We find ourselves in a moment in the history of life on Earth that feels incredibly fragile to so many of us. In it, immense suffering and enormous potential are deeply bound together. We feel the weight of collapse in ecosystems, economic systems, socio-cultural systems, and political systems. We feel hope stemming from our interactions with the magic still so alive on this blue-green planet. Many of us feel how a growing proportion of humanity is waking up out of the mechanistic, reductionist worldview – rooted in a misinterpretation of Newtonian physics that drove industrialization – and coming into a more unitive, planetary consciousness. Humanity is coming back into relationship with the Earth as a living, breathing being – made up of webs of complex relationships, of which we are an integral part.  

“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small

islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity

to shift the entire system to a higher order.”

– Ilya Prigogine

Culture Hack Labs is part of a growing group of organizations working to catalyze a worldview shift in humanity – one that can help bring us into a protopia where humans, our technologies, and the more-than-human beings on planet Earth come to live in sacred reciprocity. Shifting our ways of seeing and being is foundational to halting the Sixth Mass Extinction and ushering in the next stage of evolution on Earth. We at the BioFi Project feel that, at this moment, there is a need to identify and create place-based islands of coherence where these worldview shifts come into practice. We believe that through bioregional-scale organizing, planning, governance, and institution-building, we can begin to flow resources into positive feedback loops of biocultural regeneration, begetting worldview shifts that further this regeneration. We believe that through embodying and enacting systems redesign, creation, implementation, and evolution, we can catalyze a toroidal flow of systems change and worldview change that serves life.

Given the powerful influence of late-stage capitalism in shaping worldviews and the obstacles it places in moving beyond mechanistic and reductionist perspectives, our work centers on transforming economic and financial systems.Our theory of change is that through engaging in the inquiry and emergent practice of creating bioregional, regenerative economies, we can catalyze the conditions for well-being and well-seeing that enable people to begin to embody a more unitive worldview. Without having their basic needs met, without having access to land to steward, without healthy food to eat and clean water to drink, without having time to be rather than do, it is very difficult for people to feel connected to life – much less adopt a more holistic worldview. Through access to these foundations of well-being and engaging in the disciplined, embodied practice of creating and experiencing bioregional regenerative economies, we believe we can begin to stretch our identities and perceptions, and shift our worldviews. Through this inquiry and practice, we increase our capacity, that of our communities, and that of our ecosystems to deepen in regenerative work over time. This drives further worldview shifts, which drives further economic shifts, and so it goes.

“The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological

– social – psychological – economic system. We treat it as

if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and

infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise

directly from this mismatch.”

– Donella Meadows

We believe that through participating in Bioregional Finance, or ‘BioFi,’ people can learn to steward financial capital and other forms of capital together with their neighbors and allocate these capitals to activities that realize long-term strategies for regeneration of entire bioregions. They can envision and create economies that support the liberation of all beings within their overlapping and porous borders. They can begin to orient towards economies that regenerate life on the planet rather than suck up the Earth and turn it into money. In this way, BioFi is an aikido move that leverages the attractor of money to bring people into bioregional networks of solidarity and supports them to embody new worldviews through a range of activities that catalyze and are catalyzed by economic systems transformation. We believe that a bioregional approach is most appropriate for identifying and cultivating these place-based islands of coherence. At the bioregional scale, organizing, governance, and resource allocation can align with living systems patterns and principles.

We believe that a bioregional approach is most appropriate for identifying and cultivating these place-based islands of coherence. At the bioregional scale, organizing, governance, and resource allocation can align with living systems patterns and principles.

Using the building blocks of landscapes, minor watersheds, Indigenous territories, ecoregions, and major watersheds, bioregions can enable effective approaches to fractally organizing and governing. The practice and process of bioregioning enables nested and connected interactions between local and global ecologies and cultures. The collective intelligence of place can then be harnessed to inform and support networks of bioregions – allowing common patterns of trustworthy governance structures to emerge and spread. 

To test this theory of change, the BioFi Project is identifying Bioregional Organizing Teams around the world that are building on decades of grassroots regenerative work, creating coherence across interdependent regenerative efforts, cultivating a shared bioregional identity among diverse leaders in their place, and engaging in the inquiry and practice of creating bioregional, regenerative economies. We are supporting them to build institutions, create strategies, cultivate decision making processes, develop storytelling, and raise financial resources to catalyze this transformation. You can learn about the work of some of these amazing Bioregional Organizing Teams here. 

“A society which practices living-in-place keeps a

balance with its region of support through links between

human lives, other living things, and the processes of the

planet—seasons, weather, water cycles—as revealed

by the place itself. It is the opposite of a society which

makes a living through short-term destructive exploitation

of land and life.”

