Talk:Bioregional democracy

This is a bastardization of the concept of bioregionalism. There is nothing here that remotely refers to bioregionalism as formulated by Arne Naess and developed by others over the past twenty years.

This article and pages really calls the entire Wikipedia project to question!!

Hayduke

A google search revealed no hits for 'Ecoregional Democracy'. This appears to demonstrate that "Ecoregional Democracy" is an idiosyncratic concept. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not for personal projects.

Please revert this change only if you can supply evidence that "Ecoregional Democracy" is a widely recognised concept.

Google search:
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ecoregional+democracy%22

Someone needs to go through and remove all the other stuff this person has inserted. (Thanks to 213.253.39.xxx, it looks like most of it is now gone.) --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

A couple of the articles could be pared down to leave some useful content, so these have been left -- continental trading bloc, for example.

There's still more left that doesn't mention "ecoregional democracy", however. For example, Ecology movement, NGO and Health security. See also Four Pillars, Greens, etc., etc., --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

Just because Zundark doesn't agree with the contents of this article isn't reason enough to impose total censorship. I can agree that the article needs improvement, but that doesn't mean deletion. As to the Google search Zundark's link does indeed yield nothing, but it's based on a search for the precise phrase. Searching without the quotation marks gave me 102 hits, and what they write about seems close enough to the subject of the article to satisfy me that it merits inclusion. Eclecticology


 * The Google link wasn't mine - see the absence of my signature, look at the history of the page. But a search for the precise phrase is what is relevant here, and something which draws blank on Google certainly doesn't merit an article, even if someone were willing to take the time to write one. --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

Zundark is censoring on his own account. The term "Ecoregional Democracy" is very new, since only recently did the World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic decide to call what used to be called "bioregions", "ecoregions"...

You will find the term bioregion everywhere in the context of democratic reforms to make political boundaries fit ecologies. The ecological names for the continents are also not commonly found on Google, being new. Wouldn't you like to be the first place people come to find out about them? The link in "ecoregions" puts you one click away from the map showing the ecology temrs are legit.

As to the democracy issue, it's quite carefully defined, and "bioregional democracy", "bioregional party structure", "bioregional districts", etc., are the old names that their advocates are trying to unify under a new term: Ecoregional Democracy. The last version emphasized the change of name to match ecoregional borders, and the continental_trading_bloc entry showed some correspondence between these borders in the large and existing trading blocs.

I am not going to go back and fix all this destroyed work until it's settled. If you want the entry to be called "bioregional democracy" and redirect "ecoregional democracy" to that, fine. It's even fine to have folks who don't believe in "ecoregions" write the final draft of the damn entry... but it's a scientific concept and I expect it to be respected as one, thanks.

"Ecology movement, NGO and Health security. See also Four Pillars, Greens, etc., etc., --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22"

It's quite obvious Zundark has an agenda. These articles have been corrected several times for NPOV and then destroyed by a guy with an agenda. Without an editor it appears wiki is in trouble.


 * I haven't edited any of those five articles, and the Greens one is still full of your stuff. --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

I propose that Zundark pick someone else that he trusts and that he consent with that person to delete or fix something. 213.253.39.xxx could be Zundark so someone a little more accountable would be a better choice.


 * In other words, anyone you object to you will simply accuse of being me. --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

Also, regarding Google, for instance, it's not always perfectly reliable for material from political groups.

You will find, for instance, lots from the Viridian Greens (who like the web), and nothing from the Soylent Greens (who hate it). If you want to believe that groups don't exist because they hide or are driven off the net, fine, believe it. - First to 24.150.61.63: It would be a lot easier to defend your positions if you signed your comments as a registered contributor. Using three consecutive tildes, "~" is all it takes.

As for Google, it is nothing more than a big search engine. It's a great place to start your research, but a terrible place to end it. I would not go so far as to suggest that it wilfully censors topics for being too political. On the other hand, being rigidly stuck on the usage of a precise phrase srikes me as some kind of logical fallacy - perhaps a variation on the straw man.

I've looked at how the first line of the article might be cleaned up and ran into the phrase "better represent body and environment concerns". What did you mean with the word "body" in that context, or is it a typo for something else?

