ClimateCultures editor — and UK Architects Declare Manager — Mark Goldthorpe looks at new initiatives for regenerative design, a paradigm shift embracing principles of being a good ancestor, coevolving with nature and creating a just space for people.
2,330 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes
For the past few decades — certainly since before I began my career in environmental and climate issues — ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ has been the guiding principle behind local, national and global efforts to steer us away from greater destruction of our natural world. Language has changed over that time, not least in how we talk about ‘global warming’, ‘climate change’, ‘global heating’, ‘climate catastrophe’, the ‘Anthropocene’, ‘environmental justice’, ‘ecocide’, and so much more. But ‘sustainability’ has stuck — perhaps partly because this short word covers a host of meanings and so has the potential to bring disparate communities together around common concerns, albeit often working to different priorities.
The phrase ‘sustainable development’ emerged from the UN Brundtland Commission in 1987. It proposed a goal of “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainability here was conceived of as protecting a capacity for humanity to survive, even thrive, into a future that was no longer being undermined by our present acceleration of resource depletion, accumulation of waste and pollution and destruction of natural habitats and wildlife: sustainability as the ability to carry on. Part of the word’s appeal is to businesses’ powers of innovation and enterprise in ways that can sustain their profitability by diverting it to less damaging activities. At the same time, environmentalists could see it as a practical vehicle for delivering better nature conservation, greater recognition of the innate value of the world’s habitats, species and ecosystems, and an urgently needed move to ecoefficiency.
Although much debated at the time across a spectrum of opinions, from ‘deep green’ to ‘green capitalism’, the promise of sustainable development was that we could meet our needs both now and indefinitely into the future. A large banner under which to gather all our ambitions for a better world.
Has it worked? What have we been sustaining for the past 30 years? Our technological efficiency has improved, and movements to stimulate and accelerate popular and political action have flourished. But our waste and pollution, our energy demand and resource use, our habitat destruction and species extinction, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in our oceans and atmosphere have all continued to grow too, with all the impacts we imagined these would bring, and more. ‘Growth’ is still the dominant paradigm, even with sustainability as the supposed goal.
In 2023 the Stockholm Resilience Centre reported that we’ve now breached six of the nine planetary boundaries we rely on. Can we say that sustainability is succeeding? Should we say it has failed? Do we need an entirely new paradigm? What might that be?
From declaring an emergency…
Part of what that much-needed change might be is captured in the increasing presence of ‘regenerative’ in debates over the transition to a better, cleaner, more ecologically balanced and socially equitable future lived safely within planetary boundaries. And one part of that shift has been work that I’m excited to be associated with through UK Architects Declare.
That movement has been gaining momentum and reputation since long before I joined, part-time, as AD’s manager in 2021. The initiative’ was launched in May 2019 by Michael Pawlyn, founder of Exploration Architecture, and Steve Tompkins of architectural practice HaworthTompkins. As Michael put it at AD’s 5th birthday party last month, back in late 2018 he and Steve had a gloomy couple of pints together as they contemplated the latest and most depressing report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and how little concern there seemed to be in the architectural profession. They engaged a small group to organise a declaration of climate and biodiversity emergency. Their website very quickly attracted its first few hundred signatories and caught the imagination of the profession — not least because of its insistence on the need for change in our systems, not just (but also) in our behaviours. The declaration promoted a theory of change drawing on the work of Donella Meadows, who showed how the most effective way to change a system is through its higher ‘leverage points’: the paradigm behind the system and the mindset that sustains it, and the goals the system drives all of us towards.
This interest rapidly accelerated and expanded, spawning many related declarations across the built environment sector, around the UK and the globe. Today, more than 8,000 organisations have signed declarations in 28 countries under the banner of Built Environment Declares, and many other sectors have made their own declarations — including, of course, Culture Declares.
‘When AD started, pretty much no one outside of Sweden had heard of Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion had yet to hit the headlines, Doughnut Economics had only recently been published, the WellBeing Group of Governments had yet to form, China had yet to announce a date for decarbonisation, the idea of a Law of Ecocide, the Rights of Nature, or Future Generations legislation were all seen as distant dreams. And yet since then a lot of governments have actually implemented them.
‘And one area where I think all of us as signatories can enjoy some credit: five years ago hardly anyone was talking about regenerative design, and now everyone is. That’s something we’ve all created together — the potential for architects to reclaim our agency as shapers of the future, as integrators and systems thinkers, as people who want to be able to proudly look our children in the eye in ten years time and say “Yes, I saw this coming and this is what I did about it.”’
— Michael Pawlyn
UK Architects Declare works on a dual approach: providing practical support to its signatory practices so they can implement their 12-point declaration while operating in the current flawed economic and social system; and demonstrating how the system can be changed to one that works within our planetary boundaries and deliver social and environmental justice. The point, as Meadows demonstrated, is not to feed the paradigm that’s created our emergency by merely tinkering at its margins, but to build a new paradigm — in this case, based on regenerative rather than degenerative principles.
… to regenerative design for a better future
In its latest work, AD has developed a set of policies — Building Blocks — to transform the built environment, and guidance for architects and urban designers in a ‘work in progress’ Regenerative Design Primer. And, working with media partner Architecture Today, it has launched a new community initiative, the Regenerative Architecture Index. The Index will bring together, learn from and promote examples of regenerative activity at two levels: the practice and its projects. The Building Blocks address the need for government policies for resource efficiency, circular economy and social and natural infrastructure. These are based on foundations of climate literacy and climate leadership, alignment with well-being and planetary limits, and safeguarding future generations’ ability to act. Meanwhile, both the Primer and the Index promote clear principles for designers and businesses in the built environment sector: being a good ancestor, co-evolving with nature, and creating a just space for people.
Being a good ancestor is about a shift in mindsets to consider the truly long-term: thinking seven generations ahead and ensuring adaptability and flexibility for the future.
Co-evolving with nature is about recognising that we’re part of nature, within integral living systems, not separate from it: actively regenerating, learning from and working with natural systems.
Creating a just space for people is about providing social connection, economic opportunity and wellbeing for all: fostering a shared sense of stewardship where neighbourhoods can self-organise and build their resilience.
Together, these principles require innovative thought, designing for circularity and encouraging closed-loop energy, material and water cycles, and adopting ethical, inclusive and participative approaches.
The Primer makes a distinction between adopting these principles and continuing with the now conventional approach. Regenerative design transcends ‘sustainability’ in three key ways:
- From being ‘less bad’ to being net positive.
- From being just focused on humans to considering the whole web of life.
- From a mechanistic approach that can focus too exclusively on carbon (‘carbon reductivism’) to a more holistic and systemic approach.
Regenerative design mimics natural ecosystem processes, which keep cycling and transforming materials and grow healthier and more diverse ecosystems. It uses a systems approach to create resilient and equitable systems that integrate the needs of society with those of nature. This means looking beyond the boundary of a project or a specific site. By doing so, it delivers positive environmental and social outcomes, ensuring both human and planetary health.
— Regenerative Design Primer (p8)
Just as the May 2019 AD declaration of planetary emergency quickly attracted more support than the founders initially anticipated, in May 2024 the first iteration of the Regenerative Architecture Index gained an encouraging number and diversity of entries. Architecture Today and UK Architects Declare will be announcing the scheme’s inaugural results next month, with a special celebratory event and issue of AT’s magazine. AD will then work with participants to take a deep dive into their experiences and ideas. That learning, with feedback on the Regenerative Design Primer, will cycle directly into the next iterations of both Primer and Index next year, and no doubt spark new policy work and other initiatives.
Creative agency for change
For me, witnessing and supporting the huge amount of voluntary work that dedicated professionals — across AD’s steering group and others in small groups working to support architectural practices and engage policymakers — is energising and motivating. And the mounting realisation that not only do we need a new, positive paradigm but that one is possible and is actually being demonstrated is empowering and generates practical hope.
Another key distinction between regenerative and sustainability-driven approaches to change is that it is inherently creative: it calls on us to expand and engage our imaginations and to help design the difference we want to see. It is also an exercise in humility, recognising the world beyond our own self-centred horizons and timescales and drawing inspiration from others — human and more-than-human, and an enhanced sense of what the future can be and how its inhabitants too can flourish.
When I set up ClimateCultures in 2017, after working with the charity TippingPoint on immersive events for artists and scientists to explore creative responses to the emergency, it was out of a sense that to create change that seems hard or impossible, we need at least two things above all: a sense of agency and a sense of community or association. As I wrote in an article on ClimateCultutes, agency for change and the environmental imagination:
“We need to feel we can do something meaningful and that others are on board. Of course, we also need action itself, and increasing awareness of the problems. And these things are all interrelated: action, association, agency, awareness. Sometimes it’s personal action that comes first, providing the spark to taking more action as part of a community; these experiences help to grow both our personal and shared awareness of the issues, leading to yet more action, and so our agency builds and builds. It can be a virtuous circle, rather than the vicious cycle of frustration, disappointment and despondency.
“If there’s one thing that helps drive this virtuous circle and motivates change, I think it’s imagination. A sense that things can be different, that there are other ways of acting and living than we now take for granted. Even if we don’t know how to enact these differences, imagination gives us a new picture, casts new light on the old picture, or helps us realise that other people who we’ve barely acknowledged until now have pictures to share with us. Imagination is both an exploration and expansion of our horizons.”
As Culture Declares says, “culture can help stir up human response as well as breaking old habits and creating new stories and visions for our world … culture is what humans – and other species – do to create conditions for life to thrive. We can think in a new way about Culture as organised activities, so that we can create a Regenerative culture.”
Many ClimateCultures members and readers will also be signatories to Culture Declares or other declarations — Heritage Declares, Design Declares, and so on. And ClimateCultures would love to share your stories, examples and experiences. How does your work as an artist, researcher or curator draw on or inspire regenerative paradigms or goals? What creative works inspire you? How do you respond to the emergency and the history of sustainability-led approaches to tackle it? Where next?
Find more
You can find the original definition of Sustainable Development and much else about how it’s being implemented at the United Nations Sustainable Development pages.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has produced several reports on its planetary boundaries work. This has also been adapted by Doughnut Economics Action Lab to promote the need for a social foundation that ensures no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, as well as an ecological ceiling to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the planetary boundaries.
Donella Meadows published her highly influential paper Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System in 1999.
Michael Pawlyn has co-authored Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency with Sarah Ichioka, published by Triarchy Press (2021). They also host an excellent series of podcasts on the book’s themes.
You can find the Regenerative Design Primer and information on the Regenerative Architecture Index, as well as the Building Blocks manifesto and many other resources at UK Architects Declare. If you work for or with, or know people within architectural or other construction-related organisations, have they signed a shared declaration of climate and biodiversity emergency? You can find these at Built Environment Declares. Other declarations include Culture Declares, Heritage Declares, Design Declares and Business Declares.
You can read ClimateCultures, agency for change and the environmental imagination at my site. You might also like this 2017 post on a free ecololinguistics course that looks at the power of words such as ‘growth’ over our imaginations: The Stories We Live By.
Mark Goldthorpe