Regenerative development aims to increase the vitality and viability of social-ecological systems. However, such change does not automatically translate into higher biodiversity. A new BIODIFUL study bridges biodiversity and place‑based regeneration, arguing that biodiversity should be understood as dynamic variability and that its enhancement should be intentionally integrated into regenerative initiatives.
Need for regeneration
As multiple critical planetary boundaries have now been crossed, solely ending harmful practices cannot return human activity to operate within safe limits. Instead, there is growing emphasis on actions that restore and regenerate places to address the human-induced degradation of living systems. For example, human activities must halt biodiversity decline and become nature‑positive. While restoration focuses on humans ‘doing good’ for nature – for example, by removing invasive species or planting trees – regeneration seeks a deeper life-affirming alignment between humans and the rest of nature, both in perception and in practice.
Regenerative strategies can support cultural values, sustainable production, and biodiversity conservation, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, it remains unclear how regeneration manifests in different contexts, and how regenerative change might translate into increasing biodiversity. Within sustainability science, regeneration is framed as a meta‑concept, strongly influenced by the field of regenerative development and gradually integrated with established concepts such as resilience thinking. A new BIODIFUL publication explores the relationship between biodiversity and place‑based regenerative development to further facilitate sustainability conversations.
Refocusing on biodiversity as variability
The new study found substantial common ground between regenerative development and efforts to conserve and enhance biodiversity. This suggested that their conceptual alignment can foster more integrated pathways for creating life-affirming change, even as challenges remain.
The paper clarifies that designing place‑based regeneration is a potential strategy for enhancing biodiversity; however, regeneration does not automatically increase biodiversity. Therefore, regenerative initiatives should embrace biodiversity-respectful leadership or other strategies to intentionally create positive biodiversity outcomes. Otherwise, the aim of regenerative development to evolve place vitality and viability may fall short of addressing biodiversity decline and safeguarding the planetary boundaries.
A key conclusion was that place regeneration should approach biodiversity as variability rather than a collection of components. Biodiversity is a dynamic and relational attribute of life, encompassing taxonomic, structural, and functional dimensions – not merely a pool of genes, species, and ecosystems. Previous studies on place regeneration have rarely discussed biodiversity, and when they have, its dynamic characteristics and relationship with biocultural diversity have been overlooked.
Refocusing the concept of biodiversity in this way is also crucial for advancing the assessment of place-based regeneration, which current biodiversity and ecosystem service tools cannot sufficiently capture. The authors further identified a need for research to clarify how the cultural and social diversity of human systems relates to biodiversity, as this would align biodiversity even more closely with the aims of regenerative development.
Together with insights from regenerative development, the refocused biodiversity concept may offer a practical leverage point for nature‑related planning and management to bring greater harmony into human-nature relationships. This provides a more immediate pathway to systems change than shifting people’s underlying mindsets and worldviews, which regenerative development generally encourages.
Slow and contested shifts in worldviews
The authors emphasise that, despite widespread destructive actions, humans also possess the capacity to enhance biocultural diversity within socio‑ecological systems. Regenerative development may contribute by introducing values that are frequently overlooked in conventional biodiversity approaches.
The practitioner‑led regenerative movement often highlights plural and place‑specific meanings and values, recognising that regeneration is shaped by context. Practitioners sometimes criticise the perceived mechanistic orientation of science and question its capacity to address the complex societal challenges. Instead, they tend to promote healing and enlivening places from an ‘ecological’ worldview, often drawing on indigenous approaches that understand human action as embedded within place ecology.
Nevertheless, the authors of the new BIODIFUL perspective conclude that science has the potential to develop a shared yet context‑adaptable language of regeneration for actors involved in sustainability transformations. More rigorous scientific examination of place‑based regeneration may therefore help advance the field’s practical relevance.
While shifts toward regeneration are often understood to involve inner dimensions – such as moving from anthropocentric to ecocentric worldviews – the new article argues that relying on widespread worldview change is unrealistic in the short term, given the rapid progression of biodiversity decline and the typically slow and contested nature of such shifts. The authors propose that the refocused biodiversity concept offers a more feasible pathway for advancing social‑ecological change, while broader worldview transformations remain an important long‑term goal.
Multiple meanings challenge regeneration’s potential
Science can also offer a non‑ideological foundation for sharing knowledge and defining requirements for regeneration. The urgency and promise of regeneration have fuelled growing interest among grassroots initiatives and corporations alike. While encouraging, this trend also risks diluting regeneration’s meaning and transformative potential.
In biology, regeneration is a life process operating across nested scales: in cells as autopoiesis, referring to their capacity to self‑produce and maintain organisation; in tissues and organisms as regrowth and renewal following disturbance or injury; and in ecosystems as ecological succession, through which species composition and ecosystem functions recover and reorganise over time. In sustainability contexts, regenerative systems are likewise characterised by self‑organisation, interconnectedness, and co‑evolution; with interactions unfolding as regenerative dynamics that increase the system’s regenerative capacity.
However, many initiatives are now labelled ‘regenerative’ without necessarily demonstrating regenerative dynamics in practice. As a result, the concept risks becoming a buzzword and being co‑opted by large corporations. To bring objectivity to what is considered ‘regenerative’, systems science provides neutral frameworks, while reflection on underlying assumptions clarifies the paradigmatic foundations of regeneration.
A key challenge in safeguarding planetary boundaries and enhancing biodiversity through regeneration is how modern human systems can better align with the regenerative potential of natural systems and begin to co‑evolve as integrated, regenerative living systems.
Photo: Henry Lesnussa Pixabay
