With permission from r3.0 (Redesign for Resilience & Regeneration), a nonprofit that reimagines how the global economy can truly support people and the planet, we’re publishing selected chapters from its Seeds Series Volume 2 as part of an ongoing series.
This new volume explores a vital question: how can societies intentionally dismantle collapsing systems and replace them with regenerative ones that can endure and help life flourish?
Read more from the series here: Executive Summary | Chapter 1.0
There is a unique joy encapsulated in the interview process, where interviewer and interviewee develop a degree of intimacy within the microculture of the conversation, specific to this particular encounter, enlivened by the jokes that emerged from certain word-play, or a commonality discovered between lived experience. As with a good book or meal or movie, you almost don’t want a good interview to end.
And yet it does, yielding to other joys – in this instance, the meta-conversation that emerged amongst and across interviews. The most striking instance emerged in real time, when we interviewed Vanessa Andreotti (see here) and then Jude Currivan and John Fullerton (see here) jointly, on the same day: each dialogue offered a unique, counter-intuitive – but mutually reinforcing – new perspective on just transitions (which we encompass in our Transcend Justice chapter in the Idiosyncratic Analyses section).
We also interviewed Sahana Chattopadhyay (here) and Steve Keen (here) that day (we were busy, apparently!), and while each discussed issues that intersected with other interviewees’ perspectives, neither advanced this intriguing perspective on the potential limits of a justice framing.
This anecdote, capturing a snapshot in time from the research process, succinctly summarizes the key dimensions of our analysis strategy: identify and cluster Aligned Findings according to patterned categories; but also spotlight key Idiosyncratic Analyses, as not all wisdom is contained in consensus – sometimes, we must also listen to lone voices.
This point was reinforced more recently, in the structuring phase of a separate r3.0 Research Project, when Seeds Working Group Member Claudia Gasparovic reminded us of the strength of our Aligned Findings / Idiosyncratic Analyses approach, which surfaces both consensus and dissensus – and we decided to apply it to the new Project.
So, what follows is a long Aligned Findings section, cataloguing the common sentiments on eight thematic clusters: (Systemic; Relationality; Mindset / Paradigm / Worldview; Regeneration; Story / Narrative; Solidarity; Indigeneity; and Community- & Place-Based), followed by a shorter section on Idiosyncratic Analyses that focuses primarily on one significant counter- intuitive perspective that arose from a small minority of interviewees, and a cluster of other unique perspectives.
2.1 Aligned Findings: Weaving common threads into tapestries of meaning
There’s an uncanny sensation that arose during the processing of the interview notes and transcripts, whereby responses from individual interviewees began to converse with responses from other Interviewees, weaving common threads of perspectives and analyses into tapestries of meaning. Thematic clusters arose from the spreadsheet of distillations, and shared understandings emerged. While each interviewee (and a few paired interviewees) spoke only with our Interview Team, the assessment of the interview transcripts as a holistic body of knowledge enabled us to discern patterns stitching together a kind of emergent coherence.
This is particularly evident in this Aligned Findings section, where we curate meta-conversations around the eight thematic clusters that follow below. Each section begins with very brief introductory contextualization, and then primarily focuses on synthesizing the voices of our Interviewees into choral harmonies, with distinct voices still audible, and yet at the same time, the collective vocalization rises into confluences that transcend the sums of their parts.
2.1.1 Systemic: Building beyond and outside of the systems that oppress us (Agbo)
“[I]f you really understand the systemic nature of life, [you understand] a living system is a regenerative system. That’s the very definition of life.”
Fritjof Capra, Regeneration is fundamental to living systems, 2020
The theme that arose most in responses to the second (fundamental imperatives of regenerative economies & cultures) and third (necessary elements of just transitions to regenerative economies & cultures) prompts orbited around systems.
Appreciation for the role of systems in life has been growing for more than a half century, building on Indigenous worldviews that have integrated systems thinking (without necessarily using that term) for millennia. (Melanie Goodchild calls this intersection between Western and Indigenous perspectives on systems Relational Systems Thinking, which starts to bridge to our next section.)
Spotlighting a component of the economy – namely, investing and finance – just since the turn of this decade (2020 – with roots dating back earlier, of course) reveals an explosion of initiatives and framings integrating elements of systems awareness.
- Systemic Investing starting in 2020 (iterated in 2023 & 2024) led by Dominic Hoffstetter of the Transformation Capital (TransCap) initiative he co-founded from Climate-KIC;
- System Value Creation, explored in the 2020 r3.0 Multicapitalism White Paper (based on the concept coined in 2017 by Geoff Kendall of the Future Fit Foundation);
- System-level Investing, based primarily on 2021 books by Jon Lukomnic & James Hawley and Bill Burkart & Steve Lydenberg, that focus on tackling systemic risk;
- Design Foundations for Systems Capital in 2022 researched by Ingrid Burkett et al of Griffith University in Australia;
- FEST (Financial Ecosystems for Systemic Transformation) co-founded by Steve Waddell of Bounce Beyond and others, now led by Jen van der Meer of The New School;
- CoFundEco (Co-creating Funding Ecosystems), a network borne of the Working Group for the 2022 r3.0 Funding Governance for Systemic Transformation Blueprint.
