What is Regeneration?
What is Regeneration? Launch Event
If you missed the launch of our short film and conversation with panellists:
- Damon Gameau - the filmmaker behind 2040 and Regenerating Australia
- Paul Hawken - environmentalist and author of Regeneration: Ending the climate crisis in one generation
- AY Young - musician, Battery Tour Founder and UN Sustainable Development Leader
- Kristy Drutman - climate activist and founder of Brown Girl Green
- Dominique Hes - Chair of the board of Greenfleet, regenerative development thinker, educator, author and researcher.
you can watch it via our social channels now:
Featured Artists & Designers in the film:
The What is Regeneration? film features animations and visual effects from some incredible artists including:
Regen Studios acknowledges and thanks them for allowing us to feature their incredible work.
What is Regeneration?
Our current economic system is degenerative and extractive; it steals the future. A regeneratively designed system heals the future.
Regeneration brings vitality and renewed growth to our communities and to our ecosystems. It puts life and connection at the centre of every decision we make.
Why do we need to Regenerate?
In the graphic below (source: Donut Economics and Stockholm Resilience Centre), the green circle in the middle is the safe and sustainable zone for humanity. It is where we would be living in balance with the natural world and with more equality in our societies. Unfortunately, we have breached many ecological and social boundaries that dramatically impact our well-being and the well-being of the planet.
All of these social and eco systems need to be regenerated. The breached red boundaries need to be brought back into the safe and sustainable green zone. And we can only reach the green zone through a process of healing and repair. Sustainability is no longer enough, we need to regenerate.
A major flaw of our current system is that it doesn't value life. It exploits and extracts life, it demeans and ridicules life, it commodifies life and reduces it to data. Regeneration puts life back at the centre of our governance, our economy, and our education.
Regeneration will come easily to us when we allow it because it is the default mode of life: from the cells in our bodies to a forest after fire.
I am life that wills to live, amidst life that wills to live.
– Albert Schweitzer
Regeneration means connecting with your unique place by naming its trees and its birds, or understanding its Indigenous history.
Regeneration means growing your own food or sourcing it from healthy soils.
Regeneration means less screen time and more time in nature.
Regeneration means joining with others to design new operating systems, institutions, and ways of collaborating and communicating.
Regeneration means choosing kindness in your treatment of others - seeing beyond the aggression of the words - and, instead, seeing the human need behind them.
Regeneration means building and nurturing community.
In a time of extraction, domination and division, a regenerative deed is a revolutionary act.
Regenerative design can bring a river back to life. It can restore the health and vitality of an individual and their family. It can transform grief and trauma into vital pathways of healing for people, community, and ecosystems. Our task in the next few decades is to direct regenerative design to planet earth.
– Joe Brewer
With so many people searching for meaning in their lives, regeneration offers a way forward. What could be more meaningful than taking part in the regeneration of our planetary home?
Regenerative action is a legacy action. When future historians look back on today, they will see that amidst the chaos, the extractive behaviour, the rapid species extinction and the emerging nihilism, there were groups of people that instead chose to be regenerators: regenerative designers that planted the seeds for a thriving future society.
Stories of Regeneration
Sustainability isn't enough
Being human
The Odonata story
Action areas
Harmonise the System
This action seeks solutions to the perverse incentives, the win-lose rivalrous dynamics and the concentrated power of our current, degenerative system.
Rethink Energy
This action area is for people who are lit up by the largest energy transition in history - clean and green. It harnesses the sun & the wind, is more efficient, & it electrifies everything.
Heal Habitats
Healing Habitats presents an opportunity for collaboration between a diversity of people and a diversity of plants, fungi, animals and bacteria.
Purify Air & Water
To regenerate our air and water is to regenerate ourselves. This action area invites us to breathe deeply again and to bathe and drink in waters that heal, not harm.
Revive Soils
Reviving soils is the dirtiest underground movement in the world right now: it is reconnecting people to their food, to their health and to the climate in remarkable and inspiring ways.
Wild our Towns & Cities
This action area is for those who want to go wild in the city. Concrete makes way for urban forests, rooftop gardens and thriving inner-city ecosystems.
Move Lightly
The transport of the future is versatile, accessible and great for our health. It is mobility that allows passengers to move cheaply and quietly through their communities.
Consume with Consideration
The clothes we wear, the foods we eat and the materials we buy can either be degenerative or regenerative. Our consumption can steal the future or heal the future.
Regenerate Self & Our Communities
The regeneration of our planet cannot happen without the regeneration of its people. This action area invites us to reconnect with ourselves, others, our communities, and all living systems.
Share New Stories
This action area invites us to tell new stories: stories about our deeply collaborative traits, stories about our interconnected relationships with the living world.
Become a Regenerator
Join a growing movement of Regenerators who are ready to take action in their homes, workplaces, schools and communities. You can choose from a range of regenerative actions that are aligned to your passions and interests.
Regeneration
We work closely with Paul Hawken and the team at Regeneration.org and acknowledge their meticulous research and passion for Regeneration.
