Welcome to Bioregioning Earth– a Bioregional Knowledge Commons

Watershed Restoration and River Revival

TBS works with communities to bring back water abundance, revive river watersheds, and support sustainable development. Work includes harvesting structures across watersheds, efficient use such as drip irrigation, and water literacy for many actors. Before projects start, staff live in a village for six to twelve months to build trust, learn constraints, and co-design responses; engagement often runs ten to fifteen years per village. The core tools are johads, check dams, and percolation tanks, alongside literacy campaigns, drip systems, and sustainable farming. TBS reports 13,800 functioning rainwater harvesting systems and 13 rivers rejuvenated across India. Their work harvests 100 billion liters of rainwater annually and has converted more than 10,000 square kilometers from no-water zones into water-secure landscapes.

Cultural Revival for Ecological Kinship

TBS wove ritual and symbol into daily responsibility for ecosystems. Drawing on Raksha Bandhan, where sisters tie threads on brothers’ wrists, villagers tied threads around trees to pledge protection. After the first johad proved itself, Jal Utsav (Water Festival) in 1987 helped anchor community ownership; participants formed a village gram sabha (council) to share responsibility. From 1987, TBS supported three padyatras (campaign walks) each year, led by Gopalpura residents who chose routes, names, and how to invite other villages. Together, these practices frame restoration as cultural and relational—not only technical.

Community-Led Governance

To counter government contracts for commercial fishing that risked overuse, habitat harm, and displacement, TBS helped communities create the River Arvari Sansad (River Arvari Parliament) in 1998. The body drew gram sabhas from 72 villages along the river. With more than 140 members, the Parliament challenged those contracts through public-interest litigation until the Supreme Court canceled them—asserting community rights to water and land over company concessions. It sets rules for the river, banks, and catchment; for crops, fishing, grazing, borewells, and thirsty crops such as sugarcane—embodying local stewardship of shared resources. The twin villages of Bhaonta–Koylala, leaders in Arvari’s revival, received the first Down to Earth Joseph C. John award for an environmental community from President K.R. Narayanan on 28 March 2000. Similar models are spreading along rivers such as Chambal and Dholpur.

Water Literacy and Education

TBS ran trainings and workshops for farmers, youth, schoolchildren, and local officials—often through village heads—so communities could see how conservation linked to their own well-being and to the land’s productivity.

Water Warriors

TBS trained more than 10,000 Jal Yodhas (“Water Warriors”)—grassroots leaders, including women and youth—with technical and ecological skills to advance restoration locally. Tarun Jal Vidyapeeth offers a two-year course for water warriors and shorter courses for village institutions, NGOs, scientists, and officials. Many warriors organize through self-help groups and youth networks. By 2001–02, TBS had helped form 325 SHGs across 180 villages in Alwar and Mewat; women received training in plant-based medicine and took part in gram sabha decisions.

National and International Advocacy

In 1989, TBS and village partners discussed how mining in the Aravallis—near Sariska—was undermining johads. Dr. Singh concluded blasting had opened fractures in aquifers; communities needed relief. In 1990 TBS petitioned the Supreme Court to close those mines; in 1991 the Court ordered a stop, and in 1992 the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests restricted mining in parts of the range. To press state compliance, TBS and allies staged an 800-km march across four states. Dr. Singh walked from Himmatnagar, Gujarat, toward Delhi from 2 October 1993 for over four months. Advocacy of this kind contributed to closing some 28,000 mines by 1996. By 2001–02, TBS was contesting the 2002 National Water Policy, fearing it would deepen privatized control of water. The Rashtriya Jal Chetna Yatra crossed 320 districts in 30 states over fourteen months. That campaign helped launch Rashtriya Jal Biradari (RJB), a national forum in 2001 that ran roughly a decade—public meetings, riparian problem-solving, outreach to ministers and officials, and litigation where needed. In the 2020s, Jal Biradari linked to global drought-and-flood dialogue; the network claims more than 1,000 members and bodies such as the Indian Himalayan River Basin Council and the Indian Peninsular River Basin Council. With TBS vice chairman Professor G.D. Agarwal (environmentalist, former IIT Kanpur dean), the organization pressed for the Ganga. From 2008 his fasts—including over damming the Bhagirathi headstream—drew national attention. In February 2009, one outcome was national-river status for the Ganga and creation of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGBRA).

Small Business Lending

Spruce Root's approach to economic development starts with recognition: many entrepreneurs in Southeast Alaska don't have access to affordable capital through traditional financing channels. But Spruce Root sees beyond credit scores and collateral. Their small business lending program targets entrepreneurs who may not qualify elsewhere, but who contribute to economic development and community well-being in the region. Before potential borrowers even apply for a loan, Spruce Root provides business and career coaching. And they continue supporting them after the loan is issued. The loans can fund startup capital, working capital, business expansion, and more. Between 2012 and 2022, Spruce Root deployed $1.2 million in loan capital. In 2022 alone, they issued loans to four Alaska small businesses totaling $350,000. In 2023, new loans deployed amounted to just under $900,000—a sign of growing momentum and trust.

Business Coaching & Programs

Lending is just one piece of a much larger vision. Spruce Root offers business coaching to stakeholders beyond their loan portfolio. In 2022, they provided business basics training to Tlingit and Haida citizens, and partnered with Sealaska Heritage Institute on developing a business curriculum for Alaska Native artists—recognizing that cultural expression and economic opportunity can thrive together.

Path to Prosperity

One of Spruce Root's signature programs is Path to Prosperity, a business development competition that supports local businesses with positive social, economic, and ecological impact. The program specifically promotes the regenerative use of the region's resources—businesses that see themselves as part of the ecosystem, not apart from it. In 2022, the competition attracted 23 applications from eight communities. The 12 finalists attended an in-person Business Boot Camp, receiving 26+ hours of training and technical assistance from 14 mentors. The goal is to build a network of businesses that understand their success is tied to the health of their communities and the land that sustains them.

Resilience Circles

With Jump/Scale, Spruce Root runs Alaska Native Resilience Circles—a year-long cohort for Indigenous entrepreneurs that treats business viability and personal and cultural well-being as one fabric. Strong communities need viable enterprises; sustainable enterprises need healthy people and cultures. The program strengthens Alaska Native businesses in ecosystem care, long-term economic resilience, overall wellness, and community mental health. Cohorts meet in person and online for workshops on personal and business finance, marketing and branding, physical health and nutrition, mental health, and Indigenous culture and values. Financial skills sit alongside cultural grounding and wellness practice. By year’s end, participants leave with sharper business tools and a denser peer network among Indigenous entrepreneurs. Spruce Root and Jump/Scale describe the work as more than training: it is part of reclaiming Indigenous knowledge, wellness, and economic sovereignty across Alaska.

Sustainable Southeast Partnership

The Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP)—a Spruce Root and Sealaska program—works as a regional collective-impact network. It supports collaborative, community-led responses to linked social, ecological, and economic challenges, guided by Indigenous values. Individuals, Tribal governments, Native corporations, nonprofits, agencies, businesses, and others can take part. Village-level hosts appoint community catalysts who assess energy, food, natural resources, and economic sustainability, then surface projects—from food security and energy to habitat restoration—and pair with regional catalysts on design, implementation, and tracking. Regional catalysts also shape policy, help build cooperatives and mutual support, and run workshops to grow capacity. In practice, SSP is bioregional governance: place-rooted, accountable to communities, and woven from village to region.

Strategic Planning

In 2022, they finalized and took part in implementing a five-year strategic plan for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and began facilitating an update of the comprehensive community plan for Yakutat in partnership with the local government. These are practical tools for communities to articulate their own visions and chart their own paths forward.

Seacoast Trust

Recognizing that the work of regeneration requires long-term, patient capital, Spruce Root became the fiscal sponsor of the Seacoast Trust—a permanent funding mechanism created to provide access to capital for Indigenous-led conservation projects that place local communities at the center of efforts to achieve a healthy environment. The Seacoast Trust's guiding principles include respecting community voices, upholding Indigenous governance and leadership, and valuing the integrity of all knowledge systems—including those anchored in 10,000 plus years of Indigenous history, traditions, and stewardship. The Trust will fund the work of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. Projects slated for funding include Native forest partnerships, healthy salmon habitat, Indigenous Guardians programs, youth leadership opportunities, food sovereignty, climate migration, regenerative economies, and reduced carbon footprints. The Trust provides grants for work programs, loans for small Tribal businesses, Southeast Tribal Land Purchases, and local infrastructure projects, as well as exchange-traded and impact funds, network coordination and capacity building. In 2022, the Seacoast Trust reached an initial $20 million funding goal with the help of Sealaska, The Nature Conservancy, and the Rasmuson, Hewlett, Edgerton, Chorus, and Wilburforce foundations. But the real vision is much larger: the goal of the trust is to reach $100 million in order to fully fund the work of Sustainable Southeast Partnership in perpetuity—ensuring that this work doesn't depend on the vagaries of grant cycles, but can continue for generations.

Learning from Practical Experiments

Before leaning on abstract theory, they looked at what was already happening. One touchstone was a river parliament catalyzed by [[Tarun Bharat Sangh]], where roughly 60 to 70 villages in one river basin in Western India built institutions to govern the basin together. They also reviewed river-basin authorities and transboundary schemes—often top-down, bureaucratic, and narrow in how they defined a river’s social and ecological life. To widen the lens, they organized about 15 webinars: practitioners described experiments on the ground; others shared bioregional work from outside the region and took part in mutual learning.

Bioregional Mapping of India

A major project set out to map bioregional boundaries across India. The team worked back from district lines imposed under British rule, layering other evidence. Sources included mythology and folklore, travelogues and explorers’ accounts, memoirs by rulers and poets, geographic writing from inside and outside the subcontinent—including colonial records—and state tourism and culture material that preserved regional names and ways of life. Through that work they mapped roughly 65 to 70 percent of India—a baseline for discussing the country’s bioregional structure.

Vision for 2100

The working group is drafting a long-range biocultural vision: what South Asia might become by 2100. In that speculative picture, borders grow permeable; visas fade. Wildlife, nomadic pastoralists, and others move more freely. Older trade corridors such as the Silk Road reappear in new form. Border zones, once flashpoints, become peace sanctuaries run locally through strong direct democracy. Today’s hyper-nationalism gives way, in the vision, to civilizational and Indigenous identities; direct democracy is rooted in villages and neighborhoods and scales up across landscapes into bioregional governance. Traders and nomadic communities act as connectors—carrying news and goods across the bioregion.

Biocultural Hub

The site functions as a bioregional hub: a place where visitors, partners, and local actors meet, learn, and test ideas. It has developed into an internationally renowned UN Flagship Biohub—combining learning journeys, hospitality, and living prototypes of bioeconomic enterprise so regeneration is visible and repeatable, not only discussed. Two lines of work help keep the hub viable: Sinal do Vale’s own hospitality offer and the Madre Frutas social enterprise (below), which together connect revenue, training, and on-the-ground demonstration.

Madre Frutas Social Enterprise

Madre Frutas is a women-led enterprise that turns abundant local jackfruit into marketable products. It models agro-processing tied to regenerative practice, women’s leadership, and economic resilience—creating livelihoods where options are scarce while respecting what the land already provides.

Camino do Guaraú Eco-Tourism Trail

The 110-kilometer trail starts not by coincidence at Sinal do Vale. By curating this officially recognized Camino do Guaraú, Sinal do Vale galvanized entrepreneurs, activists, change makers, and farmers to join the regeneration movement. The trail reconnects the local community to its heritage, culture, and ecotourism potential. The trail continues through nine other segments in the beautiful mountain range of the Mata Atlântica. In each segment, Sinal do Vale has identified areas that need reforestation or conservation to create an agroecological belt to preserve and regenerate the biodiversity in the region. Not least among the species they're working to protect: the golden lion tamarin monkeys, an endangered species that depends on the health of this ecosystem. This work is about creating connected corridors of life, ensuring that the fragments of the Mata Atlântica can support the full diversity of life they once sustained.

Val Estrela Historic and Cultural Ecotourism Site

After about 20 kilometers through great landscapes, the trail arrives at Val Estrela—the port where one-third of the slaves arrived in Brazil. This is a site of profound historical and cultural significance, and Sinal do Vale has started executing a master plan to regenerate the rivers, the old church, and weighing station to create a historic and cultural ecotourism site. They're doing this work together with the local quilombola communities and fishermen who maintained this abandoned site over the past decades. These are communities with deep ancestral connections to this place, who have been stewarding it even as it was neglected by broader society. Sinal do Vale is determined to continue this work, recognizing that restoration must honor both the ecological and cultural heritage of this place.

Terra Umida Agroforestry Corridor

Another 30 kilometers along the trail, hikers pass wide degraded farmlands called Terra Umida. This is a government-supported area where the landless farmer movement of Brazil is working under very tough conditions to regenerate degraded land through agroforestry. Sinal do Vale has started building new supply chains for the farmer and food sector, seeing the potential to build a true bioeconomy with these farmers to benefit their livelihoods. This is about rebuilding food systems, forming regenerative supply chains with local producers, and creating economic pathways that align with ecological restoration.

SINAL Flow Fund

The SINAL Flow Fund is a locally managed funding mechanism designed to channel diverse capital streams—including public grants, donations, supply chain finance, and investment capital—toward regenerative initiatives in the region. The Flow Fund enables implementation of community-led projects by lowering access barriers to funding and supporting infrastructure for scaling a bioregional economy.

Storytelling of Ravens

The Trust's first major initiative was Storytelling of Ravens, an in-person convening format that began in Sitka, Alaska in 2019. These gatherings brought together Ravens from across the bioregion to share personal stories of local resilience and regenerative solutions. The events emphasize emotional and relational depth, fostering transformation through shared vulnerability and celebration of what's working. From Oregon to Alaska, these annual gatherings weave together a network of changemakers who share knowledge, build relationships, and inspire collective action.

