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Curated experts in sustainability fields who can thoroughly elaborate their view based on their accumulated knowledge and experience

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Christopher Marquis

Professor
University of Cambridge

About

Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and the author of the award-winning books Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism and Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise.

Chris has written over 20 peer-reviewed academic articles and published over 50 Harvard Business cases. He received a PhD in Sociology and Business Administration from the University of Michigan and served as Vice President and Technology Manager at JP Morgan Chase before returning to academia.
Passionate about how academic research can help people around the world address our most significant challenges, he examines how some of the biggest crises of our day —climate change, inequality, and racism — are intimately connected with how our current form of capitalism has prioritized accumulating and concentrating wealth for the few affects the concerns and needs of everyone and everything else. His research and writing focus on the need to rebalance the interactions between corporations, governments, and civil society to deliver socially and environmentally beneficial outcomes to all. 

January 5, 2026

Ecology, Justice, Governance: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

Ecology, Justice, Governance: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.

Across finance, law, science, and technology, a shared tension emerges: the tools to address ecological breakdown exist, but their deployment is constrained by inequality, short-term politics, and contested notions of responsibility. Regeneration, in this context, is less about innovation and more about reordering who bears risk, who holds decision-making authority, and whose futures are prioritized.

The selection of news items this week confronts the rising economic toll of climate disasters, Africa’s deeply unequal climate burden, speculative solar geoengineering, and subtle ecological shifts that reveal how living systems are already reorganising themselves in response to accumulated warming. Also covered are sovereign debt and biodiversity in the Amazon, human rights–based climate thresholds, and the sidelining of climate science.

Scroll down for mood on these highlights and links to the underlying stories:

  • Regenerative Debt Finance – Debt-for-nature swaps as a tool for ecosystem protection, and whether debt leverage could support regeneration without financialising nature.
  • Rights-Based Transition – Framing climate change as a human-rights crisis, with legal accountability and “carbon space” as prerequisites for regenerative outcomes.
  • Science-Led Transition – Why regeneration depends on listening to climate science, long-term restoration, and protection against short-term political reversals.
  • Climate Justice Divide – How climate change amplifies inequality, and why regenerative practice must redistribute power, finance, and opportunity.
  • Disaster Cost Reckoning – $120 billion in climate disaster losses in 2025, underscoring the economic case for prevention, adaptation, and ecosystem restoration.
  • Unequal Climate Burden – Africa’s escalating climate impacts despite minimal emissions, and the limits of adaptation under debt and financing constraints.
  • Solar Tech Gamble – The risks of profit-driven solar geoengineering and the danger of technological fixes crowding out systemic decarbonization.
  • Ecological Rewiring – What shifting moss spore cycles reveal about long-term ecological adjustment to climate change.

Regenerative Debt Finance

Debt-for-nature swaps can be a regenerative finance tool that converts sovereign debt relief into long-term ecosystem protection, illustrated by Ecuador’s Amazon deal that trades cheaper refinancing for expanded conservation. The article explores whether China, as the world’s largest bilateral creditor through the Belt and Road Initiative, could redirect its debt leverage toward regeneration, while highlighting deep tensions around transparency, extractivism, and the risk of financializing nature rather than transforming development pathways.

Read more: “Countries Want Debt Relief for Conservation. Is China Ready to Play a Role?” (Inside Climate News)

Rights-Based Transition

Climate change is a human-rights crisis that demands a “just boundary” for warming and far deeper emissions cuts by wealthy societies to create “carbon space” for poorer communities to meet basic needs without compounding harm. Regenerative practice needs to manage natural resources in ways that restore climate stability as a collective public good, backed by stronger legal accountability (linking climate obligations with human rights) and attribution science to connect emissions to specific harms and displacement.

Read more: “How climate change is threatening human rights” (Global Issues)

Science-Led Transition

Ignoring climate science is a political failure that accelerates ecological collapse, while listening to scientists opens pathways for regeneration, from renewable energy expansion to habitat protection and species recovery. Regenerative practice can only be achieved through long-term restoration—securing habitats, rebuilding ecosystems, upgrading infrastructure like grids, and protecting the high seas—paired with accountability to prevent rapid, irreversible environmental destruction driven by short-term political decisions.

