Regeneration
= "Regeneration consists of actions and processes that bring both humans and the world sustaining them into greater capacity and vitality, reciprocally." [1]
Definition
“Actions that increase the capacity, viability, and vitality of both the agent and system being acted within or upon. ... Regeneration consists of actions and processes that bring both humans and the world sustaining them into greater capacity and vitality, reciprocally. It is “the opposite of extraction.”
(https://paragraph.com/%40austinwadesmith/undualing?)
See also the book: Ecologocal Institutions.
Comment
Austin's definition is broader than many ecological uses of “regeneration.” It is not limited to restoring ecosystems or repairing damage. It is framed as a systems principle:
- capacity → ability to act or generate future possibilities
- viability → ability to persist and remain functional
- vitality → aliveness, dynamism, flourishing
And crucially, both the actor and the larger system must gain. If one side gains at the expense of the other, the process becomes extractive rather than regenerative."
Description
1. Austin Wade Smith:
"We need to formulate a notion of prosperity which does not rely on a dualism of ecology and economy. What might we call that which stands outside this opposition?
Regeneration, as a philosophy and broader practice of systemic interrelation, offers a conspicuous path out. Long held as a core tenet of land stewardship and commonsing, the notion of regeneration has gained significant interest in the recent past among economic and decentralized finance circles. This movement, as well as the arguments of this piece, braid many lineages together, most notably the basic tenents of ecological economics. Regenerative Finance, or ReFi as many call is an attempt to reformulate our essential notions of value in order to leverage economic and market-based processes to heal a damaged planet.
We need to be talking about whether this is possible at all. If it is, we don’t have many chances to get this right."
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/1wdm8BNkLJWnnzwshtYEmHYlHaXxRF3bLEt4y4-9OE8)
2. Sahana Chattopadhyay:
“Regeneration is not a homogenous, universal concept that can be adopted and applied using a few theories, models, and frameworks across varying contexts and cultures. Regeneration as beliefs and practices is an entanglement of worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies. It is unequivocally pluriversal in nature, and spans countries and cultures interweaving and inter-relating across uniquely different contexts and manifesting in local actions of relevance. The movement — if it can be called one — is a web and weave of disparate and discrete local actions taking place across the globe but embodying certain underlying values and beliefs I note later. … Regeneration is a way of being, relating, acting, and speaking in the world that is life-affirming.”
(https://medium.com/age-of-emergence/the-pluriverse-of-regeneration-1-56bc9cd630fb)
3. Next Gen et al. :
"what exactly does “regeneration” mean? It means understanding that a growing share of 21st-century economic value is already shifting toward complex eco-productive systems and habitats designed to restore, validate, and continuously improve living conditions."
(https://netxstate.substack.com/p/can-we-redesign-the-global-market)
Characteristics
Sahana Chattopadhyay:
“Regeneration decenters Anthropocentrism and steers focus back to a world guided by Biocentrism. It is essentially a multifaceted and pluriversal movement embodied in varied ways across cultures, contexts, and countries. It rests on a few fundamental pillars:
Interbeing — profound sense of our indelible interconnectedness
Compassion — deep tenderness for self and all life
Harmony — yearning for balance and thriving of all life
Acceptance — radical acceptance of all that is, and working from there
Solidarity — coming together in mutual support in reimagining a life-affirming civilization
Fearless Imagination — daring to envision a world different from the current one
Active Hope — becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for, desire to happen (Joanna Macy).”
(https://medium.com/age-of-emergence/the-pluriverse-of-regeneration-1-56bc9cd630fb)
Regeneration and Rewilding as aspects of Regeneration
Samuel Delesque:
"The answer being formulated by movements around the world, and which we embrace at OASA, is the practice of regeneration. Regeneration means more than sustainable use; it means actively healing and restoring ecosystems so that they can once again sustain abundance. If the first step was recognizing that humans are part of nature, not separate, the second step is learning to participate in ecosystems as a beneficial species – essentially, to become a keystone species in the positive sense. In healthy ecosystems, keystone species are those that create conditions for many others to thrive (like beavers building wetlands). Humans can play this role too, through practices of care and cultivation that increase biodiversity and ecosystem function. Indeed, many indigenous cultures never stopped doing this. As one indigenous scholar explains, humans' role is "not to develop, to construct, or to divert [nature] in the name of progress… Rather, our role is to build a relationship with our ecosystems, learn what they need to flourish and actively tend them."[19] This ethos of Respect, Reciprocity, and Relationship with the land stands in stark contrast to the extractive mindset – and it is increasingly being validated by western science as key to resilience.