- TWIST (Together We Invest for Systems Transformation), an investor, practitioner and facilitator network launched in 2022; and
- System Investing and System Finance initiative launched by Dark Matter Capital Systems Lab in 2025, spearheaded by Indy Johar, Irina Wang, Raj Kalia & Leon Seefield.
This increasing application of systems awareness to the investment system supports our interviewees’ identification of systems as one fundamental imperative for just transitions to regenerative economies (and their underlying cultures). The question is the degree to which these initiatives move beyond siloing a systems focus to embrace the broader, more holistic (more systemic, if you will) set of fundamental imperatives of regenerative economies and cultures (absent an in-depth analysis, it’s safe to say the initiatives vary greatly on this count.)
Our interviewees’ systems considerations started at the systems-within-systems level, as Jayati Ghosh focused on necessary transformations in two provisioning systems (within broader earth systems and social systems) in particular – the food system (away from industrial agriculture) and the energy system (reducing energy unit per output, shifting the technological and sectoral composition of economies, and changes in energy types.) Here’s her analysis of the former:
“You know, we tend to underplay the significance of food systems, both in global warming and in our overall destruction of nature and the environment, but we have moved increasingly towards industrial agricultures that are deeply damaging of the soil, of the climate, and of human health. And too, this whole desire (especially in the Global North) for access to strawberries all year round, or, every kind of fish you want at all times, etc, etc, all of which are hugely carbon-emitting – but they’re also unnecessary!”
“And so we have currently an unequal, unjust, unsustainable, and unhealthy global food system, which has to change. Now, again, huge interests are involved. We have very major agribusinesses, we have global finance, which is deeply involved. But we at Earth4All have argued that the transformation of global food systems is an essential part of a wider transformation that would actually make our planet livable, again, for all species, including humans.”
Stepping back to look at systems as a broader strategic lens, many interviewees underscored the need for systems approaches, systems literacy, and systemic awareness. Kate Raworth stated most succinctly the need for “a foundational understanding of systems dynamics” underpinning a “complexity, systems thinking mindset.” Nate Hagens reinforced the perspective that “we absolutely need a systems approach” that integrates key elements such as energy, environment, money, human behavior (both individually and collectively), etc. “The parts and the processes of these systems do fit together, and their relationships fit together.”
Lourenço Bustani framed “ecological literacy as an imperative, which comes with systems literacy. This would be a response to our complete disregard for our ancestry and our lost connection to the land.” Indy Johar focused on awareness of systemic lock-in through the metaphor of fish and water. “One fundamental imperative of regenerative economies and cultures is recognition that we are fish living in water, and the water is systemically entrapping us. Or let’s imagine we are birds that don’t live underwater, but are trapped in the water and aren’t able to fly. That’s where we are right now. So having this conversation is really important.”
Several interviewees honed in more specifically on living systems. Kate Raworth asserted that a regenerative economy “works with and within the cycles of the living world – it’s ecologically grounded… we need to understand the cycles of the living world” framed through planetary boundaries (or other living systems frameworks). Joe Brewer observed that “a regenerative economy is not simply a metaphor of a living system. It is actually the embodied living system itself.” He further elucidated:
“Meaning, you build your economy from the landscape of a watershed, and its ecology and the material flows of that ecology. It is literally a living system. And so this is extremely important that we don’t just have sweet and cute metaphors of water flow as the way of creating a monetary system. I mean, the monetary system is actually based on the flow of water, creating biodiversity and biomass. And I mean that the energy flow coming from photosynthesis and the sun is literally a basis for economic measurement of value.”
Joe Brewer further focused on another common theme amongst interviewees: the place-based nature of systems – in his instance, the organizing logic of regenerative economies as place-based landscape systems:
“A regenerative economy is place-based in a cosmologically significant way. So let me clarify what I mean by that: it could be place-based because you have a foodshed, and it’s the minerals, and the water, and the energy flow of photosynthesis of your agro-ecology system for your foodshed. It can grow to the scale of a bioregion where you have autopoiesis and self-organizing principles achieving a holistic scale. But it’s also fractal and embedded. So the idea that we honor community in place, is to also have an architecture that represents how our reality works.”
“So this is where we get into the nested earth systems, plate tectonics and continental patterns, ocean mixing processes, continental scale precipitation patterns like evaporation from the Pacific Ocean, dropping snow to make snow back in the Colorado Rockies. These continental- or planetary-scale processes become the basis in which regenerative economies can make sense, which is that regenerative economies will need to be organized as landscape systems.”