Read more: Our leaders must listen to scientists on climate change – or catastrophe is around the corner (Big Issue)

Climate Justice Divide

Climate change is an inequality multiplier that deepens global economic divides, with the poorest, especially in the Global South, women, and informal workers, bearing the brunt of climate shocks despite contributing least to emissions. Regenerative practices through climate justice solutions can redistribute power and resources: expanded climate finance, taxing carbon-intensive wealth to fund adaptation, inclusive green jobs, and community-led resilience that links ecological repair with economic equity.

Read more: Why Climate Change Is Deepening Global Economic Inequality (BW Businessworld)

Disaster Cost Reckoning

Climate disasters in 2025 caused at least $120 billion in economic losses, with heatwaves, wildfires, cyclones, floods, and droughts intensifying across four continents as global warming accelerates. We need to move beyond insured losses toward prevention and resilience—investing in ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation, and emissions reduction to curb escalating human, environmental, and economic damage.

Read more: 2025 One of Costliest Years for Climate Disasters: Report (Earth.Org)

Unequal Climate Burden

Africa’s minimal contribution to global emissions contrasts sharply with accelerating climate impacts that are reshaping livelihoods through heat, drought, floods, food insecurity, health risks, and large-scale displacement. Community-led restoration, farmer-managed natural regeneration, climate-smart agriculture, early warning systems, and expanding renewables are often overwhelmed by debt, inadequate climate finance, and rising loss-and-damage costs, making adaptation a race against worsening inequality.

Read more: YEAR-ENDER – How climate change has impacted Africa so far this century (Anadolu Agency)

Solar Tech Gamble

Private companies are advancing solar geoengineering plans—spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet—as a speculative response to accelerating climate impacts and stalled emissions cuts. However, these approaches raise concerns about profit-driven climate interventions, governance gaps, and the risk of entrenching technological fixes instead of restoring ecological balance through decarbonisation and systemic change.

Read more: Out of a superhero movie: Companies are coming up with plans to block out the sun (The Independent)

Ecological Rewiring

Climate change is revealed through an unexpected archive: decades-old military air samples showing that northern mosses now release spores up to a month earlier than in the 1990s, driven mainly by warmer conditions in the previous year. The finding underscores how living systems are quietly reorganising their rhythms in response to accumulated climatic change, offering new ways to observe long-term ecological adjustment rather than short-term disruption.

Read more: Scientists found climate change hidden in old military air samples (ScienceDaily)

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November 28, 2025

Biodiversity, Credibility, Community: This Week's Regeneration Research Digest

Biodiversity, Credibility, Community: This Week's Regeneration Research Digest

What the latest research reveals about regenerative practices

Across vineyards, scientific practice, agricultural finance, and rural communities, this week’s studies show that lasting ecological improvements depend on reconnecting ecology, knowledge, incentives, and social life.

Each piece highlights a part of this puzzle: vineyards where biodiversity rebounds when plant diversity returns; a call for biology to restore its integrative, natural-history foundations; carbon markets that can finance regenerative transitions when built on credibility and farmer benefit; and the social capital that ultimately determines whether regenerative practices endure. They remind us that regeneration works only when ecological design, epistemic balance, financial scaffolding, and social cohesion are aligned.

Dive into more details below:

  • Extensive vineyard management: Diverse groundcovers and reduced chemicals boost biodiversity and ecosystem services globally, amplified by semi-natural habitats.

  • Reclaiming biology’s core: A call to re-center natural history, taxonomy, and organismal insight as equal partners to modeling and molecular tools.

  • Carbon credits for regeneration: Credible carbon finance can turn regenerative agriculture into climate mitigation and rural livelihood infrastructure.

  • Regeneration is social: Trust, networks, and collective identity are the often-missing foundations enabling durable regenerative agriculture transitions.

Extensive Vineyard Management as a Nature-Based Solution

 

This Journal of Environmental Management review reframes vineyards, one of the world’s most pesticide-intensive farming systems, as a promising arena for nature-based solutions. Synthesizing 822 datasets from 221 studies across global wine regions, the authors show that extensive vineyard practices—vegetation cover, reduced pesticides, diverse cover crops—boost biodiversity and ecosystem services by an average of 14.2% compared to intensive management.