It's not unusual for a group like the Greens to have a bunch of nutcases jump on the bandwagon, and in keeping with the popular saying: "With friends like these who needs enemies?'' It is certainly wrong to judge the Greens on the basis of its nutcase hagers-on.  Eclecticology

-

Please, then, give examples of an actual 'ecoregional democracy' movement that exists in the real world, with cites: the previous articles simply referenced low-traffic mailing lists. Literature cites, news stories, web pages: any of these would be good. Otherwise, I will have to agree with Zundark that these articles are idiosyncratic, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. The loopiness of the original articles, alas, shifts the burden of proof to the proposers of this concept. The Anome
 * I didn't write the original article, and I have no particular attachment to the title. I would not even go so far as to characterize it as a "movement" the way you did.  I do, however, have some sympathy for some of the ideas expressed in the article.  The specific synonym "bioregional representation" suggested by the writer does a little better on Google.  Zundark's hurried deletion and accusation of vandalism bothered me more than if he had simply undertaken a discussion of the substantive issues raised.  Nothing in the article suggests that the original author acted in bad faith, even if you disagree with all of his substantive points.  Is the dispute just about the title of the article?  If so, the contents should be moved to a more appropriate title with a redirect from this article.  A redirect form a nonexistent term would then be on a par with a redirection from a misspelled one.


 * That being said, I only dove into this battle to-day (March 22), and cannot pretend that I have researched the topic thoroughly enough to make a reasonalble edit, but I will certainly look into it in the days to come. Meanwhile, I will add a warning note at the head of the article in the hopes that some of the more impatient among us will show a little more restraint for the next 30 days.  Eclecticology

- 24.*.*.* here. I support anonymity for political reasons and don't believe that reputations do the material a damn bit of good. I prefer scrapping - it makes for better material.

I'm not going to write a defense of bioregional or ecoregional democracy - I think I did that.

I agree with the "redirect" strategy if you object to anticipating a term - the ecoregions map was only released a few weeks ago by National geographic and the term "ecoregions" has not augmented or replaced "biome" or "bioregion" yet.

If you're looking for real world advocacy of this stuff, try Joel Garreau's 1981 "Nine Nations of North America" - three of which ("Ecotopia" on the West Coast, "Empty Quarter" in the arid regions east of the Continental Divide and running from Oklahoma to North Slope of Alaska, "Breadbasket" on the prairies) are strictly Ecoregional and depend totally on climate and ecology - he also defined six more that were cultural.

if you look for "bioregion" or "bioregions" specifically you'll find lots - I think the best reference for a "real world Ecoregional Democracy movement" is the Green Party of Alaska - which is entirely organized on bioregional lines.

I specifically wrote the article not to differentiate between biome, bioregion, micro-climate, watershed, and what is now called "ecoregion". Any of the other terms would be too specific - so I had to make a blanket term... compatible with the science of ecology which defines "terrestrial ecoregions" and does not define the other words.

Since this is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary, I consider that to be a reasonable approach. Yes, it's on the edge of defining something into full existence, especially the emphasis on biosecurity, but those arguments are all over the place on Green forums and at Greenpeace - I just don't have the legal right to redistribute them.

If you want to know how prevalent secession movements in general are, see http://www.secession.net

Ecoregional secession deserves a whole article of its own. But no one calls it that yet. IT's a bunch of identical goal sets with unrelated rationales...

It's the surest sign of something obvious and truly necessary, that it's out there under 200 different names, and nobody has bothered to name it yet as its so obvious and arises due to so many different pressures and constraints.

You should have a policy on anticipating names of things, but I don't see the harm in taking an obscure term and defining it in an obvious, annealing, way.

If you want it to be "bioregional democracy" and point at the Green Party of Alaska, fine. But I'm talking about something a lot larger than just that...
 * '''ARRRRGH!!! I was so right in suggesting that with friends like you, who needs enemies.  Scrapping does not make for better material.  It just forces people into hard and inflexible positions.  Eclecticology

- Please read What Wikipedia is not. There is nothing wrong with what you are doing. It is just that here is not the place to do it.

Please: Do it on Usenet. Do it on your website. Do it in Yahoo Groups. Form a political party. Print manifestos. Write a book. Hold rallies.

Just, please, don't express your personal project as encylopedic information.

Please, on the other hand, write articles about real political movements, using the terms that they use in real life. Be sure to provided lots of checkable references, as some people will be inclined to disbelieve you by default, based on your previous conduct. The Anome

-- "Scrapping does not make for better material. It just forces people into hard and inflexible positions.  Eclecticology"

Temporarily, yes. But we see whose position has guts and whose has legs and gradually get the guts and legs together far faster than we would by some kind of niceness.

I'll do my best to satisfy the objections in the article as it stands. Thanks.

"Just, please, don't express your personal project as encylopedic information."

That simply isn't going on. The issue here is the name and whether it is changing to match the ecology term or not. There's a political issue tho:

Politicians can't normally admit that they are giving up actual sovereignty to other countries or states in these cooperative bodies - still less that they are evolving towards actual democratic districts with their own representatives separate from those that represent the people living around the borders of the ecoregion or watershed.

