A Curriculum and Strategy for Regenerating the Northeast Bioregion
With a Focus on Connecticut’s Mystic River Watershed

A Structured Guide on

Bioregional Regeneration:

How we can restore flourishing ecosystems through awareness, behavioral and practical change, and design of the built environment.

Prepared for Our Watershed Community Input by

- Dr. Zbigniew J. Grabowski, Executive Director

- Gretchen Klens, Communications Coordinator

- Brenda Geer, Collaborations Coordinator

Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed

Made possible by:

The Nature Conservancy

Resilient Southeastern Connecticut Program

Gretchen Klens

What are Bioregions?

Bioregions are culturally and ecologically cohesive geographies - co-developed over time by a combination of geological, climatic, and biological (including human!) forces. These relations result in distinct stories, ways of making decisions, identities, practices of land care, food systems, built infrastructures, architectural styles, clothing, and lifeways - in short, the culture of place.

In the Northeastern United States - our bioregion stretches from the high peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Maine, the Green Mountains of Vermont, Berkshires in NY, CT, and MA, the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, through the many watersheds that drain into Long Island Sound, the Gulf of Maine, The St. Lawrence Seaway and the Atlantic Ocean. Ultimately we are part of larger hemispheric ecosystems and biocultures - e.g. that of Turtle Island, similar to tbe biocultures that are considered ‘European,’ ‘Caucasian,’ ‘Asian,’ or ‘African.’

Importance of Bioregions

Bioregion

Global

Local

The ‘think globally, act locally’ (or glocal) philosophy of sustainability that recognizes the importance of local actions in support of global goals has been a key concept since the 1980s. However, many local efforts have been frustrated by a growing recognition that local sustainability challenges cannot be addressed without addressing systemic challenges related to national and state policies and regulations, and the larger infrastructure systems that shape our basic life support systems (e.g. energy, transportation, food, water, air sheds). This systemic change is not occurring and the polycrisis is only deepening. The Bioregional / Bioregioning movement recognizes that bioregions are key sites of intervention that enable local transformations in support of global transformation. Bioregions are of sufficient size to enable new supply chains for material economies, utilize urban-rural synergies, and can sustain food and water systems.

Bioregions are both

biocultural designations and ‘terrains of consciousness’—constructions of human perception, awareness, and intentional thought that seek to identify the right relationships humans should have with their more-than-human family and with the land as a living, agentic entity.

These right relationships matter deeply. In the context of the Northeastern Woodlands, the cultural systems developed around right relationship are what produced the paradisiacal abundance of the landscape—documented in both extensive oral histories and in the accounts of early European colonists: tremendous food forests, rich agricultural plains, and enormous migratory fisheries, as depicted in the artwork below.

Indigenous peoples have stewarded these lands since time immemorial,

co-producing a landscape of abundance.

This landscape included:

Abundant mast forests: nut and fruit producing forests rich with wildlife, providing many mushrooms, medicinal plants, and materials for boats, fiber, etc…,

Diverse agro-ecological mosaics including intensively cultivated areas for the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) interwoven into forest margins, fields, and wetlands (co-created with beavers) containing many cultivated wild and domesticated species like high bush blueberries, cranberries, cattails, chenopodiums, cattails, and...

Immense fisheries including salmon, shad, river herring, eels, sturgeon, perch, flounder, blackfish, and many others, and shellfish like oysters, mussels, clams.

The abundance of Northeast is greatly influenced by intense seasonality: an extremely dynamic (and often harsh) environment. In response, many Tribes developed seasonally adapted lifeways, living in seasonal coastal and inland villages along with smaller camps and traditional gathering places (like prominent waterfalls that condensed migratory fish runs). These patterns continue into the present, as all residents and visitors to the Northeast are well acquainted with seasonal foods, festivals, activities, and dwellings.

At present, much of our abundance has been diminished by the over exploitation of species, the destruction of habitat, chemical contamination, and pollution, resulting in widespread ecological decline and the collapse of many traditional food systems.

Regenerating our bioregion requires rebuilding this abundance from the ground up.

What is Regeneration?

Regeneration entails humans working as part of nature to support the inherent capacities of biological and social processes to create the conditions for their own thriving and healing.

Regeneration is inherently restorative— and normal: every day, the body replaces damaged cells, and every season comes with death and rebirth on a cellular, organismal, and community level.

For example, regenerative medicine focuses on supporting the body’s inherent capacity to rebuild damaged tissues, often by stimulating its own pluripotency (stem cells). Culturally this entails enabling relationships, knowledge, and wisdom. Ecologically this requires restoring the connections and processes creating biocultural diversity and abundance.