The meta-analysis highlights how reintroducing plant diversity into vineyard inter-rows catalyzes ecological recovery. High-diversity cover crops deliver the strongest gains, enhancing carbon sequestration (+37.8%), erosion control (+26.4%), soil fertility (+19.9%), and natural pest control (+16.4%). Crucially, the study positions vineyards within broader landscapes: semi-natural habitats act as amplifiers, significantly strengthening the positive effects of extensive management, especially for pest control, by serving as refuges and source habitats for beneficial species. The article ultimately argues that viticulture’s environmental footprint can be reduced not through technological fixes, but through ecological design: diverse groundcovers, fewer chemicals, and landscapes stitched with natural habitat.

Read more: Extensive vineyard management and semi-natural habitats increase biodiversity and ecosystem services: insights from a global meta-analysis (Journal of Environmental Management)

Reclaiming Biology’s Integrative Core

 

This essay argues that contemporary biology risks hollowing out its core by surrendering too much to the reductionist logics of mathematics and chemistry. The author critiques how ecological modeling, genomics, sequencing, and metabarcoding, while powerful, have come to dominate biodiversity research at the expense of natural history, taxonomy, and organismal understanding. The result is a field in which elegant equations and vast molecular datasets are mistaken for knowledge, even as species-level understanding erodes under the “taxonomic impediment.”

The article traces this drift to a hierarchy of prestige: predictive models and molecular tools are valorized, while descriptive, field-based, and contextual approaches are dismissed as old-fashioned. It highlights the dangers of substituting models, imputed traits, expert opinion, and machine-generated sequences for empirical observation—surrogates that risk reifying guesses as facts.

The essay calls for a rebalancing: reviving taxonomy, reintegrating molecular and ecological insights within holistic frameworks, prioritizing scenario building over rigid prediction, and embracing uncertainty and contingency—the very qualities that define living systems. Training and publishing structures must shift away from hyperspecialization so that biology can once again connect genes, organisms, and ecosystems within a unified natural history.

Read more: Biodiversity Is Neither Mathematics nor Chemistry (SCIRES-IT Special Issue)

Carbon Credits as Agricultural Infrastructure

 

This chapter, in the book Carbon-Negative Agriculture within the series of Sustainability Sciences in Asia and Africa (SAFS), frames regenerative agriculture (RA) as a core strategy for achieving carbon-negative farming systems across Asia and Africa. Against a backdrop of severe soil carbon loss and accelerating ecological degradation, RA is presented as a holistic approach rooted in minimizing disturbance, maintaining soil cover, increasing biodiversity, retaining living roots, and integrating livestock. These principles rebuild soil organic carbon, enhance water and nutrient cycles, and strengthen resilience to climate extremes.

A central contribution of the chapter is its detailed account of carbon credits and ecosystem service payments as financial mechanisms to scale RA. By outlining the full carbon credit pipeline—baseline assessments, digital MRV, verification, and participation in voluntary carbon markets—the authors show how carbon finance can create new revenue streams for smallholder farmers. Bundling credits with yield insurance, linking RA to corporate insetting, and aligning practices with national climate commitments further broaden the incentive landscape.

Technological tools—AI-driven carbon modeling, drones and IoT soil sensors, variable-rate input technologies, biochar, and microbial biostimulants—are positioned as essential to lowering monitoring costs and ensuring credible carbon accounting. Combined with supportive policies, localized frameworks, and farmer training, these interventions aim to transform agriculture into a driver of ecological restoration, rural prosperity, and climate mitigation across the regions highlighted in the SAFS series.

Read more: Policies and Technological Intervention for Regenerative Agriculture and Carbon Credits to Achieve Carbon-Negative Agriculture (Carbon-Negative Agriculture)

Regeneration Is Social

 

This Discover Agriculture review reframes regenerative agriculture by shifting attention from soils and yields to the social capital that makes regenerative transitions possible. Synthesizing 43 studies from an initial pool of nearly 400, the authors show that trust, networks, shared norms, and collective action are not peripheral—they are the infrastructure that sustains knowledge exchange, experimentation, and long-term adoption of regenerative practices.

Across diverse contexts, the review finds that social capital shapes RA through five interconnected dimensions:

  • knowledge exchange and learning systems;

  • community building and collective identity;

  • trust and relationship quality;

  • participation; and

  • organizational networks.

