🗺️ Mapping & Indicators
You cannot tend what you refuse to see. Yet “seeing” is never innocent—every map and every metric is a bet about what matters enough to measure, and who will use the picture to argue for what. This cluster lives in that tension: making complexity legible without flattening it, and turning visibility into shared orientation rather than a weapon for surveillance. The work is as much about narrative as about numbers. When communities can hold several kinds of description of the same place without forcing them to agree too soon, they gain room to negotiate a future that no single dashboard could capture alone.
Ontology
Activities
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Project Development
A project pipeline spells out phases from idea to delivery and what evidence each stage requires. The first proposal funded by Guayabillas DAO was school water infrastructure: raised by a stakeholder DAO, approved by WhatsApp poll, paid from the $5,000 community treasury, and recorded on DAODAO and Notion—an end-to-end test of proposal, vote, spend, and documentation.
Landscape Planning and Pattern Language
During onboarding, participants used cadastral sheets and community-scale maps of forest, slope, erosion risk, and connectivity to relate regeneration choices to parcel-scale management. Joint planning flagged priority zones—unstable slopes, riparian corridors, connectivity gaps—and paired them with a pattern vocabulary: swales and vetiver for erosion, agroforestry on degraded pasture, buffers near intakes. The aim was landscape literacy: seeing each plot as part of a larger system and preparing evidence for later DAO proposals.
Storying Guayabillas
In May 2024, a three-day onboarding in Guayabillas blended participatory codesign with technical and narrative grounding. Using the Story of Place™ sequence, facilitators led storytelling, mapping, and dialogue: tracing flows such as water, wildlife, and forest corridors; reviewing land-use history and migration; naming values and priorities; and agreeing what “regeneration” should mean locally. That shared story became the reference for the DAO’s purpose, funding rules, and project priorities.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Watershed Restoration Planning
The team mapped “blue” and “green” zones along the river. Blue zones slow runoff from the mountains so water seeps into soil instead of stripping topsoil into the channel. Green zones target restoring the forests that once helped condense rain at lower altitude before air rose onto the plateau—part of reclaiming the gentler winter rains lost to flood-prone weather under current land use.