What Is BioFi?

At its core, BioFi is a framework that enables the flow of financial capital and other multi-capital resources to the regeneration of ecosystems, culture, and communities in bioregions. More broadly, BioFi is also a philosophy rooted in and informed by: systems thinking, bioregionalism, living systems science, Indigenous ways of knowing, permaculture, the rights of nature, regenerative economics, nonviolence, decolonization, and social justice. 

‍

BioFi aims to catalyze the transformation of financial and economic systems from global, homogenized, abstract, and rooted in a reductionist paradigm to  place-based, community-owned and governed, relational, anti-fragile, aligned with living systems principles and Indigenous wisdom, and rooted in a Gaian (see the Gaia hypothesis) or whole systems worldview.

‍

There are a wide range of BioFi-aligned tools, templates, mechanisms, and approaches – a range of which are laid out in the 2024 book Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet. However, there are many more organizations that work in alignment with the patterns and principles of BioFi.

‍

Central to the BioFi approach are the following objectives:

• Decentralize financial resource governance
• Organize systemic portfolios of projects (across space, time, sectors, communities, and organizations)
• Deploy investment to catalyze the transition to bioregional, regenerative economies (that are less dependent on external financial capital and financial capital in general over time).
• Plan geographically in alignment with geological, ecological, and cultural patterns (rather than political boundaries)
• Work at nested geographical and systemic scales
• Work across long time horizons (in order to shift the ecology, culture, economy, and governance in a place to those aligned with living systems patterns and principles)
• Embrace complexity and relationality
• Work with the regenerative potential of life (see Capra and Kauffman et al.)

‍