These relational dynamics determine whether farmers access new ideas, innovate collectively, build resilience, and engage with institutions. Yet despite their importance, the authors argue, social dynamics remain inconsistently integrated into RA policy, research, and evaluation frameworks. By positioning social capital as foundational rather than secondary, the article urges a more holistic view of regenerative transitions—one that treats community cohesion, peer networks, and local governance as critical drivers of ecological restoration.

Read more: Beyond soil and yields: a systematic review of social capital’s role in regenerative agriculture (Discover Agriculture)

 

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October 30, 2025

Climate, Nature, Economy: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

Climate, Nature, Economy: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.

As the lines between climate, nature, and the economy continue to blur, new forms of governance, finance, and accountability are beginning to treat ecological health as essential to stability, competitiveness, and collective resilience.

This week’s collection articles centers on the convergence of climate and nature agendas—from businesses integrating climate-informed strategy into core operations to governments and universities aligning ecological regeneration with governance and education. Together, they reveal how regenerative practice is shifting from isolated projects to embedded systems thinking—where accounting standards, policy integration, and Indigenous stewardship reshape what responsible leadership looks like in the Anthropocene.

Read below for highlights and links on the following topics.

  • Climate-Informed Advantage – Moving “beyond net zero” by embedding climate accountability across all business functions

  • Biodiversity Regeneration – How wildlife restoration drives natural carbon capture and forest resilience

  • Renewable Milestone – Renewables surpass coal for the first time, signaling a systemic energy transition

  • Campus Rewilding – Universities model regenerative land care through native planting and pesticide-free grounds

  • Aligning Climate and Nature – How integrated national plans can unlock climate–biodiversity synergies

  • Indigenous Co-governance – WHO’s Ottawa Dialogue centers Indigenous leadership in global ecological health

  • Climate–Nature Nexus – Embedding natural capital and biodiversity into fiscal and financial systems

  • Nature Accounting Standard – ISO 17298 brings biodiversity into the core of corporate accountability and governance

Climate-Informed Advantage

 

The article calls for businesses to move “beyond net zero” by integrating climate accountability across all operations rather than isolating it in sustainability departments. It argues that regenerative business practice lies in developing climate-informed strategies — embedding risk assessment, mitigation, and adaptation into every division from procurement to HR. Such systemic integration not only reduces legal, regulatory, and physical risks but also builds long-term market and resilience advantages.

Read more: Beyond net zero: Redefining climate accountability (World Economic Forum)

Biodiversity Regeneration

 

MIT researchers reveal that biodiversity loss undermines forests’ ability to regenerate and capture carbon, showing that tropical forests with healthy populations of seed-dispersing animals absorb up to four times more carbon than degraded ones. Their study highlights the regenerative practice of protecting and reintroducing wildlife to restore the “ecological infrastructure” that sustains natural forest regrowth and climate resilience.

Read more: Biodiversity: A missing link in combating climate change (MIT Technology Review)

Renewable Milestone

 

In the first half of 2025, renewables generated more electricity than coal for the first time, marking a major step in the global energy transition. Driven by rapid expansion in solar and wind capacity, renewables reached 34.3% of the energy mix, surpassing coal’s 33.1%, even as global demand rose. This milestone signals accelerating regenerative progress toward cleaner, more resilient energy systems worldwide.

Read more: Renewables have started generating more electricity than coal (World Economic Forum)

Campus Rewilding

 

Universities across the US are restoring biodiversity by replacing lawns with native gardens and eliminating synthetic pesticides. UCLA, Grinnell, and Prescott College exemplify regenerative land care through Green Grounds Certification, combining rewilding with organic maintenance to protect ecosystems and human health. These campuses model a holistic approach where education and ecology intersect, inspiring broader environmental stewardship.

Read more: Restoring Biodiversity at Centers of Learning (Earth Island Journal)

Aligning Climate and Nature

 

The article argues that integrating countries’ climate and biodiversity plans—Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Biodiversity Strategies (NBSAPs), and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)—can create regenerative synergies that enhance resilience and unlock financing. Using Belize’s mangrove restoration as an example, it highlights how ecosystem-based approaches serve both mitigation and adaptation, calling on COP30 in Brazil to lead global alignment across these agendas.

