Regeneration and Care: A Paradigm Shift

Apr 15, 2025 | Abigail Robinson and Emilia Stark

Interlocking Crises and Old Paradigms

A growing number of communities worldwide are affected by a changing climate, widespread harm to the environment, and the risks of insecurity and violence that accompany these developments. With its focus on the links between conflict and the environment, environmental peacebuilding is more important than ever, yet faces an increasingly challenging context. Global conflicts have doubled over the past five years, with a 25% increase in conflict events from 2023 to 2024. Ecologically, the world is experiencing a “triple planetary crisis” driven by an accelerating overuse of natural resources. A systematic and coordinated anti-gender backlash is influencing legislation and policies, affecting societal structures, and undermining the work of women activists, human rights defenders, and peacebuilders. 

Underpinning these trends are patriarchal and colonial paradigms that operate on the basis of extraction and domination. The current context is a visible reminder of the extent to which the systems that shape our societies have become detached from what would actually create peace and prosperity. Profound changes are also occurring in the international order, from the humanitarian and development sectors to the global economy. While major changes to dominant paradigms are long overdue, some of the changes we see at the moment are following a path that is likely to contribute to human suffering. 

At the same time, collapse and chaos also create opportunities to build momentum around alternative paradigms that can reverse the depletion of natural resources and social capital that contribute to cycles of violence and conflict. Here, we want to highlight two frameworks we see as valuable alternatives to paradigms that encourage continued extraction from both women and the environment: regenerative approaches and the ethics of care.

Reversing Depletion through Regenerative Approaches

Regeneration goes beyond sustainability through a focus on replenishing what has been used. As Mang and Reed have highlighted, regenerative approaches seek not only to slow environmental degradation, but to design human systems that co-evolve with natural systems. They are grounded in the idea that humans are part of nature and can learn from observing how healthy ecosystems function. Thriving ecosystems in nature share key qualities or characteristics that are equally meaningful when we think about human organisations and systems, and that inform some of the key principles of regenerative approaches: 

  • Regeneration is in part about taking systems to their next level of health and potential. Systemic health and wellbeing require a focus on everyone and everything in the system, rather than attending only to the needs of humans, or to the needs of certain parts of society. 
  • Healthy systems are characterized by open flows and exchanges, rather than extraction, accumulation, and waste.
  • The quality of our relationships matters, whether with one another or with the natural world around us. Change is continual; it is relationships more than specific outputs or accomplishments which provide the strength, resilience, and creativity we need to continue adapting and evolving. 
  • Living systems are always part of a greater whole – projects and initiatives are never just about direct results, but also about contributing to the evolution of the next level of the system (e.g., a community, province, or bioregion). 
  • The environment in which we live is a stakeholder in all we do, rather than something we simply act upon or take from. This is the idea of “partnering with place” which encourages us to recall our identity as participants in the natural world.

Regenerative approaches are not just about repairing harm done to the environment; their focus on restoring systemic health and wellbeing has led to their being piloted across multiple sectors including agriculture, finance, and development, with promising results. Farmers have seen regenerative approaches restore local soil health, with crop yields exceeding expectations. In regenerative finance, initiatives like the slow money movement are reconnecting investors to local communities and farmers rather than complex global markets that obscure the destination of invested funds, which in the worst cases are actively doing harm through the environmental and social impact of corporations. Regenerative development projects have helped communities rediscover their identity in connection with local ecosystems as the foundation for improving environmental, economic, and social conditions.

Regenerative approaches are ultimately about looking at potential, examining the unique value we add to the systems we are part of, and reimagining the world by creatively engaging with a broader scope of possibilities. Whereas sustainability seeks to minimize harm, regeneration reaches further to undo the damage done, renewing ecosystems, relationships, and ways of living that have been disrupted by colonialism and capitalism. This “requires fundamentally altered ways of thinking, acting, and relating between people and planet.” Similar to treating a disease, regeneration focuses not on healing the symptoms but on understanding the underlying condition, and thus is deeply systemic in its approach. 