Daniel Christian Wahl picked up on this thread, asserting that “we need to re-regionalize production and consumption and pretty much all affairs that provide community resilience and wellbeing as quickly as possible. That’s an imperative, because that’s the only way we can take as many of us through the eye of the needle as possible.”
“And in doing so, creating vast opportunities for regionally regenerative economies, and reinventing the playing field of business where it’s not just about creating regenerative companies; it’s about cascading resources and energy use … to optimize the way they provide for the local economy in ways that regenerates the local ecosystem. And that’s an opportunity for innovation, and coming home to place and learning and reusing the best of science and the best of different disciplines in the context of a specific place in a specific bioregion, to basically redesign the human impact on Earth, which is what we would do if we created regenerative economies and regenerative cultures.”
Several interviewees also picked up on the central role of ecosystems, using this term both for natural ecosystems, and the human ecosystems nested within them. Sahana Chattopadhyay held that
“we need the wisdom that comes from different intervening of cosmologies that can give rise to economic systems that are focused on thriving, that are focused on flourishing, that are focused on mindful, need-based development, that are focused on wellbeing of communities and societies in the ecosystem that they operate in, whether it’s an organization, an institution, a corporation, whatever – they are operating in an ecosystem within an ecosystem.”
Emily Kawano enumerated the dimensions of just such an economic system – namely, a Solidarity Economy. Specifically, she listed the five key elements for “developing the whole ecosystem” of a local Solidarity Economy: community land trusts (especially those that support affordable housing); regenerative agriculture; worker coops / mutual aid; a center for community production to support local sourcing; and space for cultural connection & learning
Finally, interviewees repeatedly stressed the need for systems change. Emily Kawano invoked this by first framing “capitalism and some of its unavoidable dynamics”:
“The class conflict, the unavoidable pressure to compete and accumulate and grow – make capitalism inherently unsustainable. And the need to maximize profit often means divide and rule, using whatever divisions – whether it’s race or gender or immigration status, or whatever it might be – to divide and rule workers. I’m just giving a hint of some of the dynamics of the system, regardless of what paradigm of capitalism you’re talking about – there’s this underlying logic to it.”
From this foundation, Emily lays out the need for system transformation:
“So, what’s the alternative to that? First, thinking about system change, right? We need to move beyond capitalism to post-capitalism, which means that we need to move beyond it. I no longer use the term anti-capitalism, partly because… there are actually some things about capitalism that have been useful – like some of the productivity and innovation has been good, some of that growth has been good. When it becomes blind growth, when it’s sacrificing people and planet, then that’s a problem… But now we’re at a stage where, in order to achieve that more just and sustainable and democratic world, we need to move beyond it.”
Ashish Kothari lays out alternatives beyond incrementalist tweaks of the current system, such as techno-fixes like geoengineering, or market mechanisms like carbon trading, or managerial solutions like recycling.
“The same system that’s actually creating or exacerbating the problems, capitalist statist patriarchy, is telling us, don’t worry – we have the solutions. But we know that, at a fundamental level, none of these are solutions, really. I mean, they might help to stave off the problem and delay the inevitable collapses a little bit. But they’re not really going to fundamentally change anything.”
Kothari calls instead for what he calls “radical, genuine, systemic alternatives.”
“Even as people resist and say no to a certain system, we need to recognize, support, and help to network radical alternatives… Genuine alternatives, therefore, or systemic or radical alternatives, then, are those which actually challenge the structures and relations of inequality and unsustainability and injustice.”
Kothari then distinguishes between reform as transitions that “actually only strengthen the current status quo,” on the one hand, and on the other hand, “reforms will help us to go towards the fundamental systemic transformations that we want.” To illustrate this distinction, he cites the example of food sovereignty.
“In India, we have a Food Security Act, which is essential because it makes the State responsible to make sure that food is provided to those who don’t have enough food – they’re hungry, they’re malnourished right now. So, making the state accountable is very important, but unless we move also from that into a food sovereignty law, which enables small scale producers especially to actually gain sovereignty, we are, in a sense, only reinforcing the status quo in the sense we’re making the state even more powerful and sustaining a certain dependence on the state of people who otherwise would actually be able to grow their own food or generate their own incomes, to be able to purchase the food from farmers. So the food sovereignty movement actually is a fundamental systemic radical alternative to the food crisis that we have.”
This example brings us full circle to the outset of our consideration of systems (with Jayati Ghosh making the case for transforming the food system away from industrial agriculture.) Which brings us to our final input: Nwamaka Agbo urges us to rediscover our lost “ability to think about how we are ultimately building beyond and outside of the systems that oppress us.”
