Bioregioning Tayside: Lessons from a community-led bioregioning initiative in Scotland

This paper explores practices of bioregioning through Bioregioning Tayside in Scotland. Bioregioning Tayside is a community-led initiative that reconnects human communities to the landscapes they inhabit. This paper explains how Bioregioning Tayside have applied bioregional thought in the context of Scotland. It argues that whilst bioregional practice is plural and place-specific, Bioregioning Tayside offers learnings for global bioregional initiatives: strategies for 1) building critical forms of connection to nature; 2) generating a sense of place that is not inward-looking, but builds solidarity across place and scale; 3) supporting transformative politics that makes space for contestation; and 4) identifying leverage points that are unique to the place in question. The paper also identifies key challenges including discursive politics of ‘bioregioning’, reliance on voluntary contributions, and a continued focus on the bioregion as the primary site of care. The paper contributes to the literature on bioregioning by recording bioregional experiments, connecting global initiatives and sharing the challenges of bioregioning in practice.