in consumption-waste behavioral patterns.
Appalachian Future is a project launched by The Upper New.
The Upper New was founded as an ecological education nonprofit supporting bioregional communities of practice for systems wisdom and ecological literacy toward interspecific ecological justice. Appalachian Future is primarily a project of active learning for belief and behavior change as demonstrations of ecological literacy through continued engagement with bioregional learning, planning, and building within the Upper New bioregion.
Below is an interactive map of the Upper New bioregion.
In his seminal work LifePlace, Robert Thayer provides an excellent definition to help us think about what (and where) a bioregion is:
“A bioregion is literally and etymologically a “life-place”-a unique region definable by natural (rather than political) boundaries with a geographic, climatic, hydrological, and ecological character capable of supporting unique human and nonhuman living communities. Bioregions can be variously defined by the geography of watersheds, similar plant and animal ecosystems, and related, identifiable landforms (e.g., particular mountain ranges, prairies, or coastal zones) and by the unique human cultures that grow from natural limits and potentials of the region. Most importantly, the bioregion is emerging as the most logical locus and scale for a sustainable, regenerative community to take root and to take place. In reaction to a globally shallow, consumer-driven, technologically saturated world where humans are alienated from nature and offered simulations of it instead, a bioregion offers an appropriate venue for the natural predisposition toward graceful human life on earth. The bioregional or “life-place” concept suggests the efflorescence and emplacement of biophilia, our innate affection for the totality of life in all its forms. Although by no means a unified philosophy, theory, or method, the bioregional approach suggests a means of living by deep understanding of, respect for, and, ultimately, care of a naturally bounded region or territory.”
Robert Thayer, LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice (p. 3-4)
What is Bioregional Building?
Bioregional building is, in some ways, the culmination of the three pronged system of bioregionalism (learning, planning, and building). It seems simple: we learn, then we plan, then we build.
However, with bioregionalism, learning, planning, and (re)building can (and probably should) happen in parallel. As we learn and plan enough to get started building, we keep building, within the finite capacities of the bioregion, and then we watch what we’ve built, learning from it, and planning improvements.
Bioregionalism is iteration. Bioregionalism requires systems wisdom: getting the beat of the system, looking for responsibility in the system, exposing our mental models to the light of day, implementing feedback policies for feedback systems, going for the good of the whole.
At its core, bioregional building has three components: the biodiversity framework, agriculture, and regenerative communities. This table gives a brief sense of what comprises the work that goes into each of these three components.
| Biodiversity Framework | Agriculture | Regenerative Communities |
|---|---|---|
| Living corridors Whole watersheds Conservation areas New floodways Restored basin mosaic Daylighted streams Nearby nature Bioregional wilderness | Farmland preservation Bioregional water Bioregional foodshed Expanded farming role Natural protein Cover crops Tailwater ponds Natural edges | Compact cities and towns Infill development New village centers Regenerative transit Recycled water Photovoltaic roofs Local energy Natural drainage Urban to nature pathways |
To understand more about bioregionalism and how it can work, we’ve put together a living document called Understanding Bioregionalism.
Why should we do bioregionalism?
We must come to terms with the fact that we share our biosphere with all living things, and humans are the ones responsible for having such a drastic effect on the habitability of the biosphere (for humans and everything else). Our individual and collective human actions, especially those over the past two hundred years or so, have drastically affected the longitudinal rates of climate change, as well as the resulting consequences.
In a discussion of ecological footprinting, Wackernagel & Rees make this rather succinct point:
“The first step toward reducing our ecological impact is to recognize that the ‘environmental crisis’ is less an environmental and technical problem than it is a behavioral and social one. It can therefore be resolved only with the help of behavioral and social solutions. On a finite planet, at human carrying capacity, a society driven mainly by selfish individualism has all the potential for sustainability of a collection of angry scorpions in a bottle. Certainly human beings are competitive organisms but they are also cooperative social beings. Indeed, it is no small irony (but one that seems to have escaped many policy advisors today) that some of the most economically and competitively successful societies have been the most internally cooperative — those with the greatest stocks of cultural and social capital.”
