Bioregional Weaving Labs

= "a growing assembly of 25+ international system-changing organisations, funders and impact investors, initiated by Ashoka, co-led by Commonland and OpEPA, and grounded in a community of practice".

URL = https://www.ashoka.org/en-nl/program/bioregional-weaving-labs-collective

Description

"The ‘Bioregional Weaving Lab’ concept is a geographically grounded and carefully curated multi-stakeholder partnership process that weaves together people, place and projects, equipping and supporting them to organise for transformative change. We invite cohorts of 40-60 key local stakeholders (farmers, fishermen, landowners, investors, corporate leaders, shareholders, policymakers, educators, community members, etc.) to reimagine a future for their bioregions in which they live in harmony with their environment. We call them 'influential changemakers'.

They align on a shared vision, formulate a joint mission, and map the needs of their bioregions. Through a carefully designed process, based on Theory-U, they gain a clear understanding of the root causes that drive biodiversity loss and the interconnected poly-crises (climate change, pollution, socio-economic inequality) in the landscape. The get to deeply understand the liabilities (like drought, flood risk, fires), learn about the potential of systemic innovations and NBS to reverse climate change and biodiversity loss, and discover the gaps in systems.

They align on a holistic landscape plan that can generate 4 returns in the bioregion: natural. social, financial returns and return of inspiration. They form teams to prototype innovations and connect with funders and investors who are interested in funding/investing on a bioregion scale. By participating in a BWL, these influential changemakers grow their collective leadership capacity. With their local communities they are better equipped to drive their own systems change towards a regenerative bioregion.

We share practical tools and frameworks - like a System Change Analyses, a 4 Returns Landscape Plan and the 4 Returns framework - that help Lab cohorts to think and act in a more integrated and systematic way. We introduce systemic innovations from our international (Ashoka Fellow) network, which we jointly validate to be relevant to inspire and support the bioregions in their landscape development.

We invite funders, impact investors and corporations to join our ecosystem and become partners. It is urgently needed to transform the financing system to become supportive of a regenerative economy. We aim to shift from short term, individual, project based approaches aimed at profit maximisation towards long term, trust based, holistic, collective and blended financing approaches at landscape level, aimed at creating real systems change to preserve biodiversity."

(https://www.ashoka.org/en-nl/program/bioregional-weaving-labs-collective)