Rewilding is a crucial pillar of regeneration. Rewilding means giving land back to natural processes, allowing forests to regrow, rivers to meander, predators and prey to rebalance. It does not mean excluding people; rather it invites us to steward wildland as wildland, with minimal intervention aside from removing the barriers to nature's own self-healing. In practical terms, rewilding often starts with simply setting aside a significant portion of land where logging, mining, and intensive agriculture cease, and native species (whether through active reintroduction or natural return) can reclaim their niche. OASA's approach enshrines this: our Regenerative Principles require that at least 50% of any project's land be kept as wild or rewilded, where native flora and fauna are allowed to restore ecosystem integrity[20]. This is a floor, not a ceiling; some projects may aim for even more land in core conservation. The impact of rewilding can be dramatic. Even small reserves can become seed sources for biodiversity to spread outward. In larger landscapes, rewilding has been linked to improved water retention, erosion control, and carbon sequestration as forests and wetlands rebound. Famous examples include the return of wolves to Yellowstone which triggered trophic cascades restoring vegetation and rivers, or the rewilding of marginal farmlands in Europe that saw the comeback of pollinators, birds, and soil life. Our generation has the opportunity – perhaps the last one – to undo some of the damage by giving Mother Earth room to breathe and regenerate.
Hand-in-hand with rewilding is habitat restoration of working lands through regenerative agriculture and agroforestry. Not all land will be set aside as wilderness; we will continue to grow food and harvest materials, but we must transform how it's done. Agroforestry – integrating trees into farming – is a prime example of blending production with ecology. Instead of the endless monoculture fields that typify industrial farming, agroforestry designs polyculture systems reminiscent of natural forests: mixed trees, crops, and sometimes animals in symbiotic arrangement. These systems can restore soil fertility, increase wildlife habitat, and even enhance yields of diverse products (fruits, nuts, timber, medicinal plants) while sequestering carbon. A well-known success story is the use of agroforestry in Niger, where farmers allowed native acacia trees to regrow in crop fields, leading to improved soil moisture and higher crop stability across drought years. In the tropics, "analog forestry" and jungle rubber gardens maintain canopy cover and biodiversity alongside harvestable crops. Emulating such approaches, OASA mandates that all projects "employ regenerative agriculture and permaculture; plant diverse crops (at least 5 species per 10m² and 20 per hectare) and integrate tree crops or food forests."[21] In our pilot site, Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal, this means rows of syntropic agroforestry where olive and fruit trees grow interplanted with nitrogen-fixing shrubs, vegetables, and cover crops – a living tapestry that feeds both humans and wildlife. Over the past two years, our team and volunteers have planted thousands of trees on a former degraded plot[22], literally transforming a one-time chicken factory farm into a budding forest ecosystem. We've watched as birds and insects returned, soil organic matter crept up, and a sense of sacred greenness took hold where there was previously dust.
Equally critical is water landscape restoration – regenerating the hydrological cycle that we disrupted. Techniques often fall under what permaculturist Sepp Holzer calls "Water Retention Landscapes"[23][24]. The principle is straightforward: instead of draining water off the land as fast as possible (as conventional infrastructure does), we slow it, spread it, and sink it into the earth. Practically, this involves earthworks like swales on contour (shallow ditches that capture runoff), small check dams in gullies, and restoration of wetlands or ponds. It can also mean re-contouring eroded slopes, planting deep-rooted vegetation, and mulching bare soil – all to enable the ground to hold rain like a sponge. In healthy ecosystems, rainwater is absorbed and released slowly through springs and stream baseflow, keeping rivers perennial and vegetation green through dry seasons[25][26]. We aim to recreate these conditions. Our projects are required to "capture and store rainfall through swales, ponds, terraces, and other earthworks; design landscapes to slow, spread, and sink water."[27] Already at TDF, a series of small ponds and soil bunds have been dug so that winter rains replenish the groundwater instead of causing floods. The result is visible in newly sprouting willows and reeds around the pond edges – signs that water is staying where it falls, giving life rather than rushing away. These measures also mitigate climate extremes: by holding more moisture, the land becomes cooler and moister (reducing heatwaves and fire risk) and provides reserves for times of drought.
