67 Global Regenerative Movements — making noise but failing to mobilise ordinary citizens to demand regenerative change.
''Whistling in the Wind'' Source: author + Magic Media by Canva
I’m not a lifelong environmentalist or activist. I wasn’t inspired even by the brilliant Sir David Attenborough to take more than a fleeting interest in biodiversity and our climate. Nor was I moved by disruptive protest movements, like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Their hunger for publicity through gross acts of public inconvenience didn’t capture my imagination, either. I’m just an ordinary citizen with a vote.
My Damascene moment came from an unlikely corner: an IT Analysts conference hosted by the Indian technology company Zoho.
Hearing about Zoho’s regenerative business philosophy and practices had a profound impact on me. It led me to give up my day job as an IT industry analyst, which didn’t have much meaning in the overall scheme of things, and focus on researching something that does: regenerative business.
Zoho is a rare jewel among tens of thousands of B2B technology companies. It embodies a vision of how the world should work but seldom does — see Zoho — The Regenerative Business.
During my research, which began almost two years ago, I soon realised that I needed to look beyond businesses acting regeneratively to understand the broader context of climate change, biodiversity, and humanity. The context within which forward-thinking companies like Zoho operate, but regrettably, extractive companies dominate.
I took an online course by the Stockholm Resilience Centre to understand planetary boundaries as quickly as possible. I also discovered many global and regional regenerative movements, each with a growing body of research and a few with positive solutions beyond philosophy to save all planetary life from the extractive calamities of Mammon worship. I now empathise with Hercules on his mission to clean the Augean Stables. The more I research, the more I discover how little I know. Fortunately, I use Obsidian to capture notes from around 50 books and 800 research papers.
So far, I have found 67 global regenerative movements, and I’m sure there are many more to discover. This brings me to the point of my article: I found them because I looked for them. And that’s the problem.
The question is, what impact are they having on the public’s consciousness? Very little, it seems. That’s why I characterise them as a silent cacophony. No one hears them, no matter how loudly they plead for regenerative change. This is a massive problem if they hope to shape our thinking and create demand on our politicians and policymakers to regenerate our world.
That is the crux of the challenge, recognised by some but ignored by too many in their siloed, soundproofed and fragmented echo chambers. They are saying the right things, but who is listening?
There are some encouraging signs
Several of the 67 recognise the urgency of collaborating to bring their regenerative messages to the public. However, this is a tough challenge, as mainstream media is fickle and driven chiefly by today’s bad news stories.
One of the movements explicitly recognises the challenge of cutting through to the ordinary citizen. This is what the Stable Planet Alliance says about it on the first page of its website:
'We think the most influential level of change is to affect people’s mindsets — helping folks grasp the reality of current trends and mobilising public will to change course.'
Founded by its CEO, Phoebe Barnard, she cites an ‘open letter to the citizens of Earth’ published after a collaborative meeting hosted by the Club of Rome, Roundtable for A Human Future, in July 2024. Signed by 27 regenerative organisations from across the world. One of its recommendations is:
'We would be wise to focus our creativity and networks on affecting public mindsets.'
Absolutely, but it will take much more than an open letter.
As a first step, they agreed to target leaders of regenerative movements to create some momentum to amplify the collective vision:
A call for a fairer, safer, healthier and more sustainable future for all people and life on our planet.
Stable Planet Alliance provides a more succinct vision:
A compassionate, just, ecologically sustainable society.
Only the heartless could object to that.
The organisation invites individuals to become colleagues and provides tools for ‘kitchen conversations’. These simple tools help individuals engage with friends and families to understand the challenges and lead to a mindset change. An excellent YouTube video by Andrew Gaines explains the causal link between producing and consuming more ‘stuff’ and climate change.
In Aligning to Co-Create a New Kind of Social Change Movement, Gaines calls for collaboration among regenerative movements to reach the hearts and minds of the public. In the article, he provides a brilliant cartoon by Tony Biddle, which clearly illustrates the relationship between producing ‘stuff’ for profit and fostering consumer demand through $billions in marketing, perpetuating the doom loop behind the polycrisis.