Magic Canoe

From the Storytelling of Ravens gatherings emerged Magic Canoe, a nonprofit media and storytelling organization dedicated to amplifying the people, projects, and possibilities helping Salmon Nation thrive. The Magic Canoe name comes from a story gifted by Cecil Paul, a Haisla First Nation Elder who used this story to save his home territory from logging. He described how a magic canoe grows bigger as more people join, soon holding all of us as we paddle in the same direction. As the narrative engine of the bioregion, Magic Canoe uplifts place-based innovation and regeneration through articles, videos, digital platforms, and convenings, connecting regenerative efforts across watersheds through shared visibility and values.

Edge Prize

An early experiment in funding the work of Ravens, the Edge Prize launched in 2023 as a distributed bioregional accelerator—a novel methodology for growing community through an online accelerator and prize challenge. Offering cash prizes from $500 to $20,000, the initiative convenes groups, offers learning opportunities and community building, provides funding, connects participants to additional resources, and builds a library of successful approaches. This initiative spawned [[Regenerate Cascadia]], demonstrating how small-scale catalytic funding can unlock significant community innovation when combined with learning, networking, and resource connections.

Salmon Returns

Salmon Returns is a cross-border bioregional fund grounded in the migratory pathways of wild Pacific salmon, representing what founder Cheryl Chen calls a biocultural finance collaborative for regenerating place, culture, and economy. Salmon Returns reimagines finance as an act of cultural and ecological healing, where capital returns—like the salmon—to nourish the very systems that sustain life. The fund operates through the BRIDGE Framework—a living blueprint that ensures every investment is rooted in place (Bioregional Grounding), improves biocultural function (Regenerative Design), draws from Indigenous worldviews (Indigenous Values), distributes value and governance (Distributed Ownership), circulates value rather than accumulating it (Gift Logic), and generates circular returns that sustain future projects (Enterprise Continuity). Salmon Returns supports the transition to regenerative economies by restoring biocultural landscapes, scaling community-led enterprises, and transforming finance systems. The fund has developed an emerging portfolio across the Upper Columbia River Basin and Okanagan region, the Coastal Temperate Rainforest, and the Klamath River Basin—partnering with Indigenous and local leaders to advance regenerative agriculture, watershed stewardship, and ecosystem renewal. Flagship efforts like the Okanagan Catalyst Network bring together farmers, Indigenous nations, food cooperatives, and wholesale distributors to regenerate the regional food system. The fund has mobilized over $15 million for early projects, with $15M already flowing into aligned land acquisition and distribution infrastructure. Currently raising $2M in Phase 1, with a longer-term target of $100M in catalytic capital to unlock over $1 billion in public/private investment by 2035. By 2030, the fund aims to be self-regenerating through investment returns.

Salmon Biocultural Credit Program

Salmon Returns is developing a Salmon Biocultural Credit program—a verified unit of ecological and cultural regeneration representing the restoration of salmon lifeways, habitats, and the relationships that sustain them. Unlike carbon credits that excuse harm through offsets, biocultural credits fund repair, channeling capital into living systems and turning finance from a tool of extraction into an act of reciprocity and responsibility. These credits are governed and validated by Indigenous Nations and local communities, blending traditional knowledge and science to measure real improvements in ecosystem health and cultural continuity.

Strategy Games

From 2023-2025, a strategy game was implemented in the Ericht catchment bioregion. The process began with listening to diverse stakeholders—farmers, anglers, land managers, estate owners, and community leaders—to understand their roles and perceptions. This information formed the basis for a prototype game representing the landscape's resources and dynamics. The games help players visualize interconnections across the landscape, demonstrating how individual actions impact others' livelihoods and environmental conditions.

River Detectives

River Detectives extends the community-science approach toward catchment care. From August 2023 to August 2024, residents researched historic management of rivers, bogs, and lochans—asking what past practices might teach present stewardship. The Flax & Flood strand traced mills, weather, and water—how nineteenth-century climate shifts and extreme events shaped operations and supply. That historical ecological knowledge informs today’s questions. Part 2 turns toward systematic monitoring so communities can describe current river conditions and inform management choices.

Beuda Democratic Innovation Project

They began seven years ago in Beuda, one of the smallest towns in La Garrotxa. Oscar says starting from the edge made sense: “It would be really difficult for us to start in the center because you know ruralities can be quite resistant to change behaviors sometimes.” Several municipalities were shifting away from long-serving “constructing mayors”—older men, often from construction—who had grown towns through housing for decades; some residents decided there were enough houses and voted differently. In Beuda they built relationships with residents pushing for change. Results have been striking: early terms brought sociocratic town elections that lasted six years and matured into circles for culture, environment, and more; government grew more open. In the latest term, the governing team stepped back; council members formed a new group and ran for office. Representatives now sit at council tables themselves—government and council partly fused. The town has inspired others. Since then, 14 of La Garrotxa’s 21 municipalities have experimented—some heavier on education, most on government, each in its own way.

La Garrotxa 2030 Strategic Planning Initiative

In late 2019, participatory governance was spreading across La Garrotxa; several rural municipalities had piloted citizen participation, often co-designed and facilitated by Resilience Earth. Seeing a chance to lift municipal learning to regional scale, they proposed co-producing a Strategic Plan for Territorial Resilience with the regional government. The president backed it politically and financially—with one condition: the plan must transform how governance is practiced region-wide. A core group of 12 people, chosen for sectoral, geographic, and cultural diversity, became the “critical yeast” tasked with keeping the process participatory and transparent enough to catalyze broader change. Months into the pandemic, they ran 17 online thematic round tables aligned with the SDGs. Over 600 people joined during COVID—“that was nuts,” Oscar recalls. To reach youth and diverse communities, they produced materials for 57 schools and held sessions in community centers and places of worship with minority groups. A wide survey drew more than 2,200 responses. In all, 40-plus participatory sessions fed a ten-year regional plan. Direct participation reached 7,000–7,500 people—over 11% of the population. They adapted the SDGs into 21 local targets (“Garrotxa SDGs”) that different actors could own, paired with an observatory of 400-plus indicators to track the plan. A tension surfaced: once strategy, indicators, and distributed governance are in place, traditional electoral politics can feel redundant. Oscar asks what remains for a party platform when “everything is been decided”—whether officials become “public service servers” carrying out what communities already decide in everyday hubs. Some elected leaders resisted, sensing the process could sideline them. They used an iceberg model to push strategies to real depth—and that resistance is still in play.

Democracy Festival (Festival Iltir)

To channel energy around that tension, they launched a Democracy Festival (Festival Iltir)—a space to surface what was moving. Interest ran high across sectors: large firms, public agencies, even the regional police chief engaged seriously. Last year’s festival drew 300 participants, including people from Barcelona and Catalonia’s national government, exploring how such processes could scale.

Local Government Incubator (INCAT)

Last year they opened an incubator for local governments—after many incubators for co-ops and nonprofits. Seven municipalities joined, all led by women—some in government, some in opposition—united in wanting a paradigm shift. Seven of twenty-one is a notable push; INCAT projects were striking in scope.

Regional Activation Tour

To learn what regeneration would take, Brandon and Claire ran a month-long Regional Activation Tour in October 2023, soon after they met. With more than 100 organizers and projects around the Salish Sea and Willamette Valley, they visited 14 communities in 30 days and met over 1,000 people through talks, field visits, workshops, and interviews—all asking what it would take to regenerate an entire bioregion. Elders at each stop shared knowledge; the team documented bioregional learning around that question. They followed with an online capstone so participants could workshop and share expertise, then a Cascadia Summit to shape what Regenerate Cascadia would become. A major output was a movement map—who and what sit where, and where trust must be built through relationships, not anonymous institutions. Several core design challenges emerged. Work happens in landscapes but stays disconnected. Capacity to support it is thin. In Seattle, Brandon notes, people can discuss raising $54 billion for a third phase of light rail or hundreds of millions for schools via levies—but regenerating a watershed is often “give to your local nonprofit.” The design problem: help practitioners see their work, connect with others, and get resourced. Funding pathways for watershed regeneration are weak. Practitioners are underfunded and lack time to hunt for grants. Work stays siloed, competitive, and project-sized rather than coordinated at landscape or bioregional scale—even when funders exist, bridges to people on the ground are missing. Roughly 130–140 people stayed engaged after the tour; the movement map continues to show where regeneration lives and where new links are needed.

Hubs and Guilds Development Program

This is a structured capacity system—nested support from local landscapes to the full bioregion. It sets up landscape hubs that convene diverse actors—land trusts, solar installers, housing developers—to shape shared landscape visions with real budgets. Hubs cover defined areas and help administer bioregional regeneration funds. Guilds—communities of practice on topics landscape leaders need—produce classes, resources, and directories. An ambassador network orients newcomers to Cascadia, bioregionalism, mapping, and why those frames matter.

Cascadia Bioregion Program

BioRegen (the Cascadia Bioregion Program) tackles the “readiness” question: preparing local landscapes to absorb regenerative investment through community-led capacity. The program guides 10+ landscapes through a 12-month arc—ecological mapping, regenerative portfolios, budgeting, and success measures grounded in local priorities rather than outside corporate or government defaults. Communities self-organize into hubs that can receive and steward capital while deepening planning and governance. Work is anchored in a shared bioregional identity, living-systems principles, and long-term, trust-based investment readiness. Cohorts map assets, build portfolios, set budgets and strategies, and seed projects for funding. The BioRegen pilot (including what was called the Landscape Hub Cultivator) is underway as of 2026. It supports up to 10 Regenerate Cascadia landscape groups in an online community of practice to define what a landscape hub is and lay its foundations—interrupting entrenched patterns, treating relationship networks as essential for trust, practicing participatory governance across nested scales, and building bioregional infrastructure so funding can flow where Cascadia needs it. The first half-year emphasizes place-based regeneration strategies—bioregional mapping, nested scales of place, layers of stewardship—and a portfolio of regenerative projects per landscape with budget and story materials for communities and funders. The second half focuses on core teams, fundraising, governance, consent, carrying capacity, context-based indicators, and local funding ecosystems. Each landscape group receives $8,000 in direct support through the pilot (about $5,000 for planning and mapping and $3,000 for a flow-funding sandbox).

Cascadia Regeneration Fund

The Cascadia Regeneration Fund (“Cascade”) is Regenerate Cascadia’s vision for a living financial architecture for bioregional transition. Cities can raise billions for transit or schools; comparable mechanisms for watershed regeneration barely exist. The fund is structured as a bioregional trust, with nonprofit standing in the U.S. and Canada. The main vehicle combines three back-end donor-advised funds (DAFs) into one flow fund feeding localized landscape sub-funds, governed and regranted by hubs developed through the Bioregion Program. Governance stays as local as possible; funding reflects ongoing evaluation from communities doing the work. The intent is to let money flow like water through a coherent strategy, with metrics defined on the ground. Seeding has reached $40,000 toward an initial $100,000 goal by December 2025 to test regranting—setting up larger flows from 2026.

Sydney Doughnut Economy

They use the doughnut model with eyes open to both its strengths and limits. Adapted to Sydney, it captures place-specific ecological and social dimensions. For them it works as bridge and compass—supporting systems thinking that turns into action, speaking enough of the language of current institutions while holding a relational ethos. Across activities, it functions as a shared tool to grow systemic leadership and see past silos.

Waverley Community of Practice

In Waverley they are midway through a three-phase program. Phase one—community of practice. They invited groups already active locally—Transition Bondi, Bondi Innovation, beach cleanups, and others—and asked what regeneration in this neighborhood could mean. Over four months they balanced rigor (so institutions would take outcomes seriously) with convivial process—picnics, film nights, and similar gatherings. A community of practice of about 160 people formed; visioning held social and ecological dimensions together. Mapping exercises helped people attune to the place’s particular rhythms. Phase two—cornerstone indicators. Guided by Katherine Trebeck, they use “cornerstone” measures as a counterpoint to indicators that read as technical or illegible to the public. The idea: a small set of metrics the public can stand behind—living at the interface between institutions and communities. Cornerstone indicators braid social and ecological dimensions. One example: families who are glad not to need a car in a given area—touching transport, services, autonomy, and emissions in one indicator. Midway through phase two, they compare the neighborhood vision (informed by memory of pre-colonial conditions and honest about structural barriers) with what council is already doing, surface gaps, and ask how to measure progress toward the vision. Phase three—transition pathways. They will help people find roles in the transition. With vision and indicator-backed targets, the question becomes how the community can act together in ways that complement council and raise ambition. Methods will include live modeling games and “warm data” sessions to weave diverse knowledges. Participants have already offered sharp reflections—for instance, that connection to place can rest in a deeper spiritual bond with nature. There is no single fix; some see Waverley’s doughnut work as carrying wider significance.

Regenerative Action in Thematic Areas

A middle layer focuses on thematic work across the Sydney bioregion and metro—food systems, river restoration, and related themes. Specialists have labored in these areas for decades but are not always woven into one strategy. Regen Sydney aims to convene unlikely alliances, align intentions, and apply upward pressure on existing government layers. They are beginning with the Cooks River Alliance in a southwest catchment and are watching where that collaboration leads.

Deep Economic Code Work

The deepest layer addresses the “economic code” of the place—alliances among academia, institutions, and government to move beyond GDP toward more holistic metrics that shape decisions and finance. The tension is to pair a bold horizon with practical next steps.

Biocultural Jaguar Credits Program

This pilot conservation program aims to create and demonstrate a fully transparent ecological-economic model that safeguards Earth's biosphere while enhancing human wellbeing. Launched in partnership with the Sharamentsa Achuar community, the program integrates indigenous stewardship with modern technology to protect jaguar habitats. Jaguars serve as an "umbrella species"—their protection indirectly protects other species in the habitat—and are classified as endangered. The program targets 10,000 hectares of critical jaguar habitat in intact Ecuadorian jungle through blockchain-verified conservation credits. A robust monitoring and reporting plan, including satellite, cameras and community monitoring, supports validation of credit issuance. The credits are based on the peer-reviewed ERA Biodiversity Stewardship Methodology and issued on the open Regen Network Registry. By the time of its launch in 2024, the program had already secured $75,000+ in pre-sale commitments, representing two-thirds of initial credit availability.