Finally, regeneration must include reviving native species and removing invasive ones that hamper ecosystem function. Rewilding is not just letting nature be; sometimes it needs a helping hand to recover from past abuses. This can mean reintroducing keystone species (like beavers to a watershed to restore wetland dynamics) or simply planting indigenous trees and wildflowers in areas where the seed bank is depleted. OASA's biodiversity principle emphasizes planting native species and actively supporting native flora/fauna while controlling invasives[20][28]. For instance, in Portugal we remove invasive eucalyptus saplings (a legacy of monoculture plantations) to give space for oak and cork trees to regenerate. In parallel, we see ourselves as citizen scientists of regeneration, documenting how the return of each plant or animal contributes to the greater tapestry. A small example: as native cork oaks recover, we notice more mushrooms (which need the symbiosis with oak roots), and those fungi in turn improve soil structure and nutrient cycling for other plants. Every element is connected.
In summary, the regenerative approach flips the script on land use. Where the old model sought maximum immediate extraction, the new model seeks maximal ecological function. By rewilding large areas, implementing agroforestry and regenerative farming on working lands, redesigning water management, and fostering biodiversity, we set in motion healing processes that compound over time. We also rekindle a cultural relationship to land as something sacred and communal. People often ask: How will we feed the world this way? The truth is, we cannot feed the world in the long run with the current system – it is undermining its own resource base. Regenerative systems, by contrast, create the fertility and stability on which future food security depends. They may produce slightly less commodity grain per hectare in the short run, but they produce far more total nutrition per hectare when polyculture outputs are counted, and they do so without eroding the soil or drying the rivers. Over a 300-year horizon – which is the timescale we must consider – regenerative land stewardship is the only viable path. We are not romantic naifs; we are pragmatic ecologists guided by both ancestral wisdom and cutting-edge environmental science."
(https://oasa.earth/papers/from-commons-to-commodities-and-back-regenerative-commons-manifesto/)
Discussion
John Fullerton:
"There is only one realistic pathway forward consistent with how living systems work, within the limits that thermodynamics permits, with what four billion years of evolution has learned. That pathway is regeneration.
Regeneration is not a strategy. It is not a framework. It is not a school of economic thought competing with others on the academic shelf. It is the process by which life itself works. Nothing more, but critically nothing less.
Every living system sustains and builds itself through the regenerative process: taking the outputs of one cycle as the inputs of the next, complexifying over time, creating conditions increasingly favorable to more life as biologist Janine Benyus teaches. This is not a design principle we invented. It is the operating logic of the living world, running without interruption for four billion years. Perhaps the entire life of the universe too!
Here is what the machine economy has been leaving on the table: the productive, regenerative potential of living soils “care-fully” restored; of genuinely healthy human communities with strong social fabric, trust, and meaningful work of dignity; a vibrant commons, natural and technological, larger than the private sector—imagine that, pause to truly get your head around that, the missing sector essential for the 21st century context. And healthy business ecosystems balancing efficiency and resiliency, engaged in organic and diversified trade webs rooted on right relationships of mutualism not extraction, nurtured for the health of the whole.
And perhaps most difficult of all, imagine finance profoundly restrained and redirected—capital asking not “what do I own, what can I extract?” but “what can I bring to life?” The sun delivers more energy to Earth’s surface in one hour than human civilization uses in a year. We are not facing a future of managed scarcity. We are facing a future of almost incomprehensible regenerative abundance, if we are willing to organize ourselves to receive it. Living systems are self-organizing, self-fueling, and self-governing. We have work to do.
A regenerative economy restores the conditions for genuine human flourishing: meaningful work because it contributes to something real; coherent communities rooted in place and relationship; reimagined wealth—prosperity that is genuine because it does not require the denigration of human dignity or the destruction of the living world."
(https://johnfullerton101.substack.com/p/what-if-our-doors-of-perception-were)
What are we talking about when we talk about regeneration?