Revitalizing Systems through the Ethics of Care

In a world moving toward ecological collapse, regeneration has been referred to as “the new currency.” But the principles underpinning regenerative approaches are not new and are closely connected with other models including the ethics of care. Joan Tronto, a political theorist behind care ethics, has argued that because everyone ultimately needs care, a focus on care highlights vulnerabilities that the prevailing system tends to overlook or frame as weaknesses. Because of this nexus, little attention is paid to care in politics; it draws too much attention to our own vulnerabilities. Yet democracy can actually be revitalized by putting care responsibilities at the center of democratic political agendas so our systems of governance are not just about sustaining the economy, but about allocating care responsibilities equitably. Further, Tronto notes that: 

Connecting Regeneration and Care

To relate to the world regeneratively also means to relate to the world through an ethics of care. Both concepts are concerned with re-thinking and re-constructing our relationships with each other and the ecosystems of which we are a part. They ask us to focus on what brings us together, our existence in the world and symbiosis with nature, and engage identities that acknowledge our interdependence as members of society and as part of a finite biosphere that only has so much to give. Regenerative approaches also inherently understand that only where human beings have a direct relationship to the land will they embark on a journey of care, seeking to restore and revitalize it. This occurs locally, where care and place meet. The idea that we are not separate from the land we live on, and need to care for it as we do for ourselves, is beautifully encapsulated in the way some indigenous communities define culture as “being like our place.”

All of us live and thrive through relationships of care, yet in Western ontologies care has traditionally been understood as a feminine quality, with gender norms that disproportionately attribute to women the ability to nurture. However, as Butler points out, gender is performative, meaning it is constructed and not inherent to our beings. If we are to effectively address the interlocking crises we face today, it’s clear that care for one another and the environment cannot be the exclusive purview of either the feminine or the masculine. We need a shared sense of responsibility and stewardship that breaks with gender norms to realize the full potential of everyone in society to prevent ecological collapse. 

The systems that shape our world are complex and continually changing and evolving. Wahl has emphasized that a regenerative mindset requires us to be comfortable with not knowing where system change might take us; the questions are as important as the answers. With this in mind, we pose the following questions for further exploration by those working at the intersection of the environment, gender, and peacebuilding: 

  • By engaging with unifying identities – for example, humans as participants in continually evolving ecosystems – could the paradigms of regeneration and care give us a different starting point for navigating the polarities contributing to conflict and environmental harm today? 
  • Could greater levels of gender equality be a natural outcome of regenerative approaches that do not focus explicitly on gender, but rather on restoring systemic wellbeing, replenishing ecosystems, and strengthening relationships and networks? 
  • What would it look like to mainstream regeneration and care in global agendas like the SDGs? What role could this play in accelerating and scaling up positive changes?

Ultimately, both regeneration and care remind us of our own agency, with regenerative approaches emphasizing that change at the most local or micro level of living systems can catalyze evolution at higher levels. And at a time when it seems easy to feel powerless, agency matters. The principles at the heart of regenerative approaches and the ethics of care are central to a paradigm shift that we would argue is already underway, even as old paradigms might seem more powerful than ever. They are practical and profound, and can inform our understanding of both potential and priorities as we (re)negotiate the structures that underpin governance, economies, and societies in the coming years – without negotiating human dignity or ecological wellbeing. 

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Abigail Robinson is an expert in international peace and security whose current work focuses on environmental security and regenerative approaches to governance. Her past experience includes leading research on security sector responses to climate and environmental risks, supporting governance reforms in countries affected by conflict, and negotiating disarmament treaties. She is a member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and the Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace community of practice. 

Emilia Stark is currently pursuing her graduate studies in Political Science. She has a strong interest in decolonial and feminist thought, which inform how she approaches questions of power, representation, and lived experience in politics. Her research focuses on themes of migration, emotion, and identity, particularly in relation to displacement and the politics of belonging.