Some more good examples I thought of just now and will add to the article in some way.

Great Lakes Region cooperation between the US states (WI, MI, OH, NY, etc.) who surround the Great Lakes and the Canadian province of Ontario - with Quebec as observer (technically Quebec is not on the great lakes but has a giant sewer pipe for them called the St. Lawrence). As the governors and premier (of Ontario) are elected, this is a form of ecoregional democracy. And probably the most successful example as the lakes have been cleaned up much since they instituted it.

Countries with claims in the Arctic (US, Canada, Russia, Iceland, Denmark, Norway) cooperate in a similar body - and these are also all democracies so it satisfies the definition of an ecoregional democracy to a similar degree.

Persian Gulf states were forced to cooperate to clean it up after the Gulf War - not sure if this resulted in lasting cooperation of any real kind...

These are all "watershed" examples, but differentiating "watershed democracy" doesn't make much sense. Does it?

Canadian province of BC and Washington state and Alaska cooperate on Pacific fishery regulation - although this isn't terrestrial.

Anyway, the phenomena exists, it's a question of how best to name it and how many articles to write. I'd hoped to save time and confusion by writing one good one,but if that's not possible, I'll write several little ones, one for each of the above... bleagh.


 * But we see whose position has guts and whose has legs and gradually get the guts and legs together far faster than we would by some kind of niceness.

Please. Don't try to do that.


 *  I'd hoped to save time and confusion by writing one good one,but if that's not possible, I'll write several little ones, one for each of the above... bleagh.

Please write one good article. Show more than one set of views. Attribute opinions to their holders. Cite references. Just for a start. The Anome

I offer myself as referee and/or editor. I have no opinion on ecoregional democracy. I don't even know what it is.

I propose:


 * 1) Define ecoregional democracy.
 * 2) Say who discovered the idea or advocates it.
 * 3) Explain the reasons that the major advocates give for their positions.

User:Ed Poor


 * Sounds good. But first of all, you need to verify that the term actually exists, or find an equivalent term that does. And then you have to convince 24.150.61.63 that you're not me. --Zundark, 2002 Mar 22

I'm not Zundark, okay? Our writing styles are radically different. That should be enough.

Also, the following statement could be improved, that is, made more suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia:


 * Some argue that to permit political borders to bisect ecoregions is much like requiring a citizen to live in one place while requiring only his left arm to answer to the government of another.

How about identifying who argues this way? I'd like to know more about them and their position. Is it the Carpathians?

And what is the relationship of ecoregional issues to issues of sustainable development?

You can contribute to this encyclopedia, by helping to create high-quality articles that let the reader know who says what about which: the 3 W's (if I may coin a term). User:Ed Poor


 * 24.*.*.* here. I support anonymity for political reasons and don't believe that reputations do the material a damn bit of good.  I prefer scrapping - it makes for better material.

Cogeco Cable Solutions (NETBLK-CGOC-WERI1-A) CGOC-WERI1-A IP block

I'm not hiding. I just think that over time names engender respect and respect is bad for entries. Regular contributors should confront material in a slightly annoyed state <-- keyword slightly. I shouldn't become a guru, so I shouldnt have a name. As long as you know I'm trying to make the material better and I have reasons for choosing names that aren't (yet) common for an entry, and will leave the name up to you anyway, i.e. its a goodwill effort.

By "scrapping" I certainly don't mean resorting to technical means like bots or IP bans. That's beyond counter-productive, that's relying on technology to set consensus.

Anyway:

Ed Poor says "what is the relationship of ecoregional issues to issues of sustainable development?"

Prerequisite, i.e. without ecoregional structure you get arbitrage between the two different governance systems that apply to the two parts of that ecoregion (which presumably provide similar products), and get a "race to the bottom" that "cuts off the arm" and cripples the ecology.

OK, so I assumed that ... I'll add it soon.

Oh, and thanks for the "bioregional state" reference - hadn't seen that one. That term has become deprecated in Green circles because 1. "bioregion" is being replaced as a term by "ecoregion" - a decision made by ecologists at NG and WWF when they published their map and 2. it isn't necessarily a "state" in the conventional sense of a commons ruled by majority vote that's being constructed in most of these systems - often it's a "cap and trade" market or quota system or something else which allocates the bounty and sets limits on pollution.

Kyoto is an example: greenhouse gas output to the commons of the atmosphere. Hwoever it's a bad example as not every nation in the ecological space (all of Earth) had to meet quotas, and they're not all "democracies"...

