On Wednesday, October 28, 2026, r3.0 (Redesign for Resilience and Regeneration) held its fifteenth Bioregional Open Dialogue, a 90-minute Zoom conversation devoted to Global Bioregional Month. One of the month’s three large-scale gatherings, the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress, took place in Vernonia, Oregon, within the Cascadia bioregion, and the dialogue set that Congress beside its counterparts on other continents.
What Global Bioregional Month was
The Bioregional Coherence Circle, which r3.0 stewards, framed September 2026 as Global Bioregional Month to recognize several large-scale bioregional events happening at once:
- the online r3.0 Conference, accompanied by more than 30 in-person Confluences on five continents;
- the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress, held September 15 to 19 at Camp Cedar Ridge in Vernonia;
- the Design School for Regenerating Earth’s Mediterranean Bioregional Activation in Tunisia.
The month’s graphic, designed by Michelle Maloney of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, is this post’s featured image.
How the dialogue unfolded
Bill Baue and Ralph Thurm of r3.0 facilitated, and five invited speakers reflected on what they had seen and heard. Konkankoh Joshua opened the round. He took part in both a Confluence and the Mediterranean activation, and he spoke of an olive tree under which participants had met. He asked what the birds, which know no boundary between continents or countries, and the tree itself might advise people who try to govern everything living beneath their feet and above their heads.
Later in the session, a question from Suzanne Richman, a longtime bioregionalist of the Northeast Woodlands bioregion, drew responses from three of the speakers: what role can bioregionalism play in the context of occupations? Karim Malak answered from the Mediterranean activation, Elham Abbadi from the Hima Corridor Confluence in Jordan, which ran alongside the r3.0 Conference, and Carmen Gonzales from the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress. Laura Kuri also reflected on the Congress, connecting her experience of co-hosting a Congress in Mexico in the 1990s with her work co-leading this year’s Closing Ceremony.
The facilitators and speakers
Bill Baue and Ralph Thurm, facilitators
Bill Baue is r3.0’s Senior Director and helped organize the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress as part of its volunteer team. Ralph Thurm is r3.0’s Managing Director and represented the organization at the Mediterranean activation.
Elham Abbadi
Elham Abbadi leads the Bayoudha Village Farmers Cooperative in Jordan and works in sustainable agriculture. In 2022 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported on her women’s farming cooperative, which had planted more than 15,000 trees across eight villages in Jordan’s dryland areas. At the dialogue she reflected on the Hima Corridor Confluence.
Konkankoh Joshua
Konkankoh Joshua, who also publishes as Joshua Konkankoh, is a Cameroonian elder and community organizer and a founder of the African Way Association. He developed the Bafut Ecovillage in Cameroon, an award-winning permaculture community, and is co-creating the African Peace Village in Portugal’s western Algarve. He took part in the r3.0 Conference through the African Peace Village Confluence, and in the Mediterranean activation.
Carmen Gonzales
Carmen Gonzales spoke on a keynote panel at the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress and was invited to share her reflections on it.
Laura Kuri
Laura Kuri, who is also published as Laura Valdés Kuri, is known as a founder of the bioregional movement in Mexico. She co-hosted a Congress in Mexico in the 1990s and was among the earlier Congress organizers whom the 2026 organizers thanked for their counsel. In Vernonia she co-presented a session and co-led the Closing Ceremony.
Karim Malak
Karim Malak took part in the Mediterranean Bioregional Activation in Tunisia, convened by the Design School for Regenerating Earth, and reflected on it at the dialogue.
About the r3.0 Open Dialogue series
r3.0 is an international platform advancing the transition to a green, inclusive and open economy, with a growing body of bioregional work. In January 2024, in response to demand from its community, it introduced the Open Dialogue format: 90-minute Zoom calls on varied topics, in which invited presenters frame the issues and participants from the r3.0 ecosystem and the public are welcome to join the discussion. In 2025 r3.0 dedicated a monthly series to bioregioning, which opened in January 2025 with Histories of Bioregioning, a session with Brandon Letsinger, Dr. Lyla June Johnston and Karie Crisp.
The 2026 sessions have taken up relationalized finance, Indigenous knowledge systems, funding flows across Turtle Island, BioHubs and a new bioregional knowledge commons database, among other topics. r3.0 posts recordings, slide decks and chat transcripts after each session, and keeps a Living Resources Document that collects the links from every dialogue in the series.
Why it matters in Cascadia
Cascadians had a large part in the Congress. About 130 joined, and the Department of Bioregion, which runs Regenerate Cascadia, served as its fiscal sponsor; Regenerate Cascadia’s thanks to participants describes what came out of Vernonia. The r3.0 dialogue shows the same gathering from a wider angle, as one of three events in a month when bioregional organizers met in person in Oregon, Tunisia, Jordan and many other places while others joined online.
The pattern is familiar. As Regenerate Cascadia noted in 2025, r3.0’s Confluence model, in which local groups gather in person alongside a shared program, is one of the first steps toward more bioregional congressing. Confluencing, converging and congressing also shape Regenerate Cascadia’s plans for 2027, and the 2027 Cascadia Kickoff Jam on Saturday, November 7, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific, leads into that year.
Watch, read and join
- Recording of the dialogue on YouTube.
- Slide deck (PDF).
- Living Resources Document, with links to related resources from the series.
- All of the session’s review materials on r3.0’s Open Dialogues on Bioregioning page.
Next: Hima Revival
The October dialogue seeded the soil for Bioregional Open Dialogue 16: Hima Revival, on Monday, November 30, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. UTC (6 to 7:30 a.m. Pacific). The Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon has been reviving the ancient Arab Hima system, a community-based approach to conservation, since 2004, and its Hima network now spans more than 60 sites, about 7 percent of the country. Assad Serhal, Rami Kadro, Andre Bechara and Raghida Haddad will speak. Registration is optional, and the event page offers a calendar invitation.
Featured image: the title slide of r3.0 Bioregional Open Dialogue 15. The Global Bioregional Month graphic was designed by Michelle Maloney of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance.