Nature State

I am currently exploring a new bioregional initiative, Nature State: A New Atlas of People and Place, to help meet the urgent need to find practical, decolonised and community-centered ways to create economic and social prosperity within the limits of our natural capital. We need to build bridges between systems thinking and systems change — not just on paper, but in communities, right now, where the effects of climate change and unchecked resource extraction are urgent and real.

Look around. Nation States are failing. Unfettered global capitalism is entering its end stage – albeit noisily, unwillingly, murderously and destructively. Nature States are proposed as critical units of social, cultural and economic organization and ecological responsibility. Nature State originates, gathers, shares and activates the best thinking and boldest actions that can be implemented in communities and regions confronting climate risks and seeking regenerative, place-based solutions.

It operates from a modest expectation that people the world over should be free to lead decent lives by having access to a fair share of their natural capital, and the right to defend themselves and their homes from government-enabled corporate freebooters who confuse profit with prosperity.

We need to look beyond the dysfunction of nation states to a future in which human activities on Earth are brought into greater harmony with natural systems that make our species’ survival even possible. In a sea of chaos, we need to find or create what Nobel Prize winning scientist Ilya Prigogine called “islands of coherence” that can point to better ways of organizing our societies and economies. 

This is not a naive premise. Nation States won’t give up their power easily, and nor will the holders of massive private wealth. But Nature States can grow within and without Nations. Nature States are unbounded by arbitrary lines on a map, defined instead by nature, culture and community.  As such, despite the continued power of Nation States, Nature States can act as powerful vessels for policy, investment, innovation, governance and public discourse that can bend the arc of human conduct to something more forgiving to each other and the Earth. We need to find those islands of coherence, map them, learn from them, replicate their successes and work for the day that every Nation State strives to be a Nature State, too. 

For eight decades, since the end of World War II, we have told ourselves that boundless economic growth, unchecked global capitalism and constant technological innovation will make our world safer, our citizens more secure, our societies more fair. In this current, disruptive global phase change, we need new stories, new narratives, new proofs of possibility and new institutions to pursue and manage the dramatic changes that our Nation States have proven incapable of making. Nature State exists to identify, catalyze and champion the many forms in which natural and human systems can co-evolve in mutually beneficial ways. A better world is there for the making.