2024-07-27 12:33:25
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Agnès Sinaï is co-founder and director of the Momentum Institute, a laboratory for reflection on the consequences of the ecological crisis, and author of To inhabit this world again. For bioregion policy (Threshold, 2023). She traces the history of the concept, which was born out of debates over major river development projects in California in the 1960s, and proposes that the occupation of territory should be reconsidered in the light of available resources, particularly some water.
The idea of bioregions was born in California in the 1970s. Under what circumstances was it proposed?
In the 1960s and 1970s, large cities on the West Coast of the United States were the melting pot of the hippie movement and counterculture, which criticized American society and capitalism. The Vietnam War left its mark. Particularly at the University of California, the American model is being questioned. Another battle for water is also unfolding in California. Since coastal cities have no resources of their own, they have grown thanks to the massive diversion of water from the state’s northern rivers. As early as 1904, a huge aqueduct was built in the Mojave Desert. The Colorado River then had to be rerouted to supply Los Angeles’ taps.
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Urbanization accelerated after World War II, and new large-scale engineering projects were initiated in the 1960s as part of the California Water Project. They planned to divert water from northern California’s rivers south through a vast network of dams, aqueducts, canals and pipelines to power industry in the San Francisco Bay and irrigate the Central Valley, where intensive agriculture was developing.
In what ways do bioregionalists oppose these plans?
They denounce the violence of this occupation, which has been increased tenfold by the use of technological means and fossil fuels. in his works the destruction of california (Collier, 1966), Raymond Dasmann criticized this aggressive relationship with the territory, with no regard for the natural environment, to the detriment of downstream residents, especially Mexicans, who were deprived of their access to the Colorado River water source.
Bioregionalism proposes to reconsider the occupation of a territory in the light of its available resources, starting with water, which is vital to all life. Rather than dividing cities and states, as in the United States, this is about redefining territories in terms of rivers and their watersheds, meaning they are in areas where they flow and nourish naturally.
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