In technologically complex societies, regeneration of ecological and biological systems also requires the elimination of harmful technologies (like those that produce toxic chemicals and byproducts) and the development of regenerative technologies - or those whose design acknowledges their interdependence with ecological and social systems.

Regeneration is embedded in our DNA. Our ability to generate, or create, and regenerate is what has allowed our very existence for so long.

Capacities Required for Regeneration:

Regeneration is also not the end all be all - it is one of the capacities of organisms and their cultures required for long term survival and flourishing. Regenerative capacity is interdependent with other capacities including awareness: sensory capacities enabling perception of the external and internal environment, differentiation: the ability to sense the need for specialization and detecting differences between self and other, in group and out group, friend from foe, discernment: the capability of detecting diverse qualities in internal and external states, critical for detecting dangers and identifying opportunities, motivation: the desire to undertake a task, focus: the ability to concentrate one’s attention on a particular task, and skill: precision, accuracy, timing, and style in execution of tasks, movements, necessary activities.

Related Qualities of Thriving Systems

Regeneration is also connected to other ‘qualities’ of organisms, organizations, and systems - the capacity to regenerate is closely linked to:

SUSTAINABILITY

the ability to sustain activities over designated periods (e.g. life cycles)

PRODUCTIVITY

the ability to convert time, energy, and material into useful goods and services

REGENERATION

the capacity to renew life and systems- cells, organisms, ecosystems, social-ecological-technological assemblages

ROBUSTNESS

the ability to function in diverse environmental (internal and external) conditions

BEAUTY

a sense of aesthetics, style, and value alignment

RESILIENCE

the ability to anticipate, withstand, attenuate, recover, adapt, and transform in response to disturbance

Our Bioregional Regeneration Curriculum encompasses three core themes:

1. Cultural Regeneration

Regenerative Culture is like the precipitation that falls on the mountains. Just as water connects and enables life as it flows down the landscape—regenerative culture is the all-encompassing enabler of the subsequent forms of regenerative activity. Only when we embrace a regenerative culture will we be able to implement action and experience outcome.

2. Regenerative Land and Water Relations

Regenerative land and water relations—like rivers channeling precipitation and connecting water to Earth, much as culture connects to practice—support social-ecological flourishing through interdependent projects such as:

ecological restoration
food
fisheries
fiber
fuel
access

3. Regenerative Built Environments

Regenerative Built Environments are the fruits borne of regenerative culture and regenerative land and water relations— likewater nourishing the landscape to produce abundance. They are sweet because they embody regenerative values and strengthen our relationships with the living world, creating a positive feedback system, much like how fruit seeds reproduce the trees they grow from.

Right Relationships

are characterized by respect and reciprocity. Respect pertains to recognizing the inherent rights of other beings, requiring empathy and trust building, and engaging with them in reciprocity, recognizing that what benefits individuals should also benefit the whole.

Knowledge

Creation of communities of learning and practice to support a knowledge base for regeneration, as well establishing appropriate protocols for sharing and using knowledge.

Values and Vision

Being clear about what we value, like health, well being, responsibility to all our relations, and articulating a vision for a bioregion that is abundant and flourishing.

Technique

Skills and technologies developed in relation to needs and place.

Governance

Just, equitable, and transparent decision making processes – including supporting resurgent Tribal governance and nation building, interjurisdictional collaboration, and watershed-based planning

is the largest container that enables subsequent forms of regenerative activity - its focal areas include:

Regenerative Culture

These different aspects of culture all enable one another. Recognizing our interdependence and enacting right relationships sustains us and all our relations. Cohesion in regeneration requires identifying our shared values and a vision for a bioregion in which all beings can flourish. Achieving that vision in turn requires appropriate means of decision making about what actions are necessary, which in turn require knowledge and technique to be implemented.

Regenerative Land and Water Relations

Ecological Restoration

Ecosystems are shaped by environmental (e.g. sun, wind, waves) and biological (e.g. nutrient cycling, rates of growth, rates of predation) processes. Restoring an ecosystem is re-establishing these processes and allowing for their full complexity to manifest - for example, restoring nutrient balances in water bodies often requires both eliminating harmful inputs (e.g. fertilizer runoff) as well as restoring food web complexity (e.g. restoring beaver meadows, migratory fish and bird populations, and the plant diversity supported by a more complex food web).

