The ecological crisis requires urgent, large-scale regeneration of the biosphere rooted in biological integrity and cultural revitalization.
This kind of regeneration requires a network of connected and vibrant bioregions, stewarding financial resources to support strategically coordinated portfolios of regenerative projects and organizations working to shift systems.
We envision nothing less than the creation of a new layer in the global financial architecture through the development of Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs), designed to serve every bioregion on Earth.
The BioFi Project is a collective supporting bioregions to design, create, capitalize, implement, and evolve Bioregional Financing Facilities (BFFs) that connect financial resources with regenerators. We partner with bioregional organizing teams and Indigenous communities across North America and around the world to apply the BFF templates and capital raising and allocation approaches laid out in the book Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet (published in June of 2024).
The BioFi Project team is made up of practitioners in the areas of economics, finance, governance, bioregionalism, ecology, regeneration, and social justice. Once the BioFi Project establishes a partnership with a bioregion, the team engages in a listening process; supports asset mapping; identifies which BFF is best to start with; designs a detailed proposal for a BFF; and supports the bioregion with capital raising, capital allocation, and governance implementation.
At the global level, the team also shares the ideas in the book, stewards a community of practice, builds relevant software tooling, and supports eco-credit co-design facilitation. The BioFi Project is a fiscally sponsored project of BFI, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt non-profit organization.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge that BioFi as a body of work is woven from many long, diverse threads: five hundred years of anticolonial resistance and decolonial creativity; movements for economic, ecological, and social justice and liberation; and the inspired efforts of peoples around the world organizing autonomously for the regeneration of the biosphere and their local-global communities. It is informed by persistent innovation in the fields of economics, finance, ecology, evolutionary biology, and systems theory. We believe that BFFs were born out of and can support the web of interdependent efforts of the broader regenerative movement.
We acknowledge the role of Indigenous leadership and Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and seeing as foundational for the body of work and types of institutions we are co-creating. We recognize the profound sacrifices that have been made and continue to be made by Indigenous communities around the world to protect and continue to live into these lifeways. We recognize the importance of Indigenous-led biocultural regeneration in planetary regeneration. We acknowledge the criticality of healing and reconciliation in this unfolding process.
We recognize the risk that even well-intentioned efforts to celebrate, share, and be guided by Indigenous lifeways can easily perpetuate patterns of extraction, appropriation, and neo-colonization. We believe the practice of cultivating right relationship is critical for building the solidarity between Indigenous communities and those coming to this work from a bioregional frame. We acknowledge that finding right relationship with each other in the context of our diverse lifeways requires intentional, rigorous, and patient care in cultivating equity, trust, and reciprocity. We believe this cross-cultural solidarity is foundational to catalyzing the transformation of economies and the worldviews that underpin them to serve all life.