Te Kawa Waiora

In 2020–2021, Te Kawa Waiora examined mauri—life force—along the Wairoa River and its margins, centring Indigenous partners and asking what a renewed, place-based ethics of care might look like. Findings pointed to a “new sacred”: honouring tūpuna insight while meeting present and future pressures. Lasting river health, the work argues, needs shared responsibility across hapū and towns. Co-designed with mana whenua, wānanga brought leaders and knowledge holders together. Outputs include a living framework for decisions that protect ecosystem mauri, intergenerational wellbeing, and relational duty. Te Kawa Waiora still orients regeneration efforts across the region.

Tapere: Planning Rooted in Ancestral Boundaries

Tapere builds hyper-local plans aligned with Māori tapere land units—not imported grid lines. Reconnecting Northland supports hapū and whānau to state restoration goals that match culture and geography. Wānanga, story, and mapping invite communities to picture thriving ancestral estates. Visions then steer practical work—planting, stream repair, nature-based enterprise—through a shared cultural lens, with connectivity and corridors treated as landscape-scale outcomes.

He Ripo Kau: A Vision for the Hokianga

He Ripo Kau applies the Tapere logic in Hokianga—linking taiao renewal with mana tangata. Since 2016, hui have convened hau kāinga around a shared model. NZD 3.2 million in Provincial Growth Fund support underpinned a 2020 recovery and employment wave—45+ km of stream fencing, 50+ ha planted, and training pipelines into land-care jobs. The case shows vision translating into paid, on-ground regeneration.

Te Kete Hononga: The Basket of Connections

Te Kete Hononga (“basket of connections”) bundles navigation support for community initiatives: funding, training, and agencies threaded through a trusted Kairaranga (weaver)—a local person trained to open doors across the system. One contact per community reduces friction with fragmented government programmes while keeping authority close to whānau knowledge and aspirations.

Nature-Based Enterprise

Nature-based enterprise ties livelihoods to healthy ecosystems inside each Tapere. Deprivation—scarce jobs, housing stress, thin services—slows circular economies even where biodiversity is high. Reconnecting Northland co-designs ventures that convert cultural and ecological capital into revenue, then helps align investment and fair flows so income supports regeneration rather than extracting from it.

The Connectivity Partnership

The Connectivity Partnership formalises cooperation among NGOs (WWF-New Zealand, NZ Landcare Trust), agencies, and iwi—pooling knowledge, co-funding, and coordinating corridors and catchments. It helped lift neighbourhood projects toward landscape strategies for biodiversity, pests, and water that braid western science with Māori worldviews. A parallel aim is syndicated investment: government, philanthropy, and impact capital opening shared windows for community priorities.

Green Valley Commons

In year one they formed a nonprofit and turned a former gas station at the town center into a new town square—Green Valley Commons. They raised over $1 million through land-trust funding, public sources, private gifts, and crowdfunding, then ran a community design process so neighbors could imagine the shared space. The Commons now hosts cooperative workdays, events, youth gatherings, and early shared childcare and food-growing. A lease-to-own agreement gives site control; they are working toward an outright purchase. Early support is in place; they seek $250,000 in catalytic capital to secure title, advance priority capital work (permitting, kitchen, ADA access), and strengthen programming and local governance.

Arts & Museum of the Future

On site they developed a “Museum of the Future”: archives and time capsules honor seven generations back; school visits and participatory visioning imagine seven generations forward—a place where past and future meet in the present and stories of land and people can be held while new possibilities are shaped together. Community councils—arts, design-build, elders—guide decisions through town halls and co-design. A seasonal rhythm of festivals, monthly work parties, potlucks, and resilience trainings teaches mutual aid in crises such as immigration raids or natural disasters.

Community Land Trust Formation

The team is forming a community land trust to hold the Green Valley Commons in perpetuity for collective well-being. The trust is meant to anchor cooperative housing and ecological stewardship, limit speculation, and encode equitable access and multigenerational ownership. The effort is early: governance protocols, counsel from land-justice allies, and legal design to match values. Long term, they picture affordable housing, cooperative enterprise space, a community kitchen, and commons governance—all held through the trust.

ReVillage Co-Op Enterprises

They are breaking ground on a community-owned enterprise—a public house, marketplace, café, food hub, and small-business incubator—in a long-vacant historic firehouse (once a train station) facing the new town square. The Community Food Hub & Marketplace is underway; a Community Farm Project is funded and launching soon. Each effort is co-created with communities already in place, toward a future in right relationship with land and history. Smaller cooperatives are forming in the ReVillage ecosystem: an intergenerational childcare collective, a local food and land-care initiative, and service ventures emerging through relationships. They are testing income-sharing, cooperative ownership, and regenerative service models that can sustain livelihoods where centralized systems often overlook rural communities. Technical help on legal structure and seed funding for place-rooted enterprises remain needs—the building blocks of a local economy that can support people while regenerating land.

Local Governance Innovation

They partnered with the Graton Community Services District (sewer) to broaden its mandate toward parks, recreation, and eventually ecosystem services and recommoning. The district now holds the town square and additional public space, with more planned. They also work with the Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District—linking formal institutions to an informal web of residents, businesses, and volunteers.

ReVillaging Toolkit and Learning Exchange

ReVillage wants to help other places adapt this model. They are co-developing a “ReVillaging Toolkit”—legal templates, governance patterns, land strategies, and narrative resources. A hosted residency at Green Valley Commons is planned so practitioners can immerse in the work and learn peer-to-peer. They hope for a wider network of village-builders across California and the Pacific Coast to share resources, iterate together, and spread the cultural shift the work implies.

Stone Soup Social

Like many efforts here, it began with food. The first gathering was a stone soup social—people brought ingredients, shared a meal, and started to meet. That rhythm ran from February 2, 2020, for about six weeks until COVID shut public gatherings down.

Manos Cambiadas

They launched “Manos Cambiadas,” rooted in an old pattern of neighbors helping neighbors. They worked alongside neighbors on farms and with what people needed day to day. The project continues and has mobilized more than 1,200 volunteers as community members rotate labor across farms.

Food Sovereignty and Seed Saving Networks

After Manos Cambiadas, a gap stood out: many farmers could not sell what they grew. They started “Caja Verde,” a community-supported agriculture box; a year later that evolved into Mercado Verde. For over four years they have run a farmers market—200-plus markets—strengthening food sovereignty and security. ReGenerOsa works with farmers, elders, and schools on seed-saving networks, agroecological gardens, and cooperative distribution grounded in local knowledge and biodiversity. Pilot gardens are underway; the collective supports women reclaiming ancestral seed practices and native varieties. Scaling will take resources—more communities, training, and a regional network to link growers, seeds, and markets in a closed loop.

ReGenerOsa Women's Governance Circle

ReGenerOsa is guided by what it calls the Council of Eight—a circle of eight long-serving local women leaders, including Indigenous, campesina, and Afro–Costa Rican elders—who set direction and keep activities accountable to place-based wisdom. Hazel, who works with the Seto Territorial Council, sits on the Council of Eight. The circle decides project priorities, how funds are allocated, and partnership terms. The collective comprises the women’s council, community weavers, donors, and ambassadors. Strengthening the structure calls for facilitation training, administrative support, and stipends for participation. The model is also meant as a prototype for other communities, showing how regenerative finance and land stewardship can be held collectively and ethically outside top-down NGO patterns.

Osa Biocultural Fund

The Osa Biocultural Fund is a flexible tool to seed community-run work in food sovereignty, ecological restoration, arts, and education. It is designed with participatory governance anchored in local women and elders. They are seeking $29,000 to develop and scale the fund, which distributes more than $25,000 a year to regenerative projects. One fully participatory round used $6,000. Ambassadors, the council, participants, and investors all voted on which projects to fund. That modest sum has helped spark broader collaboration—among them a complementary currency at the local farmers market and a microcredit system applicants now run themselves.

Osa Regenerative Learning Center (El Local)

El Local is a community hub and learning center that anchors regenerative projects. It hosts youth programs, intergenerational exchange, local storytelling, and skills for land-based living. The curriculum draws on Indigenous and Afro-descendant knowledge, local farming, and wider regenerative education. A school meets there; the space is multi-use and oriented to solidarity and reweaving community, with meetings, gatherings, visitors, and work traders keeping it active.

La Arenosa Pilot Site

Work begins on one hectare of pineapple—a stand-in for common practice: bare rows on depleted soil, high erosion, little water holding. The team is shifting the plot toward regenerative management: soil amendments, water retention, agroforestry, and biodiversity buffers, with monitoring of above- and below-ground health, microclimate, and hydrologic response. With ForTerra, they test accelerated soil regeneration mixes and aim for a repeatable measurement stack—ecology, water, and economics—to scale across the basin and inform finance models.

Forest Regeneration and Cattle Ranching

Ranching and clearing have left pastures prone to drying. The program works with stockmen on regenerative grazing and reforestation, uses ForTerra results on carbon, biomass, and grazing management, and trials rapid tree establishment to recover grasslands, canopy, and biodiversity services tied to rain and storage.

Panama Venture Studio + Restoration Fund

A venture studio plus restoration fund are designed as one pipeline: co-design place-based methods and enterprises, then move catalytic capital into landscape portfolios and shared infrastructure under governance that privileges community priorities and ecosystem outcomes. Financing may layer philanthropy, public instruments, and canal- or climate-linked tools without reducing outcomes to carbon tonnes alone—using markets where helpful while safeguarding social and ecological integrity.

Northeast Bioregional Strategy & Intertribal Governance Framework

A draft regional regenerative strategy—Indigenous co-governance at the core—bundles restoration with food, fiber, and fuel systems, then links those to efficient buildings, clean energy, and active mobility (trails, multi-use paths). The spatial imagination is villages and cities re-embedded in larger land regeneration. Co-design with tribal and non-tribal partners proceeds under rights-of-nature framing; resources are steered toward projects that earn reciprocity with Native nations facing distinct colonial legacies.

Northeast BFF & Venture Studio

The group is building paired capital: a bioregional financing facility (trust capital aligned with an intertribal table) and a venture studio for bioregionally rooted enterprises unlikely to emerge from conventional markets. Profits from studio ventures are intended to help fund the broader institutional shift.

Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed

The Alliance models joint municipal–tribal planning for climate, equity, and ecosystem health. Philanthropy and unrestricted gifts have passed USD 1 million toward a watershed regeneration action plan. The Alliance aims to cut risk to USD 400 million+ in climate-exposed assets in a 30-odd-square-mile basin. With the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, it is advancing a 5,000-square-foot resilience hub showcasing regenerative building plus farmer training and land access.

Nila Vena Sustainability Forum

For roughly three years, representatives of all six tribes have met through the Nila Vena Sustainability Forum, using a council format akin to their regional health board—one appointed delegate per tribe. That familiar structure has supported dialogue on cultural revitalisation, clean energy, and regenerative economy.

Nila Indigenous Land Trust Strategy

The aim is a Native-led land trust that can travel as a model—returning land and authority to tribal stewardship. Elements include: - USD 6–9 million for conservation easements on Kvichak Corporate lands—blocking incompatible development and speculative lodge buyouts. - USD 10 million via the Kuicaak Fund to reassemble fractionated ANCSA allotments that fragment control. - USD 2 million already raised to secure a wildlife corridor between Lake Clark and Katmai. If the corporation advances conservation on upper Caskan and Queac reaches while tribes aggregate allotments, parties could later negotiate trust terms that centre community stewardship.

Social Ecosystem Mapping

Early work mapped the social ecosystem: who holds stake in the basin, where they operate, and how trust might grow through repeated contact on their own ground. Mapping follows a “full polycentric” logic—many centres, each assessed with criteria fitted to local conditions, not one template. The basin is treated as a mesh of places—schools, municipalities, farms, NGOs, artists, scientists—each a centre of attention and care with different leverage on the river.

River Guardians

That differentiated engagement helped turn a loose stakeholder map into a network of River Guardians—people and organisations willing to act as bioregional stewards. Cross-pollination sessions convene varied actors to compare stories, test shared identity, and build the relationships that precede joint projects.

Collaborative Knowledge Projects

Three years of mapping fed collaborative projects aimed at regeneration: - School workshops build youth literacy on the river and responsibility for its care. - Guided ecological tours ground understanding in direct experience of the catchment. - Citizen science deepens monitoring literacy and shared ownership of data. - Artist residencies reframe how the watershed is seen and imagined. Each format stays multi-actor and emerges from prior relationship work rather than top-down design.

Decolonizing Human-Wildlife Conflicts

Conflict-reduction programmes often lean on technical packages while understating long-standing Maasai practices. In MIKIA’s documentation, fence-heavy conservation has blocked elephant corridors, concentrated animals and people, and raised rather than lowered incidents. When Indigenous knowledge is sidelined, communities may be pushed toward lethal or noisy deterrents instead of approaches grounded in landscape relationships.

Indigenous Taxonomy & Zoonosis

One line of work compiles an Indigenous taxonomy guide—how Maasai classify and relate to plants, animals, celestial bodies, and weather signs as predictive tools. A parallel track examines zoonotic disease through Indigenous lenses: how illness was understood to move among wildlife, livestock, and people, and how colonial-era shifts toward pharmaceutical reliance changed prevention and care.

Indigenous Learning Centers and Mapping

With two communities, MIKIA supports mapping of degraded habitat, water access, and human–wildlife hotspots—data owned and narrated by residents for advocacy and planning. Indigenous Learning Centers combine elder–youth teaching, modest museum functions that can generate income, and women-led enterprise space—designed to stay under community title and community governance so knowledge does not become an external asset class.

Network Naturregion Building

Many high-value patches sit isolated—a poor recipe for persistence. “Orphan” greens—verges, corporate lawns, small parks—can still host diversity if managed intentionally. The association coordinates Network Naturregion: people networking places—municipalities, schools, kindergartens, clubs, students, farmers, hunters, firms, and staff—so fragments link into something closer to a functional habitat network.

