Bioregional intelligence is understanding and living within the ecological boundaries (watersheds, ecosystems) of your specific place, recognizing how nature’s patterns (water, land, species) shape human life, fostering local resilience, and integrating Indigenous wisdom to create sustainable cultures, moving beyond political borders to build deeper, place-based relationships for ecological health. It’s about seeing the world as interconnected life systems, connecting fragmented… Read more →
Category: Bioregional Intelligence
The Next Step
It seems to me that the next step for the lab is to develop a community of interest around the idea of planetary intelligence. It makes sense to have that be bioregional, as one of the first tasks is to build a practical example of bioregional intelligence using the Genesee Finger Lakes region. I’d like to extend an invitation to… Read more →
A Practical Research Program for Developing Planetary Intelligence
Saturday, December 20, 2025 First, a clarification of framing (important) Planetary intelligence is not an end goal. It is an ongoing capacity—like public health, democracy, or ecological stewardship—that must continuously adapt as conditions change. A more accurate statement is: Planetary intelligence is humanity’s developing ability to sense planetary conditions, understand their meaning, make collective decisions grounded in reality and fairness,… Read more →
The Intelligence of Nature
Below is a synthesized, cross-disciplinary account of what we actually know—scientifically, philosophically, and empirically—about the intelligence of nature, and where the boundaries of that knowledge still lie. What We Know About the Intelligence of Nature 1. Nature is not random; it is organized, adaptive, and problem-solving Across biology, ecology, and Earth system science, one conclusion is no longer controversial: natural… Read more →
Gemini on “Building Bioregional Intelligence”
Building bioregional intelligence is the practice of developing a “terrain of consciousness”—a collective ability for communities to see, think, and act as part of their local ecological systems. It shifts focus from arbitrary political borders to natural boundaries like watersheds, soil types, and climate patterns to organize human activity regeneratively. Core Components of Bioregional Intelligence Watershed Consciousness: Understanding life through… Read more →
Building Bioregional Intelligence, Part 2 (Actually a Prequel)
Below is a conceptual prologue—deliberately non-technical in tone, but rigorous in scope—that can introduce later material on dashboards, data architectures, and AI-enabled commons. It is written to stand on its own as a framing essay on Building Bioregional Intelligence, using the Genesee Finger Lakes (GFL) as an illustrative case without treating it as exceptional. Building Bioregional Intelligence A prologue From… Read more →
Building Bioregional Intelligence
Looking at https://gflbioregion.org, and reviewing what has been generated about planetary intelligence at https://possibleplanetlab.org, what’s the best way that we can demonstrate what it means for the Genesee Finger Lakes to become a node in a planetary bioregional network? Can we generalize the “bioregional health” framework set out at https://gflbioregion.org? Can we generate a framework for a bioregional knowledge commons… Read more →