Regeneration

Regeneration is the process of restoring living systems — ecological, social, and cultural — to health and wholeness, moving beyond the goal of sustainability (doing less harm) toward the active renewal of the conditions for life to flourish. Where sustainability asks “How do we maintain what we have?”, regeneration asks “How do we restore what has been degraded and create the conditions for ongoing vitality?”

The concept draws from ecology, where regeneration is a fundamental property of living systems: forests regenerate after fire, watersheds heal after pollution ceases, communities rebuild after disruption — provided the underlying conditions for life are intact. Regenerative design applies this understanding to human systems, asking how agriculture, economics, governance, and culture can be organized to actively build soil, restore watersheds, strengthen community bonds, and renew cultural vitality rather than depleting these foundations.

Regeneration is the organizing principle that connects regenerative-economics (economic systems that restore rather than extract), regenerative-finance (capital directed toward restoration), and bioregionalism (governance organized around living ecological units). It is grounded in living-systems theory and the ontology of interbeing — the recognition that human well-being is inseparable from ecological well-being. Regeneration provides the positive vision that complements the critical analysis of the meta-crisis: it names not just what we are moving away from (extraction, degradation, separation) but what we are moving toward — a civilization in service to the flourishing of all life.

Further Reading

• A Regenerative Accelerationist Manifesto
• Bioregional Coordination: Sacred Work in a Time Between Worlds
• Compost Capital or Die
• The Emergence of the Well-Being Economy
• Civilization Redesign
• When Earth Wakes Up to Itself