Nature Tours and Experiences

Public programmes lean on direct experience: guided day walks and night walks where moths, beetles, bats, and other nocturnal life appear; festival stalls introduce the association’s work in plain sight. Feeling attachment to local biodiversity, participants are more willing to volunteer labour for upkeep. Night tours underline that diversity runs on a 24-hour clock, not only daylight hours.

School Education Programs

With Enzesfeld elementary, educators start young: children map what lives nearby, then join maintenance sessions and learn that habitats need ongoing care—nothing stewards itself. The theory is that adults who grow up tending places will later invest time in communal goals.

Sustainable Grassland Management

Open habitats cannot be sustained with uniform, industrial mowing. Historically, mosaic grazing and scythe work moved slowly across small parcels—patterns that modern large-field management erases along with specialist species. Bringing animals, shepherds, and patchwise grazing back is central. The team advises and trains farmers on these methods. Reception has shifted from scepticism to curiosity: neighbours now seek them out, reporting clear gains in visible biodiversity.

Guided Tours

Tours respond to a simple demand: visitors and locals want to know the story of the land. Guides frame history as orientation—where communities come from shapes where they can go. The format is participatory: guests walk with neighbours who move cattle on foot to high pasture, share meals such as balmoș on the slope, join mushroom forays, and help with hay in July or plum harvest in September—rhythms of work rather than packaged spectacle.

Heritage Preservation

Heritage work prioritises buildings and landscapes that can still speak clearly to history—not every structure can be saved, but exceptional ones can be repaired, reused, and interpreted. Wood and stone return to use in living architecture where possible; hayfields are managed without chemicals; hand tools from shepherd culture stay in circulation so skills stay practical, not museum-bound.

Traditional Horse Experiences

Horses are integrated as working partners: feeding, handling, light riding. The pitch is not stunt tourism but invitation into daily mountain life—pastoral rhythms and long cohabitation between people and livestock.

Silk Weaving Workshop

The silk line runs from raising silkworms through reeling thread to weaving on manual looms—methods handed down mother to daughter. A cluster of women from the commune and nearby villages now runs the workshop as a cooperative enterprise that began slowly but is beginning to yield steadier returns.

Value Chain Collaboration Canvas

VC3 stitches stakeholders so each chain link reinforces the next. In Tabanan, agroforestry cacao growers work with Agridesa on data-backed farming, digital tools, and finance; Cau Chocolates off-takes organic, agroforestry-grown beans. When actors align, projects become investable and finance can follow. Farmers report stronger soils and bean quality plus roughly IDR 10 million extra per harvest cycle—income that helps keep forest on the land, catchments intact, and businesses viable.

100 Regenerative Village Program

100 Regenerative Village (100RV) promotes agroforestry and regenerative practices so forests stay intact as water catchments. With Eco-Tourism Bali, hotels and food businesses are nudged toward local, sustainable sourcing—paying farmers who steward forest a credible alternative to selling land for tourism.

Multi-Stakeholder Forest Governance

In Jembrana, KEM supported Sabha Wana Kerthi, a multi-stakeholder forest forum chaired from the regional planning agency and joined by forestry and environment offices, the forest management unit (KPH), farmer groups (KTH), and firms such as Palapa (nutmeg) and Conservana Spices (vanilla, coffee, cacao). The body coordinates stewardship, benefit-sharing, and on-the-ground practice with policy.

Planning Assistance to Local Governments

KEM backs districts in drafting plans that lock in environmental and social commitments—not only pilot projects. Workshops bring government, smallholders, firms, and financiers into the same conversation so VC3 logic can be embedded in formal instruments.

Cultural Celebration Across Villages

Borgofuturo was refocused on weaving relationships and a shared valley identity through celebration and planning. Rather than a single three-day event in one village, it ran across four weekends in four villages. Between weekends, participants joined collective walks on trails linking settlements—learning the land and each other. The format moved from one centralised festival to a distributed, connected experience: walking connections that make the valley legible as one place, not a set of competing hamlets. Organisers invited residents, mayors and officials, civil-society groups, and local firms. Each weekend took one of the four strands: built infrastructure; culture; environmental education; and local production and craft.

Participatory Planning and Visioning

Weekend programmes included facilitated workshops for shared visioning and for drafting concrete proposals in each thematic area. The process and outcomes are documented in *Borgofuturo+ A local project for inner areas.* A core group of festival organisers, with researchers, planners, architects, and environmental scientists, then formed Inabità, a cooperative for territorial planning and governance.

Action Plan Implementation

From Borgofuturo+, Inabità produced “Qui ValdiFiastra” (*Here is Fiastra Valley*)—fifteen projects funded via Next Generation EU, with municipalities co-implementing alongside civil society, businesses, and residents. The same four strands organise the portfolio; each project mixes sectors rather than treating them as separate tracks.

Native Crop Regeneration and Supply Chain Development

Wild cacao and wild pepper anchor the model—food and medicine—restoring degraded forest while standing up processing and trade. Early revenue is meant to keep operations on the ground. Economic integration targets agroforestry on an initial ~2,200 ha, processing infrastructure, and a demonstrator that forest-based communities can earn livelihoods while protecting and restoring land. Pepper and cacao are the live cases; a later phase may extend toward ethnobotanical products.

Youth Agroforestry and Cultural Training Program

A training arc aims to reach more than 500 Indigenous youth in agroforestry, ecology, and cultural practice—passing knowledge between generations and preparing leaders who can govern territory regeneratively while identity stays central.

Native Tree Reforestation Campaign

A long-horizon campaign targets 749,000+ native trees on degraded ancestral land—guided by Indigenous ecological knowledge, aimed at biodiversity, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. Delivery includes nurseries, a core field team, ecological assessment, and harvest rules aligned with forest health.

Sustainable Ethnobotanicals Research Program

SERP documents and studies ethnomedicines and native forest foods—safeguarding ancestral healing knowledge and testing regenerative health products. It supports cultural revitalisation and could widen the enterprise beyond annual crops when the knowledge base matures.

Huni Kuin Intercultural Exchange Hub

A planned hub would host respectful cultural tourism—lodging, guided visits, and teaching grounded in Huni Kuin cosmology and restoration work—so outsiders can witness progress, diversify income, and build accountable cross-cultural relationships.

Pollinate HV

The group first mapped pollinators most at risk in the estuary watershed, then published practical guidance at pollinatehv.org. Local ecotypic seed—genotypes matched to the basin—was scarce, so they partnered with Hudson Valley Seed Company to produce it. Those seeds now move through the Library of Local network.

Library of Local Network

Library of Local now spans 17 library sites across the watershed, lending native seed, tools, and materials where people already gather. Seed is also sold commercially, but libraries widen access and strengthen civic ties. Small grants help residents install native plantings on private land.

Guild System Development

Through the BioFi Cultivator programme, HERE began convening guilds: networks of connectors and practitioners who name priority issues, commission studies, and steer funding. Four guilds are forming, each targeting at least about $1 million in community-directed capital—decisions kept close to the problem. Food tackles food-system priorities; Shelter addresses housing affordability and its overlap with climate vulnerability; Ecology coordinates forest health, invasives, deer, and rising fire risk in the Northeast; Culture holds a regenerative cultural thread so food, shelter, and ecology do not drift into silos.

Hudson Valley Bioregional Trust & Fund

A Hudson Valley trust and philanthropic fund is being built to move money through the guilds. Convenings have begun; fundraising is aimed so each guild can steward at least roughly $1 million, with allocation led by people closest to the issues.

HERE Magazine

A print magazine, Here, is planned to carry reporting and narrative from across the estuary—helping readers see the watershed as connected systems rather than isolated issues. behow.org serves as the public hub for guilds, fund news, and convenings.

Bioregional Congress

In October 2025, HERE convened a bioregional congress with all guilds—food, shelter, ecology, and culture—bringing together the range of voices and capacities active across the estuary.

Human-Elephant Harmony

Since 2016, Human-Elephant Harmony has worked with Dusun communities, agencies, and partners to treat conflict as a coexistence problem. Herds returned in 2014 after absence since mid-1980s forest fires. Telupid’s forests had largely become oil palm; elephants used plantations for food and reserves for daytime cover, while unfenced smallholders bore crop damage—fueling calls for relocation. From March–December 2016, Forever Sabah worked with the Telupid District Office; village input recalled older protocols of mutual respect with elephants, so the frame shifted from “conflict” to Human-Elephant Harmony. Workshops began in three villages (a fourth joined in 2018) around a four-part plan: train a Community Elephant Ranger Team, map elezone zones, build citizen science, and fence selected sites. Kopisuladan di Aki (“friendship between villagers and elephants” in Dusun Labuk)—nine young professionals with strong field knowledge—received a February 2018 National Conservation Trust Fund grant (RM 200,000 over 22 months, co-financed by the U.S. Shared Earth Foundation at USD 65,000); five members became Honorary Wildlife Wardens. “Listening to elephants” tracks movement, diet, and use of oil palm. Observation showed elephants following machinery that clears mature palms to feed on chipped replanting waste—evidence that access to oil palm matters for nutrition in these landscapes and that trade-offs around plantation entry differ from simple removal narratives. No further translocations have been attempted from this area since CERT formed; several calves have been raised in Telupid. The team estimates about 25–50 elephants use Telupid—the northern edge of the wider Central Sabahan population.

Watershed Conservation and Payment for Ecosystem Services

The Babagon catchment is a 3,001 ha forested watershed serving roughly 57% of Greater Kinabalu’s water demand, yet its three Indigenous Dusun communities have seen little benefit. Babagon Dam (1997) flooded Kg Tampasak—graves, orchards, padi—forcing resettlement below the impoundment with lasting harm. To protect water quality, the state restricted livelihoods on upstream Dusun lands and pressed for state-led stewardship of territories communities had long managed. After four months’ scoping and a one-year PES readiness phase, Forever Sabah brokered a multi-year dialogue among communities, government, and private actors to design Payment for Ecosystem Services. The fund model treats communities as trustees with government and others, pooling and returning payments from prospective streams—if cabinet approves and territorial rights are recognised, that could support durable jobs in monitoring, catchment care, and restoration. Mirani Momogompi Tadon Waig (MMTW) is the trained local team for monitoring, nurseries, and restoration, blending science and customary practice—including dragonfly and fish indicators—to read watershed health.

Renewable Energy Transition

SabahRE2 (August 2021) is a four-partner consortium pursuing energy equity, livelihoods, and wellbeing for rural Sabahans. Sabah holds about 72% of Malaysia’s unelectrified rural households, so off-grid renewables are a practical lever. Year one produced a public roadmap for rural renewable electrification. The target is 200 renewable mini-grids by 2030. A demand map of ~400 villages yielded 206 meeting readiness criteria; feasibility work advanced for 35 mini-grids serving 57 villages across diverse biocultural settings.

Mangrove Conservation and Spatial Planning

SPaCES (Spatial Planning for Conservation, Sustainable Economic Development and Society) supplies mapping and planning support across Forever Sabah programmes. Current work maps mangrove extent, loss, threats, and restoration need toward protecting Sabah’s mangrove estate. The Lower Kinabatangan & Segama programme deepens co-governance—community protocols, Locally Managed Marine Areas, and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas—in a large mangrove–estuary system. Livelihoods (e.g. solar cold storage for fishers, ecotourism) aim to reduce extraction pressure while communities steward the wetlands they rely on.

Legal Innovation and Policy Development

The Legal Innovation Team supports Forever Sabah with strategic legal analysis—entry points in statute for a circular economy, and space to prototype policy, legal, and institutional options. It works with civil society, lawyers, and scholars to review Sabah land and environmental law, compare international models, and track relevant global processes. An initial output is a multimedia handbook on Sabah land and environmental law, with briefs summarising key laws, policies, and institutions in plain language.

Learning and Capacity Building

Forever Sabah Institute prototypes ways to strengthen people in the network as changemakers—blurring lines between theory and practice, student and teacher, local and global, classroom and field.

Riparian Watershed Recovery

Salmon offered a practical entry: a ready stakeholder base and steep declines—a pattern across Scotland, not only the Findhorn. The Riverwoods push on riparian woodland then connected salmon recovery to climate and woodland restoration for anglers, landowners, and conservation interests. Work extends beyond narrow riparian strips toward healthier, biodiverse catchment landscapes. Flood risk matters as much as cooler, cleaner water, so “climate-resilient rivers” sit alongside habitat goals. Carbon storage is pursued from eroding headwaters to salt marsh and seagrass in Findhorn Bay. Nature Recovery is watershed-wide: native species, invasive control, coastal carbon habitats. Fieldwork has included seedling and peat surveys, seagrass mapping, and new records of freshwater pearl mussels.

Gaelic Cultural Heritage

A flagship Nature Connection strand is the human ecology residency with Ranish Sandland and Mary Macfadden—Gaelic-speaking researchers in the upper catchment who recovered songs, stories, and place names, including archival material not performed for centuries, returned to local use. Revivals reached Tomintoul’s village hall with musicians such as Julie Fowlis. Collaborators described the effort as cultural darning and mending—repairing frayed ties to land and community.

Monitoring Strategy

Monitoring pairs formal science with in-context participation: “cold” metrics and “warm” observation together describe watershed condition. Citizen science tracks woodland, river, and coastal habitats; nature-connectedness workshops use paired individual and group evaluation. The point is not only whether targets are met but whether interventions match need—using community reflection to “warm” technical data and adjust practice accordingly.

Training & Green Jobs

Workstreams test how skills training, environmental credits, and rural job pathways can align—linking restoration and land work to livelihoods and, where relevant, to housing stability in scattered communities.

Findhorn Watershed Deer Forum

The Catchment Deer Forum aligns stalkers, gamekeepers, and other land managers so deer densities support both woodland regeneration and viable stalking. It connects herbivore pressure to tree survival and peatland recovery, while keeping venison in local supply chains—pairing ecological goals with rural food economies across fragmented ownership.