Austin Wade Smith:
"Let’s start with how the Regen Economics Whitepaper defines it:
“Actions that increase the capacity, viability, and vitality of both the agent and system being acted within or upon.“
Framed in relation to humans and the planet, regeneration are those actions and processes which bring both human and the world which sustains us into greater capacity and vitality, in a reciprocal fashion.
Regeneration posits that individual / communal well being emerges through environmental stewardship. It is the opposite of extraction. Inasmuch as legacies of land management are reflected in our lexicon, it is telling that American english has a limited vocabulary for such a behavior. “Co-capacitate”, isn’t a word but incapacitate is. The analogous terms at hand stem largely from important work in feminist and decolonial thinking. Here are three.
Donna Haraway’s definition of sympoeisis.
Sympoeisis - a simple word; it means “making-with.” Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing … Sympoiesis is a word proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company. Sympoiesis enfolds autopoiesis and generatively unfurls and extends it.
It closely resonates with the belief of reciprocity outlined by Robin Wall Kimmerer when describing the diverse practices of gratitude and kinship of the first nations of Turtle Island (North America).
“Reciprocity — returning the gift — is not just good manners; it is how the biophysical world works. Balance in ecological systems arises from negative feedback loops, from cycles of giving and taking. Reciprocity among parts of the living Earth produces equilibrium, in which life as we know it can flourish.”
As well as notions of care work, as typified in Matters of Care, Maria Puig Bellacasa’s evolution of Bruno Latour’s “Matters of Concern”.
“Matters of Care - contests the view that care is something only humans do, and argues for extending to non-humans the consideration of agencies and communities that make the living web of care by considering how care circulates in the natural world.”
These definitions emerge through narrative and practice. The above authors situate their stories closely to different patterns of co-dependence and symbiosis between human beings, and “Nature”, (what I refer to as the “living world”). Spanning pollinators, soil microbes, and Douglas Firs, regeneration is co-authored between humans and the numerous lifeworlds we are embedded within.
This interrelation makes sense at a base level. We intuitively understand that to live on earth is always a double action. The separation of social and planetary prosperity is counterintuitive to our lived experience. Common sense tells us that deterioration in the health of “land”, is simultaneously a depreciation in its value, but we often struggle to acknowledge the inverse…that the remediation of damaged earth is a profound source of value. Where our current paradigm of neo-colonial extraction exacerbates the rift between Society and Nature, regeneration closes it. In fact it nullifies the distinction in the first place."
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/1wdm8BNkLJWnnzwshtYEmHYlHaXxRF3bLEt4y4-9OE8)
Characteristics
Undualing
Austin Wade Smith:
"Regeneration is a practice of undualing. Undualing isn’t really a word, I made it up to emphasize that the separation between ourselves and the world which sustains us has never existed. The dualism of Society and Nature is in turn, also the separation of economy from ecology. This is the creation myth upon which Modernism is built. [6] We’ve embedded it into the policies, infrastructures, and algorithms which run much of contemporary life. The separation of ecology and economy is synonymous with extraction inasmuch as the world beyond the human is considered a resource to be managed. Our default conflation of economic wealth with ecological extraction fundamentally drives the climate crisis ; and is a manifestation of the incredible narrowness of our definitions of wellbeing. Rather than a world co-created by a multitude of players, locations, and timelines, the dualism at the heart of modernity is a retreat from a diverse set of “worlding” practices to one universal world, centralized across time and space.
In contrast, undualing is the invitation to thicken the cast of characters which create value and sustain planetary livelihood. It is the practice of reanimating lifeworlds against forces of singularization. It resists the collapsing of many to the few. How might we nurture this pluralism in the infrastructures, organizations, and technologies we build? Through what scales and systems does regeneration offer a way out?
A start might be to develop and organize systems of value at a meso-scale, one which tethers the individual to planetary and upstream to downstream. A scale whose boundaries are already defined by the living world: the bioregion. Regeneration is a bioregional endeavor and in order to undual ecology and economy, our definitions of prosperity must be re-scoped."
(https://mirror.xyz/austinwadesmith.eth/1wdm8BNkLJWnnzwshtYEmHYlHaXxRF3bLEt4y4-9OE8)