While discussions in small groups of friends are helpful, this approach would require persistence over generations to impact our consciousness levels. We don’t have the luxury of that amount of time. Much more is needed right now, to penetrate and shape the consciousness of citizens than this approach or the one-off open letter to the citizens of Earth.
However, there are substantial obstacles that must be overcome. Before jumping into a solution, we need to understand the nature of these obstacles.
Five obstacles to raising citizen consciousness levels
Figure 1 highlights five obstacles to raising awareness and creating a desire for positive change among ordinary citizens.
So far, collaboration among movements has been poor. Although the ‘calls’ quoted above provide a starting point, there is no shared vision around which to rally. The founders of many of the regenerative organisations are mostly exceptionally well-qualified to talk about climate change, injustice and the woeful state of our economic systems.
What’s lacking are the communications expertise and collaborative strategies to reach citizens. As Gaines suggested, these movements must collaborate to create the desired impact. They won’t succeed alone or via fleeting moments of collaboration, like the Roundtable For a Human Future.
2. Negative language
Language matters, and I’ve noticed that the default focus is on generating fear and guilt.
The trouble is that for most citizens, the language of catastrophe generates a sense of powerlessness.
In the article Fourth Person: The Knowing of the Field¹, Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy state that the biggest problem facing us is not climate change, war, inequality, or the ‘proliferation of AI’ but a feeling of complete powerlessness to do anything about it at the individual level.
Degrowth is an ideological premise that appeals to socialists but sends a massive negative signal that closes down any debate. While degrowth in fossil fuel use makes sense, the term implies, rightly or wrongly, that all business growth is terrible. A comprehensive study by Ivan Savin and Jeroen van den Bergh found little evidence of the benefits of degrowth and concluded that most research papers were based on opinion.
Beware of trendy, negative terminology. Although well-intentioned, it is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.
A shift in mindset requires hope and a sense that we can create a fairer, healthier world for all life or, as R. Buckminster Fuller put it so well:
“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone.”
Before citizens slide into despair, they must hear evidence of what the world can be like when we follow the grain of a regenerative future that aches to emerge. They need a positive vision, something to believe in and work towards.
Two regenerative organisations, the Earthshot Prize and Transition Network, show us the right way. The Earthshot Prize provides tangible evidence of organisations acting regeneratively.
Rob Hopkins, the co-founder of Transition Network, paints a picture of how the world can be in his book From What Is to What If. I had the pleasure of interviewing him on an entertaining thirty-minute podcast. Transition Network is rooted in community and visionary imagination, and stories of its successes are inspirational. We need more of that; regenerative movements must up their storytelling together, not in isolation.
3. Short-term focus
Short-termism is a prevalent obstacle at the execution end, causing politicians and policymakers to focus on what can be done to boost their standings, counter opposition threats, or assuage negative public attitudes.
Many of our crises require complex changes at the systems level. Most Western governments function at the siloed departmental level. Narrow solutions generate massive public spending waste and fail to fix complex problems. Mariana Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism explores this issue insightfully. Ironically, the current UK Labour government uses the language of missions, but judging by their actions, is only paying lip service to the concept.
4. Political biases
If regenerative movements are to collaborate successfully, each must leave any political or ideological bias at the door.
While neoliberalism is naturally extractive, few, if any, within the movements would support it. On the other hand, socialism rears its head in several forums with which I have fruitlessly engaged. Both isms are harmful and destructive.
Neoliberalism is powered by greed, while envy is the beating pulse of socialism. Rather like religious wars, debate between parties of different hues rarely leads to collective enlightenment and the raising of consciousness.
If we are fundamentally motivated by care for humanity and all life, we must elevate the level of debate above the zero-sum games of political partisanship. We must be humbly ecocentric, not egocentric, or we will fail.
5. Fragmented/inconsistent messaging
Fragmented and inconsistent messaging is the flip side of poor collaboration.
