For World Green Building Week I was asked to present on the Regenerative Transition by the Botswana Green Building Council. My presentation included the following ideas and examples.

What is the regenerative transition?

We rely on nature for ecosystem services that are integral to climate regulation, the provision of clean water, the decomposition of waste and the resilience and productivity of food ecosystems.

Having damaged many natural systems resulting in planetary boundaries being breached we now urgently need to repair and regenerate these systems. This means understanding how they work and developing ways to strengthen and reinvigorate them.

Regeneration also implies improving sites and ensuring that development leaves them in a better state.

For a long time, green building methodologies have had an emphasis on finding the ‘least worst’ solution – the solution that creates the least environmental damage. This implicitly suggests that development will inevitably result in damage to the environment.  

A regenerative approach, on the other hand,  aims to find ‘best best’ solutions – solutions that improve both natural and human systems. There is an explicit intention to strengthen and enhance natural systems while accommodating human activities.

The regenerative transition is, therefore, about moving to approaches which integrate and enhance natural systems as an essential part of the development process.  

So, what does this mean?

A good starting point is to think about boundaries and scale when you develop a site. What are the natural systems within the boundary of your site? How do these local systems work with larger-scale systems such as water, biodiversity and carbon systems? Do your proposals enhance and develop local systems in ways that enable them to contribute positively to wider systems? Will your development encourage living and working patterns that support and strengthen natural systems? Can a synthesis of artificial and natural systems that have multiple human and natural benefits be created?

Working with nature

Regenerative approaches are based on a good understanding of natural systems and draw inspiration from these. Buildings are a part of nature instead of being seen to be separate from this. Water, sanitation, temperature control and other services are dynamic and linked to natural systems to improve efficiency and responsiveness.

Regeneration is about exploring and developing integrated artificial and natural systems that achieve performance that is far superior to conventional methods and create multiple positive impacts.

How can this be implemented?

Regeneration can be supported through purpose-designed frameworks. These require existing characteristics of sites, such as biodiversity, water, energy and employment to be measured and enable regenerative options for improvement to be developed and tested.

The diagram at the top indicates conceptually how this framework works. The white layered diagram (left) indicates the starting point. The coloured layers in other diagrams represent different development options with red indicating reduced performance, orange no difference and green, improved performance. The goal, using the framework, is to achieve improvements in all aspects – all green layers (right).

This framework can be illustrated through guidelines I developed for the Gauteng Department of Rural Development and Agriculture on sustainability criteria for Environmental Impact Assessments. The guidelines required the performance of aspects of a development site such as water, biodiversity, education and employment to be measured. Developers then need to provide evidence that their development improves these aspects. This enables a proactive, iterative process that can be used by government, communities and developers to create more positive, balanced developments.

Responsive regeneration plans

Regeneration can be integrated into the development of neighbourhoods through responsive regeneration plans. These measure the existing sustainability performance of a neighbourhood and develop regenerative projects that improve this over time. Projects can be developed by communities working with local councils and integrated into IDP and SDFs.

The Built Environment Sustainability Tool (BEST) can be used to develop responsive regeneration plans as it provides a way of measuring the sustainability performance of neighbourhoods and enables options for improvement to be tested and optimized as part of a long-term plan.

Applying the BEST to different neighbourhoods (informal settlements, inner city, conventional suburbs, gated estates) indicates that very different regenerative approaches are required to respond to the diversity of needs and opportunities identified.