💠 Collective Ownership Models
Activities
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.
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.
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.
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.
Land Stewardship Tokenization
The valley’s original Khoisan inhabitants are described as sustaining one of the world’s longest-lived values-based societies, contrasted with class-based society elsewhere: ownership anchors class relations, while stewardship anchors a values-based orientation. Much of the land sits in a trust: more than a century ago the original farm purchaser placed part of the property in trust. The project explores tokenizing a portion of that land—linking tokens to stewardship rather than private ownership of the parcel. Buying a token ties investment to whether on-the-ground work improves agreed progress indicators (soil, water, air, social outcomes); token value rises or falls with that performance. Tokens can be traded, but the underlying land remains in the trust and cannot be sold as conventional property—stewardship is protected before tokenization is even attempted. Discussions advanced, then stalled: a listing fee of $226,000 was not justifiable against other uses of the same funds (restoration, planting). If tokenization and legal framing succeed on this tract, however, roughly 20,000 hectares could follow—unlocking leverage beyond what a single $226,000 restoration budget would typically yield.