Category:Regenerative Approaches

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< " regenerativity is about how life creates conditions for further life. " > [1]


Topical Quotes

"Generative ownership designs are about generating and preserving real wealth, living wealth, rather than phantom wealth than can evaporate in the next quarter. They’re about helping families to enjoy secure homes. Creating jobs. Preserving a forest. Generating nourishment out of waste. Generating broad wellbeing."

— Marjorie Kelly, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution


"To move from a zero-sum culture (win-lose) to a non-zero-sum culture (win-win) necessitates widespread collaboration in assuring that nature also wins (win-win-win) and wins first, as she is the provider of the abundance upon which we depend. Only if we collaborate in creating a healthier, diverse, vibrant and bio-productive planet, will we be able to create regenerative cultures where nobody is left behind and everyone wins."

— Daniel Christian Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures


"“Instead of doing less damage to the environment, it is necessary to learn how we can participate with the environment — using the health of ecological systems as a basis for design. […] The shift from a fragmented worldview to a whole systems mental model is the significant leap our culture must make — framing and understanding living system interrelationships in an integrated way. A placebased approach is one way to achieve this understanding. […] Our role, as designers and stakeholders is to shift our relationship to one that creates a whole system of mutually beneficial relationships.”

- Bill Reed (2007: 674) [2]

Topical P2P Writers

Key Concepts of This Category

The concepts 'regenerative' and 'generative' are often applied in writings about desirable futures for the economy, for culture and for society.

Generative is often contrasted with Extractive following the writings of Marjorie Kelly (q.v.)

The term "generative" seems to be used mainly to indicate that a practice generates new resources, or more generally grows things. It is not specified what kinds of things are generated, so it can be applied to an economic practice, that may or may not be applied to natural systems.

"Regenerative", for example as used in "regenerative agriculture" has more of a flavour of restoring a system to a state where it operates in a naturally generative way. Regenerative agriculture would, for instance, be concerned with restoring and improving the health of the soil, and subtle, complex systems like fungal mycelium in woodlands; with restoring or increasing beneficial biodiversity.

It could be said that regenerative approaches include but are not limited to the related concept of rewilding, popularised by George Monbiot. Wikipedia defines rewilding as "large-scale conservation aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and core wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species." Thus it minimises the importance of humans other than to undo the damage they have done.

Regenerative Economics can at first sight look dubious, with quotes like the one from our Regenerative Economics and Wikipedia: Regenerative economic theory: "Regenerative economics is an economic system that works to regenerate capital assets."

However the next sentence goes on to explain that "A capital asset is an asset that provides goods and/or services that are required for, or contribute to, our well being." and thus the scope extends beyond conventional economics. This fits with the statement of Daniel Christian Wahl and Virginie Glaenzer: “A regenerative economy goes beyond sustainability and requires local collaboration and solidarity among individuals as co-creative participants.”


Useful Learning Resources

Key Book

  • Pathways to Regeneration: Hope and Resilience through Anticipatory Design. Stephen Demeulenaere and Scott Morris. Allo Capital, 2025. [3]:

"propose Anticipatory Design, a proactive methodology for creating regenerative economic systems based on what we can predict about the future, as a critical tool to address root causes rather than symptoms. Drawing from R. Buckminster Fuller, E.F. Schumacher, Michel Bauwens, Jem Bendell and others, the authors advocate moving beyond GDP-focused growth toward comprehensive wealth building across all forms of capital."


Introductory


Deeper Study

  • Nepalese Forests [7]
  • Santiago Xiacuí, Oaxaca, Mexico [8]


Directory

Web3 for Regeneration

Associated movements in the ecosystem [9]:

Regen Coordination

ReFi DAO & Greenpill Network: Each support a global network of local nodes / chapters advancing regenerative finance and Ethereum Localism.

Ma Earth, Bloom Network, AgroforestDAO, Kolektivo: Each brings unique expertise in ethereum aligned ecological regeneration, community organizing, and decentralized funding.

EthereumLocalism.xyz : A community of practitioners and builders co-designing principles, tooling, and narratives for locally grounded Ethereum ecosystems.

OpenCivics & Ethereal Forest: Pioneers in protocol design, convening, and knowledge commons for decentralized governance and localism.

BioFi Project: Supports the design and implementation of Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs) to channel capital into regenerative economies at the bioregional scale.

Celo Regional DAOs: Autonomous, community-driven chapters that localize Celo’s mission—hosting events, incubators, mentorship, and local coordination hubs.

B<>rder/ess & Web3 for Universities Program: Cultivates Web3 developer ecosystems across African universities through tech clubs, hackathons, and curriculum support.

Collaborative Finance (CoFi): Hosts annual gatherings on financial mechanisms and systems including community currencies, obligation clearing networks, commitment pooling, etc.

Token Engineering Commons : Advances the science and practice of token engineering, with relevance for local economic design."

(https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/ethereum-localism-x-regen-coordination-gitcoin-3-0-sensemaking-report/21940)


Regeneration-Oriented Education Initiatives

  1. Schumacher College
  2. Ecoversities
  3. Animas Valley Institute
  4. Alliance of Wild Ethics
  5. Local Futures
  6. Hollyhock
  7. Kincentric Leadership

The Regenerative Vocabulary

Compiled by Tom Atlee [10]:

Anti-Fragility – a property of systems in which they increase in capability to thrive as a result of – not in spite of – stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.

Autopoiesis – the self-organizing dynamic through which the constituents of an organism or system interact to continuously regenerate and realize the relations and processes that produced them.

Co-incarnation – the reality through which all things bring other things into existence.

Fractality – the nature of patterns in which each part has the same character as the whole, with similar patterns recurring at progressively larger or smaller scales.

Holergy – the ways a part is greater than its role in any particular whole, by being a whole in its own right and part of many other wholes. Holergy is the mirror image of synergy (a whole is greater than the sum of its parts).

Holoficiency – efficiency of, by and for the whole – the optimum engagement of all aspects of a whole for the long-term wellbeing of the whole. Holoficiency contrasts with efficiency which tends towards stripping away.

Holon – the essential identity and role of anything considered as both a whole and a part (which every thing already is).

Homeostasis – Any self-regulating process by which a biological or ecological system maintains relative stability or “dynamic equilibrium” in which continuous change occurs yet relatively constant conditions prevail overall.

Interbeing – the existential condition through which all phenomena exist and depend on all other phenomena.

Intercentricity – connection between the essential centers of entities, ideas or phenomena.

Iteration – a dynamic through which the output of one step or stage becomes input for the subsequent step or stage.

Keystone – a central part of a structure or system upon which everything else depends.

Nestedness – the quality of systems or dynamics that contain within them sub-systems or sub-dynamics, generating scaled layers analogous to a Russian Matryoshka wooden doll set of figures that nest one inside another, each smaller than the last. The general concept has many applications, such as climate action and human psychosocial influences.

Niche – the function or position of an organism or population within an ecological community and the associated range of conditions within which it can thrive.

Polycentrality – the phenomenon of having more than one center (of power, structure, information, etc.).

Recursion – a process through which the outcome of a process is put through the same process, usually over and over, producing changing results – or a shape or image which contains self-similar patterns at all scales (like tree branches).

Replenishing the Sources – providing new material or energy to the sources of material or energy you depend on.

Stigmergy – a self-organizing dynamic operating as indirect coordination between agents through meaningful traces left in their shared environment.

Succession – the process through which the diversity of species changes in an ecological community over time, usually as certain species generate environmental conditions that lead them to be replaced by subsequent species.

Symmathesy – mutual learning in context.

Telos – the end, goal, or purpose toward which something tends; sometimes experienced as a ‘pull’ from the future that draws a process toward its fulfillment.

Transcontextuality – the idea that every situation, relationship, or phenomenon exists within multiple contexts simultaneously.

Waste=Food – Waste equals food means every output should serve – and in nature usually does serve – as a productive input for another system.

Visualisations

Author: Daniel Christian Wahl; Source: Medium

Examples

Via Andrea Farias: [11]

  • Restoration of the Loess Plateau [12]

More Information

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