"Eco" comes from the Greek word oikos, meaning home. Ecology is the study of home, while economics is the management of home – and home at the global scale is planet Earth.
Ecology must inform economics.
At the most basic level, economics should be concerned with two things:
Our current global economic system doesn't speak effectively to either. In fact, it's driving us to destroy the very planet we need to survive. What do we value?
One of the great challenges for Earth regeneration is how financial resources flow into, across, and between bioregions around the planet. The Earth Regeneration Trust was launched at the Bioregional Regenerative Finance Forum that took place in the GTB in September, 2024. The Bioregional Funding Ecosystem emerging in the GTB was featured, including some of the local projects (click to the YouTube description for a detailed index by speaker).
BIOREGIONAL FUNDING
7-Generation GTB is growing a metaphorical Tree of Life through social and ecological regeneration for ecopsychosocial wellbeing. As part of the Earth Regeneration Trust, we are creating a Bioregional Funding Ecosystem.
A Bioregional Funding Ecosystem is based on relationships with an aligned vision, a whole-system bioregional view, learning across the system, and a strategic, integrated Portfolio of Projects supported by a collaborative governance structure. It enables multicapital flows.
The middle of the sketch highlights the Bioregional Platform on which work in the GTB is based. We are developing
parallel structures/processes to existing systems:
- Bioregional Learning – (re)learning how to live in our place on the planet, our bioregion, in balance with life and with a local regenerative economy. In the GTB, a Bioregional Learning Center catalyzes and informs bioregional activities, and creates coherence.
- A tapestry of local efforts, existing and new, to enable practice/experimentation and, over time, new practices. This becomes a Portfolio of social and ecological regenerative projects, which are strategically interconnected, based in trust and relationships, and are aligned in purpose. It also enables us to build in evaluation and monitoring at a large scale so that funders can see the results of their contributions.
- Collaborative Funding/Governance so that we can live into value(s). We can work toward a regenerative economy, building resilience FOR transformation.
MEETING THE POLYCRISIS
The Legacy Project is launching a Catalytic Cohort to create the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem – guiding funders, with practitioners, through a bespoke journey of action-learning.
If everything is connected to everything else, and we're in a polycrisis, then we need a whole-system approach that moves from point-solution funding to funding system health.
Through the Catalytic Cohort, we're helping create the next evolution in philanthropy.
Read our announcement and description of the Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem.