Over the past couple of decades working on the frontlines of conservation in Ecuador, there is a question I have found myself returning to over and over again. At first, I thought it was a question about conservation. Then I became convinced it was a question about economics. Today, I’m no longer certain those are different questions at all.

Conservation is often described as the protection of forests, rivers, wildlife, and biodiversity. Economists, meanwhile, concern themselves with markets, currencies, production, and trade. We tend to imagine these disciplines occupying separate worlds, each governed by its own language and priorities. Yet the longer I have spent working alongside rural communities in Ecuador, the more artificial that distinction has begun to feel. Farmers do not divide their lives into economic decisions and environmental decisions. They simply make decisions. Whether to plant another hectare of cacao, repair a leaking roof, harvest a mature tree, or leave a patch of forest standing until another season, these are all responses to the same reality.

The health of a family’s finances and the health of the surrounding landscape are often inseparable.

That realization has changed the way I think about conservation itself. Every mature tree standing today exists because someone, many years ago, chose not to cut it down. Every restored watershed reflects a generation that believed tomorrow was worth sacrificing for. In that sense, conservation is not simply the protection of nature. It is an expression of patience. I believe the same may also be true of wealth.

To explore that possibility, I would like to invite you into a simple thought experiment that goes back in time to two imaginary farming communities…

Imagine two neighboring farming communities nestled along Ecuador’s Pacific coast. They are separated by only a few kilometers, close enough that families occasionally visit one another during fútbol competitions or festivals, yet far enough apart that each community has developed its own routines and traditions. The forests surrounding them are equally healthy, their soils equally fertile, their rainfall equally dependable, and the rivers flowing past them support nearly identical farms. Farmers in both communities cultivate cacao beneath towering shade trees before selling their harvests into the same market. If you arrived as a visitor, you would struggle to identify any meaningful difference between them.

Life unfolds at the unhurried pace common to so many rural communities throughout Latin America. Before sunrise, families prepare for another day in the field inside modest wood and bamboo homes. Children walk dusty roads toward school while older farmers disappear beneath the shade of cacao plantations long before the tropical heat arrives. By afternoon, baskets of freshly harvested cacao pods sit waiting to be opened, fermented, and dried beneath the equatorial sun. Evenings bring neighbors together beneath porches where conversations drift between weather, harvests, children, and the countless small events that define community life.

The people living in these communities share remarkably similar dreams. They dream of replacing aging roofs before another rainy season arrives, purchasing a neighboring parcel of land to expand the family farm, or saving enough that their children might attend university rather than inherit only the opportunities available to previous generations. None of these ambitions are extraordinary. They are simply the aspirations that emerge wherever people invest their lives in a place they love.

Among the farmers in one of the communities lives a man named Santiago. Like many smallholder cacao farmers throughout coastal Ecuador, Santiago’s wealth is not measured by the balance of a bank account. It is measured in the health of his farm, fertile soil, dependable rainfall, and the strength of the family working beside him. Long before the first light reaches the forest canopy, he is already walking narrow paths beneath towering shade trees, pruning branches, inspecting cacao pods for disease, and quietly observing changes that only someone who has worked the same land for decades would ever notice. His relationship with the farm is less like ownership than companionship.

Few people around the world who enjoy chocolate ever stop to consider how much time is contained within a single cacao bean. A newly planted cacao tree may require several years before producing its first meaningful harvest. During those years it demands continual care while offering almost nothing in return. Once mature, every pod must be harvested by hand, split open individually, fermented with care, dried, sorted, bagged, and eventually transported to market. Each sack of cacao represents not merely agricultural production but thousands of individual decisions made patiently over many seasons and years. Every successful harvest is accumulated time.

Santiago understands this instinctively because nature has been his greatest teacher. Healthy soil develops slowly through countless cycles of growth and decay. Rivers carve valleys that no single storm could ever create. Every meaningful transformation occurring within the natural world seems to obey the same quiet principle: things of lasting value rarely appear quickly. They emerge through consistency, patience, and the willingness to invest in a future that cannot yet be seen.

Perhaps that is why farming has always required a peculiar kind of faith. Each year Santiago plants, prunes, fertilizes, and repairs without any guarantee that the coming harvest will justify his efforts. Storms may arrive unexpectedly. Diseases may spread through the plantation or cacao prices may plummet. Yet he continues working because agriculture has always demanded confidence that today’s labor will eventually become tomorrow’s opportunity.

After every harvest, Santiago and his wife sit together at their kitchen table and carefully divide the year’s earnings. Most is immediately spent on necessities—food, school supplies, fertilizer, fuel, repairs to the motorcycle, and countless other expenses that accompany raising a family. Whatever little remains is quietly set aside. Santiago is not trying to become wealthy overnight. Like most parents, he is simply trying to preserve a small piece of today’s work so that it may one day become tomorrow’s opportunity.

Across the valley in the neighboring community, a farmer named Edison follows almost precisely the same routine. He rises before dawn, cultivates the same varieties of cacao beneath similar shade trees, harvests nearly identical yields, and carefully saves a portion of every successful harvest. His children attend school, and his wife manages the household finances with equal care. If you were to compare the lives of Santiago and Edison’s families after a year, you would almost certainly conclude they were living identical lives.

For the first decade in the communities, almost nothing appears different. One family postpones replacing a roof while the other delays purchasing additional farmland. The differences seem too ordinary to deserve much attention.

But now imagine returning thirty years later.

Santiago’s community still appears modest, yet something about it feels quietly secure. Homes have been maintained rather than repeatedly patched. Children are slightly more likely to finish school before leaving for larger cities. Farmers speak about the future with cautious optimism rather than persistent anxiety. Even the surrounding landscape appears healthier. Mature shade trees continue standing throughout the cacao plantations, streams run clearer after heavy rains, and the forest seems to have slowly advanced toward the community rather than retreating from it.

The neighboring community where Edison lives hasn’t fallen into poverty during this same period. Families remain hardworking, harvests continue each season, and life proceeds much as it always has. Yet the atmosphere feels more fragile. Roofs are repaired only when absolutely necessary. Every disappointing harvest creates immediate hardship. Young people leave more frequently in search of opportunities elsewhere, and farmers quietly admit that despite working just as hard as their parents once did, getting ahead somehow feels increasingly difficult. The surrounding forest tells a similar story. It has not disappeared, but it has grown significantly thinner year by year. Pastures have expanded farther into the hillsides, mature trees are harvested a little sooner than anyone would prefer, and every year seems to require slightly more effort simply to preserve the life previous generations once considered ordinary.

Now imagine sitting beneath a mature cacao tree somewhere between these two communities. The people are equally hardworking. The land is equally fertile. They sell into the same markets, experience the same weather, and cultivate the same crop.

So what happened?

The answer, surprisingly, has almost nothing to do with agriculture. It begins with something far less visible: the way each community remembers the value of human labor.

What Money Remembers

The only meaningful difference between these two communities was something almost no visitor would ever notice.

Many years before Santiago and Edison planted their first cacao trees, the leaders of the two communities reached different conclusions about the nature of money itself. They agreed on almost everything else. They believed families should be rewarded for honest work. They wanted local businesses to flourish, farmers to prosper, and future generations to inherit stronger communities than the ones they themselves had received. Their disagreement centered on a surprisingly simple question.

What is money actually supposed to do?

In the second community where Edison lives, the leaders concluded that money should be flexible. As the community grew, additional currency could be created and introduced whenever its leaders believed more money would benefit the local economy, or in times of hardship. During years of poor harvests, new money could help families get by. When roads, schools, or other public projects were needed, additional money could help finance their construction. The system was designed with good intentions, and for many years it appeared to function exactly as expected. Daily life continued much as it always had. Farmers harvested cacao, merchants sold their goods, children attended school, and the community gradually grew.

Across the valley, Santiago’s community reached a different conclusion. Its leaders believed that money should represent something that could not simply be created. Every unit of money would first have to be earned by producing something another person voluntarily valued. No council, government, or respected elder would possess the authority to create more money. Existing money would continue circulating throughout the community, changing hands countless times over many years, but the total supply itself would remain remarkably stable. Their intention was not to make money scarce for its own sake.

Rather, they believed that if money existed to preserve the value of work, its quantity should not change independently of the work it represented.

That single decision became the only meaningful distinction between the two communities. Everything else remained remarkably similar. The cacao trees continued growing at exactly the same pace. Rain still arrived according to the seasons, storms occasionally damaged crops, and global cacao prices rose and fell without regard for either community’s monetary philosophy. The farmers remained equally hardworking and equally patient. No one suddenly became more intelligent or more virtuous because of the money they happened to use.

For many years, almost nothing seemed different.

That should not surprise us. The natural forces that shape civilizations are rarely dramatic. A forest does not become ancient in a single season, nor does fertile soil emerge from a single harvest. Rivers transform landscapes through persistence rather than spectacle, and communities evolve through countless ordinary decisions repeated across generations.

Time quietly magnifies whatever it touches. The same, I suspect, is true of money.

The more I reflected on this thought experiment, the more I realized that everything depends upon how we answer one remarkably simple question. Before asking whether money is good or bad, scarce or abundant, digital or physical, perhaps we should first ask what purpose money serves in the first place.

The answer most of us learned in school is familiar enough. Money allows people to exchange goods and services without relying on barter. Instead of trading cacao for chickens or repairing someone’s roof in exchange for sacks of rice, every exchange passes through a common language of value. Economists describe this as money’s role as a medium of exchange, and there is no doubt that modern economies depend upon it.

Yet I have become increasingly convinced that this explanation, while entirely correct, tells only part of the story.

Money (at least good money) does something even more remarkable. It allows us to preserve yesterday’s effort for tomorrow’s needs.

Consider Santiago’s cacao harvest once again. By the time a sack of dried cacao beans reaches the market, it already contains years of accumulated effort. Long before those beans were harvested, Santiago planted seedlings beneath carefully selected shade trees. He pruned branches that would never produce fruit, removed diseased pods before they infected healthy ones, repaired drainage after heavy rains, and patiently cared for trees that demanded years of attention before offering anything in return. Every harvest represents thousands of individual decisions made across countless mornings beneath the forest canopy.

When Santiago finally sells his cacao, he is not simply exchanging agricultural products for money. He is exchanging years of his life. The money he receives is merely the form that labor takes after it leaves the farm.

That realization changed the way I think about money altogether. Perhaps money is not simply a medium of exchange.

Perhaps money is best understood as society’s memory. It remembers the work we have already done so that its value may continue serving us in the future.

A teacher spends decades educating children. A carpenter builds a home that may stand for generations. A nurse cares for patients through long nights. A fisherman rises before dawn to feed his community. A farmer patiently cultivates cacao beneath towering shade trees. Each transforms a portion of his or her life into something another person values. Money becomes the bridge allowing that effort to travel forward through time until it is eventually exchanged for something else of value.

Seen from this perspective, every unit of money tells a story.

It represents a roof that was built, a lesson that was taught, a meal that was prepared, a patient who was cared for, or a harvest gathered after years of patient work. We often think of money as wealth, but perhaps wealth itself is something different. Wealth consists of fertile farmland, healthy forests, productive businesses, skilled workers, functioning infrastructure, and trusting communities. Money simply helps preserve the value created by those things so it can continue serving us long after the original work has been completed.

That distinction may seem philosophical, but I believe it carries profound practical consequences.

Imagine spending ten years restoring a degraded forest. Imagine dedicating two decades to building a successful farm, or countless evenings writing a book that slowly accumulates the lessons of a lifetime. In each case, you are investing years of irreplaceable time into creating something valuable. Naturally, you would hope that the value produced by those years could continue serving you long after the work itself had ended.

But what happens if the thing carrying that value into the future gradually begins to forget?

Nothing dramatic occurs overnight. No one physically steals your savings. The harvest remains successful, the book remains written, and the forest continues growing. Yet over many years, the relationship between yesterday’s labor and tomorrow’s purchasing power slowly changes. The roof that once seemed comfortably within reach requires another season of saving. A university education becomes slightly more expensive than expected. Replacing worn equipment must wait for another harvest. Each individual change appears almost insignificant, yet together they quietly reshape the future.

This is precisely what begins unfolding within our two communities.

Edison does not become less productive. His trees remain healthy, his harvests remain strong, and he continues working with the same dedication that has always characterized his life. Yet in his community, the money representing previous harvests gradually remembers a little less of the work required to earn it.

Across the valley, Santiago experiences something subtly different. His savings do not make him wealthy, nor do they protect him from storms, disease, or fluctuating commodity prices. Agriculture remains uncertain, just as it has always been. But when he sets aside part of this year’s harvest, he does so with confidence that those savings will continue representing the years of labor already invested.

His money does not create additional wealth on its own. It simply preserves the value he has already earned.

At first, the distinction appears almost invisible.

But nature has always taught us that the smallest differences, patiently repeated over long periods of time, rarely remain small forever. A single seed becomes a towering tree. A thin layer of fallen leaves slowly becomes fertile soil. Tiny streams carve valleys that reshape entire landscapes not because they possess extraordinary power, but because they never stop flowing.

Time quietly magnifies whatever it touches. Perhaps our money is no different.

When Our Own Community Began to Change

By now, you have realized that this thought experiment is not really about two imaginary communities set back in time. It is about the world we all live in today.

The purpose of imagining two neighboring communities was never to argue that such places actually exist, nor to suggest that the complex challenges facing rural societies can be explained by a single variable. Real communities are shaped by countless forces acting simultaneously. Education, governance, infrastructure, commodity prices, land tenure, culture, technology, and access to markets all influence whether a family prospers or struggles. No single institution determines the future on its own.

Thought experiments serve a different purpose. They simplify reality just enough that relationships hidden within complexity become easier to recognize.

When we step back into the real world, we discover that societies have wrestled with the question of money for thousands of years. Every generation has inherited a monetary system from the one before it, adapted it to changing circumstances, and passed something new along to those who followed. No society has ever discovered a perfect form of money, because every monetary system involves tradeoffs. The debates surrounding money are ultimately debates about what we want it to accomplish.

What interests me, however, is something far less political.

Most people do not spend their time thinking about monetary policy or the mechanics of financial systems. They experience money through ordinary life. They notice that groceries cost more than they did a year ago. They postpone repairing the roof because building materials have become more expensive. They watch fertilizer or machinery consume a larger share of the family budget, or realize that the university education they hoped to provide their children now feels slightly farther away than it once did.

These are the experiences we collectively describe as Inflation, but for most families the word itself matters far less than the feeling it represents. Somehow, despite working just as hard as before, tomorrow begins requiring more from them than it once did. That experience is familiar throughout the world, but it often carries particular significance in rural agricultural communities.

Consider again the smallholder cacao farmer living along Ecuador’s Pacific coast.

Unlike many businesses, they have remarkably little influence over the price they receives for their harvest. Cacao is traded in international markets, making individual farmers price takers rather than price makers. If fertilizer becomes more expensive, they cannot simply charge more for his cacao. If fuel prices rise or imported machinery costs more than it did the year before, those additional expenses must simply be absorbed. Their family continues working just as hard, yet the distance between what the farm produces and what that work allows them to preserve gradually narrows.

None of this happens suddenly, which is precisely what makes it so difficult to notice.

Every season requires only a little more effort than the one before. Replacing aging equipment must wait another harvest. Expanding the farm becomes less attainable. Savings that once represented opportunity gradually become protection against emergencies instead. No single harvest explains the change, yet over decades the cumulative effect quietly reshapes the future.

This observation has stayed with me because it reveals something deeper than rising prices.

When preserving yesterday’s work becomes increasingly difficult, people naturally become more focused on today’s needs. That is not a failure of character. It is a rational response to the incentives surrounding them.

The irony is difficult to ignore.

Many of the world’s rural communities spend their lives producing some of humanity’s most tangible forms of wealth. They cultivate food, steward forests, restore soils, protect watersheds, and manage landscapes whose value extends far beyond their own communities. Yet the financial rewards for creating that wealth under a broken money often prove far more difficult to preserve than the natural wealth itself.

By contrast, wealthier households across the globe have long understood something that rarely receives much attention. They seldom preserve their wealth by leaving it in cash alone. Instead, they convert today’s income into productive assets expected to retain or increase their value over time—businesses, real estate, ownership in productive enterprises, or other forms of long-term capital. In other words, they are converting today’s labor into assets that help carry purchasing power into the future better than cash.

Most poor families never enjoy that same opportunity.

This is not because they fail to appreciate the importance of saving. Some of the most disciplined savers I have met live in communities with the fewest financial resources. The challenge is that nearly every dollar they earn is immediately required for necessities. Food, medicine, transportation, education, fertilizer, and housing consume so much of each harvest that very little remains available to purchase assets capable of preserving long-term value.

One of the deepest forms of inequality isn’t necessarily unequal income alone. Perhaps it’s unequal access to preserving the value of income once it has been earned.

That thought has stayed with me because it shifts the conversation in an unexpected direction. Much of our public discussion focuses on helping people create more wealth, and rightly so. Economic opportunity matters enormously. But perhaps we devote too little attention to what happens after wealth has been created. If years of careful work cannot be preserved, then every generation begins the climb toward prosperity from nearly the same place.

Civilizations become wealthy not merely because they produce value. They become wealthy because they discover ways to preserve it.

That principle extends far beyond economics. Healthy soil preserves the fertility created by generations of biological activity. Forests preserve decades of patient growth. Families preserve knowledge through education and tradition. Communities preserve trust through stable institutions.

Money, at its best, attempts to preserve the value of honest work.

Perhaps these are not separate ideas after all. Perhaps they are all expressions of the same deeply human desire: to ensure that the efforts of one generation become the foundation upon which the next is able to build. And if that is true, then the question before us is no longer simply whether prices rise over time.

The more important question is whether the institutions we build help ordinary people carry the value of their work faithfully into the future.

Because if preserving yesterday’s labor becomes increasingly difficult, we should not be surprised when preserving tomorrow’s life-sustaining forests and ecosystems becomes more difficult as well.

Nature Has Always Rewarded Patience

The more I have reflected on this thought experiment, and lived similar scenarios in real life, the more I have come to believe that its most important lesson has very little to do with money itself. It has to do with time.

Perhaps that is why I no longer find it possible to separate economics from conservation. For years I thought these disciplines occupied entirely different worlds. Economists studied production, trade, and markets. Conservationists studied forests, wildlife, watersheds, and biodiversity. Their work occasionally overlapped, but they seemed to ask fundamentally different questions. Today, I’m not so sure that’s true.

The longer I have worked alongside rural communities, the more I have realized that conservation is not simply about protecting nature. It is about helping people maintain the freedom to think beyond the present moment. Every meaningful act of stewardship asks someone to accept a cost today in exchange for a benefit that may not arrive for years, or even generations. A farmer plants trees whose greatest harvests he may never personally enjoy. A community restores a watershed knowing that the full benefits may emerge only after decades of patient recovery. Parents sacrifice countless opportunities for themselves so that their children might begin life with possibilities they themselves never possessed.

Healthy ecosystems and healthy societies are both built upon the same foundation: the belief that tomorrow matters.

This realization has gradually changed the way I think about conservation itself. Early in my career, I assumed that environmental degradation was primarily the result of people failing to appreciate the value of nature. If communities better understood the services provided by forests, mangroves, rivers, and healthy soils, surely they would become more inclined to protect them. Education remains enormously important, and scientific understanding continues to guide much of our work. Yet after years spent alongside farming families throughout coastal Ecuador, I have become convinced that the challenge is often something altogether different.

Most of the people I have met do not need to be convinced that nature has value. They already know. They know that forests regulate water, which soils produce stronger harvests, and which mangroves sustain fisheries because they have depended upon those ecosystems their entire lives. Their understanding is not academic. It has been earned through observation, experience, and necessity.

The challenge is rarely one of knowledge. More often, it is one of freedom.

Imagine Santiago walking home one evening after another successful cacao harvest. As he passes beneath one of the oldest trees on his farm, he pauses for a moment. The tree is magnificent. Its trunk is so broad that two people could barely wrap their arms around it. Orchids cling to its branches. Birds nest high within the canopy, while the shade it provides has protected generations of young cacao trees from the intensity of the tropical sun. Santiago’s father remembers climbing this tree as a child. His grandfather may even have rested beneath it while clearing the first portions of the farm many decades earlier.

A few days before, Santiago received news that his oldest daughter had been accepted to a university in the city. It was everything he and his wife had hoped for, but it was far more expensive than they had imagined.

The same week, heavy rains exposed new leaks in the roof above the kitchen. The motorcycle that carries sacks of cacao to the collection center has begun breaking down more frequently. Fertilizer prices have increased again, and next season’s crop cannot simply be abandoned.

Then a timber buyer visits the farm. He points toward the old tree and offers enough money to solve nearly every immediate problem. Santiago says he will think about it.

That evening, after everyone else has gone to bed, he walks back to his plantation with a flashlight. He stands beneath the tree, places his hand against the rough bark, and quietly considers everything it represents. The timber would help pay for his daughter’s education. It would repair the roof before another rainy season arrives. It would relieve pressures that have been quietly building for years.

But leaving the tree standing also has value. Its canopy protects the cacao beneath it. Its roots stabilize the hillside. Its branches shelter birds that help control insects throughout the plantation. Perhaps most importantly, it represents continuity. It connects Santiago’s children with the generations who cared for this land before them, just as it may one day shelter grandchildren he has not yet met.

What should Santiago do?

From the comfort of an office thousands of miles away, the answer appears simple. Protect the tree. Yet that answer becomes far more complicated when viewed through Santiago’s circumstances rather than our own.

If years of careful work have allowed him to accumulate savings that continue carrying the value of previous harvests into the present, then waiting becomes a very realistic possibility. He can leave the tree standing because the sacrifices made years earlier continue supporting his family today. The future remains available to him.

If, however, preserving the value of yesterday’s work has become increasingly difficult while the costs of everyday life continue rising, the calculation changes. The roof still leaks. University tuition still must be paid. Fertilizer still must be purchased before the rains arrive. Waiting begins carrying its own cost.

Under those circumstances, harvesting the tree becomes as much an economic decision as an environmental one.

That distinction, I believe, lies at the heart of many conservation challenges around the world.

Environmental degradation is often described as though it results from people caring too little about nature. Certainly there are situations where this is true. But after years spent alongside farming communities, I have become convinced that another explanation deserves greater attention. Most people already understand the value of healthy ecosystems remarkably well. The challenge is that economic pressure steadily shortens the horizon over which they can afford to plan.

The old tree becomes a savings account because there is no other dependable savings account available. The forest becomes emergency capital. The land itself becomes the place where families store value because so few alternatives exist for them.

None of these decisions emerge from greed. They emerge from necessity.

This, perhaps, is the tragedy hidden within our thought experiment.

Nature has always rewarded patience. Nearly everything we admire in the natural world exists because someone allowed time to do its work. Yet when economic systems and inflationary currencies make patience increasingly expensive, they quietly place people in conflict with the very landscapes upon which they depend.

The two communities in our thought experiment did not diverge because one cared more deeply about nature than the other. They diverged because one retained a greater ability to wait. The other gradually lost that freedom.

Perhaps that is the deeper question conservation has been asking all along.

How do we build a world in which ordinary families can afford to become good stewards?

An Economy of Stewardship

The older I become, the less I believe that conservation is primarily about protecting nature. Increasingly, I think it is about creating the conditions under which people can afford to protect nature.

That distinction may seem subtle, but I believe it changes almost everything. We often speak about conservation as though it were simply a matter of convincing people to value forests, rivers, wetlands, or wildlife more highly than they do today. While education and awareness undoubtedly matter, they rarely overcome the incentives that shape everyday life. People respond to the world as it exists, not to the world we wish existed. If preserving a forest consistently requires greater sacrifice than clearing it, we should not be surprised when forests continue disappearing despite widespread appreciation for their ecological importance.

