A Planetary Network

To launch the Earth Regeneration Fund, six real-world bioregional contexts have come together to learn from and with each other as they prototype large-scale regenerative finance through building Bioregional Funding Ecosystems. The key to this process is looking at the whole system at once, including bioregional learning, weaving together otherwise isolated efforts, and ensuring that money reaches those doing the vital work on the ground.

The Design School for Regenerating Earth has already brought over $1 million into various bioregions. It's seeding the Earth Regeneration Fund with $125,000 (in part from Design School membership fees), which will be distributed to the network of bioregions during the year-long effort. This accompanies funding already received by Fundación Barichara Regenerativa and for the Northern Andes Regeneration Fund.

The six bioregional contexts are shown and described below.

Barichara Regeneration Fund

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Barichara is located in the Northern Andes of Colombia where the mountain range divides into three major ridge lines.​ The climate is strongly influenced by the movements of air into the continent from the Pacific Ocean. The area is in the rain shadow of the western range of mountains known as the Serranía de Los Yariguíes.

We're working to regenerate 500,000 hectares of land through large-scale reforestation and watershed restoration. This is organized with the territorial foundation Barichara Regenerativa and involves many local initiatives that contribute to the regeneration of our territory.

Work on the fund began in the Spring 2021 with the formation of an advisory council to manage donations. We gathered representatives from 15 local projects to create a framework for strategically investing $15,000 US into the community in participatory and transparent ways. As we work together at landscape scales, we become more skilled at cooperation in service to the entire bioregion.

​You can contribute to the Barichara Funding Ecosystem, which is organized around different broad themes: regenerative education; restoration of natural ecosystems; regenerative economy; cultural healing processes.

Cascadia Regeneration Fund

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The Cascadia bioregion is located along the upper Pacific Rim of North America stretching down the continental divide from Southeast Alaska to Northern California, traveling down the Rocky Mountains and as far east as the Yellowstone Caldera, and in the west, extending off the coast along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It's comprised of 435 watersheds around the Salish Sea and Columbia River Basin, and includes the Cascade Range of mountains. It's also home to a patchwork quilt of Indigenous tribal lands.

Through the organizing efforts of Regenerate Cascadia, the Bioregional Funding Ecosystem will enable mapping local stakeholders who care about cultural and ecological regeneration and increase financial flows to support their initiatives. This is a portfolio approach organized around the creation of watershed hubs and thematic "guilds" for addressing strategic concerns for all who live within the bioregion.

We're currently seeking investors who align with this vision of regeneration across nested scales – from the local organizing work within specific watersheds all the way up to the Cascadia bioregion as a whole.

Forests of the NE Funding Ecosystem

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The Forests of the Northeast is a continuous area of similar forest types across the region commonly known as New England, with extension into present-day Nova Scotia. A common identity exists here that spans from pre-contact with Europeans through the establishment of nations, provinces, and states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York). Many Indigenous peoples have ancestral lands across this large area.

​Some of the larger watersheds include the Hudson Valley, Mohawk River, Delaware River, Housatonic River, Susquehanna River, and Connecticut River Valley.

​The people of this bioregion have a long history of local economies and kinship relationships with their watersheds. The Forests of the Northeast Funding Ecosystem seeks to build coherence across its large territory in service to a regenerative future.

GTB Bioregional Funding Ecosystem

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The GTB (Greater Tkaronto Bioregion) is located along the northwest shore of Lake Ontario and also touches Lake Erie and Lake Huron. It extends beyond the Niagara Escarpment on the west and follows the Oak Ridges Moraine toward the east. The Oak Ridges Moraine is a unique formation of sand and gravel deposits that captures rainwater, filters it, and slowly releases it into the landscape like a giant sponge. There are 16 major rivers and 66 river valley systems in the area.

The GTB is 3 million hectares in the Great Lakes Basin, which has 21% of the Earth's surface fresh water. About 185 First Nations, Métis, and Native American Tribes have traditional lands around the Great Lakes Basin.

There are 10 million people in the GTB, a quarter of Canada's population, which includes Canada's largest city Toronto. Toronto has the world's largest greenbelt, over 800,000 hectares of protected land. Unique to Ontario, Conservation Authorities are local watershed management agencies; there are 13 Conservation Authorities in the GTB, organized by watersheds.

The Legacy Project is leading work in the GTB, using bioregional and intergenerational dynamics for ecopsychosocial wellbeing. This includes establishing a Bioregional Learning Center and bringing together a portfolio of projects for social and ecological regeneration.

We're currently seeking funders, investors, and partnerships for a Bioregional Funding Ecosystem that serves the bioregion as a whole. The portfolio of projects includes supporting the educational work of the Bioregional Learning Center; social regeneration through schools and healthcare; restoration of forests, grasslands, and wetlands; supporting soil health and regenerative agriculture; increasing food security; and developing a GeoAI (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence) project that can be used to map and monitor regeneration work across the entire bioregion.

Northern Andes Regeneration Fund

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The Northern Andes is a profoundly diverse region, both culturally and ecologically. It has been colonized and has experienced ongoing extraction since first contact with European explorers five hundred years ago.

​The Northern Andes Regeneration Fund is a collaboration among territorial foundations in Colombia – where local community philanthropists have organized networks of engaged stakeholders who care about the regeneration of their territories.

​Each territory in the network engages in mapping of social actors and the creation of a holistic approach to the regeneration of watersheds, native ecosystems, and local cultures.

With the help of leadership at TerritoriA – a support organization in Bogota for the Territorial Foundations Movement in Colombia – there is active and growing coordination and learning exchanges across the territories of Colombia. The fund is a collaborative framework for mobilizing resources into local landscapes both within and between the territories of the Northern Andes.

Ogallala Regeneration Fund

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The Ogallala Aquifer (a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel) is one of the most important groundwater systems on Earth. It's located beneath the Great Plains of North America and provides irrigation for industrial agriculture across the US states of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming.

This is a strategic reserve of planetary significance – currently growing food for a billion human beings. It's in significant decline, with water removal rates that will deplete the aquifer completely in the next 50 years.

The Ogallala Regeneration Fund helps organize collaborative efforts among those who seek to restore health and vitality to the high plains. It does this through a combination of ecological restoration and cultural transitions as they relate to land-use practices. The fund brings a story of transformation to what has previously been framed as an intractable problem.

Only by working with living systems at all relevant scales – including that of the aquifer as a whole – will it be possible to restore perennial grasslands, recharge groundwater supplies, regrow soils, and regenerate human lifeways that combine the best of Indigenous traditional knowledge with contemporary scientific knowledge.

We're currently seeking investors who align with this mission to help us mobilize $100 million for the acquisition of strategic land and initiation of large-scale regenerative practices for the Ogallala Aquifer as a whole system.

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