In its unique context, a specific place on the planet in Utah, the Pando Grove sprouted thousands of years ago from a seed the size of a pepper grain. The trees appear separate, but they're actually one tree. The 47,000 genetically-identical Quaking Aspens are interconnected as a single, ever-evolving ecosystem. A collective root system, hidden from view underground, spans 106 acres to enable the whole grove's health, adaptability, and longevity.
Imagine, for a moment, what it's like to be in Pando. Step into the forest through this virtual tour. You can also listen to Pando. Artist Jeff Rice made the audio recording. "As soon as the wind would blow and the leaves would start to vibrate, you would hear this amazing low rumble. The vibrations were passing through Pando's branches and trunks into the ground. It's almost like the whole Earth is vibrating. It just emphasizes the power of all of these trembling leaves, the connectedness of this as a single organism."
Can bioregions forming around the planet come to feel their connectedness? Earth is continuously weaving patterns of life at all scales. Bioregions themselves are actually already coherent – the people in them just have to see it, and live into that coherence.
Pando is a rich example of reframing what constitutes a single organism and what we think we see in any given moment. If we look closely, Pando may offer the wisdom to help us navigate through this global moment in human history to get back into balance with life itself.
We're building on the Pando Funding work of Rob Ricigliano, Systems & Complexity coach at The Omidyar Group and Network Director of the Governance Futures Network (GFN), and Anna Muoio, Co-Lead of the New Capitalism Project (NCP) and Founder of The Theory of We. We're grateful for the collaboration we started in January of this year.
This Fall, we're bringing together a Catalytic Cohort to create the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem – guiding funders, with practitioners, through a bespoke journey of action-learning. This isn't just theoretical talk. It's real, on-the-ground social and ecological regeneration work that's happening now.
Mother Nature abides by the laws of physics – and by extension, as part of the living world, so must we. We've already crossed several of the Planetary Boundaries. This is a predicament, beyond the usual incremental problem/solution approach on which traditional funding is based. Collapse cascades. Might we also be able to create cascades of resiliency? That's the ultimate funding challenge in this global moment.
We need to think whole-system – not just about climate. There are many terms we might use, but let's use polycrisis.
Our current polycrisis is a complex entanglement of climate, environmental, economic, political, technological, social, and health crises that requires not only a recognition of the multiplicity of crises, but the ways they interact. Critical dangers include breakdown outpacing comprehension, institutions unfit for purpose, and reality exceeding vision.
From a 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: "We require transformative change – a fundamental, whole-system redesign across technological, economic, social factors, including paradigms, goals, and values." Or, as we like to put it, #ChangeTheStory.
The new/old story is the story of Bioregional Earth.
I founded the Legacy Project in 2000, as the new millennium began, because I believe the work we're doing is the complex and vital legacy project of our time. We take a whole-system approach because Earth is a whole system and we're part of Earth, and because in the real world everything is connected to everything else. We can't continue to delude ourselves with a problem/solution mindset, that we can "fix" this or that in isolation.
A bioregion is the smallest actionable scale that maintains whole-system integrity. This is one of the most important ideas in this article. The bioregion is the real-world scale (not human-created boundaries like cities or nations, or theoretical constructs like economy or politics) at which life comes together and happens, at which humans can think and act sustainably, and into which and from which we can create cascades of resiliency (including creating food and material security, nurturing community relationships and decision-making, and affecting planetary processes through, for example, the water cycle).
The Greek root "bio" means life. A bioregion is your life place, that connects all life in your place. If you're thinking whole-system, then ideas like "individual wellbeing" are a contradiction in terms. "I" can't be okay unless "we" are okay (family, community), and we can't be okay unless the life systems around us are okay. This is ecopsychosocial wellbeing, encompassed in a bioregion.
Starting with local watersheds, a bioregion is defined through the geology, ecology, and culture (including Indigenous history) of a specific place. As Peter Berg wrote, a bioregion is both a "geographic terrain and a terrain of consciousness."
My bioregion, the Greater Tkaronto Bioregion (GTB) in Canada on the Great Lakes, was first defined by former Toronto Mayor and federal cabinet minister The Honourable David Crombie. In the 1980s, he led a Royal Commission on the Toronto waterfront. He learned about the term "bioregion" and realized that what happens on the waterfront is affected by the land around it. He expanded his work to look at the surrounding watersheds, and eventually published the seminal 1992 Regeneration report. Our work builds on his legacy.
From the report, the bioregion is "both a way of doing things and a way of thinking. It's not a new concept. Indigenous peoples have long understood their connectedness to the ecosystem – the land, water, air, and other life. Thinking about the whole bioregion helps focus attention on the interdependencies." As David Crombie also likes to say, "everything is connected to everything else."
If everything is connected to everything else, and we're in a polycrisis, then we need a whole-system approach.
Rob Ricigliano and Anna Muoio have spent several years exploring the idea of Pando Funding.