This is why, despite spending much of my life pursuing the goal of becoming a tropical ecologist, I have become increasingly interested in the relationship between conservation and economics. Every society creates systems that reward certain behaviors while discouraging others. Some incentives are explicit, such as payments for restoring degraded ecosystems or tax policies that encourage particular forms of investment. Others are almost invisible. They emerge through the ordinary structure of markets, institutions, and financial systems, quietly shaping millions of decisions that no policymaker will ever witness. Over time, these incentives shape landscapes just as surely as rainfall or climate.

Viewed through this lens, conservation begins to look less like a scientific discipline and more like an economic one. Every conservation strategy, whether we realize it or not, asks someone to practice delayed gratification. We ask fishing communities to harvest less today so fish populations can recover tomorrow. We ask farmers to restore soils whose greatest productivity may not appear for many years. We ask landowners to preserve forests that could generate immediate income if harvested, trusting that the long-term benefits of stewardship will ultimately prove more valuable than short-term extraction.

Nature has always rewarded this way of thinking. The difficulty is that our economic systems do not do the same.

This realization has profoundly influenced the work we do at Third Millennium Alliance (TMA). As our work has evolved—and as we have spent countless days in Ecuador’s forests learning alongside our friends and colleagues—our focus has increasingly shifted toward creating economic opportunities that reward rural communities for protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing the landscapes they already steward. Whether through improved access to premium markets, biodiversity finance, ecosystem service payments, or other emerging conservation models, the underlying principle remains remarkably simple.

Healthy ecosystems create extraordinary value for society. The people responsible for maintaining those ecosystems deserve to share fairly in the value they create.

I believe that principle more strongly today than ever before. Yet this thought experiment has gradually convinced me that earning more may represent only half of the challenge.

What happens after that income reaches the community?

Imagine that Santiago receives fair compensation for restoring a section of forest that protects the watershed supplying neighboring communities with clean water. Perhaps he earns a premium for producing cacao beneath native shade trees or receives payments because the forest on his property stores carbon that benefits the wider world. These are precisely the kinds of opportunities conservation organizations, governments, and emerging environmental markets are beginning to create.

Those payments matter. They improve livelihoods, reduce pressure on natural ecosystems, and acknowledge that rural communities provide services extending far beyond the boundaries of their own farms.

But another important question immediately follows. How does today’s payment become tomorrow’s opportunity?

Helping communities create wealth is unquestionably important. Yet helping them preserve the value of that wealth may prove just as significant. Otherwise, each generation must continually rebuild what the previous generation struggled to create.

The more I have reflected on this, and felt the negative effects of inflation myself, the more I have begun questioning our definition of wealth. We often measure prosperity by the quantity of money people possess. Nature measures something different.

A mature forest is wealthy because it contains decades of accumulated life. Fertile soil is wealthy because generations of biological activity have enriched it beyond what any single season could accomplish. A healthy watershed stores the patient work of forests, wetlands, and countless natural processes unfolding over many years. None of these systems become abundant quickly. Their richness emerges because they preserve yesterday’s gains while quietly adding new ones each season.

Perhaps healthy economies should aspire to something similar.

Many of the communities responsible for stewarding these extraordinary assets struggle the most to preserve the value of their own labor. That irony has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that conservation and economics have been asking the same question all along.

How do we preserve something valuable today so that someone else may benefit tomorrow?

A parent asks that question while saving for a child’s education. A farmer asks it while planting trees whose greatest harvests may belong to the next generation. A conservationist asks it while restoring a watershed. An economy asks it through the institutions it builds to carry one generation’s labor into the future.

Maybe these are not separate conversations after all. Perhaps they are simply different expressions of the same deeply human instinct: The desire to leave behind more than we inherited.

The Community We Already Live In

The purpose of this thought experiment was never to imagine an impossible world or to suggest that complex social and environmental challenges can be explained by changing a single institution. Real communities are infinitely more complicated than that. They are shaped by history, culture, governance, education, geography, markets, and countless other forces that interact in ways no thought experiment could ever fully capture. The story of these two communities simply allowed us to slow the world down long enough to observe one relationship more clearly. By removing much of life’s complexity, we were able to ask a question that is surprisingly difficult to see amid the noise of everyday events:

What kind of future do our institutions encourage us to build?

As I think back to Santiago, I no longer imagine him as the young farmer we met beneath the cacao canopy at the beginning of this essay. Decades have passed. The seedlings he once planted now form a mature plantation. The roof has been repaired more than once. Storms have come and gone, good harvests have alternated with disappointing ones, and the seasons have continued their patient rhythm without much concern for the ambitions of the people living beneath them. Some of Santiago’s children have remained close to home, while others have left in search of opportunities elsewhere. His own hands have grown older, but the trees around him have continued growing almost imperceptibly, adding another ring of wood each year regardless of whether anyone happened to notice.

If you were to ask Santiago what he hoped to accomplish through a lifetime of farming, I doubt he would begin by talking about money.

He would probably tell you that he wanted to leave his children with more opportunities than he himself received. He might speak about restoring the fertility of the land his parents entrusted to him, or about the satisfaction of watching trees he planted decades earlier finally reach maturity. He would almost certainly describe the farm as something larger than a business. It is part of his family’s story. It connects grandparents with grandchildren through work, memory, and place. Each harvest represents another chapter in a story that began long before Santiago was born and, if he has been a good steward, will continue long after he is gone.

Perhaps that is what stewardship has always meant.

Stewardship is not simply the careful management of natural resources. It is the quiet decision to preserve something valuable so that someone else may benefit from it in the future. Sometimes that means protecting a forest. Sometimes it means restoring a river, improving the health of a farm, investing in a child’s education, or building an institution capable of serving generations yet unborn. The details change, but the underlying principle remains remarkably consistent.

Stewardship asks us to believe that the future deserves our effort even when we may never personally enjoy its greatest rewards.

The more I have reflected on conservation, the more convinced I have become that this is the thread connecting nearly everything we have discussed. Healthy forests preserve the patient work of countless growing seasons. Fertile soils preserve generations of biological activity. Families preserve knowledge, traditions, and values by passing them from one generation to the next. Communities preserve trust through institutions that endure beyond the lives of the people who created them. In one form or another, they are all attempting to carry something valuable through time.

No system succeeds perfectly. Forests burn, soils erode, institutions weaken, and families struggle.

Conservation has taught me that permanence is never guaranteed. Every generation inherits extraordinary gifts from those who came before while simultaneously accepting responsibility for those still to come. We occupy only a brief moment within that much longer story, yet the choices we make determine whether the story bends toward abundance or scarcity.

Perhaps that is why I no longer think of conservation as a discipline solely concerned with nature. Increasingly, I think it is a discipline concerned with civilization.

Every society eventually answers the same fundamental question. Do we create conditions that encourage people to invest in the future, or do we gradually make the future more difficult to reach?

That question is expressed through our schools, our laws, our farms, our businesses, our communities, and yes, through the way we choose to preserve the value of human effort. The answers rarely appear all at once. They reveal themselves slowly through millions of ordinary decisions made by ordinary people responding to the world as they find it.

I do not pretend to know the perfect answers to these questions. In truth, this essay began because I found myself asking them.

Maybe that’s the greatest value of a thought experiment. It does not tell us what to believe. Instead, it helps us notice assumptions that have become so familiar we rarely think to question them. It invites us to imagine that the world could be organized differently and, in doing so, encourages us to examine the one we already inhabit with fresh eyes.

As I think back to Santiago one final time, I realize that what he hoped to leave behind was never simply a productive farm. He hoped to leave behind possibility. A landscape capable of supporting another generation. A family with opportunities greater than his own. A future that was just a little more abundant than the past he inherited.

Perhaps that is what every parent, farmer, and conservationist hopes for.

The more I have reflected on this thought experiment, the less I believe it is really about money alone.

It’s about stewardship.

Money is simply one of the core institutions through which we attempt to preserve the value of our work across time. Forests do the same. Families do the same. Communities do the same. They all represent humanity’s attempt to ensure that yesterday’s efforts continue serving tomorrow’s needs.

Nature has always rewarded patience. Perhaps our economies should learn to do the same. Because at the end of the day, every healthy forest, every thriving farm, every resilient community, and every hopeful future begins with exactly the same quiet act of faith. Someone chooses to plant a seed whose shade they may never live to enjoy.

*The thought experiment that forms the framework of this essay was inspired by Joe Bryan's video What's the Problem? While my article explores slightly different questions and arrives at its own conclusions, particularly regarding conservation, stewardship, and rural livelihoods, I am grateful for the creative thought experiment that helped spark many of the ideas explored here. I also recommend readers who enjoyed this article check out Joe Bryan’s video linked above.

TLDR: Healthy ecosystems thrive not because they contain abundant resources, but because resources continuously circulate through networks of relationships. While competition naturally creates concentration, resilience emerges when nutrients, energy, and value keep flowing. Human economies may work the same way. The challenge is not simply creating more wealth or better money, but building systems that allow value and opportunity to continuously circulate throughout society.

One of the most surprising lessons I learned as a young tropical ecologist many years ago is that some of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, such as the Amazon or Pacific Forest of Ecuador, are built upon remarkably poor soils.

Walk through a mature tropical rainforest and you are surrounded by abundance. Massive trees stretch toward the canopy. Epiphytes cling to branches. Birds, insects, fungi, and mammals occupy every available niche. Life seems to emerge from every surface.

Yet beneath this extraordinary biological richness lies a surprising reality. Many tropical soils contain relatively few nutrients.

For years, early colonists and land developers cleared the rainforest thinking they’d find the richest soils on earth—perfect for implementing large-scale agriculture. However, what they found was quite the contrary—acidic, clay-like, and low-nutrient laterite soils dominated. How could ecosystems support such immense productivity if the soil itself contained so little?

The answer is that forests do not depend on large nutrient reserves. They depend on nutrient circulation.

Leaves fall and decompose. Fungi transport nutrients between plants. Dead organisms become food for new life. Nutrients are continuously absorbed, transformed, exchanged, and recycled throughout the system. In many tropical forests, the majority of nutrients are not stored in the soil at all. They are actively moving through the living network.

The health of the forest depends less on the quantity of nutrients it contains and more on how effectively those nutrients flow through the ecosystem.

This insight extends far beyond ecology.

In many ways, human societies face a similar challenge. We often focus on how much wealth, capital, or resources exist within a system. We debate economic growth, government spending, interest rates, and monetary policy. Yet nature suggests we may be overlooking a more fundamental question.

What if the health of a system depends less on the quantity of resources it contains and more on how those resources move through the network?

Competition and Concentration

Nature is not an egalitarian system.

Resources are finite. Organisms compete. Some individuals, species, and populations gain advantages that allow them to capture more resources than others.

A few emergent trees capture most of the sunlight in a mature forest. A few river channels carry most of the water within a watershed. A small number of species often account for a large percentage of biomass within an ecosystem.

These patterns are remarkably common. Across both natural and human systems, competition frequently produces highly unequal distributions. Mathematicians and economists often describe these as power law distributions, where a small number of actors control a disproportionately large share of resources.

We see similar patterns in wealth, land ownership, corporate market share, social influence, and countless other domains. Just look around the world, and you’ll see that a few individuals control a vast majority of wealth.

In many scenarios, this concentration is a sign that something is broken—but that’s not always the case.

Competition in a system rewards adaptation. It rewards efficiency. It rewards successful strategies. Without competition, evolution would stall. Ecosystems would lose much of their capacity to adapt and innovate.

Yet this raises an important question.

If competition naturally produces concentration, why do healthy ecosystems not collapse into increasingly unequal and fragile systems?

The answer lies in a second process that receives far less attention.

The Hidden Architecture of Resilience

Competition shapes ecosystems, but competition alone does not sustain them.

Healthy ecosystems are also characterized by extraordinary levels of exchange.

Fungi connect plants through underground networks. Pollinators move genetic information across landscapes. Predators regulate populations. Decomposers recycle nutrients. Disturbances create opportunities for regeneration.

Resources are constantly moving between organisms, populations, and trophic levels.

Even the most dominant organisms remain embedded within these broader flows.

A large canopy tree may capture tremendous amounts of sunlight, but it does not exist independently of the system. Its leaves eventually become nutrients for the forest floor. Its fruits feed animals. Its roots participate in fungal networks. Its existence creates habitat for countless other organisms.

The tree accumulates resources, but it also contributes to circulation.

This distinction matters.

Nature does not eliminate concentration. Instead, it surrounds concentration with processes that maintain connectivity and flow.

Resilience emerges not from the absence of competition, but from the presence of circulation.

When Resources Stop Moving

This principle applies equally to human systems.

When resources become increasingly concentrated while opportunities for circulation decline, systems often become fragile.

Economic opportunity narrows. Power accumulates within a smaller number of institutions. New entrants struggle to participate. Adaptability declines.

Over time, the system becomes less capable of responding to shocks because resources and decision-making become concentrated within fewer nodes.

This is not simply a moral concern. It is a systems concern.

Healthy systems require both specialization and participation. They require both accumulation and circulation.

Too little competition can lead to stagnation. Too little circulation can lead to fragility.

Nature appears to have discovered this balance repeatedly across scales, from microbial communities to entire ecosystems.

The question is whether human institutions are structured to achieve the same balance.

Money as a Nutrient Network

Human economies can be viewed as ecosystems of exchange.

Within these systems, money serves a function similar to nutrients within a biological network. It allows value to be stored, transferred, recognized, and coordinated across large numbers of participants.

Like nutrients, money is not valuable because it exists. It is valuable because it enables relationships.

Farmers exchange food for labor. Entrepreneurs exchange innovation for investment. Communities exchange knowledge, services, and resources. Money acts as the medium through which these exchanges occur.

This raises an interesting possibility.

If the health of an ecosystem depends on the circulation of nutrients, might the health of an economy depend on the circulation of value?

Many of the challenges we face today can be viewed through this lens.

Rising wealth concentration. Declining economic mobility. Increasing dependence on debt. Short-term decision-making. Resource extraction that prioritizes immediate returns over long-term resilience.

These issues are often discussed separately, yet they may reflect a deeper structural problem involving how value moves through society.

The Search for Better Foundations

In recent years, a growing number of people have begun questioning the foundations of modern monetary systems, myself included.

One of the most notable modern experiments is Bitcoin, a monetary network built around an absolute fixed supply rather than continuous expansion.

Whether Bitcoin ultimately succeeds or fails remains an open question. What makes it interesting isn’t simply the technology itself, but the question it forces us to confront.

What role should money play within a healthy society?

For much of modern history, economic growth has been accompanied by expanding monetary supplies and increasing levels of debt—both of which have caused widespread harm. Bitcoin represents an attempt to explore a different approach, one built around predictable scarcity and long-term constraints.

From an ecological perspective, this resembles introducing a fixed nutrient budget into a system.

Yet ecology also highlights an important limitation. A finite resource supply does not automatically produce a healthy ecosystem.

A forest with a fixed nutrient supply can still become dominated by a small number of organisms. Competition does not disappear simply because constraints exist.

The same is true for money.

A fixed monetary supply may solve certain problems while leaving others unresolved.

The question is not simply how much money exists, but what kinds of relationships emerge around it.

What Kind of Forest Are We Growing?

Many debates about economics focus on the properties of money itself.

Should money be scarce or abundant? Centralized or decentralized? Inflationary or deflationary?

These are important questions, but they may not be the most important ones.

Ecology suggests that healthy systems are defined less by the resources they contain and more by the relationships they enable.

A forest does not become resilient because nutrients are infinite. Nor does it become resilient because nutrients are distributed equally.

It becomes resilient because finite resources continuously circulate through a network of relationships.

The same principle likely applies to human societies.

A more resilient economy is unlikely to emerge solely from creating more wealth or designing a better form of money. It will emerge from building institutions, communities, and incentive structures that allow value to circulate while rewarding meaningful contribution.

Competition, innovation, and property rights absolutely matter. But so do participation, stewardship, and the continual renewal of opportunity.

Bitcoiners often talk about money as if fixing the soil automatically creates a healthy forest. While healthy soil is important, it’s only half of the equation.

Healthy soil provides the foundation upon which everything else depends. Yet the long-term health of a forest is ultimately determined by the relationships and circulation of resources that emerge within it.

Perhaps the same is true for our economies.

The challenge of the twenty-first century may not simply be designing better monetary systems.

It may be learning how to build economic systems that behave more like forests—complex networks built on a finite resources that are in a constant state of circulation.

TLDR: Conservation is not just about protecting forests. It requires building interconnected systems that support ecosystems, local livelihoods, governance, and long-term stewardship together. Through TMA’s Community Forests Program, we are exploring how regeneration becomes more durable when conservation behaves less like isolated projects and more like a living system rooted in relationships, resilience, and community-led stewardship.

Over the past several decades working in conservation and restoration, I’ve become increasingly convinced that protecting ecosystems is not simply an ecological challenge. It is an architectural one.

Many conservation efforts fail not because people lack good intentions, but because the systems surrounding conservation are often fragmented and incomplete. Some projects focus exclusively on protecting intact forest while ignoring the economic realities of nearby communities. Others prioritize restoration without building the governance structures needed to maintain the work across generations. Still others establish short-term funding mechanisms that disappear long before ecosystems have had time to adequately recover.

Healthy landscapes do not emerge from isolated interventions. They emerge from interconnected systems capable of adapting and sustaining themselves over time.

This realization has heavily influenced how we think about TMA’s Community Forests Program and the broader idea of bioregional conservation.

Increasingly, I’ve come to view durable conservation as a layered structure composed of multiple interdependent systems, each reinforcing the others—much like an ecosystem.

The Conservation Layer

At the foundation is the conservation layer itself.

The goal here is not simply to “set land aside,” but to preserve ecosystem integrity and resilience over time. That requires a deep understanding of the relationships that hold ecosystems together: watersheds, biodiversity, soil systems, wildlife corridors, forest succession, and countless feedback loops that often remain invisible until they begin to fail. As I explored previously in Where Complexity Becomes Fragile, ecosystems are often held together by a small number of critical relationships and feedback loops that remain largely invisible until they begin to fail. Effective conservation therefore requires not only protecting land, but understanding the deeper structures that maintain resilience across the system.

Conservation is not static preservation. It is continuous observation and response.

Healthy ecosystems are dynamic. They evolve, adapt, recover from disturbance, and reorganize themselves over time. Effective conservation therefore requires ongoing ecological monitoring and adaptive management systems capable of responding to changing conditions before degradation becomes irreversible.

In many ways, this layer acts as the pulse-monitoring system of the landscape itself.

The Restoration Layer

But conservation alone is rarely enough, particularly in regions where ecosystems have already been fragmented and degraded.

The restoration layer aims to rebuild ecological function while simultaneously creating sustainable economic opportunities for local communities. In our case, this includes regenerative agroforestry systems designed to restore soil health, increase biodiversity, improve watershed function, and create diversified income streams for local landowners.

This dual mandate is critical. A restored landscape that cannot economically support the people living within it is unlikely to remain restored for long.

As I discussed in When Money Eats The Earth, distorted financial incentives often push rural landowners toward short-term extraction rather than long-term stewardship. Restoration systems therefore need to create economic structures where ecological recovery becomes economically viable rather than economically punitive.

For decades, conservation has often approached human communities as external pressures on ecosystems rather than integral participants within them. But in reality, long-term ecological stability and long-term human prosperity are deeply interconnected.

Restoration therefore requires more than planting trees. It requires designing systems where ecological recovery and local livelihoods reinforce one another rather than compete against one another.

Like conservation itself, restoration also requires continuous monitoring and adaptation. Are soils improving? Are biodiversity indicators recovering? Are agroforestry systems economically viable for landowners? Are younger generations seeing long-term opportunity within these landscapes?

Without feedback systems, restoration efforts can easily drift away from their original purpose.

The Governance Layer

Beneath both conservation and restoration lies another layer that is often less visible, but equally important: governance.

No ecosystem can be stewarded indefinitely through external management alone.

Lasting conservation requires locally rooted systems of leadership, trust, participation, conflict resolution, and intergenerational succession. It requires communities that not only benefit from healthy ecosystems, but possess the institutional capacity to manage and defend them into the future.

This may ultimately be the hardest layer to build, which is why many many conservation organizations have historically avoided it all together.

Governance develops slowly. Trust develops slowly. Leadership develops slowly. These things cannot simply be imported through grants or short project cycles.

Strong governance systems require deep community buy-in, local ownership of decision-making processes, and structures capable of surviving beyond any single organization or generation of leadership.

Without this layer, even well-funded conservation efforts can become fragile and dependent. With it, ecosystems gain something much more powerful: the potential for long-term self-directed stewardship.

The Missing Layer

As our organization (TMA) continues building within this framework, however, I’ve increasingly realized there is another layer beneath all of this: the financial layer.

Not simply funding in the traditional sense, but the architecture through which resources circulate throughout the system itself. This is where the challenge becomes significantly more complex.

Most conservation finance today still operates with highly industrial logic:

• centralized allocation

• rigid reporting structures

• fragmented objectives

• short grant cycles

• static budgets

• externally imposed timelines

But ecosystems do not function this way.

In many ways, this mirrors a broader theme I explored in An Economy That Behaves Like Nature: that durable economic systems may ultimately need to align more closely with the adaptive logic of living ecosystems themselves.

Forests survive because energy and nutrients continuously circulate through interconnected networks. Resources move dynamically in response to stress, disturbance, growth, and changing environmental conditions. Healthy ecosystems maintain resilience not through rigid central control, but through adaptive relationships distributed across the entire system.

In many ways, ecosystems behave less like machines and more like living networks.

This raises an important question: If conservation aims to protect living systems, should conservation finance also begin to behave more like a living system?

The Network Beneath the Forest

One of the most fascinating aspects of forest ecology is the role played by underground fungal networks.

Mycorrhizal systems help distribute nutrients throughout the forest, connecting trees and plants through vast decentralized networks capable of responding dynamically to changing conditions. These systems do not operate through a single command center. Instead, they maintain resilience through continuous circulation, feedback, and interconnectedness.

I increasingly wonder whether conservation systems require something similar.

Not a centralized bureaucracy managing every detail from above, but adaptive systems capable of distributing resources where they are needed most while maintaining coherence across the broader landscape.

This becomes particularly important in bioregional conservation, where ecological, social, and economic conditions can vary dramatically across communities and landscapes.

The challenge, of course, is that decentralization alone is not enough.

Conservation systems must also remain transparent, accountable, and legible to the institutions helping fund them. Financial flows need to be traceable. Outcomes need to be measurable. Governance structures need to maintain trust across multiple stakeholders operating at very different scales.

As I discussed in Part III: The Investment Case for Bioregional Finance, global financial systems are increasingly being forced to recognize ecosystems as foundational economic infrastructure. But this raises a difficult secondary question: once capital enters these systems, how should it actually circulate within living landscapes?

Balancing these realities may be one of the central design challenges of modern conservation. In many ways, this also builds upon ideas I’ve explored previously around distributed capital systems and bioregional finance, particularly the challenge of creating financial structures capable of adapting to ecological complexity rather than oversimplifying it.

How do we build systems that are decentralized enough to remain adaptive and locally responsive, while structured enough to remain trustworthy and durable over long periods of time?

I do not think we fully know the answer yet. But I increasingly suspect the future of conservation depends on our ability to solve this problem.

From Projects to Living Systems

What we are ultimately exploring through TMA’s Community Forests Program is not simply a collection of isolated conservation projects, but the early architecture of a living system:

• ecological protection

• regenerative restoration and economics

• locally rooted governance

• and adaptive financial circulation

Each layer depends on the others.

Without conservation, ecosystems continue degrading.
Without restoration, communities remain economically vulnerable.
Without governance, stewardship becomes fragile.
Without financing systems capable of sustaining all three, the entire structure struggles to endure.

Building systems like this is extraordinarily difficult, particularly in regions with limited resources and long histories of economic instability. None of this develops quickly. Ecosystems recover slowly. Institutions mature slowly. Trust forms slowly.

But despite the complexity, I increasingly believe this is the direction conservation must move.

Not toward larger centralized systems detached from local landscapes, but toward resilient bioregional networks capable of sustaining both ecosystems and communities together.

Perhaps the deeper lesson ecosystems offer us is that resilience does not emerge from simplification, but from complex relationships. And if that is true ecologically, it may also be true financially, socially, and institutionally as well.

This is still an evolving framework, and I suspect many others working in conservation, restoration, regenerative agriculture, and community development are wrestling with similar questions.

I’d be genuinely interested to hear how others are thinking about these challenges, particularly around governance, adaptive financing, and long-term stewardship structures.

Because if we are serious about protecting living systems, we may also need to learn how to build systems capable of living themselves.

Share

TLDR: We’re getting better at measuring how ecosystems function, but capital still flows based on simplified metrics that miss the system. The result is a structural mismatch: we fund what is easy to measure, not what sustains life. To close this gap, both measurement and finance must become more distributed, reflecting the networks that sustain ecosystems, so capital can support relationships, resilience, and long-term system stability.

In earlier essays, I explored how ecosystems are structured as complex networks of relationships. Stability does not emerge from totals, but from the margins. It emerges from the interactions and dependencies that quietly hold systems together. In Value Is Set at the Margins, I argued that what determines system behavior is not what is most visible, but what constrains and connects it. And in Where Complexity Becomes Fragile, I began to examine how these relationships, often hidden, can be identified and measured.

This leads to a deeper question. If we are beginning to see ecosystems more clearly, and if we are developing ways to measure not just what exists but how systems function, why does capital continue to flow in ways that undermine them?

The issue is not simply that we lack better information. It is that what we measure determines what gets funded, and today that relationship is fundamentally misaligned with how ecosystems actually function.

Measurement Is Not Neutral

Measurement is often treated as a passive act, a way of describing reality. In practice, it plays a far more active role. Measurement determines what becomes visible, what becomes legible across institutions, and ultimately, what becomes fundable.

Capital does not flow toward what is most true. It flows toward what can be measured within existing frameworks.

This creates a powerful dynamic. The way we measure ecosystems shapes how resources move through them. Measurement becomes a form of infrastructure, defining the pathways along which capital can travel.

As I explored in The Foundation Beneath The Economy, economic systems are layered on top of ecological ones. Yet the metrics guiding economic decisions often fail to reflect that underlying reality. What is legible becomes actionable. What is not remains invisible to capital, regardless of its importance.

A System Built on Simplified Units

Modern financial systems operate on discrete, standardized units. They rely on clearly bounded inputs and outputs that can be quantified, compared, and scaled.

In conservation, this has led to proxies such as hectares protected, species counted, and tons of carbon stored. These metrics make coordination possible across geographies, but they do not reflect how ecosystems function.

Ecosystems are relational. Outcomes emerge from interactions between species, across landscapes, and through the continuous flow of energy and nutrients over time. When we reduce systems to discrete units, we do not simply simplify reality. We reshape it. Capital flows toward what is easily measured, rather than toward what sustains the complexity of the system.

From Seeing to Funding

As our ability to observe ecosystems improves, we are entering a new phase of understanding. We are moving beyond static inventories toward a dynamic view of how systems function, where they are resilient, where they are fragile, and how they evolve over time.

But this shift does not automatically change outcomes.

Measurement alone does not change where capital flows. It only creates the possibility for change. The missing step is the translation of measurement into financial decision making. We are beginning to measure systems more honestly, but we are still funding simplified representations of those systems. We allocate funding to protect X hectares of forest or to plant X number of trees in a degraded landscape.

If we are to measure systems as they actually function, we must also ask at what scale those systems exist.

The Missing Unit: The Bioregion

Part of the disconnect lies in the unit of analysis. In Part III. The Investment Case for Bioregional Finance, I explored why ecosystems must be understood and funded at the level of the bioregion.

Ecosystems do not operate within project boundaries or political jurisdictions. They operate within watersheds, landscapes, interconnected ecological zones, and elaborate social and cultural systems. A bioregion is the scale at which these relationships become visible and meaningful.

It is also the scale at which the drivers of degradation converge. Economic pressure, land use, governance, and ecological dynamics interact within the same landscape. If measurement begins to capture relationships rather than isolated components, then funding must shift to this same level.

From Linear Funding to Living Finance

If ecosystems function as complex, interconnected networks of relationships, then the way we fund them cannot remain linear.

Modern finance is frequently structured as a straight pipeline. Capital moves from a source, through an intermediary, into a project, and produces a defined output. This structure reflects simplification. It favors clarity, predictability, and discrete results. It works for isolated interventions, but not for living systems.

Ecosystems are distributed, interdependent, and adaptive. No single node in the system determines the outcome. Stability emerges from the relationships between many parts, each influencing the others over time.

To fund systems, capital must begin to take on these same properties. It must move from a pipeline to a distributed network.

Rather than flowing in a single direction, it must circulate across the system. It must support not only conservation, but the conditions that sustain it. Governance, livelihoods, restoration, and knowledge are not separate domains. They are part of the same system.

Like a forest, where nutrients move through a mycelial network rather than a central channel, capital must circulate through relationships rather than flow through a single pipeline.

In this sense, capital is not simply deployed into a system. It becomes part of its structure.

What System Level Intervention Looks Like

The implications become clearer in practice. Most conservation approaches isolate a single variable. They protect a forest, count species, or generate carbon credits. But deforestation is not caused by a single factor. It emerges from interacting pressures such as economic instability, limited livelihoods, weak governance, and fragmented land use.

Addressing only one of these rarely produces lasting change.

TMA has developed a different approach, one that reflects the structure of the system itself. Through its Community Forests Program, conservation is integrated with reforestation, agroforestry, education, governance, and local economic development.

These are not parallel programs. They are interdependent components designed to reinforce one another. Forest protection is linked to income. Reforestation is tied to food systems. Education builds capacity for stewardship. Governance enables collective decision making at the watershed level.

The objective is not simply to protect forest. It is to change the conditions that determine whether forest is protected or cleared.

Why Complexity Is Necessary

This approach is more complex. It operates across multiple dimensions and longer time horizons, and it cannot be reduced to a single metric.

This complexity is not incidental. It is required to match the structure of the system.

In TMA’s model, conservation outcomes are reinforced by economic alternatives that reduce pressure on land, by governance systems that align incentives, and by continuous monitoring that allows adaptation. Payments for Ecosystem Services link financial incentives to outcomes at the watershed level rather than the individual parcel.

What emerges is not a project, but a system that begins to stabilize as relationships strengthen and feedback loops align.

When Measurement Shapes Outcomes

The challenge is that systems like this do not fit easily into existing measurement and funding frameworks. When capital flows toward what is easiest to measure, it favors simpler interventions such as isolated land protection or short term outputs.

More integrated approaches are harder to evaluate and therefore harder to fund. This creates a paradox. The interventions most aligned with how ecosystems function are often the least compatible with how capital is deployed.

As a result, capital continues to flow toward simplified representations of ecological reality.

Why Capital Avoids Systems

There is a structural reason for this. Capital favors predictability, standardization, and comparability. It is designed to operate across portfolios where decisions must be made efficiently.

System level interventions introduce interdependence, longer time horizons, and uncertainty. Outcomes are not always linear or immediately visible.

But this is not a flaw. It is a reflection of reality.

Avoiding this complexity does not remove it. It ensures that capital continues to act against the system it ultimately depends on.

Toward Bioregional Finance

If ecosystems function as systems, then capital must evolve accordingly.

This is the foundation of bioregional finance. Rather than funding isolated projects, capital supports system level outcomes within a defined landscape. The bioregion becomes the unit of investment, and value is tied to system health rather than isolated outputs.

In this model, communities are central actors. Governance, incentives, and ecological outcomes align at the same scale. TMA’s work offers an early example of how conservation, livelihoods, and governance can be integrated into a single system.

Measurement as Financial Infrastructure

If capital is to align with systems, it requires a different kind of signal.

Measurement must evolve beyond isolated metrics. It must capture biodiversity, water systems, land use, economics, and governance. Together, these signals provide a more complete picture of system health.

This does not eliminate uncertainty, but it reduces it enough to enable system level investment.

In this way, measurement becomes financial infrastructure. It allows capital to align with reality.

From Extraction to Regeneration

The way capital flows through a system shapes its trajectory. When incentives reward extraction, systems degrade, relationships weaken, and resilience declines.

The opposite is also possible.

As explored in An Economy That Behaves Like Nature, systems aligned with natural processes become self reinforcing. When capital supports connectivity, regeneration, and long term stability, it reinforces those same dynamics.

In TMA’s work, this shift is visible. Economic incentives are aligned with conservation outcomes and embedded within community governance. Restoration supports livelihoods. Livelihoods reduce pressure on forests. Governance reinforces both.

Over time, these relationships compound.

The Role of Frontline Organizations

Organizations like TMA operate at the boundary between ecological reality and financial abstraction. They manage landscapes rather than parcels, and address root causes rather than symptoms.

Yet funding often requires translating complex outcomes into simplified metrics. This creates tension. Systems must be simplified to be funded, even when that simplification undermines them.

A bioregional approach would reverse this dynamic. Ecological understanding would guide capital allocation.

From Bioregions to a Planetary System

If bioregions become the unit of measurement and investment, a broader structure emerges. As suggested in The Entropy Economy and The Entropy Cost of Growth, the global economy is constrained by physical systems.

A network of bioregional economies offers a way to align capital with those constraints through real, place based systems.

Closing Thought

We are beginning to develop the tools to measure ecosystems more honestly. We are beginning to see systems rather than parts.

We are beginning to understand that these systems must be approached at the level of the bioregion.

And in places like the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, we are beginning to see what it looks like to act accordingly.

The next challenge is to ensure that capital evolves alongside that understanding.

Because the question is no longer whether we can measure systems.

It is whether we are willing to fund them in a way that’s aligned with their complexity.

Subscribe now

TLDR: Conservation organizations and funders often focuses on what’s easiest to measure, but ecosystems are governed by fragile, often invisible relationships. By identifying and tracking these “margins,” we can better detect early signs of decline and prioritize actions that truly sustain the system.

From Insight to Application

In the previous essay, I explored the idea that ecosystems are not governed by their totals, but by their margins—the specific relationships, constraints, and points of fragility that determine whether a system holds together or begins to unravel. That framing shifts how we think about conservation. It suggests that what matters most is not always what is most visible, but rather the subtle connections and dependencies that quietly sustain the whole.

This raises an immediate and practical question, especially for those of us who are working on the frontlines of conservation: if ecosystems are stabilized at the margins, how do we actually identify those margins efficiently in the real world? Not in theory or abstraction, but within living systems where data is incomplete, resources are limited, and the complexity is often overwhelming.

From Keystone Species to Keystone Relationships

Conservation has long relied on the concept of keystone species—organisms that have a disproportionately large impact on their environment relative to their abundance. This idea has been useful because it provides a way to prioritize, simplify complexity, and direct resources. But it is also incomplete.

A keystone species does not act in isolation. Its importance emerges from the relationships it participates in: a predator regulating prey populations, a frugivore dispersing seeds across fragmented landscapes, a pollinator enabling plant reproduction, or a fungal network facilitating nutrient exchange beneath the soil. What ultimately holds ecosystems together are not individual species, but patterns of interaction.

If we want to measure the margins, we need to shift our focus. We need to move from simply identifying keystone species to identifying keystone relationships.

Why These Margins Are Difficult to See

This shift introduces a new challenge. Relationships are dynamic. They change over time, vary across space, and are often difficult to observe directly.

In a place like the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, the difficulty is even more pronounced. The region is extraordinarily biodiverse, but also deeply under-studied. Many interactions remain undocumented, and many species are still unknown to science.

For organizations like TMA, the constraint is not just ecological complexity, but practical reality. We do not have the capacity to monitor every interaction across the landscape, and even when data is collected, turning it into meaningful insight requires time and resources that are often in short supply.

This is not a theoretical limitation. It’s something we encounter constantly when working on the frontlines of conservation.

Learning Through Long-Term Observation

Over the past two decades, TMA has attempted to better understand the ecological structure of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador through long-term research in places like the Jama-Coaque Reserve. This work has taken many forms (TMA research highlights).

Our team has long used camera trap networks (collecting over 250,000 photos of wildlife on the ground and in the canopy) to document the presence, movement, and behavior of elusive mammals. This data reveals not just which species are present, but how they use the landscape and interact with one another.

Long-term bird monitoring has helped our team track changes in species composition over time and by forest type, map hummingbird pollination networks, and better understand how populations respond to both habitat disturbance and restoration.

Botanical surveys have identified globally high levels of plant endemism and previously undocumented species, highlighting how much of the system remains unknown.

Studies on amphibians and reptiles, often highly sensitive to environmental change, have provided early signals of ecosystem stress. In some cases, entirely new species have been discovered, underscoring just how incomplete our understanding still is.

We have also been deploying passive acoustic recorders (Audiomoths) across the landscape for the past six years, and developed a deep-learning model (Convolutional Neural Network) that’s capable of identifying up to 100 local species automatically. With over 2.1 million recordings to date, these devices capture the soundscape of the forest and different land uses over time, allowing us to monitor patterns of bird, amphibian, and insect activity at a level of resolution that would be impossible through human observation alone. Subtle shifts in the diversity, timing, and intensity of these acoustic signals can reveal changes in community structure and ecosystem health long before they become visible through traditional methods.

Perhaps most importantly, restoration and agroforestry projects have functioned as living experiments. By observing how biodiversity returns to restored landscapes, we begin to see which relationships reassemble first, which take longer, and which may be missing entirely.

Taken together, this work has not produced a complete map of the ecosystem. But it has revealed something more important:

The system is far more complex, and far more dependent on subtle relationships, than any single metric can capture.

Measuring the Margins in Practice

If we accept that we cannot observe everything, the goal becomes more focused: identify the relationships that matter most using signals we can realistically detect.

In practice, this means combining multiple imperfect but complementary approaches. Direct observation of individual species and their interactions still plays a foundational role. Recording pollination events, feeding behavior, seed dispersal, and patterns of co-occurrence in the field. These observations are often fragmented and opportunistic, but over time they begin to reveal consistent patterns.

Large-scale, distributed datasets of species presence are also increasingly important. Platforms like iNaturalist provide time-stamped, georeferenced records that, while imperfect, allow us to begin identifying patterns of presence, overlap, and potential interaction across space and time. Our longstanding Capuchin Corridor iNaturalist project has nearly 8,000 unique observations, representing around 2,000 species to date.

But much of what matters most is not directly visible. This is where indirect methods come into play. Camera traps can reveal predator-prey dynamics and movement corridors. Acoustic monitoring can detect activity patterns across entire communities of birds, amphibians, and insects—capturing the “pulse” of the ecosystem in a continuous way. Environmental DNA, another tool our organization is exploring, can identify species presence in ways that would otherwise go undetected or be too resource intensive to collect.

Still, each of these methods provides only a partial view. However, when taken together, they begin to form a more complete picture—not only of isolated species, but of complex relationships.

From Observations to Structure

As these field observations accumulate, something important begins to emerge. Not just a list of species, but a structure.

Species can be seen as individual points across the landscape, and their interactions as the web that connects everything. Even with incomplete data, this allows us to begin mapping the system as a complex network—the web of life. And, collectively, this data reveals which species are highly connected, which relationships are most frequent, and where dependencies begin to cluster.

This is where the concept of importance starts to shift. Instead of asking which species are most prominent, we begin to ask which relationships, if disrupted, would have the greatest impact on the system as a whole. Which relationships, if severed, would push the ecosystem beyond its tipping point.

These are often not the most visible elements of the ecosystem. But they are the ones that matter most when designing conservation programs that aim to maintain overall ecological health.

Detecting Fragility in Real Time

Once we begin to see ecosystems as structured networks, new types of signals become visible.

Some relationships show disproportionate influence, where small changes cascade outward through the system. Others reveal bottlenecks, where many species depend on a small number of interactions or pathways. Then there are mutualistic relationship where particular species have established a close dependance on the services of another. For example, in the Capuchin Corridor—a 40,000 hectare conservation corridor being established by TMA and local communities—the White-tipped Sicklebill (Eutoxeres aquila) is a species of hummingbird with an extremely curved bill that is perfectly adapted to access the nectar and pollinate the similarly curved heliconia flowers.

Perhaps most importantly, these systems begin to show early warning signals. Relationships may weaken before they disappear. Species may remain present, but their functional role begins to erode. Recovery from disturbance may slow.

The Paradox of Knowledge is the humbling realization that as learning expands, awareness of the vast, unknown territory increases, leading to more questions than answers.

The Constraint of Scale

Despite these advances, a fundamental challenge remains.

For organizations like TMA, working on the ground in complex ecosystems, the ability to collect and interpret this kind of data is limited by time, funding, and capacity. Monitoring entire landscapes at the level required to fully understand these relationships is often not feasible. Even with years of research, we are still only seeing fragments of the entire system.

This creates a persistent gap between what we know is important, and what we are able to measure in practice.

But this fragmentation is not limited to data and understanding. It’s also reflected in how conservation itself is funded.

Much of today’s investment in nature operates in discrete units: hectares protected, species counted, projects funded in isolation. These are useful simplifications, but they mirror the same limitation we see in measurement—they break complex systems into parts that can be easily observed, reported, and financed.

Ecosystems, however, do not function this way. They are networks of interdependent relationships, where outcomes emerge from the system as a whole rather than from any single component.

This is increasingly recognized in other domains as well. In the context of “systemic investing,” there is a growing understanding that complex challenges cannot be addressed through isolated interventions. Capital must be aligned with the structure of the system itself.

In ecological terms, this implies a shift: from funding individual components (a species, a parcel of land, or a standalone project), toward supporting the network of relationships that hold the entire system together.

This is where measuring the margins becomes more than a scientific exercise.

If we can begin to identify the relationships that define system stability, we also begin to see where intervention and investment can have the greatest leverage.

Not by scaling what is most visible, but by strengthening what is most structurally important.

Toward Scalable Understanding

This is where a new generation of tools begins to matter.

Over the past few years, there has been significant advances made on the development of automated biodiversity analysis and mapping tools. For example, Jay Gutierrez has been exploring how concepts from network science, cryptography, and AI can be applied to ecological systems. The development of his tool AI Ecologist is centered on treating ecosystems as dynamic graphs—systems of relationships that can be mapped, analyzed, and updated over time.

Then there are numerous biodiversity intelligence platforms (e.g. Gaia.eco) being built that turns scattered environmental data into a structured, searchable system for better understanding nature. By collecting data from thousands of biodiversity sources, cleaning and verifying for quality, and correcting biases to improve accuracy, the platform helps translate complex datasets into useful insights and reports.

What makes these approaches compelling is not that they simplify ecosystems, but that they provide a way to work with complexity at scale.

By integrating large volumes of observational data with models capable of detecting patterns, inferring relationships, and identifying areas of sensitivity, these tools have the potential to make ecological structure more visible in real time.

For frontline conservation organizations like TMA, this could represent a meaningful shift. The ability to move from fragmented data to a more coherent understanding of ecosystem structure would fundamentally change how we prioritize interventions, measure impact, and communicate the state of the systems we are working to protect.

From Measurement to Action

Ultimately, measurement shapes how we see the world, and how we see the world shapes how we act.

• If we measure land, we focus on protecting land.

• If we measure carbon, we optimize for carbon.

• If we count species, we track species.

Each of these approaches creates a partial view of reality, and over time, that view becomes the basis for how decisions are made, how resources are allocated, and how success is defined.

But ecosystems do not respond to metrics. They respond to the integrity of the relationships that sustain them.

If we begin to measure those underlying relationships, we begin to see systems differently. And when that happens, our actions begin to shift as well.

We start to prioritize not just the protection of space, but the restoration and maintenance of connection. We focus not only on what is present, but on whether it is functioning. We intervene not where it is easiest to measure, but where it matters most.

In this way, measurement becomes more than a tool for observation. It becomes a guide for targeted action—helping direct attention, effort, and ultimately capital toward the parts of the system that determine whether it holds together or begins to unravel.

A Practitioner’s Perspective

For TMA, this is not theoretical. It is part of the daily challenge of working in one of the most complex and threatened ecosystems on Earth—trying to understand whether our efforts are strengthening the system, or simply preserving its appearance.

Measuring the margins is, at its core, an attempt to develop a more honest understanding of what sustains life, where it is most at risk, and where capital should be deployed to ensure it remains stable.

Looking Forward

And this leads to the next question. If we can begin to identify what actually holds ecosystems together, how do we translate that understanding into systems of value?

Because until these relationships are recognized and valued within our economic systems, the forces driving their erosion will continue to outweigh the forces working to protect them.

Share

TLDR: Ecosystems are shaped by critical, often invisible relationships at the “margins,” not just by the number of species or size of protected areas. Traditional conservation and funding focus on what’s visible and easy to measure, which can overlook the functions that actually sustain system stability. To be effective, we need better ways to identify, measure, and value these underlying ecological connections.

Preface Note: As I was working on the article below, I received a Substack piece from Jay Gutierrez titled “Risk Lives in the Edges.” The overlap in ideas was striking. His article explores many of the same themes from a slightly different angle, and goes so much deeper into specific real-world examples that are worth reading. If the below piece resonates with you and you’re interested in a more detailed exploration of these concepts, I highly recommend giving his article a read.

The Logic of the Margins

In the previous essay, I explored what it might mean to design an economy that behaves more like nature. That is, structured, constrained, and layered like a living system. Concepts like biomimicry and trophic levels suggest that resilience does not come from scale alone, but from the way relationships are organized across levels of complexity.

But if we are to take this idea seriously, a deeper question emerges: how do these structures actually work in nature? What are the underlying mechanisms that allow ecosystems to remain stable over time, and how might we begin to see and measure them more clearly?

As a tropical ecologist, there are many ways I could answer this question, most of which would point back to the interconnectedness of complex living systems. But stepping outside that lens for a moment, I found myself approaching the question from a concept you often hear in economics circles: “price is set at the margin.”

What economists mean when they say this is that price isn’t set by the average buyer, nor by the total supply and demand, but rather by the next unit—the one that tips the balance.

Consider as an example a neighborhood of one hundred homes, where only one is for sale. The price that emerges from the sale of that single home immediately sets the benchmark price for every other home—even though the vast majority of homes in the neighborhood never changed hands.

Complex systems are not determined by their totals, but by the edges, the constraints, and the points where small changes produce disproportionate effects.

This is a subtle idea, but an extremely powerful one.

Looking at ecosystems through this lens, particularly as someone running a frontline conservation organization in one of the most biodiverse yet threatened ecosystems on Earth (the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, has significant implications for how we measure and value success.

Personal & Professional Context

First, a bit of background to provide context for what follows. I am a tropical ecologist with over 25 years of experience working across the neotropics, much of it based in Ecuador, where I currently live. Over the past two decades, my work has included: scientific expeditions to remote regions of the country, the discovery and description of species new to science, and the use of biodiversity data to create numerous protected areas.

Today, I lead the rainforest conservation organization Third Millennium Alliance (TMA), founded in 2007 with the mission of protecting and restoring the Pacific Forest of Ecuador in partnership with local communities. This region is one of the most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems in South America, with an estimated 95% of its original forest already lost or degraded due to human activity. In response to this, TMA focuses on designing community-based conservation programs that directly address the underlying economic drivers of deforestation.

Our work is structured around three core pillars: protecting and reconnecting remaining mature forest through the creation of protected areas and conservation corridors; restoring degraded landscapes through sustainable land management practices such as regenerative agroforestry; and supporting local communities through education and economic opportunity so they can lead, and directly benefit from, conservation efforts.

Working in this context makes one thing increasingly clear: protecting ecosystems is not just a matter of setting aside land or counting species. It requires understanding how these systems actually function, what holds them together, where they are fragile, and how change unfolds over time. The ideas explored in this article are not theoretical; they emerge directly from my firsthand experience trying to measure, manage, and ultimately sustain one of the most complex living systems on Earth.

The Limits of Bulk Measurement

For decades, conservation has relied on bulk metrics to understand the natural world. Our organization, in part driven by our international funders, puts a lot of energy into tracking the number of hectares we protect, the tons of carbon stored, and the number of species present in region where we work. These are useful metrics to monitor our impact, but they share a common limitation: they describe the size of the system moreso than its structure. They tell us how much exists, and where it is found, but don’t necessarily get to the core of what matters most or what would trigger a systemic collapse.

An ecosystem can appear intact by these general measures and still be quietly unraveling.

At the same time, as my previous articles have highlighted, our economic system continues to expand—measured in flows of money that are increasingly detached from the physical systems that sustain them. Under a fiat monetary system, money can be created with relatively few direct constraints, enabling continuous economic growth regardless of underlying ecological limits.

When these two dynamics combine—an expanding monetary system and an incomplete measurement of the natural world—a compounding problem emerges:

The global economy is incentivizing extraction of value from extremely complex systems we do not yet know how to fully ‘see’.

The Structure Beneath the Surface

To understand why, it helps to think of ecosystems not as collections of parts, but as complete structures. An analogy of a complex, interdependent system I used at a fundraising event our organization held in San Francisco recently was a Jenga tower (depicted in this articles header photo).

At the start of the game, many pieces can be removed from the tower without immediate consequence. The structure weakens, but it holds. From the outside, it may even look relatively stable. But certain pieces in the tower carry more load than others. Remove one of these blocks, and the system doesn’t gradually degrade—it completely collapses.

The difficulty is that these critical pieces are not always obvious or easy to identify. They are not necessarily the largest, the most visible, or the most abundant.

In fact, conservation has often gravitated toward protecting the species that are easiest to see and rally around—charismatic animals like the Jaguar. Across Latin America, significant resources are directed toward jaguar conservation. As an apex predator and umbrella species, protecting its habitat is assumed to confer protection to many other species within the same ecosystem.

This approach has clear strengths, and is one our organization uses when highlighting the Critically Endangered Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey (Cebus aequatorialis). This is because the approach simplifies complexity. It creates a focal point for funding, storytelling, and policy. And in many cases, it does lead to meaningful conservation outcomes.

But it also carries a hidden risk that is rarely discussed.

The species we choose to elevate and protect are not always the ones that truly hold the system together.

Often, the true structural integrity of an ecosystem depends on far less visible actors: a seed disperser that maintains forest regeneration, a specific pollinator that enables plant reproduction, a predator that regulates population balance at a smaller scale, or even a fungal network that quietly supports nutrient exchange beneath the soil.

These are not just species—they are functions, they are relationships, and they are frequently overlooked due to their complexity and our inability to translate it into actionable language.

If these underlying connections begin to break down, the system can degrade long before the loss is visible through traditional indicators, or even through the presence of iconic species like the jaguar itself.

In this sense, focusing only on charismatic or umbrella species may risk monitoring the symbol of the system, rather than its structural integrity.

Ecological Margins

This is where the analogy to economic margins becomes more than metaphor. In economic markets, marginal units determine price. In ecosystems, marginal relationships determine stability. The smallest changes such as the loss of a key interaction, fragmentation of a corridor, or disruption of a trophic link can cascade into system-wide effects.

These are the equivalent to ecological margins: the points where the system is most sensitive, where resilience is either maintained or lost.

And yet, most of our measurement systems are not designed to see them.

What Traditional Metrics Miss

Traditional ecological metrics understandably tend to focus on what is easiest to count. Species richness tells us how many species are present. Habitat area tells us how much land is protected. Even more advanced indicators often remain static, capturing a snapshot in time rather than the dynamic behavior of the system.

What they miss are the nonlinear thresholds, hidden dependencies, and network structures that actually determine whether an ecosystem can endure long-term.

In other words, they measure the components of life, but not its underlying architecture. And because our economic systems rely on what can be measured, this creates a deeper distortion:

We assign value to what is visible, and ignore what is structurally essential.

The Hidden Cost of Seeing Clearly

There is a reason conservation has defaulted to these higher-level metrics.

It is not because practitioners like myself misunderstand ecosystems. It is because seeing deeper into ecological structure is inherently difficult and expensive.

Identifying key interactions requires significant time in the field. Mapping dependencies requires repeated observation and scientific expertise. Understanding system dynamics requires long-term datasets.

For field-based organizations like TMA, working across large and complex landscapes in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, these challenges are especially real. We do not always have the resources to monitor ecosystems comprehensively at the landscape scale. In many cases, there is also a fundamental scarcity of ecological data to begin with—large portions of this region remain under-studied relative to their biological importance.

Even when data is collected, turning it into meaningful insight is not immediate. Cleaning, organizing, and analyzing ecological data takes time, expertise, and sustained effort—resources that are often stretched thin in active conservation projects.

As a result, conservation has adapted toward what is practical:

• Measure what is visible

• Track what is scalable

• Report what can be standardized

This is not a failure of intent. It is a constraint of reality. But it does create a gap.

The more we simplify ecosystems to make them measurable, the more we risk losing sight of what actually determines their stability.

The Real Challenge: Designing for Practical Complexity

If we accept that ecosystems are structured at the margins, then the challenge is not just conceptual—it is operational.

How do we identify the relationships that actually sustain an ecosystem—not just the species that represent it? How do we detect early signals of decline before they manifest at the surface? And critically, how do we translate these deeper insights into forms that can attract and direct funding?

Because conservation ultimately depends on capital—whether philanthropic, governmental, or market-driven.

Today, funding often flows toward what is easiest to communicate: large animals, visible landscapes, and simple metrics. But if the true drivers of ecosystem stability lie in less visible relationships, then there is a misalignment between what is funded and what actually matters.

This misalignment is amplified by the structure of our monetary system. When capital can expand faster than our ability to measure real-world constraints, it tends to flow toward what is legible, scalable, and immediate—not necessarily what is foundational or sustaining.

For organizations like TMA, that work in a relatively unknown and understudied region that has experienced significant anthropogenic alterations, this tension is constant. There is a desire to understand the ecosystem at a deeper level—to have a real-time sense of its health, to know whether restoration efforts are working, and to identify early warning signs of decline. But without systems that make data collection and analysis more efficient, this level of understanding can remain out of reach.

The challenge, then, is to build systems that allow practitioners to:

• Identify critical species and interactions

• Measure their presence and strength over time

• Translate that information into clear, credible signals

• Link those signals to funding mechanisms that support their protection

This is the primary bottleneck that I’ve identified.

Not simply the lack of ecological understanding, but the lack of systems that connect that understanding to decision-making and capital allocation.

Translating Complexity Into Human Terms

If we want to translate ecosystems into forms that humans (and our institutions) can understand, we need to rethink what we are measuring.

This begins by shifting from individual species to roles. Instead of asking only what species are present, we must ask what functions are being performed. Which organisms are pollinating, dispersing seeds, cycling nutrients, or maintaining balance within the food web?

It also requires moving from counts to dependencies. Rather than focusing solely on how many species exist, we need to understand how they are connected. Which species depend on others? Where are the critical links? What happens if those links are broken?

And perhaps most importantly, it requires shifting from static states to fragility. Instead of asking whether an ecosystem is intact, we must ask what would cause it to fail. Where are the pressure points? Which losses would be absorbed, and which would cascade?

This is the ecological margin we need to be paying attention to.

From Measurement to Value

Seen this way, the challenge of measuring biodiversity becomes something deeper than a technical problem. It becomes an attempt to map the sensitivity of living systems and to identify the points where small changes matter most.

But it is also something more fundamental: A prerequisite for aligning economic systems with ecological reality—the focus of many of my prior articles.

Because without the ability to measure what sustains life, we cannot assign value to it. And without value, capital will continue to flow elsewhere—often, as we’ve seen, toward activities that degrade the very systems we all depend on.

Implications for Conservation Practice

This perspective has direct implications for how conservation is practiced. Protecting land is essential, but land alone does not guarantee ecological integrity. Counting species is informative, but presence alone does not ensure resilience.

What ultimately determines the fate of an ecosystem is whether its critical functions and complex relationships remain intact.

In the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, this reality is constantly visible. Certain species act as connectors across fragmented landscapes, maintaining the flow of life between isolated patches. Certain interactions, often subtle and easily overlooked, sustain regeneration and long-term stability. And certain absences, though not immediately obvious, signal deeper structural risks that may only become visible over time.

For TMA, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. Without deeper measurement, it is difficult to fully understand the true impact of our conservation efforts. But with the right systems in place, it becomes possible to move closer to something much more powerful:

Having a real pulse on the ecosystem itself, and ultimately, a way to align economic value with the conditions that sustain it.

Seeing What Holds Everything Together

If markets are shaped at the margin, and ecosystems are stabilized at the margin, then any system of value that ignores the margins will misunderstand both.

We will continue to protect what is visible while losing what is essential. We will measure progress in ways that fail to detect decline until it is too late.

And as long as our monetary systems continue to expand without grounding in physical reality, this disconnect will only widen—driving further extraction from systems we do not fully understand.

The future of conservation may depend not on how much we protect, but on whether we can learn to see what actually holds everything together and build systems of value that reflect it.

Collective Advancement

If this article resonated with you, if you have experiences to share, or if you’d like to learn more about the work we’re doing in Ecuador, I’d welcome the opportunity to connect.

Understanding the true drivers of deforestation and biodiversity loss, and building systems that reconnect our economies to physical reality, is not something any one organization can solve alone. It requires a broader, coordinated effort across disciplines, geographies, and ways of thinking.

Encouragingly, there is a growing number of people engaging with these ideas and working to build a more grounded, resilient path forward.

If you are one of them, I’d love to hear from you.

TLDR: Modern money has become disconnected from physical reality, allowing economic activity to expand beyond the energy and resource limits that actually sustain it. A thermodynamically aligned monetary system would re-anchor money to real-world constraints like energy and ecological limits so that economies behave more like ecosystems: layered, constrained, and stable over time.

When the signals break from reality

In the previous essays, I took a first principles approach to analyze whether absolute decoupling was feasible. The analysis clearly established that all economic growth requires increased energy and material use, and that efficiency alone doesn’t reduce the total resources used. Given this, it seems extremely unlikely that absolute decoupling is possible at a global scale.

Taken together, these insights point toward a deeper issue. The problem is not only how we use resources, but how we decide to use them. Economic systems are guided by signals (e.g prices, incentives, and flows of capital) that coordinate human behavior across vast networks. These signals determine what is built, what is extracted, and what is sustained over time.

If those signals are misaligned with physical reality, the system they guide will be as well. This is where the role of money enters the picture.

Money as a coordination system

Money is often treated as a passive tool to exchange value, but in practice it functions as a powerful coordination system. It encodes value, communicates scarcity, and directs the allocation of resources across time and space. It determines which activities are profitable and which are not.

In a well-functioning system, money should reflect reality. Prices should convey real constraints of the system—how scarce something is, how costly it is to produce, and what trade-offs are involved in using it. When this happens, economic behavior tends to align with the stability of the underlying system (i.e. the physical and ecological foundations).

But when the money we use becomes detached from reality, which is the current situation, the signals it sends completely break. When this occurs, the decisions we make are made on distorted information, which in turn makes the system fragile. This is not what we want for the monetary system that guides our actions. We want a monetary system that is anti-fragile and directly tied to reality.

From physical constraint to abstraction

For most of human history, money was in fact grounded in the physical world. Early forms of money (e.g. shells, salt, livestock) were valued because they were scarce and difficult to produce. Later, gold and silver emerged as dominant forms of money precisely because they required significant energy and labor to extract. Their supply was constrained purely by geology, not by human designed monetary policies that could be manipulated.

Even early paper money retained this connection because banknotes represented claims on physical gold reserves and could be redeemed by the owner when desired. Under this system, money remained anchored to reality, even as it became more useable and convenient (i.e. durable, divisible, portable, and fungible).

The break came when this link was severed, which occured in 1971 under U.S. President Nixon (the Nixon Shock). The end of the gold standard was a turning point when the U.S. ended the dollar’s direct convertibility into gold. This shift was motivated by economic strain, rising debt, and the desire for more flexible monetary policy. As a result, the strict, gold-backed system was replaced with fiat currency, giving all governments that made this shift (which is all of them) greater control over inflation and economic expansion without being limited by their gold reserves.

Since this break, modern fiat currencies are created through institutional processes (i.e. central banking, credit expansion, and financial systems) that allow supply to expand independently of physical constraints. This single change introduced significant flexibility in the system, but it also introduced a devastating break from physical reality.

For the first time in history, money could expand without a direct relationship to the underlying energy, materials, or natural resources it depends on.

The consequences of abstraction

When money expands independently of the physical world like this, it creates significantly more claims on real resources (e.g. oil, minerals, metals, timber). These claims must ultimately be satisfied through increased production, which requires more energy and material throughput.

This dynamic artificially accelerates the system and economic growth. It encourages short-term thinking, rapid capital deployment, and the continuous expansion of economic activity. Under this system, the natural resources the economy is built on, and that operate on much longer time horizons, are placed under increasing pressure.

When money becomes abstract through government policy like this, it doesn’t eliminate its physical limits—It just passes on the negative consequences to future generations.

What honesty would require

If money is to function as a reliable coordination system within a physically constrained world, it must reflect the realities of that world. This is ultimately the goal of a thermodynamically aligned money. A thermodynamically aligned monetary system would not ignore the limits imposed by energy, materials, and entropy. Instead, it would encode those limits directly into the signals that guide all economic behavior.

Given this general description, let’s attempt to summarize the key characteristics of what a thermodynamically aligned monetary system would look like in practice:

• Constraint, Scarcity & Energy Grounding: Its supply could not be expanded arbitrarily, and new units would require real cost (ideally tied to the underlying energy and effort). This ensures that money cannot create claims on the world faster than the world can physically fulfill them. Scarcity would be real, not manufactured or distorted through government policies.

• Physical Reality Alignment & Accurate Signal Functions: A grounding in physical reality would allow money to function as an honest signal. Prices would better reflect true resource constraints, trade-offs would become more visible, and artificial abundance would be harder to sustain. Economic decisions would then be shaped by what is actually available, rather than what can be temporarily financed.

• Time Horison Alignment: A system that preserves value over long periods encourages lower time preference (a deflationary vs inflationary system), shifting behavior away from short-term extraction and toward long-term stewardship. Capital would be deployed more selectively, and investments would be evaluated not only for immediate return, but for long-term durability and resilience.

• Feedback Sensitibity, Ecological Compatibility, & Structural Stability: A fully aligned system would begin to incorporate ecological feedback. It would recognize that not all energy use is equal, and that the health of underlying systems (e.g. forests, soils, water cycles, and biodiversity) matters for long-term stability. In this sense, money would not only reflect scarcity, but also the condition (i.e. health) of the base layer systems that generate and sustain real value.

Taken together, these characteristics point toward a simple principle: A thermodynamically aligned monetary system is one that cannot create claims on the world faster than the world can physically fulfill them.

When a system does create claims on the world faster than the natural world can fulfill them, which has been the case for the past ~50 years, the systems built on top of it begins to degrade everything it touches (e.g. natural resources, food, health).

A comparison of current monetary systems

Now, given this overview of what a thermodynamically honest monetary system would look like in practice, let’s compare three current monetary systems, and how they relate to physical reality.

To do this, I asked AI to give me the top global monetary systems, to which it responded: fiat currency, gold, and bitcoin (digital currencies). Historically, gold was the predominant form of currency, however, fiat currencies have since taken the number one spot. Bitcoin on the other hand, is still relatively new and not widely used, but has gained considerable attention for it’s unique monetary framework.

While there are a host of other monetary systems that could easily be included in this analysis, let’s start by comparing the characteristics of the three primary systems mentioned above:

Viewed through this lens, the differences become clear. Fiat systems maximize flexibility better than the other two (Nixon’s objective), but completely breaks the connection to physical reality. Gold remains grounded in physical scarcity, and has the longest successful track record in human society, but it lacks adaptability (and ease of use in the modern world). Bitcoin on the other hand, introduces a new modern (digital) model that doesn’t have a very long track record yet, but it is the most constrained by energy and fixed supply.

Given this analysis, it appears that Bitcoin is currently the most thermodynamically aligned monetary system. This is because its issuance is directly tied to real energy expenditure (from mining) and strictly constrained supply (21 million hard-coded), both of which force it to reflect the physical limits that govern all economic activity.

But rather than get into the details of how Bitcoin may or may not present an opportunity for building a new, more sustainable monetary system (I personally think it does 1, 2), let’s take a step back and look at the wider framing. This is important because determing what form of money best aligns with physical reality may actually be too narrow of an approach given that all forms of money do not exist in isolation.

Nature already solved this problem

If we take a step back and look beyond human-designed systems, we find something remarkable. Natural systems (i.e. ecosystems) have already solved the problem of operating within physical limits. Unlike fiat systems that have the option to artificially create more units, ecosystems are layered, structured, and governed by finite energy flows.

Take for example, trophic systems. Trophic systems are the hierarchical arrangement of feeding positions within an ecosystem that illustrate how energy and nutrients move from producers to consumers.

In a trophic systems, energy enters at the base and circulates through living organisms (see figure below). At the base lies autotrophs (i.e. plants, algae, phytoplankton), which create their own food using energy from the sun or chemicals. Autotrophs form the base of the entire food chain because they are the only organisms that can directly transform the energy from the sun into food. Then higher up the trophic system are the heterotrophs (i.e. animals, fungi, most bacteria), which must consume autotrophs or other consumers in order to obtain their energy.

In trophic systems, energy always flows upward through a diverse network of producers and consumers, with each level transforming energy. At every step up the trophic system, most of the energy is lost as heat. Only a small fraction (~10%) moves up the food chain. Unlike the artificial systems designed by humans, higher level organisms in a trophic structure cannot expand beyond the limits of the base—they are indefinitely constrained by it. This is a self-regulating system as nature intended, and that has been time-tested over billions of years.

The economy as a trophic system

Whether we recognize it or not, human economies follow a similar structure to trophic systems in nature.

At the base lies physical reality (energy, thermodynamics, and natural systems). Above that sits the ecological layer (forests, soils, biodiversity, and oceans) that captures and stores energy. Above that sits the productive economy, where resources from the ecological layer are extracted and transformed to produce our goods/ services. And lastly, at the very top of the pyramid sits the financial system, which simply coordinates and allocates capital.

Like trophic systems in nature, this is basically a layered system of energy flow.

But unlike an ecosystem, our human-designed financial system has broken its connection to the foundational energetic constraints that support the entire structure.

Where the system breaks

In natural systems, the upper layers are strictly bounded by the lower ones. If primary production by autotrophs declines, higher trophic levels must contract. Put another way, natural systems self-regulate based on the underlying resource availability.

In modern economies, particularly under a fiat monetary system, the opposite can occur. Financial systems can expand independently of the underlying ecological base. Capital can grow (e.g. money printing) even as the natural systems they ultimately depend on are being degraded.

This is the core instability of our current monetary system.

It is the equivalent of a trophic pyramid where the top layers continue to grow even as the base collapses. This imbalance is impossible in nature for a reason. And, it should be in economies as well if we want humankind to survive and thrive well into the future.

Toward a biomimetic monetary system

If the goal is to build a stable, long-term system, the solution may not be to invent something entirely new, but to learn from what already works in nature. This is the explicit goal of biomimicry—study nature’s 3.8 billion years of evolution to emulate its forms, processes, and systems to sustainably solve human problems. Humans have successfully done this time and time again throughout history (e.g. 50 examples of biomimicry)

Given the success we’ve had in the past from copying nature, it’s safe to assume that the same should hold true with our economic systems. In this sense, it would make sense that our monetary system would begin to resemble the structure of an ecosystem.

It would have a constrained base layer, where money reflects real energy costs and cannot expand arbitrarily. It would incorporate measurement layers that track ecological health (i.e. biodiversity, soil, water, carbon systems). It would support bioregional financial systems, where capital flows are aligned with the regeneration of local ecosystems. And it would operate within governance structures that reinforce long-term stability rather than short-term expansion.

In such a system, money would no longer sit above nature; It would sit within it!

The shift in perspective

This represents a fundamental shift in how we view our economies. Instead of asking how to grow the economy from nature, the question becomes how to design an economy that behaves like nature—layered, constrained, and inextricably linked to the state of the underlying energy flows.

This is not a rejection of growth, but a redefinition of it. Growth becomes the increase of complexity and resilience within the system, rather than the simple expansion of throughput.

Conclusion

While this article started by analyzing what a thermodynamically honest money would look like, the idea ultimately points beyond money itself. It suggests that the challenges we face (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and economic instability) are not separate problems, but interconnected symptoms of a system that has become detached from its life-supporting foundation.

Reconnecting the system to physical reality will require more than technological improvement. It will require a fundamental redesign—one in which money is realigned with thermodynamics and structured to reflect the true value of the energy and resources that sustain long-term resilience.

Achieving this may begin with something as simple, and as powerful, as telling the truth about what money actually represents in our societies.

Share

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. The goal is not to make money with these articles, but rather to explore the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and to present ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience in hopes of sparking change.

TLDR: Economic growth is always tied to energy and material use, and efficiency gains alone haven’t reduced total resource consumption. Absolute “decoupling” isn’t happening at a global scale due to physical limits, meaning sustainability likely requires aligning economic activity with ecological constraints rather than relying on growth alone.

The promise of separation

A central thesis of my recent articles is that economic growth is not an abstract phenomenon only registered in financial ledgers. It’s a physical process that requires energy, transforms raw materials, and produces entropy in the real world. With this understanding, the question becomes: If all growth has a physical cost, is it still possible to separate economic expansion from its environmental impact?

This is the promise of decoupling—a concept that emerged in the mid/ late-20th century as an attempt to reconcile continued GDP growth with ecological limits (originally structured around the Kuznets Curve). It suggests that through technological innovation, improved efficiency, and cleaner production methods, economies can continue to grow while at the same time reducing their dependence on natural resources and their impact on ecological systems. It’s an idea that has become deeply embedded in modern economic and policy discourse, offering a vision of continued prosperity without corresponding environmental degradation.

If this vision were achievable at scale, it would resolve one of the central tensions of our time. And, if true, it would also mean that growth and sustainability are not in fact in conflict.

Given this, the most important question we can ask ourselves is whether this promise holds true when tested in the real world.

What decoupling requires

To evaluate the idea of decoupling, it’s necessary to clarify what it actually entails. To do this, it’s important to distinguish between two fundamentally different forms of decoupling:

• Relative decoupling occurs when the amount of resources required per unit of economic output declines. This is essentially a measure of efficiency. An economy that produces more value with less energy or fewer materials per unit of output is said to be relatively decoupling from resource use.

• Absolute decoupling, however, is a much stronger claim. It requires that total resource use declines in absolute terms while the economy continues to grow. In this scenario, the overall scale of environmental impact decreases even as economic activity expands.

The distinction between these two forms of decoupling is critical. Relative decoupling reflects improvements in how efficiently the system operates. This form of decoupling is both real and widespread. Absolute decoupling on the other hand, represents a fundamental break between economic growth and physical throughput.

The central question then is whether efficiency improvements are sufficient to reduce total resource use while economic growth continues.

The global system does not show it

When we examine the world around us today, the case for absolute decoupling becomes very unlikely. Over the past century, global economic output has increased dramatically—driven by industrialization, technological advancement, and expanding global markets. At the same time, global energy consumption, natural resource extraction, and environmental impacts have also increased.

While certain regions have achieved reductions in specific metrics, such as local emissions or energy intensity, these improvements often reflect changes in the geographic distribution of production rather than an actual reduction in total impact.

This is not an incidental outcome. It reflects the structure of a globally integrated economy in which production, consumption, and environmental impact are distributed across interconnected supply chains. Goods consumed in one part of the world are frequently produced in another, and the environmental costs associated with that production are often externalized beyond the point of consumption.

As a result, apparent progress in one region is likely to coincide with increased environmental pressure in another.

The outsourcing of physical reality

One of the defining features of modern economic systems is the extent to which they obscure the physical basis of production. As economies transition toward services, finance, and digital technologies, they often appear to become less dependent on material inputs. Industrial activity declines domestically, and economic value is increasingly generated through less visibly physical forms.

However, this apparent shift does not eliminate the underlying material processes; it only redistributes them.

The extraction of minerals, the generation of energy, and the manufacturing of products continue to occur, often in regions with fewer regulatory constraints or lower production costs. The environmental impacts associated with these activities remain, even if they are no longer visible in the local economy where they are consumed.

In this sense, many economies have not actually decoupled from resource use—they’ve simply outsourced it. Given this, the entropy produced by economic activity hasn’t been reduced at all—its just become more difficult to track.

The persistence of material dependence

Even the most advanced sectors of the economy are grounded in physical processes. Digital technologies, often cited as evidence of dematerialization, rely on extensive physical infrastructure. Data centers require land, energy, and cooling systems. Communication networks depend on cables, satellites, and electronic devices. The production of these systems involves mining, manufacturing, and transportation.

Similarly, the transition to renewable energy does not eliminate material dependence. Solar panels, wind turbines, and battery systems require large quantities of minerals and metals, as well as energy-intensive manufacturing processes. While these technologies may reduce certain forms of environmental impact, they do not operate independently of the physical world.

As economies evolve, the composition of resource use changes, but the reliance on the underlying energy and materials remains.

Growth and scale

At its core, economic growth represents an increase in the scale of activity: more goods are produced, more services are delivered, and more transactions take place. Each of these activities requires energy and materials, contributing to the overall throughput of the system. By “system” I do not mean political boundaries like countries, but rather the global economy as a whole. This distinction is important, because we have become accustomed to thinking about economic growth and environmental impacts at national levels.

For example, large economies like the U.S. use metrics such as GDP to measure economic growth and total carbon emissions to assess environmental impact. However, these metrics capture only the activities that occur within U.S. borders. They fail to account for the full economic and environmental impact of activities tied to the U.S. economy. When the U.S. sources natural resources from abroad, the environmental consequences of those activities are not reflected in its domestic accounting.

This disconnect between national and global accounting is increasingly significant in a globalized world, as it obscures our ability to track the true impact of economic growth. When a large economy outsources production while claiming progress on environmental sustainability metrics, it can create a misleading impression of improvement. In almost all cases, when assessed at a global scale, total resource use continues to rise alongside economic growth.

To determine whether absolute decoupling is truly occurring, we would need to observe a reduction in total resource use at the planetary level (regardless of political boundaries) alongside continued economic growth. Historically, achieving this level of decoupling has proven extremely difficult—if not impossible—on a global scale.

The constraint of thermodynamics

The difficulty of achieving absolute decoupling is not simply a matter of insufficient innovation or policy failure. It reflects deeper constraints imposed by the physical laws governing energy and matter.

Energy transformations are never perfectly efficient. This is because some energy is always dissipated as heat, materials degrade over time and must be replaced or replenished, and systems that process energy and materials cannot operate without losses.

These constraints impose real limits on how far efficiency can be improved. While technological progress can push these limits outward, it cannot eliminate them entirely. As a result, the relationship between economic activity and physical throughput persists.

The risk of a comforting narrative

The idea of decoupling is extremely compelling, especially for those of us dedicating our lives to protecting fragile ecosystems, because it offers a pathway that avoids difficult trade-offs. It suggests that societies can continue to pursue growth while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. This is a very comforting thought because it aligns with a vision of progress that wouldn’t require fundamental changes to current economic structures or our patterns of consumption.

However, if absolute decoupling is not occurring at the necessary scale, then this narrative carries significant risks!

It can create a false sense of progress, encouraging slow, incremental improvements while leaving the underlying dynamics largely unchanged. As a result, it can actually delay more substantial reforms by reinforcing the belief that existing systems can be made sustainable through efficiency alone.

A more grounded understanding

Recognizing the limits of decoupling does not require abandoning the pursuit of improvement. But it does require a reframing of the problem. Instead of seeking to eliminate the relationship between growth and resource use, the focus should shift towards managing that relationship within the constraints imposed by the physical world.

This involves acknowledging that economic activity will always have a material basis and that sustainability must be understood in terms of maintaining the integrity of the underlying global system that supports life (the base layer).

Put another way, it requires designing new economic systems that operate within ecological limits and prioritizing long-term stability over short-term expansion.

It also requires reconsidering how success is defined. If growth is measured solely in terms of output, it is likely to overlook the degradation of the systems on which that output depends. A more comprehensive understanding of progress must account for both economic activity AND the condition of the biophysical and ecological foundation.

Looking forward

The recognition that growth remains entirely tied to physical throughput, despite efficiency gains and technological advancement, leads to a deeper and more structural question.

If the economy cannot be fully decoupled from the physical world, then the challenge is not simply to improve technology, but to align the entire system with physical reality.

This brings us to a core concept of this Substack, which is the role of money.

Economic systems are guided by signals (prices, incentives, and flows of capital) that shape decisions about production and consumption. If these signals do not reflect physical constraints, they will continue to drive patterns of activity that accelerate resource use and environmental degradation.

Given this, the key question to ask ourselves is whether the money we use is actually aligned with the realities of the world it operates within. Is our money (e.g. USD, Euro, Yen, Yuan) currently aligned with the laws of thermodynamics? If not, what would a thermodynamically aligned money look like?

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I’m not a professional writer and don’t aim to make money by writing them. I’m a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.

TLDR: Efficiency makes resource use cheaper and more accessible, which increases demand and ultimately drives more total consumption—not less. The current article uses Jevons’s Paradox to show that in a growth-oriented system, efficiency accelerates resource extraction and entropy, challenging the idea that technology alone can reduce our environmental impact.

The question that follows growth

In the previous essay, The Entropy Cost of Growth, I explored the physical foundations of economic expansion and how growth is not an abstract phenomenon, but a material one. Every unit of economic growth requires energy, transforms resources, and produces entropy. These processes are governed by the laws of thermodynamics, which cannot be bypassed by innovation or policy no matter how hard we try. Once this reality is understood, it naturally leads to a question that sits at the center of modern thinking about progress: if growth has a physical cost, can we reduce that cost through modern technological advances and efficiency?

At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. Technological progress has consistently improved the efficiency with which we use energy and materials. Machines have become more precise and efficient, industrial processes more optimized, and products more energy-efficient. It seems reasonable to assume that if each unit of output requires fewer inputs, then total resource consumption should decline over time, right? This belief is deeply embedded in contemporary narratives about sustainability, where technological efficiency is often presented as a primary solution to environmental challenges.

However, the relationship between efficiency and total resource use is more complex than this intuition suggests. In fact, while most won’t want to hear this (and that may rub some poeple the wrong way), technological efficiency doesn’t appear to be helping us much. Rather, it appears to be expediting resource extraction.

The promise of efficiency

Efficiency is one of the defining features of modern technological progress. Across nearly every sector of the economy, there has been a sustained effort to reduce waste and improve performance. Engines consume less fuel per mile, appliances require less electricity, and industrial systems have become increasingly optimized.

These improvements are real and meaningful. On a per-unit basis, the world has become more efficient. Each unit of production now requires fewer inputs than it did in the past, which represents a significant technological achievement.

From this perspective, it seems logical to conclude that continued improvements in efficiency should eventually lead to a reduction in total resource use. If every process becomes more efficient, then the overall system should require fewer resources to function, right?

But this conclusion rests on an assumption that doesn’t hold in practice.

The paradox at the heart of efficiency

In my research for this article, I learned of an eye-opening paradox discovered by the early 19th-centry economist William Stanley Jevons. Jevons was the first person to deeply examine the relationship between efficiency and resource use. What he discovered was that when technological advancements increase the efficiency of a resource's usage, the total consumption of that resource actually rises rather than falls. This became known as Jevons Paradox, which Jevons tested while studying coal consumption during the Industrial Revolution. What he observed was that improvements in steam engine efficiency did not lead to a reduction in coal use as people expected. Instead, and counter to intuition, coal consumption increased with improvements in engine efficiency!

More efficient engines reduced the cost of using coal, which made steam power more economically attractive. As a result, industries began to dramatically expand their use of coal, and new applications emerged.

Jevons Paradox, reveals a fundamental dynamic: Efficiency lowers the cost of using a resource, and lower costs tend to increase overall demand. As demand rises, total consumption often increases rather than decreases.

What appears to be a solution on the surface, actually becomes a driver of continued growth.

Efficiency in the modern economy

This dynamic is not confined to the Industrial Revolution. It continues to shape the modern economy in multiple ways. Here’s a few examples:

In transportation, vehicles have become significantly more fuel-efficient over time. However, the reduced cost per mile has contributed to increased travel, longer commutes, and much greater reliance on personal vehicles (and multi-vehicle families). As a result, the total distance traveled has actually expanded, thus offsetting many of the efficiency gains.

In computing, advances in semiconductor technology have dramatically increased the efficiency of processing power. Yet as computing becomes cheaper and more powerful, demand for digital services continues to grow. Streaming, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and data storage have all expanded rapidly, leading to rising energy consumption across the digital economy.

Interestingly, Jovens Paradox has also be documented in other resources. A case study of water resources in Spain demonstrated why relying solely on technological efficiency to reach water sustainability is flawed. Without social and political limits on total resource throughput, efficiency gains continued to be eaten-up by economic growth, which ultimately failed to reduce the overall human impact on the planet water management programs aimed for.

In each of these cases, efficiency changes how a resource is used, but it does not necessarily reduce how much of that resource is used in total. In fact, as Jevons pointed out, it actually tends to increase how many resources are used. This is because the money or resources saved by the efficiency in question are reinvested or spent elsewhere, thus stimulating further economic growth and natural resource demand.

The deeper mechanism

To understand why this pattern persists, it is necessary to look beyond individual technologies and examine the broader system in which they operate.

When efficiency improves, it reduces the cost of production. Lower costs increase accessibility, which leads to higher demand. Businesses respond to this demand by expanding production, and consumers respond by increasing consumption. The system scales in response to efficiency.

Efficiency improves the capability of the system, but it does not determine its limits. Those limits are shaped by economic incentives, cultural expectations, and institutional structures.

As long as the system is oriented toward growth, efficiency will tend to reinforce that orientation.

Efficiency and entropy

From a thermodynamic perspective, efficiency affects the rate at which energy is used, but it does not change the fundamental direction of the system. The economy continues to transform low-entropy resources into high-entropy waste.

Efficiency can reduce the energy required for a given task, but if the total number of tasks increases, total energy use may still rise. As energy use increases, entropy increases as well.

This is why efficiency alone cannot resolve the entropy cost of growth. It modifies the pathway of energy flow, but it does not alter the underlying process.

The limits of technological solutions

Modern discussions about sustainability often place significant emphasis on technological innovation (e.g. AI, solar power, electric cars). The expectation is that advances in efficiency will allow societies to reduce their environmental impact while continuing to expand economic activity.

While technology plays an essential role in improving resource use, it cannot fully overcome the structural dynamics of the system. Efficiency gains are typically reinvested into further growth, leading to increased throughput rather than reduced total consumption.

In this context, efficiency is actually acting as an enabler of further expansion. It allows the system to operate more effectively, but it does not determine the scale at which it operates.

Rethinking the role of efficiency

Recognizing the limits of efficiency does not diminish its importance. Efficiency remains a valuable tool for improving performance, reducing waste, and enhancing quality of life. However, it must be understood within the context of the broader system.

Efficiency alone cannot solve the challenges associated with growth and resource use. Without constraints, it accelerates the system rather than stabilizing it. With constraints, it can help optimize resource use within sustainable limits.

This distinction is essential for understanding how efficiency should be applied in practice.

A different question

If efficiency does not necessarily lower total resource use, then the focus of the conversation must shift. Instead of asking how to use resources more efficiently, it becomes necessary to ask what determines how much is used in total.

This question leads beyond technology and into the roles of economic and monetary systems (hint: fiat currencies excel resource use). It also requires examining how incentives are designed, how value is measured, and how humans address the concept of growth.

Efficiency operates within these systems, but it does not define them.

Where this leads

The realization that efficiency does not necessarily reduce total resource use leads directly to a deeper and more challenging question. If growth increases energy use, and efficiency tends to expand rather than limit that growth, can economic expansion truly be separated from its physical impact?

This idea, known as decoupling, has become central to modern economic thinking. It suggests that economies can continue to grow while reducing their overall resource use and environmental impact.

But, is this actually possible? Can human economies expand infinitely? Should we really expect national GDP’s to grow constantly and forever?

As an ecologist with over 25 years experience working in one of the most complex and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, I’ve never seen any system that can grow endlessly. So why would we expect that human economies are any different?

This is the question I’ll explore in the next essay!

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer, and don’t aim to make money by writing them. I am a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.

TLDR: Economic growth is a physical process, not just a financial one—it requires transforming energy and materials, inevitably producing waste and environmental impact. Because the Earth is finite, endless growth leads to ecological degradation, meaning true progress must consider the health of the natural systems that sustain the economy.

In my previous essay, The Entropy Economy, I explored a simple but foundational idea: human civilization is built upon a layered system that has the laws of physics at its base. Above it lays ecological systems, economic systems, and finally social systems that govern human behavior. While humans do have the ability to shape the upper layers of this stack, we cannot alter the foundation (laws of physics). The second law of thermodynamics places hard constraints on what is possible, regardless of how advanced our technologies or institutions become.

This insight has an important implication—If our economy ultimately relies on the underlying physical processes, then economic growth cannot be understood purely in financial or abstract terms (the status quo today). In reality, it must be understood as a constant transformation of energy and matter. And, at the end of the day, every transformation of energy from a low entropy state to a high entropy state carries a real and physical cost.

The abstraction of growth

As we all know, modern economic systems are organized around the idea of Growth. Rising GDP is interpreted as progress, increased production is seen as success, and expanding markets are taken as a sign of wealth and prosperity. Limiting or slowing growth on the other hand, is seen as dangerous and to be avoided at all cost. To observe this, all we have to do is look back at history. Every significant economic downturn is swiftly met with some form of quantitative easing (QE) (when central banks inject liquidity into the banking system, thus lowers long-term interest rates, and encouraging lending to stimulate economic growth). Below is a snapshot of how quantitative easing was used to spark economic growth following the 2008 financial crisis.

When thinking about economic growth, it’s often discussed in terms of percentages, indexes, and financial indicators, which tends to give it an abstract quality. It can feel as though growth happens primarily in spreadsheets, balance sheets, or digital ledger systems.

This abstraction makes it very easy to overlook a crucial fact: ALL economic growth is grounded in physical reality.

Every good that is produced and every service that is delivered requires a transformation of energy and materials. Even the most intangible sectors of the economy (e.g. software, finance, or digital media) depend on physical infrastructure such as data centers, communication networks, and human labor — all of which are sustained by the underlying flow of energy. Growth, therefore, is not just an increase in economic value; It’s an increase in the scale at which energy and materials are being transformed.

What growth really represents

To understand the physical nature of growth, it helps to examine something familiar. Given that I’m currently preparing a sourdough starter, let’s consider the making of a simple loaf of bread. At first glance, it appears to be a basic consumer good, but its creation depends on a chain of energy transformations. Sunlight is captured by wheat plants and converted into chemical energy through photosynthesis. That energy is stored in the grains of the plant, which are then harvested using fuel-powered machinery. The grains are then transported, processed into flour, baked in ovens, and then distributed through supply networks before reaching the consumer.

At each stage of this process, energy is required. And at each stage, some of that energy is dissipated as heat. What appears to be a simple product is actually the result of a complex thermodynamic process.

Now extend this logic across the entire global economy. Steel production, transportation systems, housing construction, digital infrastructure, and healthcare services all rely on similar chains of energy transformation. When analyzing these examples, the global economy can be understood as a vast system that converts concentrated energy and materials into goods, services, and ultimately waste.

So economic growth, in this context, means that more of these transformations are taking place across the world at any given time. Put another way, more natural resources are being extracted and converted from low entropy states to high entropy states.

The link between growth, energy, and entropy

Once we recognize that economic activity is fundamentally about energy transformation, a deeper relationship becomes visible. As economies grow, they require more energy to sustain increased production and consumption. As energy use increases, so too does entropy—the dispersion of energy into less useful forms, primarily as heat and waste.

This relationship is not incidental. It is absolutely structural. Growth increases throughput, and throughput increases entropy.

Now, technological improvements can change how efficiently energy is used, and they can alter the pathways through which energy flows. However, they do not eliminate the underlying relationship. Even highly efficient systems still require energy inputs, and even the most advanced technologies generate waste in the process of operation.

For this reason, economic growth is always accompanied by a physical footprint (whether we see it or not). That footprint may be visible, as in the case of mining operations or deforestation, or it may be less obvious, as in the energy consumption of data centers or global logistics networks. But the one thing that is guaranteed is that it’s always present.

The illusion of weightless growth

One of the defining features of modern economies is the perception that growth can become increasingly “light” or detached from the physical world. In todays world, digital technologies (e.g. internet, AI), financial systems, and service-based industries contribute to the sense that economic expansion can occur without significant material or energy inputs.

In reality, these systems remain deeply embedded and tied to physical infrastructure. Streaming a video requires servers, electricity, and cooling systems. Cloud computing depends on massive data centers, which consume large amounts of energy. Artificial intelligence, often described as a purely digital phenomenon, relies on intensive computational processes that translate directly into electricity use and heat generation.

Similarly, technologies that are often framed as solutions to environmental challenges, such as electric vehicles or renewable energy systems, still depend on material extraction, manufacturing, and energy inputs. Lithium, cobalt, and rare earth metals must be mined and processed. Infrastructure must be built and maintained. Energy must be generated and distributed.

These systems may reduce certain types of environmental impact, but they do not eliminate the physical basis of economic activity; they only shift it to less visible forms.

The limits of a finite system

If growth requires increasing energy throughput as I’ve discussed above, and if energy use inevitably expedites entropy, then growth cannot be infinite within a finite system. The Earth has a limited capacity to provide resources and absorb waste. Even the most complex and efficient low entropy systems like tropical ecosystems regenerate at finite rates—a fact well-understood by those of us who dedicate our lives to restoring degraded landscapes.

When human economic activity exceeds these natural limits and natural rates of regeneration, degradation occurs. Soils lose fertility, forests are depleted, water systems are strained, and biodiversity declines. These outcomes are not anomalies; they are the expected consequences of pushing physical systems beyond their capacity and beyond their tipping points.

This does not mean that all forms of growth are inherently harmful, nor does it imply that economic development must cease. It does, however, mean that growth must be understood within the context of physical constraints. Ignoring those constraints, as much of the world has over the past few centuries, does not remove them. It only delays the severity and timing of their impact.

The hidden displacement of impact

Another reason the entropy cost of growth is often overlooked is that modern supply chains distribute impacts across the globe. The environmental consequences of production are frequently separated from the locations where goods are ultimately consumed. A product purchased in one country frequently relies on resources extracted in another, energy generated elsewhere, and ecosystems impacted far from the point of sale.

This geographic separation creates the impression that certain economies have become “cleaner” or more sustainable. In many cases, what has actually occurred is a relocation of entropy production. Resource extraction and environmental degradation have been outsourced rather than eliminated.

In most cases, the outsourcing of resource extraction and enviornmental degradation is uni-directional—wealthier countries outsource the extraction and degradation to less wealthy countries around the world. The U.S. outsources food production to countries all across Latin America and the world. China outsources rare earth mineral mining to countries across countries in Africa and Latin America. The story is the same time and time again—wealthier nations (typically in the northern hemisphere) outsource extraction and degradation to poorer nations (typically in the southern hemisphere).

Although few people are aware of it, upwards of 95% of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador has been clearcut and degraded at the hands of international commodity markets. It’s estimated that nearly 700,000 acres (equivalent to ~850 Central Parks) of highly biodiverse tropical forest have been cleared solely for banana production in Ecuador—a tiny country that accounts for approximately 25-30% of global banana exports.

As a result, the global system continues to operate under the same thermodynamic constraints, even if those constraints are less visible to certain populations of the world.

Rethinking what we mean by progress

Recognizing the physical cost of growth invites a deeper reconsideration of what “progress” actually means. If growth is measured solely by increases in production or consumption, it will almost certainly overlook the degradation of the systems that support long-term well-being.

A forest that stands for centuries represents a highly organized low entropy system built through continuous energy flows. It stores carbon, regulates water cycles, and supports biodiversity. Converting that forest into timber or agricultural land will increase economic output in the short term, but it will also reduce ecological complexity and resilience over the long term.

From a thermodynamic perspective, this is not an increase in order. It is a transformation of concentrated, organized energy into more dispersed forms of waste.

This distinction matters. It suggests that progress cannot be defined only by the quantity of economic activity. It must also account for the quality and durability of the natural systems that ultimately sustain it.

A necessary shift in perspective

Understanding that economic growth is inseparable from energy use and entropy, the central challenge is not simply how to grow faster, but how to operate within the limits imposed by the physical world and laws of physics. This requires a dramatic shift from focusing exclusively on expansion and growth to considering how systems can be designed for long-term stability (a feat Nature achieved in highly complex ecological systems like the Pacific Forest of Ecuador long before humans were around).

It’s important to note that this shift does not eliminate growth, but it does reframe it. It places greater emphasis on maintaining ecological integrity, improving the efficiency of resource use without increasing total throughput, and aligning economic incentives with the health of the underlying natural systems.

Most importantly, it acknowledges that the global economy is not separate from nature—It’s actually a process built on top of and embedded within it.

Where this leads

Understanding the entropy cost of growth leads directly to a deeper question. If growth has unavoidable physical consequences, can improvements in efficiency or technology allow us to reduce those consequences while continuing to expand economic activity?

This idea is widely accepted and frequently presented as the primary path forward (think of the current move towards electric cars). However, the relationship between efficiency and resource use is much more complex than it appears.

In many cases, increasing efficiency actually doesn’t reduce total consumption—It increases it!

Now that I’ve fulfilled my long-standing goal of exploring the role of entropy in the economy, I’ll turn my attention to why our modern technological advances aren’t necessarily the golden solution some think they are.

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I’m not a professional writer and don’t aim to make money by writing them. I’m a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself going deeper and deeper into the endless rabbit hole of physics.

Nearly 20 years ago, during my scientific training, I took a physics course, but back then I wasn’t particularly drawn to the fundamental laws governing matter and the universe. My passion was more with living organisms and the intricate ecosystems they form.

As time passed and my interests broadened, I’ve come to appreciate the profound ways physics underpins the human experience—and indeed all life on Earth. One of the simplest yet most powerful insights from physics that continues to amaze me is this: there exists universal laws that govern absolutely everything in the universe.

Among these laws, one stands out in particular. It shapes the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies, drives the growth and decay of ecosystems, and—most critically for us—governs how energy flows through our planet. That same law imposes strict, unavoidable constraints on every system humans create, including our economies and the monetary systems we rely on.

Most people encounter this idea briefly at some point in their education, but few realize how deeply it applies and shapes the world we live in today.

The law is called Entropy (second law of thermodynamics).

Understanding entropy does more than explain physical processes. It provides a lens through which we can better understand ecological collapse, economic growth, and the hidden forces driving environmental degradation across the planet.

When viewed through the lens of thermodynamics, the modern economy looks less like a purely financial system and more like a massive energy-transformation machine embedded within the natural world.

If we want to build economic systems that work with nature rather than against it, we must begin by understanding the physical laws that govern the energy of all systems, including our own. In the rest of this article, I explore this topic by revisiting one of the most fundamental rules of Physics 101 in a way that non-physists, scientists, economists, and the general public can understand.

The rule everything follows

One of the most fundamental principles in physics is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

In simple terms, the law tells us that entropy tends to increase over time in an isolated system. It dictates that natural processes are irreversible and that energy tends to disperse.

In basic terms, entropy is often described as disorder, but a more precise and useful interpretation is that entropy measures how energy spreads out and becomes less available to perform useful work. Put another way, energy tends to move from concentrated states into more dispersed states.

For the purposes of this article, an important detail of entropy is the difference between high and low entropy states. A High entropy state indicates a system has more disorder (dispursed energy), where as a Low entropy state indicates a system that has more order or stability (contained energy). A massive redwood tree on California’s coast is an exampe of a low entropy state. Cutting that tree down and burning it to heat our homes is an example transforming it into a high entropy state.

This process of energy transforming from more concentrated states into more dispersed states is happening constantly, everywhere in everyday life. A hot cup of coffee cools as heat spreads into the surrounding air. A drop of dye disperses through a glass of water until the entire liquid is evenly colored. A piece of wood burns in a fire, releasing its stored chemical energy as heat, light, smoke, and ash.

In each case, concentrated energy becomes diffuse.

It’s also important to note that these energetic transformations only move in one direction. You’ll never see smoke spontaneously gathering back together into a solid log, and you never see heat flowing naturally from a cold room back into a cooling cup of coffee.

For this reason, Entropy actually gives the universe its direction. And, at the deepest level, it explains why the past and future are not interchangeable (our sense of time).

Why life exists at all

At first glance, life on Earth appears to contradict this law. Living systems create extremely complex structures. For example, the rainforests of Ecuador grow into unimageably intricate networks of plants, fungi, animals, and microorganisms. Cells assemble proteins and DNA into organized forms of astonishing complexity.

On the surface, these processes seem to create order in a universe that supposedly moves toward disorder due to the second law of thermodynamics.

The key to resolving this apparent contradiction is understanding that Earth is not an isolated system. Our planet continuously receives energy from the sun. This energy arrives in a relatively concentrated form as sunlight and eventually leaves the Earth as diffuse heat radiating back into space.

This constant bi-directional energy flow creates the underlying conditions that allow life to exist. Without it, life couldn’t exist.

Living organisms on Earth’s surface capture solar energy and use it to build complex biological structures. Plants convert sunlight into chemical energy through photosynthesis, which then flows through ecosystems as animals consume those plants and other organisms further up the food chain.

But while life creates pockets of order locally, it still increases entropy in the system overall. Organisms release heat and waste back into their environments as they consume energy. In other words, life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics—it actually accelerates entropy production and the dispersal of energy throughout the system.

Forests, grasslands, coral reefs, and microbial ecosystems are thermodynamic engines that convert concentrated solar energy into dispersed heat and physical matter while building extraordinary biological complexity along the way.

Human civilization operates on this exact same principle. We take more concentrated sources of energy (low entropy state) and transform it into the things we want and need for our day to day lives (high entropy state). This last point seems obvious, but it’s abosultely vital to understand its implications if we want to build more efficient and robust economic systems.

Civilization as an energy transformation system

Modern civilization can be understood as a vast thermodynamic engine. Every economic activity we carry out ultimately transforms low-entropy resources into higher-entropy waste.

To illustrate this point, let’s consider something familiar, like a smartphone.

The production a single smartphone requires metals mined from the Earth, rare earth elements extracted from rock, silicon refined at extremely high temperatures, and energy used in manufacturing plants across the world. The device is then transported through a global shipping network before arriving to storefronts and then eventually to a consumer’s pocket.

Each step along this chain consumes energy and transforms concentrated natural resources into more dispersed forms.

Economists traditionally focus their thinking on financial transactions rather than physical transformations, but the reality is that every economic transaction corresponds to a material and energetic transformation somewhere in the world.

The economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen recognized this in his 1971 book “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process” where he argued that economic activity cannot be separated from thermodynamics, and that all natural resources of the planet are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. In other words, human’s economic systems are fundamentally about converting low-entropy natural resources into high-entropy waste.

Economic growth therefore requires increasing flows of energy and materials through the system. More growth means more energy throughput → More energy throughput means more entropy production.

The monetary illusion

Money itself is not energy and it is not a natural resource. Money is simply an information system humans designed to coordinate how resources move through our societies.

Yet, as counterintuitive as it may seem, modern financial systems often behave as if economic growth can continue indefinitely without regard to physical limits. Credit creation, financial speculation, and monetary expansion (money printing) can increase purchasing power without immediately reflecting the underlying state of the ecological systems that support the economy.

When this happens, economic signals become artificially (and recklessly) disconnected from the thermodynamic reality of the universe.

More money leads to more investment → More investment drives more production → More production requires more raw/ natural materials and more energy.

Put bluntly, this system results in accelerated resource extraction and accelerated entropy production. This is not the direction we want our social and economic systems to evolve.

In physical terms, our economy becomes a system that rapidly converts the planet’s stored energy into dispersed waste—waste that only accelerates entropy and the degradation of the finite natural resources we all depend on.

The entropy story of a forest

A mature forest in places like the Pacific Forest of Ecuador represents one of the most complex biological structures on Earth. Over centuries, solar energy captured through photosynthesis has been stored in tree trunks, soils, roots, and vast networks of interacting species.

In thermodynamic terms, the forest is a highly organized, low-entropy structure.

When the forest is cleared, this structure is rapidly dismantled and degraded. Trees are converted into timber or agricultural land. Carbon stored in biomass is released into the atmosphere. Soil erodes and biodiversity disappears.

What took many millennium of solar energy and evolution to build can be dismantled in just a few years. And, terrifyingly, the speed at which humanity has functioned like this, is only accelerating.

From a narrow financial perspective, this transformation can appear profitable. Timber, minerals, and agricultural products generate significant, and relatively immediate, economic returns.

From a thermodynamic perspective, however, something very different is happening. Highly complex and organized ecological systems are being converted into simpler and more dispersed forms of matter and energy.

Put another way, complex biological order is being transformed into entropy. Humans are essentially converting an efficient self-regulating low entropy system into high entropy waste that’s unable to recycle itself.

The stack beneath civilization

To understand why this matters, it helps to visualize the structure of human systems.

As I’ve discussed in previous articles (The Foundation Beneath The Economy), the laws of physics forms the foundation of everything → Ecological systems convert solar energy into biological structures that support life → Economic systems organize how humans use those resources → Social institutions govern how decisions are made within society.

Notice how financial markets operate near the top of this stack. However, they ultimately depend entirely on the layers beneath them. When ecological systems that are built on top of the laws of physics degrade, the entire structure becomes unstable.

Nature keeps accounts whether humans are tracking them or not.

Reconnecting economics with place

One promising approach for addressing this disconnect, and that builds on the ideas of entropy economics, is the concept of bioregional economies (see my previous four-part series). Instead of organizing economic systems purely through global financial flows, bioregional frameworks begin with the ecological systems that sustain life in a particular place.

A bioregion is defined by natural boundaries such as watersheds, forest systems, and climate patterns. Economic decisions made within a bioregion can therefore be tied more closely to the health of the ecosystems that support local communities.

This approach encourages economic systems that reward the maintenance of ecological complexity (low entropy states) rather than the rapid conversion of natural systems into commodities (high entropy states).

A case study from Ecuador’s Pacific Forest

As discussed in my previous articles, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador is one of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth. These forests regulate water cycles, stabilize soils, store large amounts of carbon, and support local livelihoods.

Yet they are also under immense pressure from mining, logging, and agricultural expansion driven by global commodity markets.

Organizations such as the Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) are working to develop financial mechanisms that align economic incentives with ecological stewardship. Rather than rewarding deforestation (the status quo), these initiatives aim to provide economic incentives to the land stewards and communities that maintain intact forests and restore degraded landscapes.

From a thermodynamic perspective, this work focuses on maintaining the complex biological structures that ecosystems represent. Healthy forests continue capturing solar energy, storing carbon, cycling water, and supporting biodiversity.

In other words, they preserve Nature’s low-entropy structures that sustain all life on the planet, including our own.

Nature’s ledger

Current human accounting systems continue to focus on short-term financial profit, but the rules of Nature operate on a different ledger (Nature’s Ledger).

Every transformation of energy has consequences whether we let ourselves see them or not.

The extraction of all natural resources increases entropy somewhere in the system, and all of which eventually impact us in some way.

The primary challenge of the Twenty-First century is not simply designing new financial tools. It’s revisiting Physics 101 in order to reconnect economics with the physical laws that governs all systems in the universe.

Because at the end of the day, the most powerful force shaping our economy is not money; It’s the fundamental law that governs the universe itself—Entropy.

If you would like to join an international community of changemakers that are trying to build a new, more sustainable (low entropy) future for humankind and the planet, please reach out. Me, my colleagues at TMA, and a growing number of local communities on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast are actively building a new economic system that protects and regeneratives life rather than exploit it. We’d love to hear from you!

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer. I am a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.

Over the course of this four-part series, I have explored the idea that the modern economy rests on a profound accounting error. Financial systems measure wealth through monetary indicators such as GDP, asset prices, and economic growth, while the ecological systems that make prosperity possible remain largely invisible within those calculations.

In the first article, I examined how this disconnect arises from a mismatch between the geography of economics and the geography of nature. Financial decisions are organized around political borders and corporate balance sheets, while the ecological processes that sustain life operate within landscapes shaped by watersheds, forests, climate systems, and biodiversity. These natural units—bioregions—function as living metabolic systems that store energy, regulate water, and generate the ecological conditions upon which human economies depend.

The second article illustrated how this dynamic unfolds in practice through the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, where community-based conservation and regenerative agriculture are beginning to align economic activity with the health of the landscape itself.

The third article explored why international investors may find compelling reasons to allocate capital toward such initiatives, recognizing that ecosystems function as productive assets whose stability underpins the long-term resilience of the global economy.

Taken together, these ideas suggest a deeper implication. If bioregions are the places where ecological wealth is created, and if capital allocation ultimately determines how landscapes are managed, then the architecture of global finance may eventually need to evolve to reflect the geography of living systems.

In other words, the emergence of bioregional finance may represent the early stages of a much larger transformation—one in which financial systems begin to operate at the scale of the planet itself.

The Economy as a Metabolic System

To understand why this transformation may be necessary, it helps to begin with a simple observation: the economy is not an abstract system of money and markets. At its most fundamental level, it is a physical process that transforms energy and materials into goods, services, and waste.

Every product manufactured, every building constructed, and every meal consumed depends on flows of energy and matter that originate in the natural world. Sunlight powers photosynthesis, which drives plant growth and ultimately supports entire food systems. Water cycles through forests, rivers, and soils, sustaining ecosystems and agriculture alike. Minerals and biological materials are extracted from the Earth and transformed into the infrastructure of modern civilization.

These processes follow the laws of thermodynamics. Energy enters the system, materials are transformed, and entropy inevitably increases as resources are dispersed and degraded over time.

Natural ecosystems have evolved remarkable mechanisms for managing these energy flows (low entropy systems). Forests capture solar energy and store it in complex biological structures while simultaneously regulating water cycles, building soil, and sustaining biodiversity. Nutrients circulate through intricate biological networks that allow ecosystems to maintain productivity over long periods of time.

Human economies, by contrast, often accelerate the breakdown of these cycles (high entropy systems). Concentrated resources such as fossil fuels, minerals, and old-growth forests are extracted and converted into goods that quickly disperse as waste. The economy expands by drawing down stores of ecological capital accumulated over centuries or millennia.

Yet because modern financial systems track monetary transactions rather than physical processes, the depletion of these ecological assets rarely appears within economic accounts.

This is the central accounting error of the modern economy.

The Limits of the Current Financial System

For much of the industrial era, this accounting error remained largely invisible because the planet’s ecological systems appeared vast relative to the scale of human activity. Forests seemed inexhaustible, oceans limitless, and the atmosphere capable of absorbing industrial emissions without consequence.

That perception is now changing.

Across the world, signs of ecological strain are becoming increasingly visible. Tropical forests that regulate rainfall patterns across continents are shrinking. Soil fertility is declining in agricultural regions that feed billions of people. Freshwater systems that support cities and industries are under growing pressure from pollution and overuse. Biodiversity loss is weakening the resilience of ecosystems that have evolved over millions of years.

These changes are not merely environmental concerns. They represent structural risks to the stability of the global economy itself.

Agricultural productivity depends on stable rainfall patterns generated by forest systems. Urban economies rely on watersheds that supply clean freshwater. Supply chains depend on predictable climate conditions and healthy ecosystems. Insurance markets, infrastructure planning, and national economies all assume a degree of environmental stability that can no longer be taken for granted.

When the ecological foundations of the economy begin to erode, financial systems built upon them inevitably become unstable as well.

Why Bioregions Matter

If ecological systems are the foundation of economic stability, then it becomes important to consider how those systems are organized. Unlike political jurisdictions or financial markets, ecosystems function as integrated landscapes defined by flows of water, energy, and biological life.

A river basin, for example, forms a coherent system in which rainfall in the mountains influences water availability downstream. Forest cover affects soil stability and water quality. Agricultural practices in one part of the watershed may influence flooding or sedimentation hundreds of kilometers away.

These dynamics operate across entire landscapes.

This is why the concept of the bioregion has become increasingly important in discussions of ecological governance and regenerative economics. A bioregion represents a geographic area defined by its ecological characteristics rather than its political boundaries. It encompasses the forests, rivers, soils, and communities that interact within a shared environmental system.

Within such systems, ecological health and economic prosperity are inseparable. When forests are degraded, water cycles change. When soils erode, agricultural productivity declines. When biodiversity disappears, ecosystems lose the resilience that allows them to recover from disturbances.

Managing these systems effectively therefore requires institutions capable of operating at the scale of the landscape itself.

A Network of Bioregional Economies

One way to imagine the future evolution of economic systems is to think of the world as a network of interconnected bioregional economies.

Within each bioregion, communities manage the ecological assets that sustain their livelihoods—forests, farmland, freshwater systems, and biodiversity. Local economies develop around forms of production that maintain or enhance the productivity of these landscapes. Regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, watershed protection, and ecosystem restoration become integral components of economic activity rather than peripheral concerns.

At the same time, these bioregional economies remain connected to global markets. Agricultural products, renewable resources, and ecosystem services flow between regions through trade and financial networks. Capital moves across borders to support investments that strengthen the resilience of landscapes and the communities that depend on them.

In this framework, the global economy becomes less like a centralized machine and more like a living network—an interconnected system of bioregional economies exchanging goods, knowledge, and capital while maintaining the ecological integrity of the landscapes from which those goods originate. This is how we convert our current high-entropy economic system into a low-entropy system that mimics the complex biological ecosystem underlying its success!

The Role of Sound Money

For such a system to function effectively, the financial institutions that allocate capital must operate with a longer time horizon than those that dominate much of today’s economy. Many of the ecological processes that sustain prosperity—forest regeneration, soil formation, watershed restoration—unfold over decades rather than quarterly earnings cycles.

This is where the concept of sound money becomes relevant.

Monetary systems that preserve value across time tend to encourage long-term investment and stewardship. When money rapidly loses purchasing power (due to inflation), economic actors are pushed toward short-term extraction and speculative behavior. When value can be stored reliably over long periods, it becomes easier to finance investments whose benefits accrue slowly.

In a world increasingly defined by ecological limits, financial systems need to evolve toward forms of money and capital allocation that reward patience, stability, and long-term stewardship.

The Emergence of Planetary Finance

In recent years, early signs of such a transformation have begun to appear. Carbon markets, biodiversity credits, watershed payment systems, and regenerative agriculture funds are all attempts—far from perfect but significant—to bring ecological processes into the domain of financial decision-making.

These mechanisms represent early steps toward what might eventually become a broader system of planetary finance: a financial architecture designed to allocate capital in ways that maintain the stability of the Earth’s ecological systems.

Advances in technology are making such systems increasingly feasible. Satellite monitoring allows scientists and investors to track forest cover, soil health, and water cycles across entire landscapes. Data platforms and artificial intelligence make it possible to model ecosystem dynamics with unprecedented precision. Distributed digital systems offer new ways to measure, verify, and finance environmental outcomes.

New, digital currencies like Bitcoin, with proven scarcity, and that cannot be controlled or manipulated by any singular political entity, are also beginning to introduce new opportunities to build more resilient and sustainable economic structures (see Hard Money, Living Forests). Harder forms of money have the potential to help humanity transition from an economy that requires fast-capital (inflationary) to one that values patient-capital (deflationary)—the impacts of which could spark a systematic shift in how we manage our natural resources and build a brighter future for humanity.

Thanks to these advances in human knowledge and technology, it is becoming possible for the first time in human history, to observe and manage the Earth’s ecological systems at a planetary scale.

Restacking the Global Economy

Viewed through this lens, the transition toward bioregional finance may represent the beginning of a broader reorganization of the economic stack itself.

At the foundation of that stack lies ecology—the flows of energy, water, nutrients, and biodiversity that sustain life on Earth. Above that foundation exist the bioregions where these ecological processes interact with human communities. Financial systems and markets then operate as mechanisms for allocating resources within and between these landscapes. Finally, social and political institutions emerge to govern the societies built upon this layered structure.

When these layers are aligned, economic systems reinforce the regenerative capacity of the planet. When they become disconnected—as they often are today—financial incentives can dramatically accelerate the degradation of the ecological systems upon which prosperity ultimately depends.

Restoring that alignment may be one of the defining economic challenges of the Twenty-first century.

Toward a Planetary Ledger

The modern financial system was built during an era when the Earth’s ecological systems appeared effectively limitless. Economic growth could proceed without serious consideration of the planetary boundaries that sustain it.

That era is ending.

As humanity confronts the realities of climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource constraints, the institutions governing capital will need to adapt. Financial systems that ignore the ecological foundations of prosperity will increasingly generate instability, inequality, and environmental degradation.

Bioregional finance offers a glimpse of a different path.

By aligning economic systems with the geography of living landscapes, it becomes possible to create institutions that reward regeneration rather than extraction. Capital flows begin to reinforce the health of ecosystems rather than undermine them.

In the end, every economy—no matter how sophisticated its financial instruments or technologies—remains bound by the physical realities of the planet that sustains it. Energy must come from somewhere. Water must flow through functioning ecosystems. Soil must regenerate if food systems are to endure. For most of modern history, our financial systems have behaved as though these foundations were effectively infinite. They are not. The coming decades will require a different kind of economic architecture—one capable of recognizing the living systems of the Earth as the true assets upon which prosperity depends. Bioregional finance may be one of the first steps toward that architecture. By aligning capital with the regenerative capacity of ecosystems, we begin to rebuild an economy that operates not in opposition to nature, but as a participant within it. In that sense, the challenge before us is not simply financial reform. It is the creation of a new nature-based ledger for civilization—one that finally accounts for the wealth of a living planet.

*I wrote this article from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer. I am a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.

For most of modern financial history, investors have operated under a quiet assumption: that the natural world exists largely outside the boundaries of the economy.

Capital builds factories, finances technology companies, funds infrastructure projects, and allocates resources across industries and nations. Meanwhile, forests, rivers, soils, and oceans provide the materials and environmental conditions that make those investments possible. In other words, nature has typically been treated as a backdrop rather than as a central component of economic systems. But, even if most don’t yet see it, that assumption is beginning to break down.

Across the planet, the ecological systems that support the global economy are under increasing strain. Tropical forests that regulate rainfall for major agricultural regions are disappearing. Soils that sustain food production are degrading faster than they can regenerate. Freshwater systems that supply cities and industries are becoming increasingly unstable.

For investors with long-term horizons, these changes represent more than environmental concerns—they represent systemic financial risks.

As I’ve described before (The Foundation Beneath The Economy), the global economy ultimately rests on a set of biological and climatic systems that function as the planet’s underlying infrastructure. When those systems weaken, the stability of everything built on top of them—from food systems to insurance markets to global supply chains—begins to erode.

In other words, the global economy depends entirely on assets that rarely appear on financial balance sheets.

Forests regulate rainfall that sustains agricultural regions worth trillions of dollars. Watersheds provide freshwater that underpins urban economies. Biodiversity stabilizes ecosystems that maintain resilient landscapes capable of absorbing shocks. These systems form what might be called the planet’s natural balance sheet.

For most of modern economic history, investors have treated these assets as externalities—important, but largely outside the scope of financial markets.

That era is coming to an end before our eyes.

A new category of investment is beginning to emerge at the intersection of climate finance, biodiversity protection, and regenerative agriculture. These investments do not treat ecosystems as passive scenery. Instead, they recognize living landscapes as productive (low-entropy) systems capable of generating long-term economic value.

At the center of this shift lies a concept explored in the previous articles of this series: bioregional finance (Part I, Part II).

The question for investors is no longer whether ecosystems matter to the economy.

The question is how capital should be allocated once that reality is fully understood.

Ecosystems as Economic Infrastructure

Investors are accustomed to valuing infrastructure. Ports enable trade. Roads connect markets. Electrical grids power industrial production. Telecommunications networks support modern digital economies. Infrastructure attracts investment because it forms the backbone of economic activity.

Yet beneath the infrastructure built by human societies lies a far older and more fundamental system: the ecological infrastructure of the planet.

Forests regulate rainfall patterns that sustain agricultural regions across continents. Wetlands filter freshwater that supports cities and industries. Mangroves and coral reefs protect coastlines from storm surges while supporting fisheries that feed hundreds of millions of people. Healthy soils underpin the global food system. Biodiversity maintains the resilience of ecosystems that stabilize landscapes in the face of climate variability.

These natural systems function as infrastructure every bit as critical, if not more, as roads or power plants. But unlike conventional infrastructure, they rarely receive systematic investment. Instead, they have historically been treated as free inputs into economic production.

As the scale of human activity expands, however, the limits of this approach are becoming increasingly visible. When forests disappear, rainfall patterns shift. When soils degrade, agricultural yields decline. When biodiversity collapses, ecosystems lose the resilience required to adapt to environmental stress.

The resulting disruptions ripple outward through supply chains, financial markets, and national economies. For investors with multi-decade horizons, and those looking to build lasting generational wealth, these ecological changes represent a new category of macroeconomic risk.

Protecting and restoring critical ecosystems is therefore not simply a matter of environmental stewardship. It is increasingly a matter of financial prudence.

Ecosystems as Productive Assets

While ecological systems are often framed primarily as resources to be protected, they can also be understood as productive assets (especially when managed and valued properly).

A healthy tropical forest provides a range of services that generate measurable economic value. It stores carbon that helps stabilize the global climate. It regulates regional rainfall patterns that support agriculture across entire countries. It protects watersheds that supply freshwater to downstream communities. It sustains biodiversity that supports ecosystem resilience and potential scientific discoveries.

Historically, these services have remained largely invisible within financial markets.

But that invisibility is beginning to change.

Sustainable and lucrative supply chains are emerging for agricultural products grown within regenerative landscapes. Carbon markets compensate landowners and communities for maintaining forests that store atmospheric carbon and stabilize the climate. Water utilities increasingly recognize the value of upstream watershed protection.

New forms of natural capital investment are also beginning to appear, linking ecosystem restoration with long-term financial returns. These developments suggest that ecosystems may gradually become integrated into the financial architecture of the global economy.

In this emerging framework, forests, soils, and watersheds are no longer treated solely as environmental concerns. They become valuable assets capable of generating long-term and sustainable economic flows.

Why Bioregional Finance Matters

The challenge lies in designing modern financial institutions capable of investing in these systems effectively.

Traditional project-based conservation finance often struggles because ecological processes operate across entire landscapes rather than within the boundaries of individual projects.

A forest ecosystem functions as an integrated system. Watersheds link upstream land management with downstream water availability. Agricultural practices influence soil health and biodiversity across wide geographic areas.

Bioregional finance attempts to address this challenge by aligning investment structures with the natural boundaries of ecosystems. Instead of funding isolated projects, bioregional funding facilities allocate capital across entire landscapes—watersheds, forest regions, and agricultural zones—where ecological processes interact as interconnected systems.

This approach offers several advantages:

First, it allows investments to be diversified across multiple activities within a landscape, including regenerative agriculture, forest conservation, and ecosystem restoration. Like with any investment, this diversification reduces financial risk while strengthening ecological outcomes.

Second, monitoring ecological performance at the scale of a bioregion provides a more accurate picture of environmental health than project-level metrics alone.

