A carrying budget states how much of each ecological ceiling a bioregion’s economy may draw on, and what social floor it must meet, as thresholds for the whole bioregion and allocations within it.
Extended definition
Benjamin Life calls determining a bioregion’s needs, capacities and carrying budget “the founding act” of a bioregional economy (Part I, 2026). He sets the limits as particular quantities: aquifer recharge, watershed capacity, soil budgets. In Part II he draws the method from the thresholds-and-allocations work of Bill Baue and colleagues at r3.0, which makes Kate Raworth’s doughnut computable for a territory. The ceiling comes from the ecological side of the doughnut, drawn down from the planetary boundaries to the bioregion. The floor comes from its social side.
The carrying budget measures stocks against thresholds. It is the first output of the Metabolic Study Template, which builds it from the BioRegion Atlas and then measures flows inside it. Because regeneration raises what a landscape can carry, the budget is redrawn on the plan’s revision cycle.
Contrast with adjacent terms
Metabolic study. A metabolic study measures flows: how value and materials move through the bioregion. The carrying budget sets the boundary the flows must stay within.
BioRegion Atlas. The Atlas compiles baselines and profiles. The carrying budget turns them into limits and allocations.
Related terms
Sources
- Life, B. (2026). An Introduction to Bioregional Economics (Part I)
- Life, B. (2026). The Missing Middle of Bioregional Development
- Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut Economics
Provenance
Written 28 October 2026 from Benjamin Life’s Part I and Part II. “Carrying budget” is Life’s phrase. Its use as the name of a template output, the inclusion of the social floor, and the contrast with the BioRegion Atlas are the wiki author’s. The wiki has not yet read r3.0’s own account of thresholds and allocations; enrich this entry from it.