Regenerative Finance Working Group

From the outset of Common Earth’s efforts it has been clear that there is an urgent need to shift investment away from economic activities that destroy Earth’s commons and toward regenerative work. The other key barrier is the inadequacy of existing financial models and instruments to the task of investing in ways that will regenerate complex living systems. This is the restraint that the Regenerative Finance Working Group is being formed to address.

On October 3, 2019, a scoping meeting for the proposed Regenerative Finance Working Group was held as part of Common Earth’s Annual Regenerative Development Summit at the Commonwealth Secretariat. Approximately 20 participants from a range of disciplines and perspectives discussed the purpose and potential of the Working Group.

The current members are:

Ricardo Peon, Chair

Stuart Cowan

Russell Jacobs

Tammy Tullis

Laura Ortiz Montemayor

Tom Duncan

James Atherton

Holly Ruxin

John Fullerton

Louise Kjellerup Roper

The initial purpose of the Regenerative Finance Working Group is:

To redeploy and redesign finance

In a way that unlocks the potential of regenerative development initiatives and the evolutionary capacity of local communities

So that the Commonwealth can rapidly increase climate resilience and the health of nations within a single, unified effort.

Scope

As part of its initial scope, the Regenerative Finance Working Group will focus on addressing three time horizons for encouraging financial innovation:

Immediate Acceleration - high impact finance-related activities that can greatly accelerate the flow of capital and other resources to regenerative approaches to climate resilience throughout the Commonwealth. These activities do not depend on policy shifts or fundamental systems transformations. They include de-risking projects by educating investors, assembling case studies to demonstrate financial viability, and mentoring teams in creating investment-grade projects; mapping the current regenerative finance ecosystem to better connect projects and investors; creating a toolkit with sample project documents, regenerative metrics, and related resources; and others to be developed.

Near-term innovation - support project and policy innovations building from existing market conditions but showing systemic pathways to deep financial systems transformation. These innovations, particularly in nature-based solutions, will test new ways of integrating multiple forms of capital (financial, built, social, ecological); evaluating systemic outcomes (e.g. Blue Marble Evaluation); blending different sources of capital (commercial, philanthropic, governmental); and other approaches.

Deep transformation - evolve the scenarios, visions, theory, and underlying philosophy for the deep structural shifts in finance (and related enabling systems) that will create complete alignment between ecological and community regeneration and economic activities. Given potentially unsolvable conflicts between current financial systems and the long-term regeneration of the Commonwealth, it is imperative to map viable transformations and pathways for rapidly achieving them in an interdisciplinary manner drawing on growing research and action in this Field.