Third, bioregional finance helps address a persistent structural imbalance in the global economy: the disconnect between the places where ecological resources are extracted and the places where financial wealth accumulates.

By embedding capital within the landscapes that generate ecological value, bioregional finance begins to reconnect economic incentives with environmental stewardship—a true win-win.

The Role of International Investors

Most of the world’s ecologically important landscapes are located in regions where financial capital is relatively scarce, but biological capital is rich.

Tropical forests, biodiversity hotspots, and critical watersheds often lie within developing countries where rural communities face significant economic pressures. Without access to financial resources that reward long-term stewardship, local landowners may be forced to pursue short-term land uses such as timber extraction or agricultural expansion. This poses a risk much larger than most can imagine, and one that will eventually impact the daily lives of everyone on the planet.

International investors therefore play an essential role in closing the financing gap that drives ecological degradation.

By allocating capital to bioregional funding facilities, such as TMA’s project in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, investors can help support regenerative livelihoods that maintain forest cover, protect watersheds, and sustain biodiversity for all of humankind.

In return, investors gain exposure to an emerging category of assets linked to ecosystem services, sustainable agriculture, and climate resilience. This relationship represents more than a simple financial transaction. It creates a partnership between global capital allocators and local stewardship, where the health of ecosystems becomes a shared economic interest.

A Portfolio Perspective

From a portfolio perspective, investments linked to natural capital possess several distinctive characteristics.

Many ecosystem services are tied to physical processes—such as rainfall cycles, soil formation, and biological productivity—that operate independently of financial market fluctuations. This can provide diversification benefits relative to traditional asset classes.

At the same time, global demand for sustainable commodities (i.e. cacao, coffee), carbon credits, and ecosystem services is expected to grow significantly as governments and corporations increasingly pursue climate and biodiversity commitments in response to ecological threats to human wellbeing.

As regulatory frameworks evolve and environmental accounting becomes more sophisticated, investments in regenerative landscapes may increasingly form part of institutional portfolios.

For investors seeking long-term stability, supporting the regeneration of Earth’s most complex and biodiverse ecosystems may ultimately prove to be one of the most important forms of infrastructure investment available.

Investing in the Planet’s Balance Sheet

The idea that ecosystems should be treated as economic assets may once have seemed radical. But as the ecological foundations of the global economy come under increasing strain, it is becoming clear that financial systems must evolve to reflect the physical realities of the planet.

Bioregional finance represents one possible step in that evolution. By aligning capital flows with the natural boundaries of ecosystems, it becomes possible to build financial institutions that reinforce the regenerative capacity of landscapes rather than undermining them.

For international investors, this shift offers more than an opportunity to support environmental protection. It offers a chance to participate in the construction of a new economic architecture—one in which prosperity is measured not only by financial growth, but by the health and resilience of the ecosystems that sustain human civilization.

If the bioregion is the balance sheet of the Earth, then investing in its regeneration may become one of the most important financial decisions of the twenty-first century.

If you or someone you know is interested in exploring or investing in this new and innovative asset class (natural capital at the bioregional scale), please reach out. Our organization (TMA) is working on the cutting edge of natural capital and bioregional finance in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, and we would love to connect with you.

*This article was written from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer. I am a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience. Whenever possible, I will credit the original sources of information and inspiration referenced in my work.

In the previous article, I explored the idea that the modern economy suffers from a fundamental accounting error. Our financial systems are organized around political borders and abstract financial indicators, while the ecological systems that sustain prosperity operate according to entirely different boundaries. Rivers follow watersheds, forests follow climate patterns, and biodiversity follows landscapes shaped by geology and evolution.

These natural systems form what we call bioregions—ecological units that function as living metabolic systems. They contain assets in the form of forests, soils, rivers, and biodiversity. They generate flows of value through ecosystem services such as water regulation, carbon sequestration, and agricultural fertility. And like any productive system, they accumulate liabilities when those assets are degraded.

If bioregions function as natural balance sheets, the next question becomes practical rather than theoretical: Can financial systems be designed to operate at the scale of those living systems?

One place where that question is beginning to take shape in practice is the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, a region where the intersection of global markets, rural livelihoods, and ecological richness makes the stakes particularly clear.

A Landscape of Extraordinary Wealth

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador sits on the equator at the nexus of the Chocó Rainforest and Tropical Dry Forest Bioregions, two of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Stretching along the western slopes of the Andes and down to the Pacific coast, this landscape contains dense tropical forests, cloud forests, and river systems that support an extraordinary concentration of biodiversity.

Although it’s less known, scientists estimate that the Chocó rainforest contains some of the highest levels of biodiversity anywhere on the planet. Hundreds of bird species inhabit the forest canopy. Amphibians and reptiles thrive in the humid understory. Orchids, bromeliads, and countless plant species form intricate ecological communities that have evolved over millions of years. Paired this with the globally high levels of endemic species found in the Topical Dry Forest, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador represents a hotspot of biodiversity that sustains life on our planet.

But the ecological richness of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador is not limited to biodiversity alone. These forests also perform essential functions that support both local communities and the broader regional and global climate system.

The dense forest canopy captures moisture from Pacific air currents and regulates rainfall patterns across the region. Root systems stabilize steep coastal mountain soils, preventing landslides and erosion. Rivers originating in these forests supply freshwater to communities, farms, and cities downstream. The forest itself stores vast amounts of carbon, playing a quiet but critical role in regulating the global climate.

In ecological terms, the Pacific Forest of Ecuador is an extraordinarily productive system. In economic terms, however, much of that value has remained invisible to the global population.

When the Ledger Is Broken

For generations, rural communities living in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador have depended on the land for their livelihoods. Smallholder farmers cultivate crops such as cacao, coffee, and tropical fruits. Families manage small cattle pastures or grow subsistence crops on hillside farms carved out of the tropical forest.

These activities form the backbone of the local economy. But they also exist within a broader global financial system that often places intense pressure on rural landscapes.

International commodity markets reward rapid and increased production. Landowners facing economic uncertainty frequently move to clear additional forest to expand agriculture or cattle grazing. Timber extraction can provide immediate income in regions where alternative financial opportunities are extremely limited.

As I’ve mentioned many times before in my articles (see The Zoo & The Jungle), none of these decisions are irrational.

They are the logical outcome of an economic system that rewards short-term financial returns while failing to compensate the long-term ecological services that intact ecosystems provide.

The forests of the Pacific region of South America regulate rainfall, protect watersheds, and store carbon that benefits the entire planet. Yet the local communities living closest to those ecosystems rarely receive direct economic compensation for maintaining them. On the contrary, they are being incentivized by a broken economic system that encourages and rewards extraction.

The result is a familiar pattern seen across much of the tropical world: ecosystems that generate enormous global value are gradually converted into short-term commodities because the international economic systems governing capital fail to recognize their long-term importance for the health and wellbeing of humankind.

In effect, the balance sheet of the entire bioregion is ignored, and the natural capital stored in these forests and soils is quietly being liquidated.

A Different Approach: Working With the Landscape

Over the past several years, organizations working in the region, including the one I manage (Third Millennium Alliance - TMA), have begun experimenting with approaches that attempt to realign economic incentives with the ecological health of the landscape.

Rather than viewing conservation and economic development as opposing forces, these efforts start from a different premise: healthy ecosystems are the foundation of long-term prosperity.

In practical terms, this means working directly with rural communities to help develop livelihoods that maintain or enhance the ecological productivity of the landscape rather than degrading it.

Farmers are supported in the adopting of regenerative land management practices that improve soil health and increase long-term productivity. Forest conservation initiatives are implemented to protect critical habitats and watersheds. Sustainable agroforestry systems integrate crops such as cacao and coffee with native forest cover, allowing farmers to generate income while also maintaining biodiversity and ecological stability.

Each of these activities carried out by TMA in collaboration with local communities living in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador contributes to maintaining the natural assets of the bioregion—its forests, soils, water systems, and biodiversity.

But while these initiatives can produce significant social and ecological benefits, they often face a familiar obstacle: Access to capital.

The Capital Gap

Across much of the developing world, including those that TMA works with in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, rural communities face severe constraints when it comes to accessing financial resources. Traditional banks are often reluctant to lend in regions where land tenure is complex, job opportunities are far and few between, infrastructure is limited, and agricultural incomes can fluctuate significantly from year to year.

This lack of capital creates a structural challenge for regenerative land management. Activities such as agroforestry, soil restoration, and forest conservation often require upfront investment and may take several years to generate financial returns.

Without access to patient capital, landowners will continue to default to land uses that generate faster income, even if those activities degrade the long-term productivity of the landscape they and the world depend on.

This is where the concept of Bioregional Funding Facilities begins to become relevant.

Financing the Bioregion

A bioregional funding facility is designed to deploy capital within the boundaries of a specific ecosystem. Instead of evaluating projects purely on short-term financial returns, the facility also considers how investments affect the long-term ecological health of the landscape.

In the context of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, such a facility could pool capital from multiple sources (ie. impact investors, philanthropic organizations, governments, and climate finance mechanisms) and direct those resources toward activities that strengthen the ecological and economic resilience of the region.

Funding from such facilities can support long-term regenerative agriculture programs (TMA’s Regenerative Agroforestry Program), forest conservation initiatives (TMA’s Jama-Coaque Reserve), and community-based watershed restoration projects (TMA’s Community Forests Program).

Returns from such activities can be generated through a combination of mechanisms. Sustainable agricultural production can generate income for farmers and investors alike. Carbon markets may compensate landowners for maintaining forest cover that stores atmospheric carbon. Biodiversity credits and ecosystem service payments could provide additional revenue streams tied directly to the health of the landscape.

The key difference is structural. Instead of treating ecosystems as passive resources to be extracted, the financial system becomes embedded within the ecological metabolism of the bioregion.

Capital flows begin to reinforce the stability and productivity of the landscape rather than undermining it. A restructuring of the global economy in this fashion has unimaginable potential to shift incentives, improve livelihoods, and regenerate the planets vital ecosystems we all depend on.

Aligning Incentives

When financial incentives are re-aligned with ecosystem health, the dynamics of land use can change dramatically.

Farmers who once faced pressure to clear additional forest may instead benefit from maintaining tree cover through agroforestry systems. Communities that protect watersheds may receive compensation for the downstream water services those ecosystems provide. Restoration projects that rebuild degraded soils can increase agricultural productivity while simultaneously improving the resilience and richness of the landscape.

In this framework, the economic value generated by the bioregion remains directly connected to the communities who steward it.

The result is not simply conservation; It’s the emergence of a bioregional economy that is built on maintaining and enhancing the natural capital of the landscape.

From Case Study to System

The Pacific Forest of Ecuador is only one landscape among many facing these challenges. Across the tropics, ecosystems of immense ecological value coexist with rural communities navigating difficult economic realities.

What makes the Pacific Forest of Ecuador particularly interesting is that it illustrates how the ideas explored in the previous article (bioregional accounting, ecological balance sheets, and thermodynamic limits) begin to translate into real-world institutions.

The experiment unfolding in this region suggests that finance itself may need to evolve in a dramatic way.

If ecosystems are the foundation of prosperity, then the global institutions governing capital must operate at the scale of those ecosystems. Bioregional funding facilities represent one attempt to make that shift.

They are still early experiments, and many questions remain about how these systems can be scaled and integrated into global financial markets. But they offer a glimpse of a different economic model—one where capital allocation reinforces the regenerative capacity of the landscapes that sustain human life at a planetary scale.

Reconnecting the Ledger

The modern economy was built on financial systems that often treat nature as an external input rather than a foundational asset. The result has been a steady liquidation of the natural capital that supports human prosperity.

Bioregional finance offers a way to reconnect the ledger. By aligning financial systems with the ecological boundaries of the planet, it becomes possible to create economies that reward regeneration rather than extraction.

In the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, this shift is only beginning. But it suggests a broader possibility for the future of economic development—one where prosperity is measured not only by financial growth, but by the health and resilience of the living systems that make that prosperity possible.

If the bioregion is the true balance sheet of the Earth, then the task ahead is clear.

We must learn how to finance it by connecting international pools of capital to the projects and communities that are building a new, more sustainable, model for the future.

*This article was written from my own experiences, research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer. I am a tropical ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience. Whenever possible, I will credit the original sources of information and inspiration referenced in my work.

The Planetary Ledger

For most of modern history, the global economy has been built on a simple assumption: that nature exists outside the economic system.

Markets measure production, governments track growth, and financial institutions allocate capital across industries and countries. Meanwhile, the forests, rivers, soils, and oceans that sustain human life are treated largely as background conditions; important, certainly, but not central to the architecture of economic decision-making.

This assumption has shaped the modern world.

It has allowed economies to expand rapidly, technologies to flourish, and billions of people to achieve higher standards of living than any previous generation. Yet it has also created a quiet but profound disconnect between the way financial systems measure wealth and the physical systems that make prosperity possible in the first place.

Forests that regulate rainfall rarely appear on balance sheets. Watersheds that supply freshwater to cities are seldom treated as economic assets. The biodiversity that stabilizes ecosystems and supports agriculture remains almost entirely absent from financial accounting.

Instead, the global economy largely measures value through the extraction and transformation of natural systems rather than through their long-term health.

The result is a kind of invisible accounting error.

Economic growth can appear strong even while the ecological foundations of that growth are gradually being eroded.

In recent years, I’ve increasingly noticed that this disconnect has become difficult to ignore. Climate instability, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and water scarcity are beginning to reveal the extent to which human prosperity depends on the stability of the planet’s living systems.

These developments are forcing a deeper question: What if the economy has been mapped incorrectly?

What if the true units of economic value are not national economies or corporate sectors, but the actual ecosystems themselves: the forests, watersheds, grasslands, and coastal systems that generate the conditions for life and productivity on Earth?

This idea eventually lead to the concept of the bioregion: a landscape defined not by political borders but by shared ecological characteristics and natural resource flows (see A Brief History of Bioregions and Bioregionalism in Scholarly Literature by Karl Burkart). Within these landscapes, forests regulate water cycles, soils sustain agriculture, and biodiversity supports resilient ecosystems that can adapt to change.

If ecosystems generate real economic value, then they must also represent a form of natural capital—assets whose health and productivity determine the long-term stability of human economies.

The question then becomes how financial systems might evolve to recognize and support these living assets.

The current series aims to explore that very question. Across four articles, I will examine how the idea of bioregions may reshape the way we think about economic accounting, conservation finance, and global capital allocation.

The current article introduces the concept of the bioregion as a natural balance sheet, suggesting that ecosystems function as economic systems with assets, income flows, and liabilities.

The second article will explore how this framework is beginning to take shape in practice through community-based conservation and regenerative agriculture in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth.

The third article considers the perspective of international investors, outlining the emerging investment case for bioregional finance and the role global capital may play in supporting the regeneration of critical ecosystems.

Finally, the fourth article looks further ahead, exploring how networks of bioregional economies could eventually form the foundation of a planetary financial system that is designed to align capital flows with the ecological processes that sustain human civilization.

Taken together, these ideas point toward a simple but transformative insight.

If the global economy ultimately rests on the productivity of the Earth’s living systems, then the true balance sheet of our civilization may not be found in financial markets alone.

It may be written across the landscapes of the planet itself.

And learning to manage that planetary ledger may become one of the defining economic challenges of the twenty-first century.

Part I: The Geography of Wealth

There is a subtle but profound error embedded in the way modern economies measure wealth. Our accounting systems were designed around political geography rather than ecological geography. Nations track GDP, governments manage fiscal balances, and central banks regulate monetary flows within borders drawn on maps by history and politics. Yet the natural systems that sustain life operate according to entirely different boundaries.

Forests, rivers, soils, and climate systems do not recognize national borders. They organize themselves through patterns of energy and water that move across landscapes in coherent ecological units. Rain falls in the mountains, water flows through forests and farmland, rivers carve their way toward the sea, and nutrients cycle through soil and living organisms along the way. These interconnected systems form what scientists and geographers call bioregions, or areas defined not by political jurisdiction, but by shared ecological characteristics such as watersheds, climate patterns, and biological communities.

Despite the central importance of these systems, modern economic institutions rarely treat them as meaningful units of analysis. Economic decisions are made at the scale of corporations and governments, while the ecological consequences unfold at the scale of landscapes and watersheds. The result is a persistent mismatch between the geography of economic decision-making and the geography of the natural systems that make economic activity possible in the first place.

This mismatch may be one of the most important accounting errors in the modern world.

In earlier essays on Nature’s Ledger, I’ve explored how modern financial systems often behave as though they exist outside the physical world. In Why Fiat Money Is Broken, I argued that money ultimately represents claims on real energy and resources. When monetary systems expand faster than the underlying energy and materials that support the economy, financial signals become increasingly disconnected from physical reality. The consequences of that disconnect show up not only in financial instability, but also in the degradation of the ecological systems that support human prosperity.

Economics Without a Landscape

Modern economic accounting largely treats nature as an external backdrop to human activity. When forests are cut down and converted into timber, the value of that timber appears in economic statistics as productive output. When land is cleared for agriculture, the crops produced from that land enter GDP as additional economic activity. Yet when ecosystems quietly perform the functions that make life and economic production possible (i.e. filtering water, building soils, stabilizing climate, or maintaining biodiversity) those services rarely appear anywhere in the financial ledger.

The consequences of this omission are significant. Because ecosystem services are largely invisible within economic accounting systems, markets systematically reward activities that convert natural systems into tradable commodities. Forests become more economically valuable when they are cut down than when they remain standing. Wetlands generate measurable economic value when they are drained and converted to farmland, even if the loss of those wetlands increases flood risk and degrades water quality for downstream communities.

The economy’s books record profit, but the ecosystem’s balance sheet is deteriorating.

This pattern is visible across much of the world. Watersheds that once regulated water flows and prevented flooding are increasingly destabilized as forests are cleared and soils erode. Agricultural systems that once maintained fertile soils now struggle with declining productivity as nutrients are depleted faster than they can be replenished. Rivers carry increasing loads of sediment and pollution toward coastal ecosystems that are themselves under mounting stress.

None of these trends appear clearly in traditional measures of economic growth. GDP can continue rising even as the ecological systems that sustain economic activity gradually lose their capacity to function.

I’ve previously written about this dynamic through the ecological concept of carrying capacity. In natural ecosystems, every species eventually encounters limits imposed by energy, water, soil, and habitat. When populations exceed those limits, the result is overshoot followed by correction. In The Ecology of Money: How Fiat Growth Pushes Us Into Overshoot, I explored how modern monetary expansion can temporarily push human economies beyond the regenerative capacity of the landscapes beneath them. Artificial financial growth can mask these limits for a time, but the underlying ecological constraints eventually reassert themselves.

In this sense, the problem we face is not simply environmental; it’s fundamentally an accounting problem.

One Earth Bioregion framework.

The Bioregion as a Natural Balance Sheet

If ecosystems generate real economic value, then they must also have something resembling an economic structure. One way to think about a bioregion is as a kind of natural balance sheet—a system containing assets, generating flows of value, and accumulating liabilities when those assets are degraded.

The assets of a bioregion include the physical and biological systems that store energy, nutrients, and ecological stability. Forests accumulate biomass and regulate regional climate patterns. Soils store carbon and provide the foundation for agricultural productivity. Wetlands absorb floodwaters and filter contaminants from rivers. Aquifers hold freshwater reserves that can sustain communities through periods of drought. Biodiversity contributes to the resilience of ecosystems by maintaining complex webs of interaction between species.

These natural assets generate ongoing flows of value that economists increasingly refer to as ecosystem services. Each year forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and regulate local rainfall patterns. Soil microorganisms break down organic matter and recycle nutrients that plants depend on for growth. Pollinators support agricultural production across vast landscapes. Rivers transport freshwater from mountains to lowland communities and coastal ecosystems.

These flows function much like income generated from capital. They represent the productive capacity of ecosystems operating over time.

At the same time, economic activity generates ecological liabilities. Soil erosion removes fertile topsoil faster than it can be rebuilt. Pollution accumulates in waterways and the atmosphere. Biodiversity declines as habitats are fragmented or destroyed. In thermodynamic terms, these processes represent increases in entropy—forms of degradation that reduce the capacity of ecosystems to maintain order and productivity.

Modern accounting systems track financial assets and liabilities with great precision, yet they rarely account for these ecological dynamics. The depletion of forests or soils may appear nowhere in national accounts until the moment those resources are converted into marketable commodities.

By that point, the underlying capital has already been liquidated.

The Entropy Problem in Economics

At a deeper level, the disconnect between economics and ecology reflects a failure to account for the thermodynamic foundations of economic activity. Every economy is ultimately a physical system that transforms energy and materials into goods, services, and waste. Energy enters the system primarily through sunlight, which drives photosynthesis and supports the biological productivity of ecosystems. Materials circulate through complex cycles involving soil formation, nutrient recycling, and biological metabolism.

Natural ecosystems have evolved over billions of years to manage these energy flows with remarkable efficiency. Forests capture solar energy and convert it into biomass while simultaneously building soil, regulating water flows, and supporting complex webs of biodiversity. Nutrients are continually recycled within the system, allowing ecosystems to maintain productivity over long periods of time.

Industrial economies, by contrast, often accelerate the breakdown of these cycles. Concentrated resources such as fossil fuels, minerals, and old-growth forests are extracted and converted into goods that quickly disperse as waste. Pollution accumulates in air, water, and soil faster than natural systems can absorb it. The entropy of the system increases, reducing the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate themselves.

Because economic accounting systems focus primarily on financial transactions rather than physical processes, many of these entropy costs remain invisible within the economy’s ledgers. Activities that degrade ecosystems can appear profitable even when they undermine the long-term productivity of the landscapes on which the economy depends.

As I explored in Hard Money, Living Forests, these incentives are particularly visible in rural landscapes. When communities face economic pressure and financial systems reward short-term extraction, the fastest way to generate income is often to convert living ecosystems into immediate commodities. Forests become timber, fertile land becomes degraded farmland, and long-term ecological stability is traded for short-term financial relief.

The result is an economic system that often rewards the liquidation of natural capital rather than its regeneration.

Why Capital Must Align With Ecology

If economic prosperity ultimately depends on the health of ecological systems, then the allocation of capital should reflect the boundaries and regenerative capacities of those systems. This insight leads naturally to the concept of bioregional finance.

Throughout this publication I have argued that prosperity ultimately rests on the stability of ecological systems. Forests, soils, rivers, and watersheds are not external to the economy—they are the physical infrastructure that makes all economic activity possible. The challenge now is moving from diagnosing the problem to designing institutions capable of aligning financial incentives with the health of these systems.

Bioregional finance begins by recognizing that landscapes themselves are productive systems. A healthy watershed generates clean water, stable soils, and climate regulation. A functioning forest ecosystem produces biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and rainfall patterns that support agriculture across entire regions.

When these services are degraded, the economic consequences ripple outward through society in the form of declining agricultural productivity, water scarcity, and increasing vulnerability to climate shocks. Conversely, when ecosystems are restored and maintained, the stability and productivity of human economies increase.

This suggests that capital should not be allocated purely according to short-term financial return. It should also be directed toward maintaining and enhancing the ecological systems that generate long-term prosperity.

The Emergence of Bioregional Funding Facilities

One emerging approach involves the creation of bioregional funding facilities—financial institutions designed to deploy capital within specific ecosystems. These facilities pool funding from investors, governments, philanthropic organizations, and local communities, and direct it toward projects that maintain or restore the ecological systems of a particular bioregion.

Such initiatives might support regenerative agriculture, forest conservation, watershed restoration, or sustainable livelihoods that reduce pressure on fragile ecosystems. Returns can be generated through mechanisms such as carbon markets, biodiversity credits, sustainable commodity production, and payments for ecosystem services.

What distinguishes these facilities from traditional investment structures is their explicit alignment with ecological boundaries. The goal is not simply financial return, but the long-term stability and productivity of the landscape itself.

In effect, capital becomes embedded within the metabolism of the ecosystem rather than operating outside it.