"There is a growing set of donors frustrated with [traditional] approaches and eager to experiment with how to resource deep transformation work. Pando Funding is a new paradigm in how philanthropic capital flows. Purposefully and powerfully designed for complexity, long time horizons, and collective system change. Pando Funding enables capital to be pooled and deployed across resilient system change networks, not just to fund fixed initiatives. It helps these networks launch aligned projects behind their shared vision and grow the enabling conditions for lasting transformation… It's not a fixed model, but a shared invitation to evolve how we fund – and, together, decide what matters."
— Pando Funding website
As highlighted in one of their articles, we see that Pando Funding moves from point-solution funding to financing system health. Instead of predictive, linear, and atomized, it's emergent, complex, and systemic. Instead of a "fixing" mindset, it's about a healing mindset. It fosters synergies, adaptability, and innovation. There's an emphasis on multicapital flows, collaborative power with those working on the ground, and accountability to seven generations (i.e. a long-term orientation).
We've been developing the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem since the beginning of this year. We started with the Pando Funding base – root Enabling Conditions (like a Core Team supporting aligned purpose, mapping, and the creation of a Bioregional Learning Center), along with a portfolio of interconnected Project Clusters, all working toward Whole-System Health (ecopsychosocial wellbeing).
To create the Bioregional Funding Pando Ecosystem, we merged this base with an intergenerational, bioregional approach, drawing on Joe Brewer's Bioregional Funding Ecosystem.
In keeping with Pando Funding, this is a multi-year, multi-donor model combining the best of many existing approaches to philanthropy: Emergent Strategy; Collective Impact; Multi-Donor Fund Pooling; Trust-Based Philanthropy; Flow Funding; Future-Focused Funding; Developmental Evaluation; Systems Complexity Research.
Through the Catalytic Cohort this Fall, we're helping create the next evolution in philanthropy.
Earth is our mother, and remembering that we both come from her and return to her opens up so many possibilities to move from a "fixing" mindset to a healing mindset – to heal ourselves, each other, and our world.
The Bioregional Funding Ecosystem brings together people and place, old and new story, Western science and Indigenous knowing, left and right brain, mind and body, spirit and heart. From Joanna Macy's work, this is the (whole-system) work that reconnects. It reconnects everything truly valuable that has been reduced into fragmented pieces in the modern world, including the planet itself.
Joe Brewer wrote The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth. In that book, it's clear that the pathway through polycrisis and cascades of collapse is neither straight nor clear.
We're also collaborating with Dr. Dan Longboat, co-founder of the Indigenous Environmental Institute at Trent University, and with First Nations in the GTB. He reminds us that the Prophecy of the Seven Fires of the Anishinaabe tells of a time when the waters become so poisoned that the animals and plants fall sick and begin to die. Much of the forests and prairies will be gone, so the air begins to lose the power of life. In this time, the time of the Seventh Fire, a new people will emerge from the clouds of illusion. They will be given a choice between two paths: a green path of life and a charred path of death. If they choose the green path, it's not as simple as just walking forward on the path. They will need to retrace their steps to pick up that which has been lost, broken, or forgotten. Important stories will be returned to them.
Systems complexity research shows us there are no simple, straight-line paths, no point-solution fixes, especially in a global predicament with a high degree of uncertainty.
As we design a Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem, what we can do is design simultaneously for conditions, interactions, and monitoring aimed in the right direction. The result? Moving toward whole-system health.
So, what takes shape is Enabling Conditions that support interconnected, strategic Project Clusters embedded in a continually-monitored Context so that action and learning (by funders and those on the ground) adapt in real time.
The idea of context becomes especially important since a bioregional approach is very much dependent on context – the real place/bioregion in which you live. Remember that Pando has thrived for thousands of years in its own unique place in Utah.
This isn't solely left-brain work, so this is a right-brain depiction of the Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem. We wanted it to feel alive and dynamic, inviting you to explore, and maybe even creating some mental messiness to help break rigid patterns of thinking. Some interpretation:
What does a Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem look like in a specific bioregion, like the GTB?
This is a pull-out of the Enabling Conditions and Project Clusters for the GTB Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem. Note that this isn't a Theory of Change, but an actual description of work happening now on the ground.
Enabling Conditions start with a Core Team that convenes, weaves, sensemakes, holds processes, and enables strategy. It supports right relationship within and between groups, mapping, and grassroots decision-making.
We've been working over the last three years to strategically weave together a Portfolio of Project Clusters for both social and ecological regeneration (people in place). We're creating parallel structures and processes with a view toward Horizon 3. In the Project Clusters, you see everything from watershed and large landscape regeneration on the far left to economy, education, and health as you move across to the right. We've also left an emergent space so that we intentionally look for what we might not initially see.
Note that work on something like economy, for example, can't happen in isolation. We can only work effectively on regenerative economy when it's nestled in relationship with the other themes/project clusters and the larger context of the bioregion.
Working on a bioregion itself isn't enough.
