# Foreword Foreword 8  Foreword  Foreword This book makes an argument for the decentralization of financial resource governance, and the organization of project portfolios for systemic change, to enable financial capital to reach the people and initiatives best positioned to contribute to global regeneration. It makes the case for the urgent development and piloting of a new structure to support this decentralization – the Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF) – which every bioregion on Earth could create to support its transition to a regenerative economy. We believe that BFFs can help align financial flows with living systems principles and Indigenous wisdom, to serve the thriving of all life on Earth – a purpose shared by all of us who contributed to this book. We recognize that the current financial system was designed to serve colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Over centuries, these forces have produced a massive concentration of financial resources tied to the extractive activities destroying the possibility for life on Earth to continue to thrive. As awareness of the polycrisis grows, a wave of capital is forming that is attempting to avert further ecological, social, and economic collapse. And yet, there is a significant risk that if this capital flows through a financial architecture rooted in the same life-denying and inequitable power structures and logic based on abstraction, it will simply perpetuate, and perhaps even accelerate, the existing extractive processes. An effective and proportionate response to the ecological crisis requires urgent, large-scale regeneration of the biosphere rooted in ecological integrity, cultural revitalization, the centering of Indigenous wisdom, and the recognition of the interdependence of everything on Earth. This will only be possible through local actions taken by the many small groups all over the world that are living in “right relationship” with place – in both rural and urban settings. These groups are active stewards and many have Indigenous and traditional practices for land management that can be interwoven with Western scientific insights and technology to support critically impactful biocultural regeneration and repair. Indeed, we believe that the recognition and empowerment of the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples must be foundational in our response to the ecological crisis. We must learn from these original stewards about the roles of relationality, reciprocity, responsibility, respect, reverence, redistribution, reconnection, and critically, regeneration, in all that we design and build – including evolutions of the global financial system. There is currently a lack of connective tissue between those that hold and manage the large pools of financial resources seeking regenerative impact, and the coalitions of actors on the ground carrying out critical regeneration activities. systemic investment lens to facilitate the flow of resources and regeneration benefits between these two currently disconnected groups of actors to support regeneration free of externalities, exploitation, and oppression. BFFs can serve as semi-permeable membranes between institutions rooted in the status quo economic paradigm and the emerging bioregional economies applying fundamentally different economic logic and value systems. The authors and team of advisors believe that BFFs are a critical piece of the financial architecture needed to respond to the ecological crisis, in particular, and the polycrisis more broadly. In these pages, we aim to raise awareness among investors and policymakers of the urgency and importance of decentralizing financial resource governance to achieve global climate and nature goals, and to mitigate further ecological, economic, and social collapse. We also hope to catalyze Bioregional Organizing Teams and Indigenous communities around the world to design and implement these facilities, and develop project portfolios for systemic change, so that they may raise and deploy financial capital that supports their transition to regenerative economies. We aim to motivate a network of philanthropists, public grant providers, and investors to capitalize these facilities through a strategic, integrated capital approach. Additionally, we hope to inspire innovators, futurists, designers, and artists from across disciplines and worldviews to develop new financial and governance tools, business models, and ownership structures that can support the realization of the value of biocultural regeneration at multiple scales. threads: five hundred years of anticolonial resistance and decolonial creativity; movements for economic, ecological, and social justice and liberation; and the inspired efforts of peoples around the world organizing autonomously for the regeneration of the biosphere and their local-global communities. It is informed by persistent innovation in the fields of economics, finance, ecology, evolutionary biology, and systems theory. BFFs were born out of and can support the web of interdependent efforts of the broader regenerative movement. Money is one of the strongest attractors in the world today. You are likely reading this book, at least in part, for this reason. Money confers power and choice. It holds the potential to be both a great destroyer, and a great organizer. As a result, finance – how money is designed and flows – is a key leverage point for systems change and largely determines how our systems impact our ecological basis of survival. We believe deeply that BFFs can wield and reshape finance to empower regeneration. And, perhaps more importantly, for all those who will be attracted to engage with BFFs – either as a lever for systems change or a source of funding – we believe this new class of financial institution can catalyze more life-affirming worldviews and deeper place-based relationships with all life in a bioregion. Finance is just a vehicle. Planetary regeneration is our journey. We value your willingness as you explore this book to engage with us on the possibilities for these new institutions in serving the flourishing of all life on Earth. Authors: Samantha Power (The BioFi Project and Finance for Gaia) and Leon Seefeld (Dark Matter Labs / Dark Matter Capital Systems) Advisors: Stuart Cowan, Ph.D. (Buckminster Fuller Institute), Edward West (Applied Alchemy / The BioFi Project), Indy Johar (Dark Matter Labs / Dark Matter Capital Systems), Raj Kalia (Dark Matter Labs / Dark Matter Capital Systems), Jan Hania (Biome Trust), Matthew Monahan (Biome Trust / Ma Earth), Karl Burkart (One Earth), and Justin Adams (Ostara)