Hala Traditional Agriculture Mapping

Traditional Hawaiian land management is a layered bioregional system. At broad scale, moku were political regions aligned with environmental gradients (temperature, sun, rain), shaping how entire landscapes were used. Over roughly seven to eight years, a documentation effort has combined those customary frameworks with geospatial analysis to inform present land-use choices. The work maps historical agricultural signals against environmental layers—botanical surveys (including 29,000 kukui trees along the Hāmākua Coast), soils, archaeology, archival checks, and modeling at roughly 85% accuracy. A flagship line traces the kou (candlenut-based) system: mapping kukui and breadfruit exposed a sharp break at Laupāhoehoe—breadfruit drops out, kukui patterns and soil fertility shift, coinciding with the boundary (Humuʻula) between the moku of Hilo and Hāmākua. That alignment shows large-scale land care tracked political lines that themselves tracked ecological gradients—even where drivers such as soil fertility are not obvious on the ground. Nested ahupuaʻa ran from mountains to sea, often organized around water, so communities could access a wide resource gradient. Finer kaluulu-style belts (for example Kona’s breadfruit zone) matched environmental limits and cultural preference.

Traditional Knowledge in Governance

The cooperative is entering a cooperative service agreement with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) so these bioregional models can guide program funding—for example, funding agroforestry only where traditional practice indicates agroforestry fits, avoiding projects that mismatch place. Early thinking also asks how this bioregional lens could inform legislation and public land management in Hawaiʻi today—a bridge from Indigenous and place-based knowledge into contemporary governance.

Strategy Games

From 2023-2025, a strategy game was implemented in the Ericht catchment bioregion. The process began with listening to diverse stakeholders—farmers, anglers, land managers, estate owners, and community leaders—to understand their roles and perceptions. This information formed the basis for a prototype game representing the landscape's resources and dynamics. The games help players visualize interconnections across the landscape, demonstrating how individual actions impact others' livelihoods and environmental conditions.

Diamante Luz

The collective describes Diamante Luz as its first on-the-ground node: shared land for permaculture and common resources, where residents, neighbors, and visitors co-create ways of living and working with non-human relations. The site hosts learning for ecological wellness and restoration across ages—spaces for artisans, processing kitchens, syntropic food forests, and support for people stepping into local food leadership.

RECenter the Resource Recycling Center San Salvador

RECenter gathers recyclable and repurposable material for the local community and runs education on how everyday choices shape impacts. The project includes machinery to process plastic into blocks and, at the time of documentation, was moving toward acquiring an extruder for further repurposing.

Sacred Shield Initiative

Sacred Shield puts Indigenous-led protection teams on the ground: regenerative education, long-term biocultural sovereignty, and capital that can move with frontline priorities. Teams steward sacred lands under extractive pressure with defense that stays community-owned. The consortium links that work to "active resistance to extractive pressures in the Boruca territory, which are displacing local populations and disrupting the keystone ecosystems that really affect the whole planet."

Participatory Governance Development

Governance is described as a living braid of sociocratic practice and Indigenous decision-making—listening from many directions, elders and local communities in the weave, sociocratic circles with shared representation, and decentralized, transparent mechanisms for deciding and acting. The baseline is "recognition and reciprocity first." When council decisions land, communities need capacity to move; the aim is governance patient enough for real listening yet able to act quickly once alignment appears. Pasted image 20260218174155.png From Diamante-Barú Bioregional Consortium: Activating bioregional finance facilities rooted in Indigenous reciprocity, ecological stewardship, and self-governance.

Diamante Bioregional Trust Development

The Diamante Bioregional Trust is a community-aligned capital channel aimed at grassroots regenerative action. So far, the consortium has raised, spent, and tracked about $125,000—foundational work on a lean budget—while building toward a $125 million goal to take tested approaches across the wider bioregion. A curated set of ready-to-implement projects—water protection, reforestation, legal land defense, cultural revitalization, decentralized education—comes out of years of groundwork with communities bordering the Osa Peninsula.

Pollinator Citizenship Program

The city treated the pollination system as an active partner—an alliance that fed information back into governance. The relationship moved through three recognitions: pollinators as mediators between people and ecosystems, pollinators as agents of prosperity in both ecological and economic terms, and finally pollinators as citizens with standing in the city’s political imagination. The Pollinator Citizenship Program mapped the city from a “bee’s eye view,” cutting across ordinary public–private boundaries. Supporting pollinators required seeing the territory as one system—an archipelago of places where nectar and pollen exist—so that corridors for pollinators could run across parcels and land-tenure lines. In practice, that meant governance that recognizes non-human residents, design and regulation attentive to pollinator needs, continuous corridor-building across ownership types, and a view of the city as several overlapping systems working at once.

Governance Platform Methodology

Strong pilots often stall because they lack governance that can carry them. Curridabat’s answer was a methodological bet on platforms—shared systems many projects can join. The move is from supply-side planning (predetermined projects pushed outward) to demand-side work: use data and stories to open conversation, let communities name needs through informed dialogue, let projects emerge as responses, and learn when outcomes diverge from expectations. The city contrasts low-value governance (short horizons, scarce resources, agendas set elsewhere) with high-value governance: local decision-making power, capabilities treated as a system, strategy guiding choices over time, and culture treated as an asset rather than an obstacle. Scaling regenerative work depends less on any single project’s brilliance than on governance for the project—designed alongside the project. Four moves anchor the platform: clarify demand, reshape governance, open new conversations, and strengthen capability systems.

Archetype-Based Planning

Curridabat used archetypes—stand-in beings whose needs and experiences shape the story of a place—to surface gaps between today and a desired future and to support backcasting and sequencing of change. In Curridabat, archetypes ranged from pollinators, air, and water to children, very old residents, and wheelchair users—each illuminating different facets of justice, access, and ecology. The same approach was applied in Nosara, a coastal community in Guanacaste, where people chose archetypes suited to shoreline life—among them young people, species such as marine turtles that link land and sea, and everyday coastal livelihood roles—showing how the method travels beyond the city.

Community Food Security Project

When COVID-19 stopped tourism in Guanacaste, Costa Rica Regenerativa mobilized 500 farming families in a belt skeptics had called unsuitable for vegetables. Drawing on Cuban methods and Indigenous growing practices, they rebuilt severely degraded plots—harvesting water, stretching dry-season use, and rebuilding dark soil with carbon and mulch along lines developed over decades by Manders. Harvests came quickly; a mother told him the children’s eyes were shining again and their skin smooth again—something no economic return could match. A simple monitoring scheme used color rings on trees so non-readers could scan farm health at a glance. Cooking workshops helped families accept bitter traditional crops. Food forests followed for easier management and climate resilience. Teenagers—including young women on survey drones—gained skills that could keep rural life viable.

Savory Hub Initiative

The Savory Hub work targets 380,000 regional cattle hectares. Farmers who dedicate 15–30% as corridors can sharply raise returns while giving land back to wild connectivity. Large forest patches (over 500 hectares) anchor the map; farms stitch between them. A 40-year initiative with Replanet began at 30,000 hectares with room to grow toward two- to three-hundred thousand hectares via carbon markets, aiming for broad “360” benefits—farm income, carbon, water, and roughly a third of the landscape supporting nature. Regeneration draws on Lacandon practices with balsa and mulch rather than planting full-sun timber rows; it accelerates processes that fit local biology. Insect monitoring showed fivefold insect population gains, with beneficial species dominating pests—work neighbors first read as “crazy.” Bats—about half of local mammal species—signal ecosystem integrity.

Regenerative Agriculture Program

The program works through technical schools, pairing demonstration sites, student training, and carbon finance for fences and water. Farms document ~0.5 inch annual soil gain and up to $110,000 first-year income. Trainings include homemade repellents from chile, onion, and garlic so practices stay affordable and ecological. Soil-centered climate work ties to ~150% emissions offset via food—buying time, as Muñoz notes, for better batteries and other hard tech.

Educational Hive

Muñoz sees formal education as misaligned with present needs; the Hive, built with Ugal, links experts, learners, and bioregions for applied projects, with achievements logged in a passport-style record. A Ghana school food-forest illustrates what becomes possible when learning meets place. A purchased farm is becoming an on-site training center; a Peru-born program brings nature itself into schools as teacher.

MRV Collective Development

The MRV Collective (measurement, reporting, verification) seeks transparency for regenerative outcomes. Sensors track eleven soil parameters; the aim is reliable field data and burial protocols so regenerative management is not left only to costly consultants while chemical inputs carry ready labels.

Oral History Collection and Memory Mapping

In trawün (community meetings), elders remembered when *pitrales* and *gualves*, *canelos* and *lumas* dominated the land—recorded in this account—along with stories of change, place, and legends such as the Girl of the Radales, who appears to those who walk the radal groves. Memory work recorded sharp losses: puma, skunk, monito del monte, burrowing owl, and other beings elders knew from lived experience. Legendary fires turned routine; crops sometimes burned before harvest while families fought only to save houses. As one elder observed: “Before, the puma could be found in any sector, because there was more forest and houses were far apart... we were living in a space where we coexisted with wildlife” (elder testimony). That reality had changed sharply, calling for a coordinated response. The project also built a documentary archive of territorial memory and linked youth to ancestors. Naming dozens of plants, animals, and relations, the community still carries biocultural depth that can ground regeneration.

Ecological Assessment and Monitoring

In 2022, researchers and community members sampled macroinvertebrates in three Cruces tributaries—Colico, Afunalhue, and Petrohue. Stream quality varied by site: Afunalhue and Petrohue scored good quality; Colico was slightly degraded. Names carry history: *Cudico* suggests dirty water; *Colico*, yellow water. Camera traps showed a skewed roster: six of nine species exotic—dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, rodents—versus three native. Native fox and güiña (kodkod) still appear as hopeful signs. The work sets baselines and indicator species for later comparison. The community mapped currents across the territory, tracing contamination. At least four flows remain in good ecological condition; Coihueco stream shows degradation. Watershed characterization links local flows to neighboring areas and tracks shifts in species and water quality.

Community Engagement and Education

At Colegio Virgen de la Candelaria, workshops linked students to their environmental heritage. Young people sampled macroinvertebrates, set camera traps, and—with great student amazement—saw güiñas and foxes on screen for the first time though they had lived beside those habitats. They debated how domestic animals affect native fauna and sketched responses. By the close, many children held ecological ideas that had eluded some adults. Dialogues surfaced urgent worries: water access (“I have to wait eight days for water delivery because I need the water”), rising river pollution, land pressure from newcomers, social friction (practices, consumption, trash, noise, loose dogs), and cultural loss—fewer yayipun ceremonies, palín games, and collective celebrations.

Participatory Strategy Development

To move past only fighting emergencies, the community began a participatory strategy in 2021—spanning community, commune, region, and beyond, with an eye on water that reaches the sea: regeneration imagined from community to ocean. The aim is a ten-year-plus plan that aligns community priorities with regional institutions; maps who lives there and where to act; keeps students connected to territory; weaves internal networks for new leadership; resonates with other bioregions; and uses ecosystem thinking as its backbone. Beyond productivity-focused census categories, they built tools for household economy and composition, health, ecological knowledge, resource practices, culture and sport, and intent to stay in Mapuche territory. With Ministry of Science support and three ecological funds, they advance land-use mapping, endemic forest restoration, family finance renewal, and community-led implementation.

Network Building and Learning Exchange

A network structure has formed organically: the team connects organizations and actors running regenerative initiatives—in any dimension—to bioregional networks inside Colombia and to the Global Network of Regenerative Communities, so lessons travel horizontally rather than staying project-bound. Colombia Regenerativa still convenes bioregion-to-bioregion exchanges and, through the global network, links especially with peer processes in Latin America.

Three Rings Evaluation Process

In 2021, Colombia Regenerativa undertook a systematic evaluation process with seven bioregions across Colombia. This evaluation used a "three rings" model where the past forms the first ring, the present the second ring, and the future the third ring, with each bioregion collectively determining their position on a scale. The evaluation framework spans six general categories that emerged from the bioregions' own experiences: governance (how decisions are made collectively), economics (how resources are stewarded and exchanged), ecosystem management (how lands and waters are cared for), cultural identity (how traditions and knowledge are preserved), community health (how relationships and wellbeing are nurtured), and education (how knowledge is transmitted across generations). The process was deliberately collective, with each region determining which actions were being taken across these categories. By 2023, bioregions engaged in self-evaluation while referencing what others were doing, enabling learning between bioregions. This cross-regional learning became one of the most valuable aspects of the process. An interesting pattern emerged from the 2023 evaluation: two regions—Rio Bolo (a farm region along a river) and Q'uena (an Indigenous bioregion)—evaluated themselves lower than two other bioregions that have more rural populations. The higher-scoring regions also attract people from cities who go to these territories to promote regeneration. These patterns reveal important dynamics: urban-rural connections can accelerate regenerative work, but Indigenous and traditional farming communities may have different timelines and metrics for success.

Virtual Gaia Digital Mapping Platform

Colombia Regenerativa is developing Virtual Gaia, a collaborative project with Costa Rica to create a digital mapping platform where all bioregions in a country—or anywhere on the globe—can be localized. The platform will enable users to visualize evaluations, ecosystems, mapping, and community work on a digital globe. Currently, the team is mapping new initiatives that want to be regenerative or are in the process, including personal and private initiatives that aren't yet formal bioregions. This mapping helps identify where regenerative momentum is building and where connections might be strengthened.

Bioregionalization Course Development

Recognizing the need for broader learning, Colombia Regenerativa is developing a course in bioregionalization where conversations serve as a fundamental design element. The goal is co-creating these bioregionalization processes alongside regenerative governance with a school of governance, enabling communities to deepen their local organization.

Healthy Landscape Strategy

Carolinian Canada's Healthy Landscape Strategy aims to grow Canada's Biggest Wildlife Garden connecting Toronto to Windsor with healthy habitat. The strategy is informed by ecologist Doug Tallamy's research demonstrating the ways in which native plants support greater insect populations, biodiversity, and landscape health than non-native plants. The Healthy Landscape Strategy includes four key activities, linking restoration and conservation priorities based on the latest local and global science: 1. Save local nature: Increase commitment to saving habitat with long-term agreements. 2. Steward healthy landscapes: Use best ecosystem practices to increase habitat quality. 3. Seed, grow, create, or restore high-quality habitat: Use native plants sourced locally, ecologically, and ethically to increase habitat quantity and connections. 4. Lead healthy resilient communities: Connect communities to nature through strong equitable collaboration, positive engagement, First Nations leadership, and an ethical, local native plant industry. Support a climate-smart, green economy for thriving local communities through cross-sector collaboration. Native plants hold cultural and relational significance to many Indigenous peoples who view native plants as relatives and friends, not commodities. As the demand for native plants increases, part of Carolinian Canada's strategy is to ensure an ethical seed strategy for native plants within the region.

Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond

The Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond (DZCIB) links investor repayment to five holistic outcome streams—habitat, knowledge/circling, economy, relational connection, and ecocentric wellbeing—rather than treating ecology as the only ledger. Partners launched design work in 2019 in ethical space hosted by Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. The five-year pilot began March 2020, spanning 60 ha in the zone, to accelerate healthy landscapes, nature-based solutions, reconciliation, and human–nature relationship. - Capital: CAD $130,000 from VERGE Capital (Pillar Non-profit Network), structured as a repayable prototype via the VERGE Breakthrough Fund (5% interest, three-year term). - Habitat delivery: Indigenous TEK and Western science together; 53 projects with nine partners (First Nations, trusts, municipalities, ALUS, etc.), typically with 1:1 in-kind match. - Outcome payers: Third-party evaluation gates repayment. Payers include 3M Canada, multi-year public anchor funding, and Pollinator Partnership—grants legally conditioned on outcomes. - Leadership: Carolinian Canada, VERGE, Thames Talbot Land Trust, Deshkan Ziibiing, Ivey Business School—explicitly Two-Eyed Seeing in design and review. Five pillars (each with a pay-for-success benchmark): habitat gains; people learning on the land; intercultural economic opportunity; nature connectedness; ecocentric sightings—broadening “success” beyond hectares. Through July 2021, the pilot reported 69 ha improved, 39,000+ native plants, and ~450 people in land-based learning—spanning volunteer planting (e.g. Briscoe Woods), invasive control and corporate seed collection (Hawk Cliff), bilingual trail and language work (Anishinaabensag Miikaanens), and multi-site work with conservation authorities and First Nations. As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in the report, restoring land without restoring relationship is empty; relationship is what endures.

In the Zone Habitat Tracker

Since most of the land in the region is privately owned, landowners in the Carolinian Zone play an instrumental role in habitat sustainability. Habitat partners, landowners, volunteers, and community members are welcome to participate in the Conservation Impact Bond by logging their habitat projects using the In the Zone Habitat Tracker. This multi-partner platform, facilitated by Carolinian Canada and WWF-Canada, connects and assists diverse landowners and communities to grow, steward, and measure healthy landscapes using "Big Picture" measures of landscape health and resilience, as well as localized impact metrics.

Participatory Systems Mapping

The foundation for CEDPO was laid through a participatory systems mapping process initiated in 2015, led by Regenerative Earth in collaboration with local communities and Indigenous groups. The resulting systems map identifies existing capacities, unmet needs, root causes, feedback loops, and leverage points for regenerative intervention. The mapping revealed a shared vision centered on a regenerative economy that supports thriving communities and culture, where jobs are reliant on healthy ecosystems, creating incentives for ecological stewardship. It also illuminated key challenges: unsustainable development, international land acquisition accelerating over recent years, unsustainable agriculture, poverty alongside conservation driving illegal deforestation and poaching, fragmentation among working groups, and cultural erosion. This systems analysis guides CEDPO's theory of change, objectives, strategies, and project selection criteria across environmental, social, and economic sectors.

Multi-Stakeholder Governance

CEDPO’s governance is nested and statutory: a national rural-development mandate, university research capacity, an NGO fiscal backbone, and a territorial council (SETO) that mixes elected municipal and community seats—including Indigenous representation—so decisions stay accountable to place. Partners such as Regenerative Earth, INDER, PIOSA, and SETO each play a role, but the design point is co-stewardship under Law 9306: SETO meets monthly, steers the 2024–2030 territorial plan, and has moved roughly $4 million into regional priorities in recent years—including electricity for Indigenous communities that lacked grid access.

Project Portfolio Development

CEDPO has backed about 15 initiatives chosen through its systems map—spanning environment, society, and economy. Examples include: - Ngäbe communities: knowledge exchange, seed saving, traditional agriculture and medicine, productive-system strengthening, and ecotourism grounded in Ngäbe practice (phase one complete). - AsaOsa (recyclers’ association): operational support for the peninsula’s main recycling hub, where informal wages lag the environmental service provided. - Women-led enterprises: native vanilla in agroforestry (including export links) and meliponiculture for pollinators and income. - Marine work: Racing Coral trains divers in reef gardening in the Golfo Dulce; Mar y Tierra links land use, education, and monitoring to integrated watershed–coastal management.

Bioregional Financing Facility Development

A bioregional funding mechanism currently in development, the CEDPO Financing Facility is designed to receive donations and investments from Costa Rican donors, the Costa Rican government, and international sources. The facility will support the core CEDPO operations team, finance locally led regenerative projects, strengthen community organizations and governance, and maximize available resources through connections with government institutions, NGOs, and universities. CEDPO aims to raise $100,000 annually for operational needs. As of 2025, $35,000 has been secured, hoped to be a three-year commitment, leaving approximately $65,000 annually to be raised.

Results-Based Farming Program

The programme puts a price on good management through results-based payments. A rapid field assessment scores each parcel out of 10 for overall condition—biodiversity, water, soil, invasive pressure, and related indicators. Higher scores mean higher payments. Staff do not prescribe practices; they set targets, and farmers who meet them are rewarded. Poor scores unlock targeted investment—water systems, fencing, feeding layouts—so outcomes can improve over successive seasons. Bureaucracy was deliberately stripped back: the annual farm plan is two pages—a map, the scores, and suggested improvements—plus one signature per year. That lightness helps keep farmers in the scheme and treats them as the main conservation workforce on the ground.

Farm Infrastructure Support Initiative

Targeted grants fund practical upgrades—stone walls, feeding systems, water management—that lift environmental scores and make day-to-day farming easier. The logic matches the results model: invest where it shifts outcomes, not where it merely ticks boxes.

New Revenue Development

Farmers now earn from work the landscape needs: restoring drystone walls (sometimes through local enterprises built around that craft), hosting visitors who want the story from the people who farm the land, and—in Wild Atlantic Nature—paid crews (for example) controlling invasive rhododendron several days a week. Payment is tied to ecosystem services, not only to commodity output—linking income to stewardship and creating rural jobs around that labour.

Burren Peer-to-Peer Learning Network

The programme brokers farmer-to-farmer learning: who already farms for nature pairs with neighbours who want to transition. The premise is simple—farmers often resist outside experts but listen to peers—so the network supplies structure, trust, and follow-up rather than top-down advice.

Farming Hub

A local office matters: it is where farmers get plain-language guidance, paperwork help, and small “plans for nature” when they want to act but fear doing the wrong thing. That accessibility is part of mobilising farmers and other landowners across Ireland who are willing but unsure where to start.

Burren Public Engagement Program

Each year the winterage—moving cattle onto the mountain—draws a public ritual around transhumance. Crowds can reach a thousand people helping move stock, with national media coverage—a visible vote of confidence in farmers who produce food and steward a globally rare landscape.

Regenerative Sanctuary

At the center of this project is a ceremonial dome built by the collective, where rituals, women's gatherings, intergenerational healing work, and arts-based events are held throughout the year. The space also hosts low-impact learning journeys and regenerative tourism, designed for deep listening, not consumption. Visitors engage through storytelling, ancestral practice, land-based work, and silence. Financial support is being sought to improve hosting infrastructure (kitchen, housing, water systems), offer stipends to local stewards and elders, and support regenerative programming that centers Muiska cosmology, ecological repair, and community resilience. The sanctuary serves as a living showcase for bioregional practices and a space for international learning exchanges. Visitors engage through storytelling, ancestral practice, land-based work, and silence, experiencing whispers of Mother Earth in this living temple of peace. As the grandmother Margarita—a revered elder of the World Council of Elders—used to say: "When the mind unites with the heart, everything is possible." This is Bosque Fractal's invitation: to unite mind and heart, to regenerate the land and the spirit, and to inspire Colombia and the world toward peace and ecological wholeness.

The Living Atlas

Bosque Fractal is developing a "Living Atlas"—a dynamic, participatory tool that maps the ecological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of the territory. This atlas weaves together watershed maps, sacred sites, historical memory, and narrative layers contributed by elders, artists, and local stewards. The Living Atlas blends digital and analog tools to map bioregional regeneration, capturing both data and the intangible stories of land and people. It serves both as a guide for ecological restoration (what to plant, where to protect, how to read the landscape) and as an educational and ceremonial resource. The vision extends beyond Colombia. Bosque Fractal is connected to a network of sacred peace temples across the globe—in the Gulf of Maine, Scotland, Wales, and beyond—through the Living Atlas for Bioregional Regeneration. This atlas uses sacred geometry and multiple knowledge traditions to connect bioregions and share practices for peace and ecological healing.

Bosque Fractal Governance and Finance

To protect the land and its vision beyond individual ownership, Bosque Fractal is developing a collective governance and financing model rooted in the principles of the commons. This includes formalizing a Colombian legal structure that can steward the land collectively, while maintaining international partnerships through a U.S.-based fiscal conduit. The bioregional governance and financing structure consists of three interconnected components: 1. Cobalt, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the U.S., serves as the international partner for receiving donations and stewarding funds with transparency. 2. A for-profit social enterprise, active in Colombia since 2011, collaborates with local projects, the community biohub, and governance councils to direct resources where they are most needed. 3. The Living Atlas serves as a core initiative that blends digital and analog tools to map bioregional regeneration. This structure allows for international funding to flow into the region while maintaining local autonomy and ensuring resources are directed where they are most needed through collaborative governance councils.

Ecological Restoration of Valle de Zaquencipá

The land at Bosque Fractal is part of a critical watershed feeding Bogotá and surrounding areas, and includes degraded zones requiring urgent care. Over the last few years, the team has planted thousands of native trees, regenerated damaged soils, and begun monitoring water flow and soil health. With initial funding, Bosque Fractal will expand several high-priority projects, including: Oak Forest Restoration: Reviving native oak forests, which are crucial for water retention and biodiversity. The oak forests surrounding the valley are themselves ancient elders, teaching how to heal and regenerate both land and spirit. Pollinator Hotel: Supporting bees and other pollinators as keystone species for ecosystem health. Rainwater Purification Plant: Supplying clean water to the community while demonstrating regenerative water management practices. Regenerative Tourism: Creating sustainable tourism experiences rooted in cultural education and ecological stewardship. Bioregional Zone and Guest House: Serving as a living showcase for bioregional practices and a space for international learning exchanges, including building a guest house for workshops and cross-bioregional collaboration. The restoration work recognizes that this ecosystem, though occupying just 1.7% of Colombia's páramos, provides 85% of the country's drinking water, making its restoration critical not just locally but nationally.

Cross-Sector Collaborative Infrastructure

Over the past two years, Blueprint has facilitated regular convenings of over 50 individuals and organizations, building shared language, governance structures, and aligned funding strategies. This infrastructure has enabled rapid collaboration across issue areas such as food security, forest health, energy access, and rural mental health. The team is creating a formal backbone organization that can hold shared capital, facilitate project incubation, and distribute funding to aligned local partners.

Post-Disaster Regenerative Recovery Model

In the aftermath of devastating floods, Blueprint for Impact developed a community-rooted model of regenerative recovery. This approach integrated trauma-informed care, ecological restoration, cooperative planning, and systems design. The model includes participatory assessments, stakeholder mapping, and localized strategy development—all grounded in Appalachian cultural values and ecosystem realities. Rather than simply rebuilding what was lost, the model focuses on regeneration: restoring ecosystems, strengthening communities, and building systems that are more resilient to future shocks. This work recognizes that disasters can be catalysts for positive transformation when communities are empowered to lead their own recovery.

Appalachian Cultural Infrastructure

The initiative supports place-based cultural work by developing a bioregional cultural infrastructure that includes arts funding, participatory storytelling projects, and partnerships with cultural institutions across the Southern Appalachians. Projects include: - Short-form stories follow each project, sharing tangible impacts - A full-length documentary, "Blueprint Appalachia," chronicles how the region is rebuilding post-Helene in a regenerative way This media will be nationally distributed, reframing how people see and support Southern Appalachia. By elevating local stories to national attention, Blueprint aims to shift narratives about the region from one of poverty and dependence to one of resilience, innovation, and cultural richness.

Development Portfolio

Blueprint is assembling a portfolio of investable initiatives—forests, farms and soil, health, food access, micro-economies, and arts—so funders encounter a systemic regional program rather than isolated projects. After Hurricane Helene, about 40% of regional tree cover was damaged, elevating wildfire risk and debris work alongside longer-term forest stewardship tied to water and identity. Soil, water, and farm programming aim to scale producer-led regeneration and food security. Health efforts include: - nature-based care models - food-insecurity work links farms to dignified community distribution - micro-economy support tries to diversify beyond fragile tourism - arts are treated as infrastructure for cohesion and narrative change Financing is designed to braid these streams—ecology, livelihoods, culture, and care—as one bioregional investment thesis.

Appalachia Community Capital Design

Blueprint is developing community capital strategies that embed regenerative values and local decision-making. This includes designing grant and loan mechanisms to fund land-based projects, cooperative enterprises, and creative infrastructure. The group is prototyping governance structures that center equity, lived experience, and intergenerational leadership. They are actively exploring flow fund models and bioregionally rooted donor circles, and they envision a "Community Wealth Table" where local actors co-govern the deployment of resources.