Sometimes its hard to know how far to go with the ecology stuff. These guys talk about *lots* of different kinds of "keystone species" in various situations and the definition varies rather drastically by ecoregion.

Also it may not be clear that democracy implies governance in the language of the land... and thus indigenous sovereignty or all the Europeans learning it. ;-)

Now Bioregional Democracy

Actually I'm not sure this name is technically correct, under the way the new word "ecoregion" is used in ecology it includes watersheds and even oceans...

however "bioregion" is generally only used for terrestrial ecoregions, so the references to Great Lakes or Arctic Ocean ecoregional cooperation can't really be said to be "bioregional democracy".

It's a nitpick. Put a link that redirects "ecoregional democracy" to "bioregional democracy" and I'll be happy. I'll put something at the start of the article which indicates this shift in terminology - and keeps ecoregional throughout the article.


 * No problem with this change from my perspectvie. Eclecticology

Another nitpick:


 * Scientists claim that ecoregions are observed in nature rather than imposed by man.

I'd rather see "Scientists recognize" or "Scientist John Doe claims". ..

User:Ed Poor - I think in this case "Scientists claim" is appropriate, since it's neither a recognition of an empirical fact that they can prove, nor a claim made by a narrow range of scientists, but something established by a broad consensus.

This is only my own opinion here, I'll go with a consensus, but:

Think of a particle accelerator in physics. You don't want to say that "Scientists recognize" that it "works" and produces accurate measurements of very tiny things - because they can't really prove that - there are only a couple of them in the world and they tend to run quite different experiments. You also don't want to say that "CERN claims" or "SLAC claims" as that implies that these institutions are the only scientists who believe that their equipment is useful in physics. It is appropriate in these cases, and the ecology consensus case, and a few others like "psychiatrists" who "claim" collectively that the DSM-IV represents something other than billable hours, to use the relatively ambigous but inclusive "scientists claim".


 * In these cases, you say: "According to scientists at CERN . . ." User:Ed Poor

- OK, this needs a style rewrite, and I'm about to tackle that, as I now think it is the weakest of the articles I've written.

a note on terminology: the terms "state" and "representation" and "constituency" and "district" and "riding" are all too specific to any one political system - they come with legacy baggage - so while you will find most of the discussion on this on the web expressed in terms of "bioregional state" or "bioregional representation" or "bioregion as riding" or whatever, it is all variants on what we call "democracy" in some form. Democracy is the most general word, and corresponds with "grassroots democracy", "social democracy", and other theories of governing.

Also, although it hasn't happened yet, "ecoregional" is going to replace "bioregional" reference because of the shift in ecology. So I prefer to leave the title "Bioregional" for now but the content should refer to "ecoregional" as much as possible, as a generic term that now has specific meaning thansks to scientists at WWF and NG agreeing on the def'n of ecoregions.

The linguistic material is really hard to handle - democracy implies decisions are made in some common language - and the link between biodiversity and language is considered critical by the advocates of this approach - I have never discussed it with anyone without mentioning language and linguistic proofs of correlation between decision-making language and sustainability.

But, other articles had similar problems, and they were fixed, so I'll give this a try. maybe a lot more foundation material on biodiversity would help remove the controversial stuff from this article, and leave it stating only what Zundark called "common sense" conclusions.

Open to input...? I'll tackle this before Wednesday and encourage anyone else to add any material,but would ask you avoid removing any until that ruthless rewrite I'm planning...

Bioregional Revolutionary Movement
Is this for real? It looks like a cia front... really! -max rspct 12:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup tag added
I added a rewrite tag to this article. Aside from the fact that some of the prose tends to make my brain congeal, it seems more like a number of sections on ecoregions, but headed by a very confused introduction. Within the first paragraph two terms "bioregional democracy" and "Bioregional State" are used which seem to have somewhat variant meanings. This awkwardly twinned concept is then defined as "a set of electoral reforms", but then "a movement", in the subsequent two sentences. An opening paragraph should be able to concisely convey the concept of what the article will cover.

The second paragraph gives a "best known example" of the "Great Lakes Commission", which certainly seems to fall under "watershed cooperation", but doesn't seem to be an obvious example of "electoral reforms", or a movement notably denoting "local jurisdictional dominance". At first glance, the GLC appears (and says as much on its website) to deal with communications, policy research and advocacy. It does not "govern" the watershed - there is a separate bilateral International Joint Commission involved in this, which is established at the national level in both countries. I'm not sure that "giving up some sovereignty" would be an appropriate description of this.

