# Key Messages Key Messages 10  Key Messages  Key Messages Policymakers, institutional and individual wealth holders, and the general public are increasingly recognizing the severity of the current ecological collapse and the risk of further collapse cascading across our interdependent economic, political, and social systems. Large pools of capital have been committed to ‘nature’ to respond to this crisis. However both traditional and novel institutional financing mechanisms and methodologies risk perpetuating the same extractive processes and power structures driving the crisis. Many important regenerative projects and initiatives are led by people with deep relationships to place who are best positioned to both utilize this capital and support the design of contextually-sensitive financing practices more likely to produce regenerative outcomes. However, these projects and initiatives, many of which are small scale and informal, are often structurally excluded from capital sources or considered illegible to capital holders. Communities around the globe are building networks of bioregional collaboration and solidarity, creating Bioregional Learning Centers and Bioregional Hubs that grow capacity for place-based learning and coordination towards regenerative economies. template to empower these networks by connecting pools of capital to regenerative projects and initiatives, and structuring these capital flows in alignment with living systems principles and Indigenous wisdom. ➡️️ -> the decentralization of financial resource governance ➡️️ -> the design of project portfolios for systemic change ➡️️ -> and the transition to a regenerative economy.  They become the connective tissue between: ➡️️ -> centralized financial resources 🍄 -> and the mycelial network of regeneration. BFFs can enable financial capital to support the strengthening of relationships between community members, between stewards and the lands and waters they tend, and amongst all of the more-than-human life and living processes in those lands and waters. The warning signs from the Earth we are experiencing can be seen as an invitation to remember our interconnectedness with all life on the planet and begin embedding relationality, reciprocity, responsibility, respect, reverence, redistribution, reconnection, and critically, regeneration, in all that we design and build at this juncture – including our financial systems. A note on language: In this book, we have chosen to use the terms “investment” and “investing” to describe all processes of providing financial resources. This builds on an understanding that all forms of financial capital provision (equity, debt, donations, grant-making, etc.) ideally yield returns, as in the traditional notion of investment yielding financial returns to the investor. However, in our broader usage of the term, we recognize that some investment (such as traditional impact investment) can be designed to yield financial returns for the investor in addition to multi-capital returns for a broader community, and that other investment (such as grants) can be designed to yield non-financial returns (such as social connection and inspiration) for the investor and a diversity of multi-capital returns for a broader community. Many diverse multi-capital frameworks and definitions – including Indigenous concepts – have been proposed in recent years to offer language for breaking from the perception that money is the only form of capital flowing around and through us. The authors celebrate this diversity of frameworks as an insight into the diverse nature of value itself and do not recommend the global use of a single homogenous multi-capital framework. However, this book focuses on the 4 Returns Framework1 (financial, social, ecological, inspiration) due to its accessibility and demonstrable success. At times this book draws upon language from the seminal Eight Forms of Capital2 (intellectual, spiritual, social, material, financial, living, cultural, and experiential). 1 Commonland: 4 Returns Framework & 4 Returns Platform 2 Ethan Roland and Gregory Landua: Regenerative Enterprise: Optimizing for Multi-Capital Abundance (Chapter 3: The Eight Forms of Capital)  Executive Summary  Executive Summary -> 1. Introduction We are living in the midst of widespread and recognized destruction of the living world. The ecological crisis, the crisis faced by Indigenous nations, multiple geopolitical crises, the economic crisis, the refugee and migrant crisis, the energy crisis, the inequity crisis, and social crises are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing. In face of this “polycrisis,” a key realization is now spreading: the global economy cannot survive the ecological and social destabilization on the horizon. This recognition among economic and financial policymakers, the financial sector, and real sector corporations marks a shift away from the false, myopic, and devastating view that the economy is separate from the biosphere. Developing modes of being aligned with Indigenous values in rallying communities to respond in service to life will be key in adapting humanity’s response to the polycrisis. As awareness and understanding grow, and regulatory pressure increases, actors from across the financial sector are beginning to direct financial capital towards supporting biocultural regeneration. While on the surface this might seem Biocultural regeneration – promising, there is significant risk that if these resources flow through the existing A holistic and interconnected financial architecture, they could lead to further commodification, privatization, approach to revitalizing and restoring ecosystems, financialization, and centralization of natural assets and wealth. The structural biodiversity, and cultural characteristics of the economy that are driving the crisis have remained largely practices in a given spatial unaddressed. Therefore, closing the “nature finance gap” alone is not sufficient. context. It recognizes the Where those resources are spent, how financing is structured, and who gets interdependence of nature to make those decisions is as important as the quantum of capital. In particular, and culture, emphasizing the how those resources support the transformation of systems, relationships, and importance of Indigenous and traditional knowledge worldviews will determine whether they are successful in addressing the ecological and practices in stewarding crisis and polycrisis that we collectively face. ecosystems. Broadly speaking, regeneration is the process of a system regaining its needed energies, resources, and sustain. Contrasted with “sustainability”, which is In an attempt to slow and reverse the ecological crisis, and in the absence of oriented towards preserving sufficient or expedient action by global actors, nation state governments or the and minimizing negative private sector, communities around the world have started to organize living impacts, regeneration is economies, ecological management, and governance systems at the oriented towards restoring and revitalizing systems that have bioregional scale. been degraded. Bioregions are defined by ecological, geographical, and/or cultural boundaries as opposed to human-made, jurisdictional ones. Despite the immense promise and potential of bioregional-scale organizing, strategic planning, and implementation, these initiatives are chronically underfunded around the world. A participatory, transparent, place-based approach is needed to identify those people and projects that must urgently be provided financial resources to enable their important work. Regenerators – The There is a lack of connective tissue (trunk and branches in Figure I.) between individuals, communities, organizations, and networks those that hold and manage the large (and increasingly concentrated) pool of actively engaging in biocultural financial resources (leaves of the tree) and the coalitions of actors on the ground regeneration efforts. The (regenerators) carrying out these critical regenerative activities (roots and specifier “on-the-ground” mycelial network3). refers to those working in consistent, embodied, and ecosystems and landscapes. Concessionary Capital Market-rate FINANCIAL Invest#ent Capital Investment RESOURCES Public & Philanthropic Grants Supply Chain Finance Individual Public Sector Donations Direct Investments Invest#ents Revenue Bioregional INTERMEDIARIES Financing FinanÀingÁFaÀili¿¾ Facility Bioregional Bioregional Financing FinanÀingÁFaÀili¿¾ Facility Financing FinanÀingÁFaÀili¿¾ Facility Land Owners Permaculture Per#aculture & Volunteer Regeneration ReŠeneration Education ‡ducation Programs ProŠra#s Farmers Far#ers REpENERATORS Note: The categories of financial Land Stewards Regenerative ReŠenerativ• IndiŠenou´ Indigenous resources and regenerators Communities Co##unities Nations & Tribes included here are illustrative, but not comprehensive. Art by Cory Brown. In this critical moment, the authors propose a new layer in the global financial financial resource governance, the design of project portfolios for systemic change, and the transition to a regenerative economy. They have the potential to become the connective tissue between financial resources and on-the-ground regenerators. They can do this by enabling strategic, integrated capital raised from a variety of sources to flow to aggregated portfolios of systemically coordinated and supported regenerative projects on the ground. In return, regeneration benefits can flow back to investors in a community-determined, non-extractive way. We believe this infrastructure is needed to put finance in service to life and Indigenous wisdom. 3 The complex network of fungal hyphae that extends through soil or other substrates, facilitating nutrient transfer and communication between and across species within soil ecosystems.