⚖️ Legal Stewardship
Law is one of the few ways societies remember their intentions across long spans of time. Used well, it can turn care into something durable—boundaries that protect more than property lines, agreements that outlive a single campaign, and recognition that rivers or forests might hold standing of their own. Used poorly, it can lock the past in place. This pattern is about aligning formal instruments with the shape of land and water as they actually are—so that stewardship is not only a moral claim but something communities can defend, adapt, and pass on.
Ontology
Activities
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.