Why we should stop trying to make the economy “sustainable” and focus on making it “regenerative”!
Imagine you were in a relationship in which your partner had been treating you terribly for decades, emotionally and physically abusing you, taking you for granted and having a great life for themselves, only possible because of your support and suffering. And if after some deep soul searching, your partner realized their errors and said “Don’t worry darling, I know now, I will stop doing you any harm, sustainably! I promise it will be abuse-zero.” How would you feel? Would this create a healthy, balanced and long-term relationship? Or would it feel like you were just hanging on in there, in a “neutral” relationship fully determined by your partner?
Now, imagine that your partner and you instead decided to together heal (i.e. regenerate) the relationship, to create a trustful, balanced and mutually supportive future together and to commit to not only protect each-other but help each of you thrive (assuming you were a VERY compassionate and understanding partner, making such healing possible after such behavior)? How would that feel?
Now, assume you were planet earth, and your “idiot” partner was humanity… Well, now you should be able to better understand the difference between creating a “sustainable” or a “regenerative” economy. In this article, we will explore what a regenerative economy is, what it might look like, and what is needed to work towards such a future.
What is a regenerative economy?
One way of looking at a regenerative economy is that it is “the application of nature’s laws and patterns of systemic health, self-organisation, self-renewal and regenerative vitality to socioeconomic systems” (RESPOND, 2022). It is the idea that human systems (the economy, culture, society, politics, etc.) can return to being in balance with natural systems, and not only in a precarious “sustainable” balance, but in a mutually generative balance, in the way different natural eco-systems support, complement and create redundancies for each other, ensuring long-term resilience.
So, what might such a regenerative economy look like?
I find extremely important that any future vision of a regenerative economy needs to be one “in which everyone doesn’t have to be the same kind of person… where there is an interdependence of lots of kinds of people with lots of belief systems and continued evolution” as adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategies, 2017) so beautifully words it. Too often in the social impact world, visions of the future are made for a certain typology of person — usually something along the lines of oat-milk latté drinking, bike-traveling, feminist, vegan, multi-lingual, high-social capital, pro-LGBTQ+, NFT trading, left leaning, anti-racist, meditating, avocado-addicted (for anyone feeling triggered by this description, it’s not far off a description of myself!) — and in those visions, everyone is happy with that specific way of being, and believes it is the best way for everyone.
But the reality of how transformations have always happened, is that there are always those who have no place in the future “vision”, there are always those who lose out from “progress” (and who then usually create the resistance to change). Whilst we know that the transformation needed now is so vast, deep and so urgent that there will inevitably be resistance and losses (as there already are many losses with the status quo, e.g. the millions displaced by drought and desertification; those losing jobs to cheaper, unethical labor abroad; etc.), this should not slow us down.
I believe we can be more creative and more inclusive in our imagination of the future: How can we co create with and integrate those who drive cars, those who feel uncomfortable with the pace and rate of change, those who feel unseen by many of the movements in the limelight and media attention, those who see the talk of “de-growth” and “cutting down” as only relevant for those who had a lot, and those who feel they have more pressing issues than which milk to drink ?
There are some beautiful depictions of what this vision might look like practically, such as the awesome animations by Jan Kamensky.
And some have developed great models of what principles such a future could be based on, like here the Capital Institute:
And importantly, the “regenerative” phase of the economy would only be temporary, until we have “regenerated” all the harm done over the past decades and make it into a “generative” phase of mutually reinforcing equilibrium. As this graph by Charles Duprez (created for degrowth, but showing the same dynamic; inspired by O’Neill (2012), Rao and Min (2017) and Raworth (2017)) shows:
This temporary / transitional state of a regenerative economy means it is very difficult to describe the complex interplay of socio-politico-economic and ecological systems which will be needed to regenerate the harm done by the past decades. This will be different in each person (yes, we on a personal level have lots of regeneration to do!), relationship, family, community, organisation, city, region, country and at the global level. Imagine the abusive relationship described at the top of the article, there can be no blueprint to healing such a relationship. It has to be a process dependent on the very specific conditions, events and stakeholders involved in that relationship. The same is true with regenerating the various interconnected eco-systems and crisis we are facing.
Indeed, as the Post-Carbon Institute’s remarkable recent report “Welcome to the Great Unravelling” describes, we need to consider the ecological crises (not only climate change, but also biodiversity; soil, water and air pollution; resource depletion, etc.) as deeply interconnected with the social crises (from inequality to discrimination; poverty to authoritarianism; or impact of technological change (AI, robotization, etc.)). As the report suggests, these crises need to be dealt with as one polycrisis, with many facets mutually affecting each-other:
“Societies have confronted challenges before, but these tended to be localized. Today, civilization is global. Humanity has become a “Superorganism” due to instantaneous globe-spanning communication and rapid long-distance transportation enabling large-scale movement of raw materials and finished goods. A typical smartphone may be designed on one continent, draw raw materials from three others, get assembled on a fifth, and be shipped to a sixth for ultimate sale. The impacts of human activities are also globalized as never before, with greenhouse gas emissions from one country affecting the climate for people on the other side of the planet — often, people who themselves generate minimal emissions.”