Food Systems

We are all nourished and sustained by the foods produced by landscapes and water bodies - food systems refer to the entirety of the processes that support the cultivation, production, harvest, processing, storing, cooking, eating, and disposing of foods - with regenerative food systems focusing on beneficial relationships across all of these stages of the food system life cycle. Traditionally, humans developed food systems that align with seasonal rhythms and sustain the soils and waterways that in turn enable food production. This care for the systems that enable harvest, or maximizing the productive potential of the system, rather than a focus on ‘maximum sustained yield, is a key feature of regenerative food systems.

Fiber

Fibers enable our existence as a species (a mostly hairless primate!) and is often deeply interwoven with ecosystem and food system care as well as technologies of building and manufacturing. Non structural fibers, like cotton, hemp, wool, flax (linen), nettles, dogbane, reeds, bark, skins, fur, and hair, and many others have been used for clothing, ropes, cloth, yarn, thread, baskets, boats, insulation, and other applications for millenia.

Fiber culture is a critical component of bioculture.

Structural fibers, like wood and bone, are used to produce buildings, boats, vehicles, and are likewise key parts of bioculture, enabling specific technologies and lifeways. Much of our modern economy relies on synthetic fibers created from ancient biological feedstocks, i.e. fossil fuels, shifting towards regenerative fibers doesn’t require abandoning that entire technology platform, but recognizing its interdependence with human and ecological health.

Fuel

Fuels keep us warm (or cool), powering homes, vehicles, and are distinct but related to energy systems (described below). Traditionally humans have relied upon biological systems for fuel, including fossil fuels, and regenerative fuels, like sustainable plant based fuels, can be a key part of energy transitions. Humans have used biological fuels since time immemorial as low cost sustainable heating sources, including for homes and buildings that require minimal heating due to design and build quality. Harvesting fuels out of forests can also provide ancillary benefits, like reducing wildfire risks and improving forest health, and can be part of a larger set of sacred responsibilities that humans have to their more than human relatives.

Access

Restoring and creating regenerative land and water relations requires that lands and waters can be accessed by those who will perform regenerative labor - including humans and our non-human relatives. Access has many dimensions, and includes considerations of inherent rights, ownership, jurisdiction, treaty reserved rights, conditional treaty rights and responsibilities, easements, usufructure.

Regenerative Built Environments

Regenerative Built Environments are those that harness the potential of built systems to embody regenerative values and strengthen relationships with the living world.

This happens through their direct impacts and interactions with ecosystems—for example, using appropriately sized stream crossings—and is rooted in right relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. Regenerative built environments include residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, as well as the critical infrastructures that support daily life, including energy, transportation, waste handling, water, and manufacturing systems.

Housing and Buildings

Regenerative buildings leverage their material supply chains, site design, and programmatic functions to contribute to ecosystem health, social well being, and economic performance. A regenerative built environment fosters right relations across its supply chain and life cycle, including construction, operations, use, renovation, adaptive reuse, and if necessary demolition. The mainstream of regenerative building practices is a core goal of the Bio Based Materials Collective.

Waste Processing and Conversion

Regenerative systems seek to eliminate the concept of ‘waste’ - instead focusing on how byproducts and excess of one process integrate into other processes - just like in ecological systems where every output is also an input. In practice this entails closing material and energy loops in line with the concept of circularity, and cradle to cradle manufacturing. For human wastes this translate into separating waste streams of gray, black, and yellow waters and reclaiming use from each of them through energy recapture (e.g. anaerobic digestion) and material recovery (e.g. creation of urea based fertilizers, gray water irrigation systems, and compost or biochar). For manufacturing systems this entails the creation of industrial ecosystems that eliminate pollution through process integration (in line with the spirit of the Clean Air and Water Acts as well as the enabling legislation for the Toxic Substances Control Act), and even more importantly through biomimetic design and biobased innovation that eliminates hazardous substances as end products.

Water

Water is life - it pervades all material systems, bodies, and makes our planet habitable. Regenerative water supply systems entail harnessing positive relationships between other systems and their relationship with water. For example, Protecting source areas and eliminating pollution from waste, manufacturing, transportation, food, fiber, and fuel and energy systems. Regenerating our relationship with water also requires large scale ecological restoration of aquifer recharge areas, wetland complexes, and coastal habitats as well as integrating green stormwater infrastructure and diverse nature based solutions into the built environment to filter and metabolize contaminants until the technologies causing pollution are evolved.

