Peter from KAFRED with a Jackfruit, in their Agroforestry demonstration site.
With the world facing so many critical problems that are all inter-related, such as climate change, cyclical droughts with attendant starvation, water scarcity, health insecurity and poverty, the time has come for all of us to learn from and to collaborate with those who have been been stewards of the land for thousands of years in a way that respects the Earth and all the intertwined systems that make life work.
To regenerate means to restore something to a better state. Regeneration is how we can restore the soil, the water, the flora, the fauna, the livelihoods, the health of the Earth and most of all, the way human beings relate to nature, to power, to civilization and to progress by designing an equal and balanced nature-inspired system.
By valuing and bringing forth ancient and indigenous knowledge and selectively applying advances of our technological age, regenerative approaches seek to reverse the degradation of the planet's natural systems and design human-driven systems that co-evolve with natural systems to generate mutual benefits, improve life for all on this planet and create resilience for the future.
Efforts towards soil regeneration, carbon sequestration and imposing a carbon tax are beneficial for improving our relationship with the environment, but regeneration is so much more than that.
Regenerative development,which draws inspiration from the self-healing and self-organizing capacities of natural living systems, aims for an integrated, whole-systems approach to the design and construction of human settlements and practices and development, is increasingly seen as a successful model for achieving this end.
A video by our partners Re-Alliance, introducing Regenerative Design.
Principles of Regeneration
Regenerative projects improve the health of every system they touch.
Projects and initiatives that take a regenerative approach use holistic thinking to create resilient, flourishing and equitable systems that respond to the needs of society while respecting the integrity of nature.
By design, regenerative projects create virtuous cycles of co-benefits in their ecosystems— social, economic, ecological. Regenerative practices lead to returns on multiple forms of capital, long-term resiliency, climate mitigation, and adaptation, resulting in secure livelihoods.
Patterns and Systems
Regenerative design principles have been put into practice by indigenous cultures and land-based communities for centuries.
Mirroring natural patterns, designing for whole-systems and ‘seventh generation’ thinking, these concepts have long been the cornerstone of many nature-grounded peoples’ symbiotic relationship with their environment.
The term Regenerative Design and Regenerative Development originated more recently, evolving alongside movements such as Permaculture and Agroecology, and are a preferable way to refer to the movement instead of the mainstream term Regenerative Agriculture, that often excludes the major role played by indigenous farmers, including those who were taken from their farms and enslaved, separated from their regenerative practices. These are the specialists who play a major role in developing, applying and sharing knowledge of regenerative design.
Regenerative development marks an evolution in the concept and practice of sustainable development.
Whole-systems thinking
YAKUM help to preserve and promote indigenous food sovereignty, land rights and forest restoration in Ecuador.
A key element of regenerative design is thinking in whole-systems.
In every community, each individual element relies on the others for health and support.
Imagine a forest floor: tree roots, fungal networks, worms, millions of soil bacteria and other microorganisms -- they all connect to create thriving soil and plant health, sharing nutrients and ‘information’ with one another.
Enabling healthy systems and ecosystems— social, cultural, ecological, economic.
Regenerative design practitioners work to create and encourage healthy systems which create perpetual cycles of co-benefits, constantly strengthening the health of the overall system as well as each individual element. The co-benefits, inter-related and cascading, have an exponential potential to produce real change in the livelihoods and quality of life of those living in the region: empowering women and children, increasing income, ending malnutrition, increasing access to water, creating alternative livelihoods, improving health conditions and many others.
“Instead of doing less damage to the environment, it is necessary to learn how one can participate with the environment by using the health of ecological systems as a basis for design. The shift from a fragmented to a whole systems model is the significant cultural leap that consumer society needs to make – through framing and understanding living system inter-relationships in an integrated way.”
What’s the difference between Sustainability and Regeneration?
Sustainability can loosely be defined as doing less or no harm to the environment. In a world of mass consumerism and waste, sustainability initiatives are very important.
Differing from sustainability, regeneration instead asks, how can we recognize ourselves as fully part of this natural system, and design ways to engage and participate that mutually benefits all?
Another way of representing the differences between sustainability and regeneration is through a scale or a continuum, like that visualised below inspired by Bill Reed’s 2007 paper, “Shifting from Sustainability to Regeneration”.