Indeed, there is much evidence that the gravity of the polycrisis and the state of deterioration or destabilization of many of our global systems are so far beyond regeneration, that we need more to focus on how to navigate the “great unravelling” and regenerate what can still be saved, rather than on imagining we can really turn back the damage done on all fronts. Again, coming back to the abusive relationship example, we might be at the stage of no return, but instead navigating the tricky, prickly and rocky dismantling of that relationship and creating a wholly new status quo in a way which is not managed or planned, but rather an adaptive, emergent process.
So, what needs to be done to move towards regeneration?
One way of thinking about it is that we need businesses (and the policies and regulations which provide the framework for businesses) to shift towards “actively contributing to the health of the planet while simultaneously growing key business metrics like sales, engagement and more” as Handprint’s report “Race to Regeneration” states.
Others would debate that it is possible or even desirable to maintain growth as one of the objectives of business, rather seeing regeneration as needing a lot of “de-growth” before it can be regenerative. Erin Remblance puts it wonderfully in her presentation on degrowth: “A planned and democratic reduction in material and energy throughput in over-consuming nations while improving wellbeing and global justice”.
This view of de-growth importantly aims to “plan” the reduction in throughput (production + consumption) rather than let that reduction happen through “collapse”. It also focuses on the “over-consuming” nations, populations and companies — meaning that we don’t put the burden of fixing the mess made by the minority of the global population onto the majority of the world’s population who until now have mainly felt the suffering caused by the global patterns of production and consumption.
What is clear is that it will require building our individual and societal resilience, to maintain personal balance and societal cohesion as we go through the next decades of transformation. This is one of the major focuses of Purpose+Motion’s (P+M) work these days, including our work with leaders, teams and organisations to build their inner competencies, quite powerfully summarized in the Inner Development Goals:
In order to build our individual resilience and capacity to regenerate, we at P+M focus, amongst other things, on supporting Gamechangers to learn how to listen to their own body, reestablish a healthy connection with their emotions, and rediscover a transcendental relationship with everything that is alive. A regenerative economy can only be the product of individuals committed to live in regenerative ways. Mindfulness, embodiment, and altered states of consciousness of the body are key practices that train our resilience and our abilities to understand how to solve polycrises.
We also feel it is crucial for this transformation to occur in a regenerative way, that there be what Sahana Chattopadhyay excellently calls “transition facilitators and designers” who “are spatially and temporally aware in their vision and methods. They draw on knowledge and wisdom from the past and welcome the intelligence of diverse cosmologies and ontologies. They don’t make the error of ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutioning nor do they impose preconceived conclusions. Their approach is essentially dialogic, emergent, and imaginative. They conceive solutions in the present, respect learnings from the past, and owe their allegiance and responsibility to future generations.“
Indeed, Sahana Chattopadhyay describes a powerful model for how organisations can go through a transformation towards regenerativity, ideally accompanied by such a Transition Facilitator:
This process, which builds on “ecocycle planning” and “Theory U”, supports groups to identify and let go of that which no longer serves them; enter the “unknown” and imagine new futures; prototype and consolidate those new practices and structures; and bring those to maturity.
It is those “transition facilitators” (or “space holders” as we also like to call them) for which we have created a regular 3-day retreat (3 times a year in January, June, October) where we co-create and take the time and space to deepen and widen our capacities, experiences and understanding of the polycrisis and the poly-opportunities which emerge from this for transformation and a more regenerative world to emerge. We call it the Emerging Pathways Retreats, and they are hosted in the incredible Stolzenhagen space renovated by Christa Cocciole and friends — from a former industrial farm to being an eco-community space for transformation and regeneration! We strongly believe that such a space and time for exchange amongst wider groups of stakeholders are crucial. Some other examples that we are aware of and can recommend are the Organisational Development Day by Socius, or the Kaleido and Your 2040 communities and gatherings.
This is another key ingredient for moving towards a regenerative economy: physical spaces to be able to experiment and experience what a regenerative economy can be like. This could be places like Stolzenhagen, but also like C*Space Co-Working in Berlin (see “the sharing is caring part of our August 2023 Newsletter) which is determinedly becoming a hub for regenerative transformation from Kiez (local district in Berlin) to Cosmos! From events exploring what regenerative economies look like, to the community members who exchange and collaborate on their regenerative projects, to the space itself which provides a warm and homely feel for those working there. (Full disclosure, we are members of the co-working community, and we LOVE it here! Yet, I am sure (and hope for you dear reader) that there are similar spaces in your local neighborhood, and if not, maybe worth initiating? ;)
If you’re interested in exploring how you can contribute to creating a regenerative economy, or how we could support you in this — or if you want to exchange about some of these ideas do get in touch: purposeandmotion.com
