Catalyst of The Good Bioregion Movement
Pezzoli, K. 2011. “Action Research Challenges, Solutions & Opportunities: A guide to The Global ARC’s Sustainability Database ” The Global Action Research Center (The Global ARC), Sept 3, 2011.http://www.theglobalarc.org/images/uploads/Action_Research_Challenges_and_Solutions.pdf
Draft of a two page trifold brochure
http://www.theglobalarc.org/images/uploads/Global_ARC_Brochure_Pezzoli__Sept3.pdf
Vision
A just world of healthy bioregions, foodsheds and watersheds where urban and rural communities flourish together sustainably.
Mission
Shift urban-rural relations and local place-making toward globally-minded, interdependent bioregionalism that fosters healthy, just, resilient, and culturally sensitive sustainabe development worldwide.
Our definition of sustainability
"Improving the quality of life, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, while living within the limits of supporting ecosystems" (Agyeman, Bullard and Evans 2003)
What We Do
The Global ARC is a nonprofit organization that creates university-community partnerships, knowledge networks, and multimedia to enable just, healthy and innovative bioregional development. The Global ARC brings together educators, researchers, scientists, professionals, students and community organizers. The mission is to interconnect and scale up sustainability solutions (across urban-rural divides) focused on food, water, energy, land and the built environment. The organizing framework—which is place-based, globally-minded and solutions-oriented—advances integrative concepts including watershed, foodshed, socio-ecological systems, knowledge commons, environmental health and justice.
The Global ARC’s core functions include:
- A systematic way for community-based organizations to clarify and publically broadcast their priorities for use-inspired, problem-solving, and solutions-oriented research.
- Collaborative infrastructure (internet and institutional) that incentivizes citizens, scientists, entrepreneurs and others to collectively pool/share research-based evidence for innovation and public benefit.
- A holistic “connect the dots” approach to urban-rural sustainability that integrates otherwise fragmented efforts in the quest for justice, environmental health and good jobs (framework = creating innovative biocultural regions).
- Leadership capacity-building for community engagement, research translation, science communication and social innovation.
The Global ARC’s core programs include:
1. ARC Sustainability Database --version 2.0 soon to be released, includes social networking
2. Leadership Development --this has two parts:
- Civic Engagement Internship Program: Training students, with the help of faculty and community scholars/mentors, to be "action research" liaisons between our regions institutions of higher education and community-based organizations working at the front lines advancing social and regional innovation for just and sustainable urban-rural/ metro-hinterland development (biocultural regionalism).
- Civic Sector Leadership Groups: A dynamic leadership and organizational development model for: (1) issue processing among leaders of nonprofit orgs, and (2) cross-fertilizing imagination, resources, and strategies across leadership groups in The Global ARC’s 8 areas of concentration.
3. Bioregional Workbench: An application for federating distributed intelligence and enabling interactive mapping/visualization/spatial analysis in targeted ways to be defined by our civic sector leadership groups and Global ARC partners . We will begin with a regional focus on the food-water-energy nexus. This application could eventually become a place for NSF grant awardees and others to share their outputs to meet the merit to society and data sharing requirements of their research contracts.
Other elements to be developed over the long term as the Global ARC matures:
- Science Communication Academy : An annual workshop for engaged scholars on the arts and crafts of communicating science.
- Biannual Awards Program : Recognition/financial support for most impactful Action Research Challenge/Solution set inside the Global ARC.
- Knowledge Commons : An open access publishing venue that specializes in transdisciplinary nexus narratives relevant the Global ARC's mission (fostering interdependent and innovative bioregionalism worldwide)
- Sister-Bioregion Program : A confederation of city-regions around the world, joined to energize scholarship of engagement and innovative bioregionalism --leveraging the Global Planning Educators Association Network of 750 planning schools clustered into 9 regional associations of universities worldwide.
- Global ARC Innovators (a small team of trusted partners able to join forces as opportunities emerge to execute grants, projects, publications and multimedia in support of the Global ARC's mission to transition regional economies and cultures toward more just and sustainable place-making (LifePlaces) worldwide.
We serve as an Outlook Tower in the way that Patrick Geddes (1915) describes regional surveys for planning purposes
We survey bioregional assets including:
- Social, cultural and economic capital
- Ecosystems and green infrastructure
- Scientific, creative and educational institutions
We identify organizations and projects that are creating:
- New value and common wealth (e.g., community gardens)
- Innovation and green jobs (e.g., appropriate technology, alternative livelihood opportunities)
- Solutions-based activism/planning that generates social learning, community engagement, and ecological democracy
We chart global networks and flows that can:
- Interconnect and strengthen progressive regionalist efforts worldwide (linking academic, professional and civil networks)
- Provide global-comparative perspectives and opportunities to enrich action research and critical pedagogy
Who We Are
The Global ARC is led by a mix of educators, researchers, scientists, professionals and community organizers all of whom are dedicated to critical study, open dialog, social learning and shared problem solving through place-based approaches. We join forces with one another through partnerships and networking that foster globally-mindedness and equity in planning research, education and practice.
Why call our organization an ARC?
First, it’s an acronym for Action Research Center. More importantly, ARC it is a metaphor for our urgent times, time to bring diversity together—animals, plants and people—joined in a willingness to sacrifice, live simply, tread lightly, with respect. ARC also conveys a connective energy, literally as in lightening bolts and figuratively as in leaps of imaginative power that connects the otherwise disconnected.
