The North American Bioregional Congress - David Haenke & Daniel Wahl in conversation
Channel: Daniel Christian Wahl
Date: 2021-03-18

On February 15th, 2021 I met David Haenke online to talk with him about his work on bioregionalism and how he participated in organising a series of North American Bioregional Congress events in the 1980s.

It was an absolute delight to connect with David via email prior to us speaking and learning so much from the documents he shared. We had a very warm and beautiful conversation, which made me feel grateful for meeting yet another important elder of the Great Turning or the long transition towards reinhabitation and diverse regenerative cultures everywhere healing the Earth and her people - place by place, community by community, bioregion by bioregion.

The recording quality drops towards the end as the snow started piling up on David's satellite dish in the rural Ozarks where he still lives promoting bioregional collaboration and co-creation. This only have us a great opportunity to reschedule a second call which I will share soon.

We honour many important elders like Thomas Berry, Peter Berg, Raymond Dasmann, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, John Todd, E.F. Schumacher, Henry George, Robert Swan & Susan Whitt, ... and David describes his vision of 'The Third Way' as a middle-way between capitalism and socialism. 

...

We talked about Gary Snyder and the influence of his work on bioregionalism in North America and how he defined the bioregion as a life place. ...

I share with David how my path led me to arrive at understanding that the bioregional is critical for integrating the local and the global, human affairs and Ecosystems/Planetary Health and redesigning the human impact on Earth to be regenerative rather than destructive. The place where we can co-create diverse regenerative cultures.

David shares about his work on 'bioregionalism and ecological economics' (I will share his paper as a guest post on my Medium blog). ...

... sorry for the sound quality during the last 10 minutes until we had to break off the recording due to the heavy snow where David lives.


More:
https://ozarklandtrust.org/orlt-board/david-haenke/