Nature, Capital, Tensions: 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 selections focus on how nature, capital, and corporate sustainability are being reframed under growing political and ecological pressure. We look at the widening ESG divide between Europe and the US, the rise of nature as an economic priority, and the risks of under-disclosed biodiversity dependence. We also touch upon Canada’s contested nature strategy, circular approaches to electronics, the case for “greenshouting,” and the overlooked importance of soil biodiversity.
In addition, this week, take a listen to my conversation with Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation, where we explore both the potential and limits of purpose-driven business. Hollender shows how sustainability goes beyond “green” products, requiring education, health-centered design, and deeper engagement with consumers in their everyday lives.
At the same time, his experience highlights the structural tensions at the heart of this work: efforts to build employee ownership and values-driven culture often clash with traditional investors and governance models. The conversation ultimately reframes regeneration as a systems challenge that requires not just better companies, but changes to the broader rules shaping business itself.
Read below for highlights and links on the following topics:
ESG Divide: How Europe and the US are moving in opposite directions on sustainable investing
Nature Economy Shift: Why ecosystems are becoming central to economic resilience
Hidden Nature Risk: The biodiversity dependencies most businesses still fail to disclose
Capitalizing Nature: Canada’s attempt to finance conservation through market logic
Circular Electronics Shift: Extending hardware life to cut waste, costs, and emissions
Greenshouting Shift: Why companies may need to communicate credible sustainability work more openly
Nature Disconnect Crisis: The long-term decline in human connection to nature
Soil Life Crisis: Why soil biodiversity is essential to food, climate, and resilience
ESG Divide
Political and regulatory divergence is reshaping sustainable investing, with European pension funds doubling down on ESG while US investors retreat under political pressure and shifting priorities. Major asset managers like BlackRock are caught navigating conflicting expectations, as ESG becomes both normalized in practice and increasingly contested in rhetoric across regions
Read more: Transatlantic divide widens over investment approaches to ESG (Financial Times)
Nature Economy Shift
Nature is emerging as a core pillar of economic resilience, with nearly half of global GDP ($44 trillion) dependent on ecosystems that are now under severe strain from biodiversity loss and climate shocks. The Climate Innovation Forum’s Nature Stage focuses on translating this recognition into action: mobilizing investment, embedding nature into risk management, and scaling nature-based solutions as both a resilience strategy and a major economic opportunity
Read more: Nature at the Heart of Economic Resilience: Why the Nature Stage Is the Most Important Room at CIF26 (Climate Action)
Hidden Nature Risk
Businesses overwhelmingly depend on biodiversity yet fail to treat it as a material risk, with fewer than 1% disclosing their impacts despite growing evidence that ecosystem degradation directly threatens supply chains, costs, and operations. The gap reflects a systemic misframing of nature as peripheral, though emerging tools like TNFD and real-world cases such as Coca-Cola show that integrating nature into core strategy can enhance resilience and efficiency
Read more: Every business depends on nature. Fewer than 1% disclose this relationship. (Oxford Economics)
Capitalizing Nature
Canada’s new nature strategy under Mark Carney reframes conservation as an economic asset—mobilizing billions in funding, expanding protected areas, and attracting private capital by assigning value to ecosystems. Yet critics argue that this “capitalist” approach risks commodifying nature, sidelining Indigenous perspectives, and enabling continued industrial expansion under the guise of conservation, leaving unresolved tensions between economic growth and ecological protection
Read more: Can Mark Carney’s ‘capitalist’ Nature Strategy protect a natural world in steep decline? (The Pointer)
Circular Electronics Shift
Extending the lifespan of industrial electronics through repair, refurbishment, and secondary markets offers a practical pathway to reduce e-waste, cut costs, and strengthen supply-chain resilience amid component shortages. By shifting from replacement to reuse, companies can lower embodied carbon emissions and avoid costly upgrades, demonstrating how circular economy strategies deliver both environmental and operational benefits
Read more: Circular economy in electronics: Extending hardware life (Robotics & Automation News)
Greenshouting Shift
Corporate sustainability is entering a “doom loop,” where political backlash and fear of scrutiny push companies to stay silent, even as real climate risks intensify, undermining transparency and slowing progress. The article argues firms should instead embrace “greenshouting,” openly communicating credible actions to rebuild trust, counter misinformation, and reassert sustainability as a core business imperative.
Read more: The sustainability doom loop: why companies should be greenshouting (Sustainable Views) [paywall]
Nature Disconnect Crisis
Human connection to nature has declined by over 60% since 1800, driven by urbanisation, biodiversity loss, and the breakdown of intergenerational transmission of nature engagement. Reversing this “extinction of experience” requires transformative changes, especially early childhood exposure and radically greener cities, rather than incremental interventions
Read more: Human connection to nature has declined 60% in 200 years, study finds (The Guardian)
Soil Life Crisis
Soil biodiversity—hosting an estimated 59% of life on Earth—is fundamental to food systems, climate regulation, and water cycles, yet over 60% of EU soils are degraded due to intensive land use and climate pressures. New research highlights both the risks of long-term ecological decline and the potential for recovery through tailored land management and stronger policy frameworks, positioning soil as a critical but overlooked pillar of resilience
Read more: Beneath our feet: Why soil biodiversity is key to Europe’s future (IUCN)
The regenerative business practices and sustainability innovations highlighted in this week’s Regenerative Insights directly tackle the critical issues of corporate responsibility explored in my recent book explored in my recent book, The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost.