The opening concludes by indicating there are "more profound" forms of this concept, and continues on with a number of theory-based sections which seem to have only had passing introduction with the opening, which doesn't mention bio/ecoregions by name at all - I'm not sure if the article was a Frankenstein merger of various bits and pieces, but as a reader coming across it, the current format is distinctly unhelpful. Even within the later sections, there is a distinct lack of answers to basic questions such as who is actually using or promoting some of these terms and concepts, how common such usage might be, etc.

Are there any active editors on this article? - David Oberst 06:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Complete rewrite started
I've decided to be bold and tear apart this article. Some major points:
 * There seems to be very few references to the term "bioregional democracy" that aren't somehow related to this wikipedia article. Unless good citations for common usage of this term for some specific concept to base an article on, or usage as an umbrella term to base some sort of disambiguation page on, it may not be necessary to keep this article at all, depending on what happens to the various parts.


 * The intro. As i mentioned above, the intro seems to be an unsourced and (on the face of it) poorly argued chunk of text with little relation to the rest of the article.  The first paragraph might survive in the "umbrella" scenario (minus the "electoral reforms" bit), but the second on the Great Lakes Commission seems ready for the scrapheap.


 * Ecoregions - the most coherant bits of the article all seem to deal with ecoregions. There is an existing stub article, Bioregionalism, which seems to be in need of major expansion.  Contrary to "bioregional democracy", there does seem to be quite a number of references to this term, and the article should probably be expanded to include the history of the term, a bibliography, etc. I'm collecting what references I can, and if I can expand it, bits and pieces of this article might find a home there eventually.


 * Ecoregional consensus - this section lacks any citation for the term or justification for the text as written, which includes no explanation of the nature of the "consensus", and reads like disconnected notes from some other article. The only references to "eco/bioregional consensus" that I can find are a couple extremely non-notable mentions in passing for a "Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg", who "facilitated bioregional consensus training for local ecological groups.  I've tagged this with {importance}, and will likely delete it if nobody else comes along with support.  [section now deleted]


 * Bioregional State - I've tagged two sections which appear to deal with the book/webpages "Toward a Bioregional State" by Mark Whitaker. I've created a stub article Bioregional State (which used to be a redirect here) as a possible new home for anything related to this.  "Bioregional State" as a phrase seems to have no usage outside of Whitaker.  Whether Whitaker's stuff is notable and non-WP:NOR enough to survive as a separate article would be a question for another time and place.


 * Bioregional Revolutionary Movement - I removed this section, based on the non-notable Bioregional revolution article now nominated at AfD.


 * Language and Biodiversity - I'm not even sure where to start on this section. It looks like some citations from linguistics have been wrapped in the phrase "bioregional democracy", but whether there is something useful here that could be moved elsewhere may take some detective work on someone's part.

Anyone with suggestions, comments or dissents, please come forward. - David Oberst 04:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Delete tag added
I've put a dated delete tag on the article. To some extent this is to see if it brings any editors out of the woodwork, but also from a difficulty in trying to find parts to salvage. The two sections I tagged as possibly moving to Bioregional State may in fact have just had that phrase wrapped around some previous text, and in any case Bioregional State itself might wind up as a non-notable article, and I really don't want to dig into the whole thing. - David Oberst 02:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * My suggestion would be to move any salvagable bits from this article or from Bioregional State (i.e. the Whitaker citations) to Bioregionalism, and then have this article and Bioregional State redirect to there. Bioregionalism is a movement of several decades duration, an a substantial amount has been written about it (although the article doesn't yet do the movement justice); this article, however, may have crossed the line into original research. Tom Radulovich 16:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree that this article should be deleted, as it contains a lot of substance and on whole it adds value to the encyclopedia. Also, I question the value of information learned by adding a tag to bring editors 'out of the woodwork'.  Such a test presumes that articles must be defended by keeping articles on your watchlist forever 'in defense'.  Requiring such is counterproductive to the spirit of Wikipedia.  In principle, the presumption behind your 'out of the woodwork' test does not assume good faith. BruceHallman 17:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Bruce, I actually agree with the undesirability of my tagging, and I would have removed the tag myself in any case and sent the article to AfD if it came to that. If you can point out what you would see as the useful parts (and where they should go) that would be helpful. A starting point would be the title "bioregional democracy" itself. What would you suggest as the one or two most significant citations of the term, indicating what core concept the article should be expounding on, and what notable useage in the outside world is being reported on? Many of the references I find seem to refer somehow to Wikipedia, and when those are eliminated (try this Google search) there doesn't seem to be a coherant "bioregional democracy" usage that obviously pops out to me. The article seems to be bits and pieces that (at best) belong elsewhere. - David Oberst 18:11, 16 June 2006 (UTC)