Good Growth is a thesis for supporting people and ideas that focus on intentional impact rather than superficial accreditations. It's the movement from extractive to regenerative relationships with ourselves, our community and our planet.
Introduction
We're in a time of transition between models of how value is created, owned, transferred, and as such have a unique opportunity to ensure the next stage of humanity is one that is in the service of the greater interconnected, interdependent whole.
Good Growth is how we hope to develop as humans to create ever increasing value and richness to the world around us — from the inanimate material world and the essential natural world, to the intricate social, cultural and economic dynamics that we have created. The wider our accounting of the world, and the deeper our relationships with it, the more likely we are to be growing well.
A community engaged in Good Growth develops creative methods to be self-sustaining while also improving the planets capacity to provide ever more value for the living world (and us too!). The more expansive its view of the world and the more intimate its relationships with it, the more likely it is to develop in positive ways.
To realise this, we established what our own priorities were as a community, and place our own decision-making framework in the context of this worldview; based on a belief that new technologies can ensure what is next is better than what has come before:
- To focus on regenerative projects that contribute to culture
- To support projects in “capitalisms blind spot”
- To ensure projects get a foothold in the future through engaging in new technologies i.e. Web3 and AI
World Wide Wonder
All of human social and financial activity depends on the life support systems of the natural world. One way of viewing the areas in which our activities have impact is to think in terms of “capitals”; at a basic level, there are three, but a more expansive version includes a load more:
- Natural capital — This refers to anything from the invisible microorganisms in the soil to the largest plant (a self-cloning seaweed the size of Cincinnati!). All deserving respect, love in their own right, but are also the building blocks of an environment that supports among many other wonders, humans. Yaay.
- Social capital —This refers to the networks, relationships, culture and understandings that allow people to cooperate. It also includes the ways of relating between people that allow us to coordinate to fulfil our material, spiritual, emotional and health needs.
- Financial capital — This refers to money or other human-created instruments that allow us to facilitate and coordinate activities at physical, geographical and temporal scales beyond the immediate by creating the capacity to accumulate, store, transfer and exchange value.
These are not actually distinct and are in constant interaction and flow. While it may be popular to say money is the root of all evil, the truth is that it is an incredibly useful tool. The problems emerge when the financial world takes priority over the other worlds, when the value created in the financial world is used to justify the negative impacts of our actions in the other worlds.
It is the interaction of all these capitals that determines the course of our destiny as humanity and more widely, life
As people, communities, or organisations, all our activities have an impact on the world. We are in a relationship with the world, and it is the nature of that relationship that establishes whether we are practising Good Growth. We think that we should strive for regenerative relationships to all the capitals and probably those we don’t even know about, like hedgehog spirituality 🦔
Regenerative Relationships
Good Growth requires us to be in a regenerative relationship with the world (or to be trying our best to get there). The regenerative relationship is one that we are largely unfamiliar with (there are communities that have retained the knowledge of this relationship — but they have been sidelined, denied, oppressed). The regenerative relationship is one that seeks to improve the world around us, to play our part in it, rather than contain it to play a part in our endeavours.
We should aim to progress our relationship from extractive to regenerative:
- Extractive and harmful
- Minimising Harm
- Zero Harm
- Positive
- Regenerative
The examples below do not necessarily mean that the organisation or approach reflects all of its interactions, but give an idea of what that type of relationship looks like.
- Extractive and harmful: only see the elements of the capital that serve our purposes and create harms within that capital and others. We reduce the richness of the world to the one single dimension in which we can extract value — usually reducing to the financial dimension.
Example - In the music industry, it is common to set up new, young musicians on extractive contracts. This might involve a large, seemingly generous advance. But there is an expectation that this is paid back by the musician, and they’re rights to the music they themselves have created are stripped from them. This structure comes from the financial imperatives of the industry.
Example - Consider fossil fuel industry. It transformed the world, boosted productivity, helped build cross cultural connections. But at a cost. The industry was among the first to understand the impact of its activities on climate, but hid this, in order to maximise the financial returns of its existing investments. The result is a climate that is rapidly destabilising and the industry itself is at risk of having “stranded assets” - investments it can never recoup because they have been regulated against.
- Minimising harm: Requires an acknowledgement of the harms caused. The best version of this is design of business models to minimise impacts in the first place. There is some debate about whether “net” minimisation - where the reduction of harm happens indirectly through some kind of an offset - is a useful way to minimise or might excuse failures to design for minimisation.
Example - Gambling companies, casinos design their games, websites, shops and betting opportunities to drive user engagement and retention. The number of people whose lives are destroyed through gambling addiction has reached all time highs. The gambling industry sets up a campaign to raise awareness of addiction - rather than change their incentives, gamification and design.
Example - Sewers running into riversHarm has been significantly reduced since the days of open sewers that ran straight into streams, rivers, and the sea. But sewers in the UK still regularly overflow and no river in the UK is clean enough to swim in, with regular fish die offs, and decreased life in them because the financial cost of infrastructure is prioritised over the cost to present and future life.
- Zero harm: Business models that design out all negative impacts. There is some debate about whether “net” minimisation - where the reduction of harm happens indirectly through some kind of an offset - is a useful way to minimise or might excuse failures to design for zero harm.
Example - Carbon offsets. When a company offsets its carbon emissions. It is, in that one domain, achieving a net zero harm. It would be better to design out the carbon emissions in the first place.
Positive: Designing business models that have no harm and in addition have positive impacts.
Example - Charitable activities, youth programmes, where financial capital is turned into services that improve people’s social, cultural, spiritual capital. Sometimes as a consequence certain outcomes improve to the point that the funds are recouped through increased tax base, decreased costs to the health system.
- Regenerative: Designing business models that strengthen the systems it interacts with to develop their capacity to generate ever greater benefits to life across all capitals.
Example - Regenerative fishery Veta la Palma has become a sanctuary for birds to visit in an ever harsher landscape by returning land that had been drained and overgrazed into managed marshes. Instead of scaring off the migrating birds which eat the fish that is their product, they pride themselves on the birds arrival. They bring sustainable and purposeful jobs to the area. Consistently invest in developing further products that improve the fish yields and bird wellbeing.
Conclusion
As a species we have done spectacularly at improving humanity’s capacity and lives. Our models have brought us a long way. But now we’re seeing that those models too were limited, and that ultimately we are part of the natural world, we are nature. We should strive to return to our place within it - yes, equipped with our knowledge and tools, but to improve it for all living beings. Culture, along with technology is part of the toolset with which we can approach the challenges approaching and try to avoid future ones.
As we grow and evolve, our collective understanding of Good Growth will also evolve. We’re already looking forward to what this may look like in the future, what it means to be regenerative across all the capitals that form a part of our world and social activity, and engage with anyone who shares our goal for redefining growth … so please get in touch if you’d like to get involved with our mission 💚