Wackernagel & Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, (p. xi)
In essence, bioregionalism is a behavioral and social solution. It’s also quite comprehensive, seeking to shift essentially all the ways that human beings operate individually and collectively in the biosphere, using bioregions to help define the appropriate scale of operations to all humans to understand a better way to fit within the biosphere and share it with all other living beings.
Keeping this biosphere habitable for everyone is the only good choice we’ve got.
Again, Robert Thayer provides a rather concise reason, with four axioms:
“The ultimate measure of a convergent bioregional approach, if it is to influence the mainstream, will be its contribution toward regenerating local cultures, ecosystems, and resources into the indefinite future. A life-place framework will be judged not on how “warm and cuddly” it makes people feel but on whether it contributes in a physical sense to the fulfillment of needs of life on earth: clean water and air; sufficient food, shelter, and clothing; peace from violence; a sense of meaning in life and a motivation for continuing to live; and enough of all of this to sustain life for other living systems as well as for our own species. When I look beyond the pragmatic requirements of a life-place approach, I see a simple set of axioms: People who stay in place may come to know that place more deeply. People who know a place may come to care about it more deeply. People who care about a place are more likely to take better care of it. And people who take care of places, one place at a time, are the key to the future of humanity and all living creatures. At first glance, these axioms might imply a linearity of logic, but many of the effects are also causes. In essence, the idea of a life-place or bioregion connects natural place, awareness, knowledge, wisdom, affection, stewardship, sustainability, and, most important, action, as a “fuzzy set” of nested and covariant concepts. Embedded in the bioregional idea, therefore, is a very general hypothesis: that a mutually sustainable future for humans, other life-forms, and earthly systems can best be achieved by means of a spatial framework in which people live as rooted, active, participating members of a reasonably scaled, naturally bounded, ecologically defined territory, or life-place.”
Robert Thayer, LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice (p. 5-6)
The Four Axioms, again.
People who stay in place may come to know that place more deeply.
People who know a place may come to care about it more deeply.
People who care about a place are more likely to take better care of it.
And people who take care of places, one place at a time, are the key to the future of humanity and all living creatures.
Why Appalachian Future?
We believe the integration of composting, gardening, mushroom cultivation, and aquaponics as service networks into a modular, extensible “communities of practice” model for bioregional circular economies built on evidence-centered measurement and assessment of practical learning is the innovative element of the Appalachian Future project. (Yes, that’s a lot to consider in one sentence.)
We want to help motivated people do better things with their land in their communities, helping them formulate a “what works best in this place” approach to mixed services design and implementation: all in service of a profit-sharing circular economy that establishes local food security, nutrition, and livelihoods of permaculture. And we want to motivate others to adopt this mindset.
This is why we are taking a “learning first” communities of practice approach, and why, at its core, the Appalachian Future project is a bioregional learning system. This is why we are designing the Appalachian Future project to use the bioregional learning, planning, and building work being done in the Upper New bioregion to serve as a model for how it can be designed and implemented in any other bioregion, anywhere in the biosphere.
We want to disrupt markets because we want to follow systems wisdom practices through leverage points to create the necessary paradigm shifts inherent in the core of Appalachian Future’s intended outcomes. We are educating and innovating away from capitalism toward the commons and commoning.
Using this mentality, we want to use the Appalachian Future project to encourage practical change through these mindset shifts.
People can put their land to good use, even in absentia.
People can have access to better food and nutrition with lower emissions due to proximity and scale.
People can learn to eat in season and within reason.
Components of Bioregional Building: Agriculture
Based on the core pillars of Appalachian Future, these are the ways we can provide sliding scale value to the populations of the Upper New River basin, through the pragmatics of design, production, management, and maintenance services: composting as a service (community scaled alternative waste management), gardening as a service, mushroom cultivation as a service, commercial scale mushroom production (sold in person and online), aquaponics as a service, beekeeping as a service, permaculture orientation, consumer and producer education (active learning and belief/behavior change), economic commons network management, produce brokerage and food/profit sharing management as a service.