Each of the 66 movements I have researched has great potential value for our world. However, the call for substantial regenerative change will not penetrate the public consciousness without a shared vision and the ability to consistently generate positive excitement among citizens.
A regenerative philosophy is insufficient. We need an exciting world vision with evidence of real local, community, country, regional, and global successes. The current mental landscape generates despair, not hope. That must change, and it can only be accomplished through collective, concentrated effort.
We must create a focused beam of pure light to penetrate the gloom and illuminate the path towards regenerative change.
Before explaining how to overcome these obstacles, let’s examine a high-level overview of these 64 global regenerative movements and their priorities.
Regenerative movements come in several guises but have many affinities
Figure 2 outlines the main focus areas of the 67 regenerative movements. My findings are based on my analysis of what each movement claims it stands for.
Figure 2: Primary focus areas of the 67 regenerative movements. Source: author
While the most significant percentage (46%) is focused on climate change and biodiversity, all are acutely aware of the environmental backdrop. The other 55% have narrower areas of focus. 14% are deeply concerned about societal fairness and injustice. 12% want to reshape economics to wrest it away from Mammon worshippers and to put it into the service of all humanity and a healthy planet.
Around 10% see regenerative business as a potential planetary lifeline, while 8% want to help organisations and communities transform themselves, with 8% concerned with governance mechanisms. 2% investigate environmental crimes.
The solution starts with a vision developed collaboratively by regenerative movements
Figure 3 outlines the four continuous communication stages that lead to regenerative action.
Figure 3: From collaborative vision to regenerative change. Source: author.
Working back from the desired outcome, governments provide much of the financial and mission-making muscle essential to power action. However, this will not happen unless the public demands it en masse.
This is not happening today because of the barrage of mixed signals from vested interests and ineffectively articulated messages from regenerative movements, each focused on its interpretation of what must be done.
It’s time for regenerative movements to agree on a unified vision and shared purpose. The Stable Planet Alliance’s call for a compassionate, ecologically sustainable society seems like a good place to start.
Transforming from a fragmented landscape of movements to a unified force
Let’s hope that the 27 movements in the Roundtable for A Human Future are following up on their promise to encourage leaders of relevant movements to collaborate and focus their energies on mobilising the public.
In any event, rather than thinking solely about their unique positioning and differences, leaders of each movement should focus on the natural affinities they share.
Figure 4 is a snapshot of potential affinities among the 67 movements. This Obsidian graph view is based on my subjective analysis of priorities and is only a guide to where the strongest affinities exist.
Figure 4: Obsidian graph view of 67 regenerative movements and relationships to priorities
Climate-Biosphere is the largest node, reflecting the 46% of regenerative movements summarised in Figure 2. The other nodes are coloured dark grey.
The panel outlines seven priority areas alphabetically, as shown in Figure 5.
Recommendations:
Lead with success stories that capture the imagination
The success stories inspire and generate a belief that a regenerative world is possible and desirable. Part of the collaborative effort must be to share successes, and each leader should be tasked with identifying their success stories.
Break-out groups coalescing around priority areas could be used to pool success stories or collaborate post-workshop to contribute to a success database that everyone can access in the movements and beyond.
Time for ambition and imagination
To shape our mindsets, we will need more than an open letter to citizens. We need a consistent vision and thousands of stories communicated to citizens of all ages where they are, in digital, social channels, print, videos, films, and documentaries. Once they sense the excitement, even the mass print and broadcast media will want to get involved.
Use the expertise of highly experienced transformation specialists
The Club of Rome’s experience, collaborating with the other 26 organisations, resulted in the Open Letter to the Citizens of the Earth. I bet it was a tooth-pulling exercise to try to reach an agreement among them all.
I recommend using the expertise of Otto Scharmer and his highly experienced team at the Presencing Institute to follow the tried and tested Theory U transformation method to develop the unified vision and agree on the practical aspects of creating an effective communications plan that regularly showcases successes to reach and capture the imagination of the public.
In the words of Teilhard de Chardin:
“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”²