The focus on organizing individual bioregions is just part of the story. The other part of the story is that we have to do it together – because Earth is a whole system. A whole-system cascade of resiliency from place-based efforts happens as bioregions are interconnected in a planetary network of learning to regenerate Earth.
This is already happening as bioregions on five continents are building relationships in the Design School for Regenerating Earth. We're working collaboratively with co-founders Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple.
A key feature of the Catalytic Cohort this Fall to create the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem is that we're modelling bioregional collaboration for scale-linking impact. The GTB (supporting the Great Lakes Basin as the next scale up), with a Core Team that includes myself and Brian Puppa, is a sister bioregion with Barichara (supporting seven territories in the Northern Andes of Colombia), led by Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple.
This is a meaningful North/South, Eagle/Condor collaboration. The GTB and Barichara inform each other. We share five critical themes to create coherence in the work across bioregions, while each bioregion retains its unique context and identity. Projects are clustered under the five themes of governance, regenerative economy, health, regenerative education, and ecological regeneration (in the GTB this theme is broken down into subthemes).
What does this look like in practice? Some examples…
In the GTB, we have a Bioregional Learning Center network that includes the Conservation Authorities (organized by watersheds), local universities, environmental programs, farms, libraries and schools. We're working with all 13 Conservation Authorities in the GTB to coordinate hundreds of watershed and large landscape projects. We're doing detailed GeoAI land cover mapping of the bioregion for planning and monitoring, that will be used by the 100+ municipalities in the GTB. This includes a socio-cultural layer created using Cynefin's SenseMaker software. We have partnerships for backyard and agricultural regeneration. We have deep Indigenous knowledge interaction, working with Dr. Dan Longboat at the Indigenous Environmental Institute at Trent University and the eight First Nations in the GTB.
Similarly in Barichara, they have a learning ecosystem that encompasses a regenerative school for children, community programs, and a communications team for strategic storytelling to help the public understand local regenerative work. They're doing reforestation and watershed restoration work that includes a Syntropic Agroforestry Collective, Origen del Agua Nature Reserve (a demonstration/learning site for restoration of heavily degraded land), and Bioparque Móncora (a community forest and sanctuary). They're working on geospatial mapping identifying strategic priority areas and supporting participatory processes with 30+ local initiatives. They're developing Integrated Landscape Management for territorial-scale planning. They're building local identity respecting the ancestral lands of the Guane People.
Both the GTB and Barichara have fully-funded, experienced Core Teams with a network of trusted relationships (Enabling Conditions). Barichara has been in development since 2020; the GTB since 2023.
Both have a strategically woven Portfolio of Project Clusters ready to fund. Several projects are already underway – including the $12.5 million (over 5 years) GeoAI land cover mapping project in the GTB as a model for other bioregions, and the $5 million territorial regeneration plan in Barichara.
One of the great challenges for Earth regeneration is how financial resources flow into, across, and between bioregions around the planet. Patterns of similarly-structured, place-based work – modeled by the GTB/Barichara Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem collaboration – show how we can effectively fund bioregional work.
Each bioregion has a Portfolio of Projects clustered into five themes (or some similar variation). This scale-links to the sub-continental level, like the seven territories in the Northern Andes, each with their own local teams using similar structures and themes to those developed in Barichara, and collaborating with each other.
Then that links to the Earth Regeneration Trust, which began last year by flowing funding into six regions.
This coherent whole-system approach lays a foundation for cascades of resiliency to begin to take hold around the planet.
Will we choose the charred path or the green path?
Join us to #ChangeTheStory around how we organize and fund social and ecological regeneration to heal ourselves and our planet.
If everything is connected to everything else, and we're in a polycrisis, then we need a whole-system approach.
This Fall, the GTB/Great Lakes Basin and Barichara/Northern Andes are bringing together a Catalytic Cohort to create the first Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem – guiding funders, with practitioners, through a bespoke journey of action-learning.
As NATO asks nations to commit 5% of GDP for war, the Bioregional Pando Funding Ecosystem, and the Earth Regeneration Trust, enable funding to flow for the regeneration of life.
We already have two major US foundations participating in the cohort. Other funders interested in participating are asked to provide a minimum amount of funding, de-risked and leveraged by the two Founding Funders. The cohort will run over a couple of years, with engagement tailored to your schedule.
Leaning into the wisdom of the Pando Grove, you'll increase your comfort and skill with funding whole-system work, understand the power of the bioregional scale, and experience how projects are more effective with Enabling Conditions and how Project Clusters multiply impact.
You'll engage in real-time interaction between Western science and Indigenous ways of being/doing.
You'll participate in robust storytelling to share with your stakeholders and the public.
You'll have an option for an immersive experience in the GTB and/or Barichara.
This Catalytic Cohort will be transformative, shifting not only your thinking, but your heart and your spirit.
You will help co-create the next evolution in philanthropy to meet the global moment. This is our moment – together.
Reach out to us at the Legacy Project to discuss the Pando Catalytic Cohort
