Norrland Network Bioregion 2030 — Share ideas and join the action

Welcome to the preliminary version of the Norrland Bioregion 2030. You are welcome to give feedback and get engaged, and you can also support the development via donations.

Why Norrland?

• Northern Sweden is in the Arctic (polar) circle and in northern Europe.
• 60% of Sweden’s territory, but less than 10% of the population lives there
• According to the Swedish government’s recent numbers, Norrland needs more residents, around 100 000 people.
• Historically, the region is more politically and economically dependent on decision-making in Stockholm, where the national government is based.
• Most of Norrland is one of the most unhabituated parts of Sweden and consists of large nature, green and forest areas.
• There are around 4000 islands, most of them without residents, and there are also around 30 Sami villages where the residents are from the indigenous Sami people.
• Certain municipalities such as Oevertorneao, became “eco-municipalities” already during the 1980s
• The world’s largest hydrogen gas production facility and Europe’s largest battery factory are being developed in Norrland.

Norrland Network Bioregion vision

The idea of a bioregion is to create a type of polity, community, and society that complements and comprehends cities, sub-national regions, and nations by focusing on governance and actions regarding ecology, nature, and climate. For example, in the case of Northern Sweden, the nature and climate are the same in areas that belong to Finland, Norway, and Russia.

Norrland Network Bioregion is imagining and thinking about Norrland as a place for different and specialized decentralized communities that can co-create and cooperate with each other and public institutions, especially at the local levels. Norrland Network Bioregion would be a decentralized bioregion based on inter-community cooperation and governance as through liquid democracy.

Also, Norrland Bioregion would be affected by and influence governance when it comes to municipalities, the Norrland region, Sweden, European Union, United Nations, and hopefully even an Arctic Bioregion in the future.

Through the co-creation of Norrland Network Bioregion, we hope to establish the Norrland (public) region into a more innovative, creative, and entrepreneurial place that can attract individuals and communities committed to improving our planet when it comes to the economy, welfare and ecology. This development will depend on agreements and cooperation between decentralized communities and public institutions.

Bioregional creation process

Currently, we live in a world where no government, better said UN member-state and sovereign nations, has recognized any virtual or decentralized community as sovereign. This is different even with initiatives such as Liberland.

National governments, supranational polities such as the EU, and international organizations are unwilling to change the current international system where new nations can only be created through enough international recognition in the UN. One of the goals is to convince the European Commission, the Swedish government, the Norrland region, and municipalities such as Kiruna to accept and recognize decentralized communities and their citizenships systems as complementary and cooperative institutions.

This goal can be done by a bottom-up approach by organizing meetings, dialogues, and presentations about how different decentralized communities operate regarding aspects such as agriculture, arts, business, culture, creativity, entrepreneurship, ecology, finance, innovation, projects, regeneration, etc. A special focus is creating stories and visuals about what decentralized communities can do and achieve locally.

Besides all institutional challenges, another major challenge is that many people, including in Sweden, need to become more familiar with and understand things such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain, NFTs, and other vital parts of decentralization. This means that this work will also be educative and informative by providing basic knowledge about decentralization to public and private actors such as politicians, office servants, NGO activists, company employees etc.

Experimentation, tests, and trials

In order to empower and develop our lobby towards public institutions, practical trials and community organizing will be important. In practice, if one or several decentralized communities can establish themselves in Norrland, it will be easier to show public officials, institutions, and politicians at the local level how such communities operate in daily life.

Sweden is one of the most open and free countries regarding migration. The main reasons are positive experiences about efforts, contributions, and rewards immigrated individuals provide via entrepreneurship and creativity. Thereby, if at least one decentralized community can establish itself and operate with its model it will be easier to convince public institutions about the benefits, positive results, and good things that the community is making.

For example, this development can be done regarding agriculture, eco-tourism, and tech entrepreneurship. Suppose a decentralized community of 20 to 80 individuals can establish an eco/regenerative village. In that case, it could result in aspects such as agricultural production, solar energy production, possibilities for having visits with guided tours and gift shops, and remote and digital work opportunities via co-working spaces.

Support and creation

Co-creating a network bioregion demands visions, engagement, and results. It can be done through bottom-up and decentralized cooperation between entrepreneurs, communities, NGOs, and public institutions. If you are interested in cooperating, please get in touch with me via vladlau89@gmail.com

Thanks for reading. You can support and reward my writing via:

Pay Pal — lauvlad89@gmail.com

Algo — NCG6LBALQHENQUSR77KOR6SS42FGK54BZ5L2HFDSBGQVLGYIOVWYDXFDI4

ADA — addr1q9vfs6nqz4xmtnpljwhv4tukyskd2g7enxd87rpugkwwvfun5pnla5d5tes2mvurrc77e7837yd0scrfk063qlha8wgs8d4ynz

Bitcoin 3HbxyDXE9MhNQ8RqsirqgYvFupQzh5Xby2

ETH — 0x8982cdb97bd23f092f78a16a4fc93c5c4607a285

Seeds — vladlausevic

Skycoin — ZxjhWMJRbTNCRQzy5MekZzH4fhdWFCqBP8

Tezos — tz1QrRzkTAKuPKF8dmGW6c1ScEHBUGvoiJBM