Read more: The Potential Impact of Aligning Biodiversity Efforts in National Climate Plans (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions)

Indigenous Co-governance

 

WHO convened the Ottawa Dialogue to co-create a Framework that centers Indigenous-led, regenerative stewardship—grounded in trust, reciprocity, FPIC, and Indigenous data sovereignty—linking biodiversity, territory, and health. The practice emphasized is co-governance: elevating Indigenous knowledge systems in policy and operations to restore ecological and community well-being, with outcomes feeding into CBD Article 8(j) processes and the WHO Traditional Medicine agenda.

Read more: Strengthening Indigenous-led engagement in global health and biodiversity governance (World Health Organization)

Climate–Nature Nexus

 

This policy brief argues that climate change and nature degradation form an interconnected “climate–nature nexus” that amplifies economic and ecological risks. It calls for regenerative economic governance—integrating natural capital accounting, green taxonomies, and biodiversity criteria into fiscal and financial policy—to build resilience and capture co-benefits across mitigation, adaptation, and conservation.

Read more: Understanding the climate–nature nexus and its implications for the economy and financial system (CETEx)

Nature Accounting Standard

 

ISO 17298, the world’s first international biodiversity accounting standard, establishes how organizations measure, manage, and report their impacts and dependencies on nature. Developed by the International Organization for Standardization, it moves biodiversity from CSR rhetoric into fiduciary duty—integrating ecosystem health into risk management, finance, and corporate governance. This regenerative shift makes nature a measurable asset within global business strategy.

Read more: Biodiversity Gets Its ISO Moment: Nature Accounting Arrives (Forbes)

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September 29, 2025

Labels, Treaties, Accountability: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

Labels, Treaties, Accountability: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

 What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.

 This week’s headlines spotlight the tug-of-war between regenerative ambition and the risks of greenwashing. The stories show how innovation and governance can unlock pathways for ecological renewal, while also underscoring how credibility and enforcement are crucial to ensuring those pathways deliver real impact.

The pieces below dig into the contested terrain of regenerative labels, the uneven landscape of corporate net-zero pledges, and the urgent need to define what “regeneration” actually means. They also highlight systemic levers—school meal programs tied to climate policy, scaling up regenerative organic farming across millions of acres, and consumer demand for authenticity—that could make regeneration more than just rhetoric. Together, they point to how regeneration’s future depends on both bold action and rigorous standards.

Here’s a roundup of articles and insights that dive deeper into these issues:

  • Whisky Waste Regeneration – Biotech startup turns distillery by-products into Omega-3 algae

  • Regenerative Label Risks – Why Regenified’s for-profit, in-house model threatens credibility

  • Net Zero Greenwashing – Many corporate net-zero pledges prove symbolic, not actionable

  • High Seas Treaty Milestone – Landmark ocean treaty enters into force in 2026 to protect biodiversity beyond national waters

  • Regenerative School Meals – Rockefeller pushes climate-aligned school nutrition

  • Defining Regeneration – Competing labels fuel confusion and greenwashing risks

  • Scaling Regenerative Organic – 320+ brands and 67,000 farms show that Regenerative Organic certification can scale

  • Beyond Sustainability – Next-gen consumers are demanding more than sustainability

Whisky Waste Regeneration

Scottish biotech startup MiAlgae is transforming whisky distillery by-products into microalgae rich in Omega-3s, creating a circular and regenerative alternative to fish-derived oils. By using waste streams to grow algae in renewable-powered bioreactors, the company reduces reliance on wild-caught fish, protects marine biodiversity, and develops a scalable, localized supply chain for aquaculture, pet food, and beyond.

Read more: From Whisky Waste to Sustainable Omega-3s: Cheers to Circularity (Sustainable Brands)

Regenerative Label Risks

This opinion piece critiques the Regenified certification, arguing that its for-profit structure, lack of transparency, and in-house verification undermine credibility in regenerative agriculture. Without independent governance and impartial standards, such labels risk enabling greenwashing and eroding consumer trust in genuinely regenerative practices.

Read more: The regenified label risks credibility of regenerative agriculture (Food Safety News)

Net Zero Greenwashing

A University of Birmingham study finds that many corporate net-zero pledges serve as symbolic reputation tools rather than genuine pollution-reduction strategies. By analyzing 1,200 sustainability reports, researchers showed that companies often lack concrete plans, leaning instead on image management, which risks fueling greenwashing unless backed by measurable, enforceable action.

