Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet is the foundational publication of the global BioFi Project, making the case for a new layer in the global financial architecture through the creation of Bioregional Financing Facilities to serve every bioregion on Earth.
Published in 2024 by regenerational economist Samantha Power, the book proposes that BFFs can drive the decentralization of financial resource governance, the design of project portfolios for systemic change, and the transition to a regenerative economy. The publication argues that BFFs have the potential to become the connective tissue between increasingly concentrated pools of financial capital and the networks of community organizations, land stewards, and regenerative projects operating within bioregions worldwide.
Core Argument
The book begins with a critical observation: while awareness of the ecological crisis is growing and financial actors are beginning to direct capital toward regeneration, there is significant risk that if these resources flow through the existing financial architecture, they could lead to further commodification, privatization, and centralization of natural assets and wealth. Where resources are spent, how financing is structured, and who gets to make those decisions matters as much as the amount of capital deployed.
BFFs address this risk by enabling strategic, integrated capital raised from a variety of sources to flow to aggregated portfolios of systemically coordinated regenerative projects. In return, regeneration benefits flow back to investors in a community-determined, non-extractive way. The publication positions this infrastructure as necessary to put finance in service to life and Indigenous wisdom.
What the Book Covers
The publication is comprehensive in scope, covering the theory, design, and implementation of Bioregional Financing Facilities. It includes detailed templates for three types of facilities: Bioregional Trusts, Bioregional Investment Companies, and Bioregional Banks. It examines governance and capital allocation frameworks, innovative financing mechanisms including eco-credits, nature-based currencies, participatory grantmaking, and bioregional tithing. The book includes twelve case studies from bioregional organizing and finance initiatives worldwide, including Regenerate Cascadia (Case Study 9).
Relevance to Cascadia BioFi
Cascadia BioFi is one of the first practical implementations of the BFF model described in this publication. Regenerate Cascadia participates in the BioFi Project's Cultivator Cohort and is actively applying the framework to the design of the Cascadia Regeneration Fund, the development of flow funding pilots, and the creation of community governance structures across ten landscape groups. The Cascadia program serves as both a case study and a testing ground for the ideas advanced in this book.
BFFs can become the connective tissue between increasingly concentrated pools of financial resources, locked in the extractive economy, and the mycelial web of regenerative projects and organizations worldwide. Through BFFs, we believe we can put finance in service to life.
Samantha Power, Bioregional Financing Facilities