Farm Food Access Program

The Farm Food Access Program is the Trust’s lead intervention: it pays farmers for food that is then prepared or boxed for community resource centers across six counties—getting dollars onto farms while feeding neighbors through trusted front-line organizations. The design grew from an eight-week pilot backed by a $1 million American Red Cross grant. The theory of change is straightforward—pay producers first, widen the program, and over time reduce dependence on one-off disaster and charity dollars by knitting in schools, institutions, and households as reliable buyers, supported by storytelling that builds demand for local food. Operations lean on Fastroots, a platform for spotting needs, coordinating resources, tracking impact, and sharing transparent, community-held data.

WNC Food Hub Collaborative

The WNC Food Hub Collaborative is a newly formed group of 10 participating food hubs across the region that collectively purchase from hundreds of local farms. This existing network of aggregation, storage, and distribution capacity provides the foundation upon which a truly integrated regional food system can be built. The Trust works to strengthen and integrate this local food supply chain, reducing inefficiencies, building infrastructure, and expanding capacity.

Institutional and Commercial Purchasing

Schools, universities, and hospitals could anchor steady demand for regional farms, but procurement rules, food-safety expectations, and thin coordination often block uptake. The Trust is bundling responses: procurement subsidies that reimburse institutional and commercial buyers for verified local purchases; investment in aggregation and food-safety capacity so farms can meet buyers where compliance is non-negotiable; and digital links between hubs and institutions to cut administrative friction.

Blue Ridge Community Land Agreements

Recognizing that land access is a major barrier for small-scale and BIPOC farmers in the region, the Trust is developing a land strategy based on long-term stewardship rather than speculative ownership. The team is working with landowners in three target landscapes who are willing to enter into long-term agreements that prioritize food production and ecological regeneration. These regenerative land trusts will acquire and permanently protect farmland at risk of development, provide affordable land access to farmers through below-market rates, and ensure long-term affordability for local growers while scaling regional production capacity. The agreements may include community easements, stewardship covenants, or lease-to-own models that favor equity, regenerative production, and generational succession.

Blue Ridge Foodshed Capital Infrastructure

The Trust is partnering with Abundance Capital to administer the Blue Ridge Foodshed Fund—a catalytic donor-advised fund (DAF). This multi-donor fund receives tax-deductible grants from public, private, and corporate donors, creating a capital pool for grants, zero/low-interest loans, and return-based investments. Returns flow back into the Fund to be reinvested in more initiatives. The team is identifying catalytic projects in three specific landscape clusters across the region. Potential investments include local processing and aggregation centers, mobile market units, cold storage solutions, and co-located services for farmers and food entrepreneurs.

Producer-Centered Governance Design

A core tenet of the Foodshed Trust model is that producers must play a central role in funding decisions, infrastructure design, and enterprise development. The organization is hosting a series of listening sessions and design workshops with producers across the region to co-create these governance models. Over time, these governance frameworks will be embedded into the operation of the Trust's capital vehicles and community land tools.

Tayside Community Science Initiative

As one of five NatureScot pilots, the initiative asks how community-led monitoring can strengthen resilience and regeneration—grounded in place-based knowledge, shared learning, and collective agency. An opening mapping phase surfaced recurring problems: incompatible methods across groups, weak hooks to regional or national strategies, and cases where communities collect extensive data but rarely see direct benefit. The team is now documenting live examples—from flood monitoring to heritage work on how Strathmore land-use history altered water paths—and asking what adaptive governance would mean for community monitoring that actually feeds decisions.

River Ericht Catchment Restoration

The Ericht is among Europe’s most important Atlantic salmon spawning systems. Restoration finance nationally falls short of need; new policy instruments are appearing, and this project is testing how to operate in that shifting policy and funding terrain. Work includes woodland and peatland restoration, with salmon survival as the narrative anchor: as one participant put it, many doubt salmon can persist—“but we’re going to do our best to see what we can do.” Habitat repair is treated as the decisive lever for keeping salmon in these rivers.

River Detectives

River Detectives extends the community-science approach toward catchment care. From August 2023 to August 2024, residents researched historic management of rivers, bogs, and lochans—asking what past practices might teach present stewardship. The Flax & Flood strand traced mills, weather, and water—how nineteenth-century climate shifts and extreme events shaped operations and supply. That historical ecological knowledge informs today’s questions. Part 2 turns toward systematic monitoring so communities can describe current river conditions and inform management choices.

Strategy Games

From 2023-2025, a strategy game was implemented in the Ericht catchment bioregion. The process began with listening to diverse stakeholders—farmers, anglers, land managers, estate owners, and community leaders—to understand their roles and perceptions. This information formed the basis for a prototype game representing the landscape's resources and dynamics. The games help players visualize interconnections across the landscape, demonstrating how individual actions impact others' livelihoods and environmental conditions.

Stocktake and Gap Analysis

Between autumn 2024 and early 2025, two directors held ten conversations with [[Dark Matter Labs]], working through fifteen dimensions of how the Tay might one day host bioregional financing facilities without being pulled into finance-as-usual.The stocktake and gap analysis summary names what followed: most effort still moves on grants; directors absorb much of the labour unpaid; the orchestrated live portfolio stays narrow while a longer shelf of ideas waits on restricted funds and courage. Relationships with power and place are understood in the room more often than in a single shared atlas; bioregion-wide visioning is deliberately cautious because neighbours want motion, not another talking shop. Pilots such as the Ericht point toward MRV and a possible nature-finance aggregation path, yet no Tay-dedicated financial vehicle exists—only the question of what must harden first so a facility could be trustworthy rather than ornamental.

Family Land Biodiversity Index

A project involving 43 farmers with the goal of ensuring at least 10% of farmland is dedicated to biodiversity while maintaining farm viability. To this end, they developed the Family Land Biodiversity Index (FBI), a tool designed to reward farmers for ecological stewardship. Unlike traditional conservation schemes that rely on static subsidies for setting aside land, the FBI is a results-based incentive system with four components: biodiversity survey, farm-specific biodiversity plans, annual biodiversity scoring, and results-based payments. The project developed a digital tools to accurately measure space for nature on farms and verify the ecological quality of these areas. The outcomes of the project were exciting. Farmers reported 5–10% revenue increases through diversified income sources, such as agroforestry and eco-tourism. The 43-farm discussion group created a strong social fabric, and even neighboring farms started creating their own habitat corridors. This created biodiversity gains including pollinator population recovery, recovery of ground-nesting bird species, and improved soil health. The FBI model is now being considered for wider agricultural policy reforms at the national and EU level.

Sustainable Dairy Index

Building on the FBI system, the team developed the Sustainable Dairy Index, a systematic effort to redefine success metrics in dairy farming by integrating environmental and social returns alongside financial ones. The program introduces frameworks for measuring social contributions, recognizing that when farmers depend on other farmers, they create circular economies and sustainable economies.

Dunhill Ecopark Development Initiative

Dunhill Ecopark is a community-scale hub meant to combine living, working, learning, and enterprise: roughly 38 businesses already operate on-site, with education spaces anchoring how people encounter regenerative agriculture and reflect on environmental, social, and economic impacts together. A planned on-site milk-processing facility would keep more value from regenerative dairy in the territory—linking premium products to fair returns for farmers. The hub mixes earned income, grants, and investment so the site can stay viable while the model is tested at scale.

Regenerative Agriculture Demonstration Network

Demonstration farms knit neighboring holdings into a learning network—sharing practices and materials in place. One early experiment uses waste wool as mulch around aronia berries. The longer-term bet is that these sites become reference points: for farmers trying new crops, for visitors relearning relationships to food and land, and for shifts in what people grow, buy, and expect from the landscape.

Waterford Bioregional Mapping

Mapping work combines science and lived attachment. Participatory workshops ask residents where they feel emotionally tied to the territory; those insights layer onto geological base maps of river basins and land use. In the Anne Valley, community-led water-quality monitoring adds ground-truth to institutional data. Throughout, the process engages Gaeltacht na nDéise (Irish-speaking Waterford) so language and culture stay visible in how the bioregion is drawn and discussed.

Story of Place

To understand the boundaries and character of their bioregion, the BLC undertook a Story of Place process, creating a layered analysis starting from geology, examining landscape and land use, rainfall patterns and soil types, but also human social history and political history. This process sought to understand how human culture has been shaped by the natural characteristics of the region.

Devon Doughnut Project

In 2020, as the world grappled with the global pandemic, the BLC recognized an opportunity to reimagine their bioregion's future through Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics model. The BLC convene an action design collective, which grew in a year from about seven people to 170. For each domain of the doughnut economics framework, they gathered experts working on the ground in different sectors: coastal marine health, livelihood and work, political voice, and others. Participants identified leverage points in each domain, as well as pathways to action– one particular scenario in each domain that has the power to drive a significant shift. The collective also developed a framework using twinned indicators to create pathways for both citizens and policy makers working side by side. The process produced the Devon Doughnut—an interactive website capturing the current state of affairs in the region, proposing indicators and ways to track them, plus suggested actions to regenerate communities and ecosystems.

Dartington Charter & Dance

The UK's first River Charter was established at Dartington in 2019, which recognizes the river's intrinsic rights alongside its role in supporting biodiversity and community wellbeing. The Charter has since been integrated into Dartington's Neighbourhood Plan and local religious pilgrimage routes.

Dancing in Salt Marshes

The program pairs salt-marsh restoration and water conservation with cultural engagement—including work toward river rights charters—so ecology and culture move together rather than as separate “environmental” and “arts” tracks. Because the marshes are too fragile for heavy visitation, the BLC commissioned a film: two dancers from local communities perform in costume on the marsh itself, giving people a visceral connection to a place many will never walk on.

Climate Adaptation Learning Journey

Over five days, participants move through the bioregion—farms, coasts hit by flooding, river communities facing high water, sites where people are repairing roads themselves—linking water quantity and quality to everyday decisions. The aim is twofold: strengthen communities as first responders to local climate risk, and work with elected councillors so adaptation strategies are co-produced rather than imposed from outside.

Bay Delta Community Learning Ecosystem

A strategic network-building initiative that combines monthly community calls highlighting local projects with Bioregional Explorers Club field trips to build direct experience of the watershed. The program brings together diverse stakeholders through regular strategy workshops and community gatherings, focusing on building relationships and shared understanding across the bioregion.

Bay Delta Asset Mapping

The Trust leads an asset-mapping process that asks: What strengths already exist in this system—institutions, people, projects, built and natural assets—and how can they be named, mapped, and made easier for others to find and build on? Community sessions, evolving digital tools, and ongoing data collection together build a shared picture of capacity across the bioregion.

Bay Delta Governance Innovation

Governance innovation proceeds along four connected lines: partnering with aligned institutions; targeted education for agencies (including taking water-district officials on watershed tours); engaging private landowners in restoration; and experimenting with “partner state”–style arrangements that widen who stewards decisions. The work connects to existing funding streams—such as California’s nature-based solutions programs—while building skills and relationships for bioregional-scale coordination.

Resource Transformation and Material Development

A central focus involves identifying and transforming undervalued resources into valuable products and materials. They work with Mérinos d'Arles sheep wool, exploring natural dyeing techniques and new applications that can reactivate industries and reconnect value chains while avoiding plastics. The organization examines how seeds can be made with rice—common in the Camargue—and explores the leftovers of olive pressing, extruding and mixing them with minerals to create chairs. They investigate salt—one of the most abundant materials in the world—exploring crystallization processes that only use wind and sun to produce wall applications in buildings, valuable for energy-efficient construction. Beyond material development, they create software and documentation for these age-old materials, showing how they can be used in different ways and shared with design communities.

Sustainable Building Demonstration

One of their most significant projects is the comprehensive renovation of a 2,000-square-meter industrial building on the Luma Arles site. Completed over three years in collaboration with two architectural teams, the project demonstrates sustainable construction principles. They developed 20 materials from the region within a 70-kilometer radius, using the building site itself as a key source. The building is connected by the materials with the landscape, but it's also an ecosystem in itself—collecting gray, green, and yellow water to irrigate gardens, with water filtered by algae used in their research programs.

Biofabric Places Network

The Biofabric Places Network is a collaborative system of material production hubs. The network enables different bioregions to learn from each other—materials "cooked" in similar ways but adapted to local contexts, from Middle Eastern deserts to European cities. Each time, they work together with industries, universities, and build local networks with cities and various partners to find cooperatives that can continue building and producing these materials locally. They're mainly focused on building materials, examining how waste streams in cities and larger regions can contribute to a healthier building industry.

Cross-Border Indigenous Alliance Building

The alliance is a long-horizon effort to weave together Indigenous nations on both sides of the Ecuador–Peru border—more than 30 peoples and nationalities in a region where colonial borders have often split communities and territories. The point is not a one-off summit but sustained relationship-building: recurring Indigenous-led assemblies where people bring decisions home to their own authorities; ceremonies and protocols that set the tone before policy debate; and working sessions that can host technical and political questions—land, extraction, climate—without displacing local norms with outside timetables. Over time, that rhythm of meeting has helped groups with fraught histories see themselves as a single political and cultural force. Participants describe the shift as a “marriage between peoples,” drawing on traditional approaches to conflict resolution to move from rivalry toward shared strategy.

Reforesting Edible Forests

A regenerative food forest project that increases biodiversity while providing economic benefits to 47 communities. The project supports communities while restoring forest ecosystems, creating productive landscapes that integrate food security with ecological restoration.

Amazon Headwaters Territorial Monitoring

Communities are establishing autonomous monitoring systems that combine traditional knowledge with modern technology—from satellite imagery to smartphone-based documentation—to track both ecological health and territorial incursions. This data feeds into a broader advocacy strategy aimed at influencing national and international policy, particularly around keeping fossil fuels in the ground and securing indigenous land rights.

