omniharmonicRegenerative Economics
Regenerative economics is an economic paradigm designed not merely to sustain but to actively restore and renew the social and ecological systems upon which all wealth ultimately depends. Moving beyond the sustainability framework — which aims to do less harm — regenerative economics asks how economic activity can actively improve soil health, watershed integrity, community resilience, and cultural vitality.
The intellectual foundations draw from living-systems theory, recognizing that healthy economies, like healthy ecosystems, are characterized by diversity, reciprocity, nutrient cycling, and adaptive capacity. Just as a forest builds soil while producing timber, a regenerative economy builds social and natural capital while meeting human needs. This contrasts sharply with extractive economics, which treats both nature and community as inputs to be consumed in the production of financial returns.
In practice, regenerative economics manifests through community-land-trusts that steward land in perpetuity, worker-cooperatives that circulate wealth within communities, regenerative-finance instruments that fund ecological restoration, and bioregional economies organized around watershed boundaries. It connects to the well-being-economy through shared metrics of flourishing rather than growth, and to doughnut-economics through the recognition that economic activity must operate within planetary boundaries while meeting human needs. The concept of compost-capital — transforming extractive capital into regenerative community wealth — represents the transitional strategy for moving from the current system toward a regenerative one.