While we do intend to take advantage of digital technologies for building bioregional process management systems as appropriate, our traditional technologies are much more robust and longitudinal, including: community scale composting, gardening, earth sheltered greenhouses, beekeeping, mushroom cultivation, mycoremediation, aquaponics, permaculture, passive solar, micro-hydro power, wind power, etc.
Where, What, and When?
Our bioregion of concern is the Upper New river sub-basin, which contains a population of ~350,000 people in counties across northwestern NC and southwestern VA (from Blowing Rock, NC to Blacksburg, VA). Initial deployment of the pilot project will take place in Alleghany County, NC, home of the Upper New, Inc. By 2040, our network should physically engage all 18 watersheds of our bioregion across all four components of the Appalachian Future project. By 2050, we should be rapidly scaling the model across neighboring bioregions and throughout the United States.
| Primary Goals | Secondary Goals |
|---|---|
| Composting Gardening Network integration Bioregional learning system | Mushroom cultivation Aquaponics |
Primary 1: Composting
Community-scale composting of multiple types, initially focused on Types 1 & 2 (pre-consumer meat-free food waste). We’ll have public facing drop off locations staffed with educational volunteers and instructional signage (printed and digital), and we’ll establish pick-up networks with commercial partnerships (restaurants, breweries, etc.).
Primary 2: Gardening
For interested property owners, we’ll provide a range of services from site plans, consultation, construction, and management, with produce/crop sharing options for negotiating costs and levels of gardening services. Various gardening techniques will be employed, including options for integrated composting systems and various types of greenhouses.
Secondary 1: Mushroom cultivation
We’ll begin with a pilot commercial operation (using a multi-year lease agreement or donated property), followed by residential property options in relevant habitats (a service similar to the gardening options mentioned above). This will be followed by mycoremediation pilot projects as applicable in the bioregion.
Secondary 2: Aquaponics
Starting with a pilot commercial operation (same as above), we’ll experiment with various techniques that are modular and scalable onto the properties of the bioregion, and roll out services as the proof of concept takes shape.
Primary 3: Network integration
In parallel to building and refining (and staffing) the procedural framework for the network of stocks and services we’re establishing in the bioregion, we’ll make inroads to integrate existing organizations, stocks, and services into this new network: farmers markets, food banks, waste management, etc.
Primary 4: Bioregional learning system
We’re building a cloud platform to manage data capture and feedback (weather, inputs, outputs, process, labor, mileage, etc.) to support practice-based learning as participants increase engagement in this bioregional community of practice. This includes consumers who are not part of any AF production network.
One of the purposes of this data platform is to validate transitions to a circular economy with evidence of substantial shifts in costs, outcomes, and throughputs. The learning platform doubles as a recruitment tool, validating the model of the network of services, showing the path to modular, extensible scalability to any watershed bioregion on the continent.
This bioregional learning system is taking shape as part of the Local Watersheds project.
The Big Picture
We are all humans in the biosphere: breathing air, drinking water, eating food, and generating waste.
At Appalachian Future, all humans are welcome to join our cause. We do not have barriers to access our opportunities to improve the biosphere and our human communities entwined with all other biological communities.
We simply have rules of engagement for increasingly sophisticated, ecologically literate human behavior.
It’s not about who or what you are.
It’s about what you do (and don’t do) that matters to us.
What we humans do (and don’t do) is what matters to the biosphere.
Perhaps David Orr says it best:
“As long as anything like our present civilization lasts it must monitor and restrain human demands against the biosphere. This will require an unprecedented vigilance and the institutionalization (or ritualization) of restraints through some combination of law, coercion, education, religion, social structure, myth, taboo, and market forces. History offers little help, since there is no example of a society that was or is both technologically dynamic and environmentally sustainable. It remains to be seen how and whether these two can be harmonized.”
David Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (p. 21)
What’s YOUR Appalachian Future?