–Peter Berg And Raymond F. Dasmann

For us, the transition to bioregional, regenerative economies involves a shift from dependence on a globally-embedded, extractive, brittle economy to more place-based, sovereign, circular, resilient economies that support the regeneration of cultures and ecologies. Regenerative economies strengthen the relational fabric in a place by acknowledging the existence of diverse forms of value and the relationships that inform that value. They support the mapping of assets based on relational value and enable holistic investment in the regeneration of those assets. These economies move away from the market fundamentalism that is currently so pervasive that reduces everything – including living beings and forms of care – to abstract objects whose entire value it aims to capture in dollars. Regenerative economies will look different in every bioregion, marking a move away from the current monoculture economy that touches almost every region of the planet, to more biodiverse economies that are driven by community needs and values, and their ecological contexts.  A regenerative, bioregional economy becomes increasingly self-reliant over time – staying within its ecological boundaries without compromising the ability of other bioregions and future generations to meet their needs.

Regenerative economies strengthen the relational fabric in a place by acknowledging the existence of diverse forms of value and the relationships that inform that value. They support the mapping of assets based on relational value and enable holistic investment in the regeneration of those assets.

My co-author Leon Seefeld and I laid out a vision for realizing these regenerative, bioregional economies, through BioFi, and the objectives and attributes for Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs) in our book, Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet, which was published on the 2024 June Solstice. The key components of these BFFs are laid out below – all of which have the capacity to catalyze the shift to a more unitive worldview in the people that interact with BFFs. Critically, BFFs aim to align their investments with living systems principles and Indigenous wisdom and to shift power imbalances – elements we believe are critical for capital to truly be in service to life.

BFFs can take in capital from an extractive and destructive economic system and compost it to grow new, regenerative, bioregional economies that eventually do not require external capital at all, but can autonomously engage in economic reciprocity and solidarity with neighbors both near or far. In this way, Bioregional Financing Facilities can channel life-giving nutrients and energy to, and between, the islands of coherence emerging amidst increasing disequilibrium. 

And so, we are actively working to build BFFs with a network of bioregions, while we build a broader BioFi movement and the BioFi Community of Practice. We are also building a network of capital holders that acknowledge the anti-life ideology so central in modern worldviews and systems and are committed to flowing resources back to the places from which wealth has been extracted. Together, we are embarking upon a translocal, collective unlearning and learning journey. We believe that this connectivity and mutual learning between this geographically and culturally dispersed range of actors is critical for emerging bioregional islands of coherence to survive and thrive.

Together, we are embarking upon a translocal, collective unlearning and learning journey. We believe that this connectivity and mutual learning between this geographically and culturally dispersed range of actors is critical for emerging bioregional islands of coherence to survive and thrive.

In the face of unfolding catastrophe and breakdown, we believe it is a critical time to cultivate deep trust, engage in shared sensemaking, and organize effective coordination systems to respond in creative solidarity to biodiversity loss, climate disasters, systemic shocks, and the need to care for the hundreds of millions of refugees who will be forced to move across bioregions and find new, supportive homes. The transcultural coherence we need cannot be developed from a placeless mind applying an abstract mechanistic model of the world. It can only arise from the open, adaptive, and cooperative exchange between the human and more-than-human life communities that are grounded in the essential ecological integrity of place and rooted in a unitive worldview – one that acknowledges the sacredness of every living being.

The BioFi vision is woven from many long, diverse threads, including: 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.

If you are inspired by BioFi as an approach to catalyzing economic systems transformation and worldview shifts, we invite you to join the growing movement. We invite you to join or catalyze a Bioregional Organizing Team where you are; to join the BioFi Community of Practice which aims to cultivate and support a community of practitioners who are designing, capitalizing, implementing, and evolving Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs) through peer-to-peer learning and coordination; to crowdfund for a regenerative project in your bioregion and steward the resources raised with your community; to map the various forms of capital in your life and to move away from a focus on financial capital and exchange; to collectively engage in discussions around theories of value; or to simply support local farmers with your food choices. We invite you to take steps to move into a more relational, gift economy rooted in care – recognizing each of our needs and capacities. 

“There’s a time for certain ideas to arrive,

and they find a way to express themselves through us.”

– Rick Rubin

Money is one of the strongest attractors in the world today. It 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 BioFi can wield and reshape economic and financial systems to empower regeneration. Through this process worldview change and systems change continue to catalyze each other. The collective behind the BioFi Project has profound gratitude for the willingness of so many brilliant people from around the world to engage with us to explore the possibilities for the BioFi movement to propel a new way of seeing and being that serves the flourishing of all life on Earth.

Money is one of the strongest attractors in the world today. It confers power and choice. It holds the potential to be both a great destroyer, and a great organizer.

—

Samantha Power is a Regenerative Economist, Bioregionalist, Futurist and Co-Founder & Director of the BioFi Project

Editorial contributions from Tyler Wakefield, Regenerative Culture Facilitator, Founding Member of the BioFi Project

Some of this text was originally published in the book, Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet by Samantha Power and Leon Seefeld.