ASHA International Advocacy

The Alliance engages in significant advocacy with national governments in the region as well as international organizations. A recent example is their campaign supporting the referendum in Ecuador to keep oil in the ground in the important Indigenous (Yasuní) region of the Amazon, which passed successfully. The Alliance is now monitoring to ensure compliance with the referendum results.

Biocultural Jaguar Credits Program

This pilot conservation program aims to create and demonstrate a fully transparent ecological-economic model that safeguards Earth's biosphere while enhancing human wellbeing. Launched in partnership with the Sharamentsa Achuar community, the program integrates indigenous stewardship with modern technology to protect jaguar habitats. Jaguars serve as an "umbrella species"—their protection indirectly protects other species in the habitat—and are classified as endangered. The program targets 10,000 hectares of critical jaguar habitat in intact Ecuadorian jungle through blockchain-verified conservation credits. A robust monitoring and reporting plan, including satellite, cameras and community monitoring, supports validation of credit issuance. The credits are based on the peer-reviewed ERA Biodiversity Stewardship Methodology and issued on the open Regen Network Registry. By the time of its launch in 2024, the program had already secured $75,000+ in pre-sale commitments, representing two-thirds of initial credit availability.

Altiplano Regeneration Manifesto

The common challenges facing the territory—environmental degradation, social loss, and economic uncertainty—inspired entities from across the region to unite and create a common manifesto. The manifesto serves dual purposes: acting within the territory to regenerate and revitalize it for maximum positive impact, and serving as a powerful tool to influence regional, national, and European policies. They have united, represented in the town councils, more than 200,000 people, creating a significant collective voice for bioregional regeneration. This manifesto is designed to inspire people from different organizations to join, while also devising ways to cooperate, create networks, and build synergy between territories to inspire each other.

Natural Ecosystems Restoration

Restoration focuses on natural areas and how they connect to working farmland. On priority sites such as La Muela, partners work to recover vegetation, soils, and water retention. On farms, agreements identify where to restore natural zones alongside production, with measures to hold water and soil and to build biodiversity. Corridor initiatives extend habitat connectivity so natural patches and productive land form a coherent mosaic.

Regenerative Agriculture Transition

One of the initial goals has been to help align stakeholders and shift from the development of almond monocultures and intensive agricultural and livestock farming practices to mainstreaming regenerative practices and developing the regional market for them. More than 100,000 hectares of rain-fed almonds grow in the AlVelAl Territory, creating huge potential for business-driven restoration. Regenerative techniques are known and work, but cultural adoption is a long-term process requiring patient support and demonstration of both ecological and economic benefits. The alliance backs the transition with education and training, farm-level assessments for farms that want to change practices, research and monitoring to document what works, demonstration farms that show regenerative management in real conditions, and early-transition support so farmers can absorb risk in the first years of change.

Ecoregenerative Certification

Ecoregenerative Certification is a voluntary standard for farms that are already organic and want to show they go further: they manage land in ways that improve soil, water, and biodiversity, not only meet organic rules. That gives farmers, cooperatives, and buyers a clearer story in the market—consumers can trust the claim because it is checked against regenerative practice, not just the word on a pack. The standard applies to the main crops of the Altiplano: tree crops such as almond, olive, pistachio, grape, and walnut; field crops such as cereals and legumes; and aromatic herbs. Rules are tuned to each farm and crop rather than applied as a one-size-fits-all list, so the same seal can mean something serious whether the holder is a grower, a cooperative, or a brand further down the chain.

Regenerative Agriculture Machinery Bank

To practice regenerative agriculture, specific machinery is needed, and not all farmers can afford the full range of machines required. Farmers in the area decided to create a community machinery bank, sharing equipment among members. The bank now counts 61 members, demonstrating how resource sharing enables broader adoption of regenerative practices. The cooperative combines equipment access with collaborative learning. They have developed a network for shared farming tips ("truquillos")—those little secrets that farmers share with each other when they have trust and complicity. This approach recognizes that knowledge sharing is as important as resource sharing in building a regenerative agricultural movement.

Regenerative Value Chain Development

The work has developed three regenerative businesses now in operation: an almond-focused company (Almendrehesa), an olive oil cooperative (Habitat), and a food platform (AlVelAl Foods) to sell regenerative products from across the territory. These businesses provide farmers with premium prices for regenerative products while supporting the transition to regenerative practices. 43 locally run businesses have benefited from increased access to new markets and value chain infrastructure, creating economic opportunities that align with ecological restoration goals.

Ecotourism Development

Tourism is developed as a way to connect visitors to landscape regeneration and local culture—not as undifferentiated growth. Programs highlight stewardship, identity, and creative engagement with the Altiplano, so that travel reinforces the same regeneration story the alliance pursues in agriculture and nature.

Education Alliance

They hold that regenerating the landscape requires a shift in how people feel and think about land. The alliance pools energy, talents, knowledge, and experience toward that end, with the vision that regeneration becomes lived practice, not only a technical agenda. They pursue two main lines of work: a shared framework of knowledge and competencies for what regenerative education means in the territory, and a social strand that stresses cohesion and cooperation—because landscapes are shared, not individual. The “Regenerando Mariposa” / “Regenerating Butterfly” concept— involving the collective planting of butterfly shaped landart sculptures made from aromatic herbs–—ties art, creativity, and biodiversity regeneration into learning that can inspire wider society.

Landscape Finance Strategy

The landscape partnership first ran a 4 Returns finance assessment with AlVelAl, allied foundations and enterprises, and Commonland—mapping real interventions and their costs. The results (to early 2025) put total identified need around €177.5 million on a five-year view, with about half of that in grant-like capital. Building on that diagnosis, AlVelAl and Commonland are developing a landscape finance strategy with partners inside the territory and beyond, testing promising mechanisms such as collaboration with the European Investment Bank, cajas rurales (rural savings banks), and other instruments still taking shape—so public, community, and private capital can meet the landscape.

Landscape-Scale Restoration Projects

The Alliance has adopted 11 community-focused projects that cover more than 15% of Scotland's rainforest zone, with more coming soon. These projects include Beò Airceig (an ambitious 30,000-ha collaboration between the community and landowners in the glens surrounding Loch Arkaig), Appin Rainforest Regeneration (created by the local community development trust to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits), and Loch Lomond Rainforest Project(aiming to deliver both habitat restoration and an education programme for locals and visitors). The projects are helping to tackle some of the big issues, such as deer management, invasive non-native species, job creation and even cultural regeneration through folk festivals!

The Common Ground Forum

When the Association of Deer Management Groups first approached the Alliance for Scotland's Rainforest a few years ago, they saw potential for collaboration—something they called "the common ground." But decades of conflict between environmental groups and deer management interests had created a deep-seated lack of trust that made even conversation feel like a distant dream. They brought in the Centre for Good Relations, specialists in civic mediation. Through careful facilitation, people from all sides of upland deer management—environmental charities, government agencies, gamekeepers, private estate managers—began meeting and building relationships of trust. As the mediation process was ending, the people involved insisted they wanted to keep going, to continue the work they'd started together. In Autumn 2023, the Common Ground Forum was born. Today, the Forum has brought together more than 500 people across Scotland's upland deer management sector. They work together through respectful, constructive conversations to make better, more informed decisions about upland deer management. Last November, their work was recognized with the Innovation Award at the Nature of Scotland Awards—the first time such a diverse group of people had received this kind of recognition together. NatureScot has also recruited two new deer management roles in the rainforest.

Our Rainforest Futures

The challenge of restoring Scotland's rainforest is also about building the local capacity to do the work. Our Rainforest Futures, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, creates jobs and skills training opportunities across the west of Scotland, ensuring that local communities have the knowledge and resources to deliver long-term habitat restoration. The project brings people together to share knowledge and learn from each other, building the skills needed for rainforest management—from invasive species control to habitat monitoring—while contributing to rural economies and community wealth.

Nature Finance for Scotland's Rainforest

The Alliance estimates that £500 million in long-term investment is needed to truly restore and expand Scotland's rainforest. To date, the Scottish Government has contributed £3.8 million towards ASR's projects, with an additional £6.3 million provided to Forestry and Land Scotland to develop a Rainforest Team and put more than 2,000 hectares of rainforest habitat on the road to recovery. While £8 million has been secured for current projects, this falls far short of what's needed. That's why ASR members are developing an innovative fundraising model that blends private and public capital. This financing mechanism creates accessible, scalable investment models to harness private capital. The project establishes a comprehensive framework including business cases for ecosystem service investments (initially focusing oncarbon credits), governance structures for scaling investment, ecological and social standards, investor integrity requirements, and community benefit protocols. The model includes: - ASR Integrity Charter: An ethical framework ensuring that financial institutions, businesses, and organizations seeking to invest in or purchase ecosystem services from rainforest restoration projects align with ASR's environmental and ethical values. The charter establishes five key requirements including verifiable net zero commitments, ethical direct activities and investments, responsible lobbying practices, human rights compliance, and fair employment standards. - ASR Project Standards Framework: A comprehensive quality assurance framework establishing verification standards for rainforest restoration projects seeking private investment through ASR's funding mechanism. The standards serve as a qualification benchmark for high-integrity natural capital projects, ensuring they deliver measurable outcomes for climate, nature, and local communities. This creates transparency for investors while maintaining ecological integrity and community benefits.

Tourism Industry Transformation Initiative

Mallorca's economy is dominated by tourism, which comprises approximately 80% of economic activity. This creates a unique context for regeneration work—tourism is both part of the problem and a necessary intervention point. The alliance has started to work on crafting partnerships within the tourism industry in order to start catalyzing change. The work included producing documentary series highlighting regenerative practices around the island called "Isla Viva".

Sacred Pathways Revitalization Project

The project uses ancient infrastructure as a tool for contemporary environmental awareness and cultural reconnection, honoring both pre-Christian and Catholic heritage. Building on the foundation of Jaime Ferrer's "Terra, Alma, Societat" work, they co-initiated a project that brought back to life seven ancient pilgrimage routes to the holy forest of Lluc. Reviving those routes—which reach back toward pre-Christian pilgrimage and sites used by prehistoric communities up to 5,000 years ago—opened a conversation about how people engage with the landscape today.

Foodshed and Energyshed Mapping

On Mallorca, the alliance has used foodshed and energyshed mapping to trace how food and energy move through landscapes and settlements—mapping relational “footprints” rather than only administrative boundaries. The aim is practical: to surface leverage points for regenerative projects rooted in how the island actually feeds and powers itself.

Educational Work with Schools

The work is less a single education program than a series of intentional conversations across communities. Projects with schools brought Balearic teachers into a “soil, soul, and society” dialogue; parallel conversations on local food helped give rise to Slow Food Balear. Multiple intervention points have seeded connections that ripple through the island’s social and ecological systems.

Participatory Forest Restoration

Acción Serrana has developed a sophisticated restoration infrastructure which includes maintenance of protective fencing, seed collection, nursery construction and operation, seedling germination and transplantation, and strategic underplanting during the rainy season. They run more than 26 nurseries producing Polylepis trees across 12 operational areas, creating a supply chain for high-altitude reforestation. The work spans over 70 consecutive campaigns, resulting in more than 876,000 native trees planted across more than 290 hectares of degraded mountain landscapes. Each restoration campaign involves an extensive collaboration network: over 25 organizations including NGOs, government institutes, and businesses working together. The campaigns employ 65 permanent staff and mobilize more than 1,300 annual volunteers.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

A robust monitoring system ensures transparency and scientific rigor across all restoration work. Acción Serrana maintains permanent ecological plots in 12 reforestation areas, with university-led citizen science programs tracking restoration progress. The system includes more than 8 years of technical reporting, monitoring tree growth and survival rates over five-year periods after planting. Current measurements show approximately 70% tree survival rates—a significant achievement in high-altitude environments with challenging growing conditions. The monitoring system tracks multiple indicators: hectares restored, tree survival and growth, employment generation, staff involvement, and landscape-scale ecological changes. This comprehensive approach enables adaptive management, replicability across sites, and accountability to local communities, funders, and the scientific community.

Culture and Employment

Beyond ecological goals, the restoration work focuses on promoting visibility of local gaucho and indigenous communities, creating green employment opportunities for youth in restoration, mountain guiding, and forest ranger positions. This dual approach addresses both ecosystem degradation and the need for sustainable livelihoods that keep young people connected to mountain communities.

Academia Biosférica

The Academia Biosférica program represents an intergenerational training initiative developed in partnership with institutions across Latin America. This academy will integrate ecosystem restoration education, mountain ecology, and regenerative culture practices, combining scientific knowledge with ancestral wisdom and youth leadership training. The program aims to generate ecological, economic, social, and cultural sustainability through the social inclusion of young people in ecological restoration and environmental education.

Governance and Values

Acción Serrana operates through a four-tiered governance model that reflects the bioregion's nested social and ecological systems: 1. At the most local level, community-led watershed councils organize activities across more than five basins, representing different communities and landscapes. 2. These councils feed into an intergenerational advisory board composed of local organizations, ensuring that wisdom from elders and innovation from youth both inform decision-making. 3. This local structure is articulated through the national Foundation of Biospheric Activities, which provides administrative and legal infrastructure. 4. Finally, international sponsors including the Triangle Foundation, Global Forest Generation, and others provide financial and technical support. The governance model embodies Acción Serrana's core values: ecological integrity, cultural resilience, youth inclusion, and reciprocity with nature. As one leader explains, these values are "very basic but really guiding the heterogeneity and diversity of our groups in the different basins."

Capital Allocation and Financial Strategy

Currently, approximately 70% of funding comes through Acción Andina's international network, with 30% from matching grants and public-private partnerships. The organization is actively transitioning toward more diversified blended finance mechanisms to reduce dependence on any single funding source. Grants flow to infrastructure development (nurseries, fencing), direct reforestation activities, youth employment programs, and capacity building. Sub-funds support microgrants for community initiatives, citizen science monitoring programs, and branding support for regenerative products. The allocation model ensures that decision-making power remains with local communities while accessing resources from international allies.

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