Read more: New study uncovers major corporations’ deceitful practices: ‘Often used as a symbolic tool’ (The Cool Down)

High Seas Treaty Milestone

The High Seas Treaty has reached the required 60 ratifications and will come into force in January 2026, marking a landmark step in protecting international waters. The agreement sets binding rules to conserve marine biodiversity and create marine protected areas, aiming to restore ecosystems damaged by overfishing, pollution, and climate change. It is the first international treaty focused on safeguarding biodiversity in the two-thirds of the ocean that lie beyond national borders.

Read more: Key oceans treaty crosses threshold to come into force (BBC News)

Regenerative School Meals

The Rockefeller Foundation, alongside governments and global partners, is calling for school meal programs to be integrated into national climate policies and sourced through regenerative farming. By linking nutrition to ecosystem health, the initiative aims to improve child well-being, empower local farmers, and build climate-resilient food systems that sustain soil, water, and biodiversity.

Read more: Rockefeller Foundation Joins Call to Action to Integrate Regenerative School Meals into National Climate Policies (Rockefeller Foundation)

Defining Regeneration

This piece explores the battle over what “regenerative agriculture” means, centering on whether organic practices should be a non-negotiable baseline. It contrasts certification schemes (ROC, Regenified, A Greener World, Land to Market), highlighting debates over chemical inputs, tillage, and third-party verification, and how retailers like Whole Foods filter claims to curb greenwashing. With no single definition, it leaves farmers, retailers, and consumers navigating a fragmented system that risks both greenwashing and confusion.

Read more: The Battle Over ‘Regenerative’: Why Agriculture’s Hottest Term Has No Clear Definition (Observer)

Scaling Regenerative Organic 

A coalition of 320+ brands and 67,000 smallholder farms across 46 countries is proving that Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) farming can scale to deliver climate impact while boosting financial performance. With nearly 20 million acres under ROC practices, companies like Lundberg Family Farms and Dr. Bronner’s show how regenerative organic methods rebuild soil, cut chemical use, enhance biodiversity, and attract fast-growing consumer demand.

Read more: How Regenerative Organic Can Save The Planet—And The Food Industry (Forbes)

Beyond Sustainability 

In a Q&A with Gary Hirshberg, cofounder of Stonyfield Farm (a leading U.S. organic yogurt brand), the case is made that younger consumers now demand more than “sustainable” branding—they expect companies to actively regenerate soils, ecosystems, and communities. He argues that only Regenerative Organic certification, with its strict standards for soil health, animal welfare, and third-party verification, can deliver genuine climate impact and cut through greenwashing.

Read more: Why consumers are demanding more than just “sustainable” (Fast Company)

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August 20, 2025

Land, Livelihoods, Legacy: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

Land, Livelihoods, Legacy: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines

What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.

Regeneration is showing up in unexpected places—from the vineyards of Bordeaux, to citizen science platforms to AI-powered almond farms. I’ve been tracking how these shifts unfold across sectors, revealing both promising breakthroughs and persistent blind spots.

This week’s selection underscores the need to ground regenerative transitions in place-based, participatory approaches—whether in farming, energy, or finance. From food company scorecards that bring much-needed transparency to regenerative claims, to renewable energy projects that must do more to respect ecosystems and communities, these stories reveal the fine line between “green” and regenerative.

Here are this week’s highlights—curated in the hope that one or two might resonate, challenge, or inspire.

  • Regenerative Food Grading – How a new report scores food giants on real outcomes, transparency, and farmer support

  • Rethinking Renewables – How poor planning puts biodiversity at risk—and why local input matters

  • Regenerative Investment Model – DSM Land’s “Tree Model” ties conservation to accessible, purpose-driven finance

  • Citizen-Powered Regeneration – How iNaturalist users are helping rediscover species and restore ecosystems

  • Regenerative Terroir – Why winemakers are embracing soil-first practices for resilient, expressive vines

  • Soil Science for Resilience – Minnesota’s research shows regenerative practices rebuild soil and climate stability

  • Heat Threatens Pollinators – Rising heat kills key beetles, putting Indonesia’s palm oil at risk

  • Pollinators for Resilience – Regenerative cocoa practices boost yields and climate resilience without expansion

If you see any stories of note about these themes, please do be in touch!

