Category:Regenerative Approaches

Topical Quotes

"Generative ownership designs are about generating and preserving real wealth, living wealth, rather than phantom wealth than can evaporate in the next quarter. They’re about helping families to enjoy secure homes. Creating jobs. Preserving a forest. Generating nourishment out of waste. Generating broad wellbeing."
— Marjorie Kelly, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution

"To move from a zero-sum culture (win-lose) to a non-zero-sum culture (win-win) necessitates widespread collaboration in assuring that nature also wins (win-win-win) and wins first, as she is the provider of the abundance upon which we depend. Only if we collaborate in creating a healthier, diverse, vibrant and bio-productive planet, will we be able to create regenerative cultures where nobody is left behind and everyone wins."
— Daniel Christian Wahl, Designing Regenerative Cultures

Topical P2P Writers

• Daniel Christian Wahl
• Kate Raworth
• Marjorie Kelly

Key Concepts of This Category

The concepts 'regenerative' and 'generative' are often applied in writings about desirable futures for the economy, for culture and for society.

Generative is often contrasted with Extractive following the writings of Marjorie Kelly (q.v.) The term "generative" seems to be used mainly to indicate that a practice generates new resources, or more generally grows things. It is not specified what kinds of things are generated, so it can be applied to an economic practice, that may or may not be applied to natural systems.

"Regenerative", for example as used in "regenerative agriculture" has more of a flavour of restoring a system to a state where it operates in a naturally generative way. Regenerative agriculture would, for instance, be concerned with restoring and improving the health of the soil, and subtle, complex systems like fungal mycelium in woodlands; with restoring or increasing beneficial biodiversity.

It could be said that regenerative approaches include but are not limited to the related concept of rewilding, popularised by George Monbiot. Wikipedia defines rewilding as "large-scale conservation aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and core wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species." Thus it minimises the importance of humans other than to undo the damage they have done.

Regenerative Economics can at first sight look dubious, with quotes like the one from our Regenerative Economics and Wikipedia: Regenerative economic theory: "Regenerative economics is an economic system that works to regenerate capital assets." However the next sentence goes on to explain that "A capital asset is an asset that provides goods and/or services that are required for, or contribute to, our well being." and thus the scope extends beyond conventional economics. This fits with the statement of Daniel Christian Wahl and Virginie Glaenzer: “A regenerative economy goes beyond sustainability and requires local collaboration and solidarity among individuals as co-creative participants.”

Useful Learning Resources

Introductory

• Introduction to regenerative initiatives and movements by Daniel Christian Wahl

• Regenerative Resource Compilation, Ecosystem Graph | 7Vortex http://ow.ly/ws7E30lJEHq
• Earth Repair Radio: series of podcast interviews on regenerative approaches to earth and ecology, by Andrew Millison [1] Sample podcasts in the series:
  1. Gregory Landua on Regenerating the Planet with Cryptocurrency‎
  2. John D. Liu on the Ecosystem Restoration Camps‎
• Investing in Regenerative Agriculture: includes over eighty interviews at June 2020 [2] Sample podcasts in the series:
  1. Thomas Rippel on Using a Blockchain to Help Farmland Stewardship Organisations Grow
  2. Shameek Chakravarty on Connecting Indian Urban Consumers Directly to Organic Farmers through Farmizen‎

Deeper Study

• Designing Regenerative Cultures. By Daniel Christian Wahl. Triarchy Press, 2016 [3]

Visualisations

Author: Daniel Christian Wahl; Source: Medium

More Information

• Wikipedia: Rewilding (conservation biology)

Related Categories

• Category: Economics (and its subcategories, listed there)