🗂️ Portfolio Development
Activities
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Portfolio of Legacy Projects
The Portfolio of Projects gathers fragmented, decontextualized activity in the bioregion into Legacy Projects—shared units of practice that can spread. That structure helps new local approaches become common practice; makes regenerative work visible to itself and to the public; supports integrated landscape planning and multisolving; coordinates cooperation for social and ecological regeneration at bioregional scale; and spreads learning and synergies across projects.