Manufacturing

We are technological primates that have long transformed raw materials into diverse finished products, dramatically increasing in complexity over time. Regenerative manufacturing requires closing material loops, eliminating toxic chemicals, and engaging in fair labor practices across their supply chain for equitable wealth generation. Given current technological lock in and dependency on polluting industries, this requires significant innovation in biobased and renewable energy powered manufacturing platforms.

Transportation

As a species we are enamored of movement, and our current life styles have co-evolved with global to local transformation infrastructures generally relying on fossil fuels. Re-desiging transportation to be genuinely multi-modal, have increased mass transit, and creative active transportation and hybrid human and electric powered vehicles are key transformative technologies. Regenerative transit networks use kinetic energy recaptures systems, integrate living and energy generation elements to provide shade and multiple ecological, social, and technological functions and benefits and are a key element of regional, urban, and neighborhood planning.

Energy

The world revolves around energy. The vast majority of energy on our planet comes from our sun, or from ancient byproducts of planetary formation and the dissolution of ancient suns (e.g. radioactive materials and the heat of the earth’s core). At present the majority of our species energy needs are being met through direct solar radiation - which warms our planet against the cold backdrop of space, and through the utilization of diverse fossil fuels. Transitioning to a completely renewable and distributed energy system that does not require pollution is a key sector of the regenerative transformation.

Application of the Concepts Laid Out Above

Assembling Place-Specific Resources and Describing Their Application Within the Bioregion

In the Mystic River Watershed - a key site of the development of Pequot cultures and the bioculture of the Northeastern Woodlands - we are working towards a Watershed Regeneration Action Plan utilizing the above framework which we hope to co-evolve with our community. Based on our community engagement to date, we understand that regeneration of our watershed will require significant elaboration of the concepts laid out above and the identification of specific opportunities for creative interventions and systems transformations. As part of this process we invite you to participate in our Watershed Regeneration Action Plan process to elaborate and evolve our horizon points and guiding principles and identify the necessary actions to put them into practice.

Understanding Culture as Bioculture

The culture of the Pequot peoples is inseparable from the bioculture—namely the agro-ecologies and life ways—encountered by colonizing and migrated peoples.
Culture encompasses both immaterial and material aspects of human existence and serves as a container for interrelated focal areas. All fit under the umbrella of culture and land relations.
A general background on Native history—told from a Native point of view, as much as possible—is a key part of our Bioregional Regeneration Curriculum.

Indigenous Descriptions of Abundance

Colonial accounts of first contact emphasized the paradisiacal nature of the Northeast and Eastern Seaboard.
Accounts describe hyper-abundances of migratory fish and birds:
- Walking on the backs of salmon, shad, river herring, and sturgeon.
- Skies darkened by passenger pigeons.
Many of these species were intentionally respected for their life-giving attributes, with specific practices of land care and ritual ensuring their seasonal returns.

Bioregion-Based Food Systems

Native and Naturalized Agro-Ecologies

Polycultures in intensive crop production:
- The Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash.
Medicinal gardens and intensively cultivated areas, including:
- Wetland agricultural systems often co-produced with beavers.
- Cultivated wetland species like cattails, duck potatoes, chenopodium species.
- Fish and mammals dependent on wetland complexes.

Forest-Based Systems

Immediate sustenance provided by:
- White oak acorns, hickories, walnuts.
- Fruiting trees and shrubs such as:
- High and low bush blueberries
- Cherries
- Shadbush / Serviceberry / Juneberry
- Wintergreens
Forests supported key game species:
- White-tailed deer, turkeys, raccoons, opossums, wolves, bears, coyotes, and the now-extinct eastern elk.

Fisheries and Shellfish

Marine, freshwater, and migratory fisheries.
Shellfish as a critical component of both sustenance and cultural identity.

Fiber Systems / Fibersheds

Vital for clothing, building materials, and necessary technologies:
- Fish nets, lines, storage nets, etc.

Regenerative Built Environment

Key Sectors:
- Buildings and Housing
- Manufacturing
- Food and Material Processing
- Community Infrastructure
- Commercial Systems

photo credit: hpb magazine

Wastewater Treatment and On-Site Systems

Living Building Challenge requires on-site waste treatment with flexibility in implementation:
- Composting toilets and greywater separation are common.
Examples:
- Omega Center (Rhinebeck, NY): Living machine
- PAE Building (Portland, OR):
  - Living machine
  - Collects urine for fertilizer
  - First large commercial building to produce fertilizer on-site
Community-scale innovations:
- Anaerobic digestion and wastewater treatment systems:

A Curriculum and Strategy for Regenerating the Northeast Bioregion With a Focus on Connecticut’s Mystic River Watershed