Regenerative Food Grading

This report by As You Sow evaluates how 20 major food companies are implementing regenerative agriculture across their supply chains. It identifies a lack of universal standards as a key barrier to accountability and investor clarity, and introduces a scorecard assessing company transparency, farmer support, and measurable outcomes. The report aims to benchmark regenerative strategies and highlight best practices that contribute to healthier soils, biodiversity, and food systems.

Read more: From the Ground Up: Transparent Pathways to Regenerative Food Systems

Rethinking Renewables

This article calls for a more regenerative and localized approach to the energy transition, highlighting the unintended environmental and social harms of poorly planned renewable energy projects. In Spain, for instance, solar installations threaten olive groves, while offshore wind projects disrupt marine ecosystems. Experts advocate for participatory planning that safeguards traditional land uses and biodiversity, ensuring renewable energy is deployed with ecological sensitivity.

Read more: Experts urge rethink on renewable energy and its hidden environmental impact

Regenerative Investment Model

DSM Land’s “Tree Model” reimagines land ownership and investment as an ecosystem rooted in regeneration. Through a trunk-and-branches structure, it supports long-term conservation while incubating purpose-driven ventures—such as agroforestry, equine therapy, and youth education—that restore degraded land and serve communities. By lowering the barrier to entry and enabling investments from $100, DSM Land makes regenerative finance accessible while aligning capital with ecological restoration and community well-being.

Read more: DSM Land Launches Funding Campaign to Expand Revolutionary Tree-Based Investment Model that Combines Profit with Purpose

Citizen-Powered Regeneration

A new international study reveals how citizen-contributed wildlife photos on iNaturalist are transforming biodiversity research and conservation. By documenting species' ranges, behaviors, and even rediscovering lost species, the platform enables regenerative science that leverages everyday observations to restore ecosystems and protect biodiversity. Researchers highlight the vast, underutilized potential of this global crowdsourced data to support ecological restoration and biodiversity conservation.

Read more: Your nature photo might be a scientific breakthrough in disguise

Regenerative Terroir

Regenerative agriculture is gaining traction in the global wine industry, with vintners embracing soil-first practices like cover cropping, no-till farming, and agroforestry to build resilient ecosystems and enhance grape quality. From Bordeaux to California, winemakers report stronger vines, improved water retention, and more expressive wines—while organizations like the Regenerative Organic Alliance are scaling certification efforts. The movement redefines terroir to include the entire ecosystem, linking ecological restoration with premium wine.

Read more: Viniculture’s New Frontier: Regenerative Agriculture

Soil Science for Resilience

The University of Minnesota is spearheading regenerative agriculture research to restore soil health, enhance climate resilience, and improve water quality across the state’s farmland. Through initiatives like Forever Green and the Long-Term Agricultural Research Network, scientists are testing perennial crops, diverse rotations, and integrated livestock systems that rebuild the soil's physical, biological, and chemical integrity. Their work shows regenerative practices not only withstand extreme weather but also offer economic and ecological solutions for future farming.

Read more: Healthy soils, healthy environment

Heat Threatens Pollinators

Indonesia’s palm oil yields are under threat as rising temperatures endanger Elaeidobius kamerunicus, the key beetle species responsible for oil palm pollination. Researchers at ICOPE 2025 warn that heatwaves exceeding 43°C kill beetle larvae and disrupt pollination, jeopardizing a cost-effective, natural system. Experts advocate for regenerative practices such as habitat preservation and reduced pesticide use to protect pollinators and support long-term plantation health.

Read more: Indonesia’s Palm Oil at Risk as Rising Temperatures Kill Pollinating Beetles

Pollinators for Resilience

A new Oxford-led study shows that enhancing pollination through regenerative practices like maintaining leaf litter, reducing chemical inputs, and providing shade can boost cocoa yields by 20% while building climate resilience. Conducted across Brazil, Ghana, and Indonesia, the research highlights how biodiversity-centered strategies can future-proof cocoa production without expanding plantations, offering a nature-based solution to global chocolate supply threats.

Read more: New study highlights ways to future-proof cocoa production


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