This approach also addresses one of the central drivers of environmental degradation: the disconnect between the locations where natural resources are extracted and the places where financial gains accumulate. In many parts of the world, ecosystems are depleted to supply global markets while the economic benefits flow primarily to distant financial centers.

Bioregional finance seeks to reverse this pattern by ensuring that the value generated by ecosystems remains connected to the communities and landscapes that sustain it.

A Different Map for the Economy

If this perspective is taken seriously, it suggests that the future of economic organization may look very different from the systems that dominate today. Instead of mapping economic activity primarily onto political borders, societies might increasingly organize economic governance around ecological systems such as watersheds, forest regions, and coastal ecosystems.

In such a world, economic success would be measured not only by the growth of financial indicators but by the health and resilience of the landscapes that support human life. Prosperity would mean increasing the regenerative capacity of ecosystems while maintaining stable and thriving communities within them.

This does not imply abandoning markets or economic growth altogether. Rather, it suggests redefining growth in terms of ecological regeneration and long-term stability rather than short-term extraction.

Bioregions provide a framework for making this shift because they align economic decision-making with the physical structure of the planet itself.

The economy, in other words, begins to follow the map drawn by nature.

Looking Ahead

Many of the ideas explored in previous Nature’s Ledger essays, from thermodynamic limits to ecological carrying capacity, point toward the same conclusion: economic systems must be re-anchored to the landscapes that sustain them.

Bioregional finance is one attempt to do exactly that.

But the real question is whether these ideas can work in practice.

In the next article, I will explore how this framework is beginning to take shape in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. There, efforts are underway to align financial incentives with the protection and restoration of an entire landscape—an experiment in building economic institutions that operate at the scale of a living ecosystem.

In that sense, the bioregion may not only be a useful way to understand the world.

It may also be the missing unit of economic accounting.

*This article was written from my own research and thinking, with the assistance of Chat to help organize ideas, synthesize information from multiple sources, and improve clarity of expression. While I enjoy writing these essays, I am not a professional writer. I am an ecologist interested in exploring the connections between economics, environmental degradation, and human well-being, and in presenting both established and emerging ideas in ways that are accessible to a broad audience. Whenever possible, I will credit or link to the original sources of information and inspiration referenced in my work.

I recently read a Substack article by John Elkington that really resonated with me, and that aligns with so much of what I write about here at Nature’s Ledger. In his article “Is Nature Our Living Stack?” he looks at how technologies like AI work in stacks (layers), and how this can be used to better understand Nature’s role in our stack. I think he hits the nail on the head when making the point that Nature sits at the foundational stack of everything we know and everything we build, including our economies. Below, I’d like to follow this train of thought by looking at how our modern economies have disconnected from this reality, and how this is the leading cause of so many of the problems we see in the world today.

Modern economies increasingly operate under the assumption that growth is limited only by political will and inflation tolerance. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the dominant system we live in today, argues that governments issuing their own currency are not financially constrained, and that spending can expand as long as inflation remains manageable.

But this framing quietly ignores a deeper reality: our entire world (planet Earth) itself is a constrained sytem.

In nature, no system grows because it can afford to. It grows because energy, materials, and ecological conditions allow it to. When those limits are exceeded, imbalance and collapse follows. Human economies are no exception. They are not separate from the natural world; they are nested within it along with everything else.

To understand why modern monetary thinking is increasingly at odds with human wellbeing, we need to return to first principles—and to nature.

Nature Operates on Balance, Not Belief

Every ecosystem is governed by the same fundamental rules:

• Energy availability defines what is possible

• Material inputs determine scale and durability

• Feedback loops enforce limits

• Overshoot leads to degradation or collapse

A forest cannot grow indefinitely. A fishery cannot expand without restraint. Even the most productive systems stabilize around a carrying capacity dictated by underlying resources.

These limits are not moral judgments. They are undeniable and unchangeable physical facts.

Human economies evolved inside these same constraints. For most of history, economic activity was tightly coupled to land, labor, energy, and materials. Past forms of money included commodoties with natural scarcity (i.e. sea shells, silver, gold). Growth under this system was slow, uneven, and bounded—but generally aligned with ecological reality.

Modern monetary systems, especially since decoupling from the gold standard, loosened that coupling to encourage unnatural growth.

The Base Layer We Forgot

A useful way to understand the problem is through stack thinking—the idea that complex systems are built in layers, with each layer dependent on the one beneath it.

The real stack looks like this:

1. Energy & finite physical/ natural resources

2. Ecological systems

3. Human societies & economies

4. Monetary abstractions

Money sits at the top, not the bottom. It is a coordination tool, not a source of value. At it’s core, money is just a tool we use to store our time, energy, and labor in order to later exchange it for things that we need.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) implicitly flips this stack. It treats the monetary layer as primary, assuming that expanding the abstraction can generate real outcomes independently of the layers below.

But abstractions cannot override physics.

Where Modern Monetary Theory Breaks from Reality

To be clear, MMT correctly observes that sovereign governments are not financially constrained in the same way households are. They can issue currency. They can fund programs without immediate revenue. They can essentially create value out of thin air where no value previously existed.

Where the theory fails is in what it treats as the binding constraint.

MMT frames inflation as the primary limit to spending. But inflation is not the constraint; it is the signal! The real limits lie in the layers beneath:

• Energy availability

• Material throughput

• Labor capacity

• Ecosystem resilience

You cannot print fertile soil. You cannot create more freshwater with keystrokes.
You cannot mint biodiversity, stable climates, or cheap energy just because you want to spark more growth.

When money creation outpaces the real economy’s ability to supply these things, prices rise—not because money is “too abundant,” but because the underlying resources are scarce.

Inflation is the smoke, and resource constraint is the fire.

The Hidden Cost: Inequality and Ecological Degradation

When growth is pursued through monetary expansion rather than real productivity or stewardship, the consequences follow frightening yet predictable patterns.

New money enters closest to power (Cantillon Effect): financial markets, governments, large institutions. Asset prices rise faster than wages. Those who own assets benefit. Those who depend on wages fall behind.

At the same time, pressure mounts to extract more from the natural world to “justify” the expanding financial system. Forests become inputs. Rivers become liabilities. Degradation is externalized while gains are privatized.

The result is a paradoxical economy:

• Rising GDP

• Rising inequality

• Declining ecosystem health

• Stagnating or falling real wellbeing

This is not a failure of execution. It is a predictable outcome of disconnecting money from material reality. And, it’s impacts are degrading the entegrity of the entire system from the ground up right before our eyes.

Human Wellbeing Is Not Abstract

Human wellbeing depends entirely on real things: Food, energy, shelter, clean water, stable ecosystems.

Money does not create any of these things. It only allocates claims on them.

When monetary systems expand faster than the resource base that supports them, society does not become wealthier—it becomes more fragile. Scarcity is hidden temporarily behind credit and currency issuance, then revealed through rising costs, social tension, and environmental collapse.

There is no version of prosperity that bypasses ecology.

Toward a Nature-Aligned, Deinflationary Economy

This does not mean austerity. It does not mean stagnation. And it does not mean rejecting technology or progress.

It means restructuring economic systems so growth is once again anchored to reality.

A nature-aligned economy prioritizes:

• Efficiency over expansion

• Quality over quantity

• Long-term resilience over short-term stimulus

• Stewardship over extraction

In a nature-aligned economy, growth slows where resources are scarce and accelerates where regeneration is possible. Economic signals reflect ecological truth. Prosperity is measured in durability, not velocity.

This is a deinflationary environment in the deepest sense—not falling prices, but falling pressure on ecosystems, communities, and future generations.

Nature’s Reality Is the Ultimate Ledger

Inflation is not the bill we are paying—it is the flashing warning light and screaming siren telling us that something is wrong.

The true ledger is kept by physics, biology, and energy flows. No theory, no matter how elegant, can escape that accounting system. When we deny it, the costs do not disappear; they compound.

If we want an economy that endures, we must stop pretending monetary abstraction can override Nature’s reality. The future belongs to systems that grow within limits, not those that deny they exist.

Technology (e.g. internet, AI, robotics, Bitcoin) naturally lowers costs and increases efficiency. But modern economies are inflationary systems that fight falling prices — distorting incentives and widening inequality. Nature already understands why this fails, we just need to follow Nature’s lead.

Learning From Living Systems

In nature, systems that learn become more efficient.

A forest that has existed for centuries does not need more energy each year to survive. It needs less waste, tighter cycles, and better feedback loops. Nutrients are reused, water is conserved, and energy flows become refined. Over time, the system produces more life using fewer inputs.

This pattern mirrors the idea of ecological carrying capacity, which is the reality that systems thrive when growth respects limits rather than attempting to override them.

Human technology, at its best, follows this same logic.

Yet the modern economic systems we’ve built reward the exact opposite.

Modern fiat currencies depend on permanent expansion; they require more money, more debt, more consumption just to avoid collapse. In doing so, they quietly punish efficiency, devalue savings, and widen inequality. Technology, meanwhile, is inherently deflationary: it lowers costs, improves quality, and allows us to do more with less.

This tension sits at the heart of one of the most important economic questions of our time:

Can technology realign human economies with the logic of nature, or will inflationary systems force us to keep stripping the planet to keep the numbers growing?

The Inflationary Trap: Running Faster to Stay in Place

Inflation is often described as a rise in prices, but that misses the deeper truth.

Inflation is a signal of inefficiency baked into the system — a dynamic I’ve explored previously in the context of fiat money, inequality, and the erosion of purchasing power.

When new money is created faster than real productivity grows, purchasing power falls. Those closest to the source of money creation (i.e. governments, banks, corporations) benefit first. Everyone else must work harder just to maintain the same standard of living. Savings decay, long-term planning becomes irrational, and debt becomes a necessity rather than a choice.

In ecological terms, this resembles a degraded ecosystem:

• Soil nutrients are depleted faster than they regenerate

• Species survival requires ever-increasing energy input

• Short-term extraction replaces long-term resilience

The system doesn’t collapse immediately; it limps along, demanding more inputs for declining returns.

This is not accidental, it is structural!

Technology as Evolutionary Pressure

In nature, inefficiency is selected against.

A species that needs twice as much food to survive will disappear unless it adapts. Evolution favors solutions that reduce energy expenditure while increasing fitness and survivability — the driving principal behind natural selection.

Technology plays a similar role in human systems.

When allowed to operate freely, technology:

• Lowers production costs

• Increases precision and quality

• Reduces waste and redundancy

• Compresses time, labor, and energy

Think about what has happened to communication, computing power, renewable energy, and access to information during our lifetime. Each has become cheaper, faster, and better over time.

This is not inflationary. It is deflationary progress — the kind that raises living standards without demanding more raw materials or more human exploitation.

The core insight of The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth (highly recommended reading) is that technology naturally drives prices down. When prices fall, abundance increases. When abundance increases, inequality should decrease.

But fiat systems cannot tolerate falling prices because falling prices threaten debt.

Why Falling Prices Terrify Fiat Systems

Debt depends on future money being worth less than today’s money.

Inflation quietly ensures this.

This forward-pulling of value is not just a financial abstraction. It shows up physically on the landscape — in deforestation, depleted soils, and land-use decisions that prioritize short-term liquidity over long-term regeneration.

If technology is allowed to reduce prices naturally, debt becomes harder to repay, asset bubbles deflate, and systems built on leverage begin to unravel. So instead of allowing efficiency to benefit society, fiat systems fight it:

• By expanding credit

• By inflating asset prices

• By redirecting gains toward financial markets instead of real production

The result is a paradox:
We live in the most technologically capable era in history, yet people feel poorer, more precarious, and more indebted than ever.

This is not because technology failed.
It’s because its benefits were captured.

The Natural Analogy: Closed Loops vs. Extractive Loops

In nature, healthy ecosystems are closed-loop systems.

Waste from one organism becomes food for another. Energy cycles through the system without accumulating destructive excess. Growth is bounded by reality.

This contrast between closed-loop and extractive systems mirrors a broader framework I’ve used throughout Nature’s Ledger — comparing regenerative ecological systems with inflation-driven economic ones.

Inflationary economies are extractive loops:

• Value is pulled forward from the future

• Debt replaces regeneration

• Environmental costs are externalized

• Inequality concentrates like pollution

Technology, when aligned correctly, allows human systems to move closer to ecological logic:

• Precision agriculture reduces land degradation

• Decentralized energy lowers extraction pressure

• Digital coordination reduces redundancy and waste

• Transparent systems reduce corruption and rent-seeking

In other words, technology allows us to live within limits without reverting to scarcity.

Technology, Poverty, and Power

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of deflationary technology is its impact on poverty.

When costs fall and access improves:

• Education becomes scalable

• Market access expands

• Local producers compete without value being siphoned away

• Time horizons extend beyond survival

Poverty is not merely the absence of income — it is the absence of optional time and predictable value.

This loss of optionality is especially visible in rural and resource-dependent communities, where inflation quietly undermines both livelihoods and conservation outcomes — something I’ve explored through on-the-ground experience in Ecuador with our organization TMA.

Technology restores optionality, but only if value can be stored and transmitted honestly.

When money itself is broken, technological gains leak upward instead of outward.

Environmental Degradation Is an Inflation Problem

Environmental destruction is often blamed on growth, but it is more accurately blamed on distorted signals.

When prices, money, and incentives are misaligned, ecosystems absorb the error — a recurring theme in my writing on how financial systems externalize ecological costs.

When money loses value over time:

• Extract now, regenerate later (or never)

• Convert forests into assets that “keep up” with inflation

• Prioritize short-term returns over long-term stewardship

Technology gives us the tools to monitor, measure, and protect ecosystems with unprecedented accuracy, but inflationary systems pressure landowners and communities to liquidate natural capital instead (especially in rural agricultural communities in the developing world).

In nature, depletion without regeneration leads to total collapse.

Human systems are no different, but modern society has chosen to ignore this truth.

The Choice Ahead

Technology is not neutral.

It either amplifies extraction or enables alignment.

We are at a crossroads where deflationary technologies can:

• Raise living standards

• Reduce inequality

• Lower environmental pressure

• Restore long-term thinking

Or they can be captured by inflationary systems that demand endless growth on a finite planet.

Nature has already solved this problem. Efficiency, not expansion, is the path to resilience.

All we have to do now is listen to Nature and follow her lead.

Introduction: A Misunderstood Tool for Good

Among climate advocates, human-rights defenders, and development thinkers, Bitcoin remains a paradox. To some, it’s a speculative bubble or an energy-wasting technology. To others, it’s an open network that returns power to people in places where the financial system excludes them. Both can be true — but only one tells the whole story.

For those who care about poverty, justice, and the environment, Bitcoin deserves a second look. Behind the noise, it is emerging as one of the most profound social technologies of our time: a monetary commons that is global, censorship-resistant, and governed by transparent rules rather than arbitrary authority. This point is substantiated by the fact that the Human Rights Foundation has made it a core pillar of their work.

The following essay argues that Bitcoin, understood through a progressive lens, is not a distraction from social and ecological change but a potential ally to it.

Below, I’ll explore three pillars:

1. Economic justice and inclusion: how Bitcoin offers a lifeline to the unbanked and under-served.

2. Human rights and democratic resilience: how decentralized money protects freedom in an age of surveillance.

3. Environmental integrity: how digital scarcity can align with ecological limits and fund regeneration.

I. Poverty and Financial Inclusion: Fixing the Root, Not the Branch

The problem with degraded money

Most development programs start at the branches — jobs, subsidies, credit. But beneath them lies the monetary root: how value itself is stored, exchanged, and trusted.

• When money loses its value faster than people can save, it erodes trust and fuels short-term thinking.

• When banking systems exclude the poor, they are forced into cash economies vulnerable to theft and corruption.

• When currencies are inflated or politicized, the poor pay the price first.

“Degraded money degrades nature — because people cut trees when their savings lose value.”

In much of the Global South, this isn’t theory.

• Between 2010 and 2020, inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa cut purchasing power by over 50%.

• In Argentina it’s 143% per year; in Nigeria over 30%.

• Every percentage point means real families losing access to food, education, and savings.

Why Bitcoin changes the equation

Bitcoin is the first digital asset that anyone can hold without permission, inflation, or borders. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins, its ledger is transparent, and its access is universal.

In countries where banks fail or currencies collapse, citizens use Bitcoin as a store of value and remittance rail:

• Nigeria: Over 60% of adults lack formal bank accounts, yet peer-to-peer Bitcoin volume exceeds that of the UK.

• Argentina: Workers convert paychecks into Bitcoin to escape triple-digit inflation.

• El Salvador: Introduced millions to the benefits of digital finance for the first time.

None of these cases are perfect, but they reveal something powerful: money as a human right, not a privilege.

Global Remittances: US $860 billion / year
Average Bank Fee: 6.2 %
Average Bitcoin Lightning Fee: 0.1 %
Sources: World Bank 2023; Strike Payments 2024

II. Human Rights and the Architecture of Freedom

Why money is political power

Freedom of speech, movement, and assembly all rely on one quiet freedom: the ability to transact.

In 2023, more than 50 countries restricted payments to silence dissent. From Myanmar to Nicaragua, regimes have learned that freezing a bank account is easier than jailing a journalist.

For activists, journalists, and NGOs, access to censorship-resistant money can mean the difference between survival and silence.

Bitcoin as neutral infrastructure for rights

Bitcoin doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you believe. Its rules are mathematical, not political — and that neutrality makes it a powerful humanitarian tool.

• Ukraine: Bitcoin donations delivered millions in aid within hours of the 2022 invasion.

• Nigeria: The Feminist Coalition used Bitcoin to fund protests when banks froze their accounts.

• Afghanistan: Women journalists used Bitcoin to receive salaries when the Taliban banned female work.

The Human Rights Foundation now distributes grants directly in Bitcoin for exactly this reason: “It’s the only payment network that cannot discriminate.”

Transparency as accountability

Bitcoin’s ledger is public. Every transaction leaves a trace, making corruption harder and auditability stronger. For international aid, that means donations can be traced in real time, from donor to field project, with no hidden intermediaries.

For progressives who’ve long called for transparency in institutions, Bitcoin delivers something rare: accountability by design.

III. Environment and Energy: Aligning Digital Scarcity with Natural Scarcity

The energy debate: myth and context

Critics often call Bitcoin “an environmental disaster.” Yet the evidence tells a more nuanced story.

According to the U.S. OSTP (2022), global Bitcoin mining consumes 100–140 TWh per year — roughly the same as data centers, and less than gold mining or global banking.

The key question isn’t how much energy it uses, but what kind, where, and what it enables.

As of 2024, research by Lyn Alden and Daniel Batten shows that 54 % of Bitcoin’s energy mix comes from renewables or waste energy — the fastest decarbonizing industry tracked.

Miners are moving toward stranded hydropower, flared gas, and curtailed wind energy, turning wasted power into productive capital.

Bitcoin Emissions By Sector
Source: Daniel Batten (batcoinz.com)

Bitcoin as a driver for renewable energy

Unlike most industries, Bitcoin mining is geographically flexible — it can operate anywhere, anytime. This flexibility allows it to stabilize renewable grids by buying excess energy when supply exceeds demand and shutting down within seconds when grids tighten.

A 2024 SSRN study found that co-locating miners with renewables in developing countries improves grid economics and accelerates clean-energy investment. Bitcoin becomes, unexpectedly, a buyer of last resort for green power, turning intermittency into opportunity.

From emissions to regeneration

A new generation of projects are using Bitcoin to fund regeneration, not just consume energy:

• Costa Rica — mining revenues tied to reforestation.

• Congo— bitcoin mining dries cacao beans and funds park ranger salaries.

• USA — solar-powered, battery-backed mining with near-zero emissions.

In each case, the formula is the same: turn energy into locally-driven conservation.

Natural scarcity as moral compass

For decades, progressives have argued that prosperity must respect planetary limits.
Bitcoin encodes that truth in its DNA: a hard cap of 21 million coins.

Unlike fiat money, it cannot be inflated at will. This is not austerity, it’s honesty.

“Sound money reminds us that prosperity must come from creativity, not extraction.”

When money obeys scarcity and the first law of thermodynamics, the logic of endless growth loses moral force. Bitcoin’s finite nature becomes an invitation to rethink abundance within limits — the foundation of any sustainable civilization.

Data and Accountability: Measuring Bitcoin’s Real Impact

Carbon, water, and waste — the facts

According to the UN (2023):

• Carbon emissions: ≈ 85 Mt CO₂ (0.17 % of global).

• Water footprint: ≈ 1.65 km³ per year (0.04 % of global use).

• Electronic waste: ≈ 30 kt per year — comparable to smartphone turnover.

Significant? Yes.
Existential? No.

By contrast, global data centers emit 500 Mt CO₂ and aviation over 900 Mt, both of which are growing at an exponential rate due to AI’s expansion and increased global travel.

As renewable use expands, Bitcoin’s footprint continues to fall, with some models projecting net-zero by 2030 due to methane capture and grid symbiosis.

Source: CoinShares 2022

Why Bitcoin bans backfire

When China banned mining in 2021, production simply migrated to dirtier grids in Kazakhstan and the U.S. Midwest.

A 2024 Nature Sustainability paper confirmed that bans increase emissions unless mining is redirected toward renewables.

The lesson echoes environmental policy itself: banning without alternatives displaces the problem, it doesn’t solve it.

Progressive metrics for accountability

Progressives should lead the creation of open data frameworks for Bitcoin sustainability:

• Transparent energy-mix dashboards for each mining region.

• Independent audits of carbon intensity.

• Standards that include community benefit and biodiversity outcomes.

Bitcoin’s open ledger already provides the transparency; what’s missing is the will to measure what truly matters.

Blueprint for Action: Sound Money, Sound Forests

Principles for engagement

1. Inclusion: Equip rural youth, women, and farmers with access to open wallets and training.

2. Transparency: Require miners to publish energy sources and emissions data.

3. Local Ownership: Promote community-based mining and collective savings.

4. Ecological Alignment: Tie Bitcoin revenue directly to regenerative projects.

5. Measurement: Track how each satoshi (bitcoin units) earned links to real ecological outcomes.

What progressives can do now

• Learn: Read the Bitcoin Policy Institute report (below), Lyn Alden’s energy study, and humanitarian case studies.

• Engage: Join initiatives like Daniel Batten’s work and CleanUp Mining that measure real impact.

• Support: Fund pilots linking Bitcoin to conservation or financial inclusion.

• Bridge: Reframe Bitcoin not as ideology but as infrastructure for fairness.

Conclusion: Toward Sound Money and a Living Planet

Bitcoin is not a panacea. It won’t regrow forests or replace civic action. But it can rewire the incentives beneath everything we value.

By separating money from manipulation, it protects the poor. By decentralizing power, it defends human rights. By encoding scarcity, it mirrors the ecology it depends on.

Progressives have always fought for better systems, from voting rights to public education. Now, one of those systems happens to be digital and decentralized.

I highly recommend you take a deeper look into the benefits of Bitcoin before dismissing it the next time you hear or read a defamatory report.

“The future of money is being written in code. Let’s make sure it speaks the language of freedom, dignity, and regeneration.”

Up Next: Nature Already Solved Inflation: Technology, efficiency, and the economics of living within limits.

Technology (e.g. internet, AI, robotics, Bitcoin) naturally lowers costs and increases efficiency. But inflationary systems fight falling prices, distorting incentives and widening inequality. Nature already understands why this fails.

Interested In Using Bitcoin For Good?

If you’re a Bitcoiner that wants to use it for good, our organization, Third Millennium Alliance (TMA), would greatly appreciate a Bitcoin donation of any amount. All Bitcoin received will be held in perpetuity in an exponential growth fund that will help us scale-up our community-led conservation efforts in the Pacific Forest of Ecuador. Learn more and donate using the button below:

Donate BTC Today!

Further Reading

• Lyn Alden — Bitcoin’s Energy Use Explained

• Bitcoin Policy Institute — Crypto-Assets and Climate Implications (2022)

• Daniel Batten — Why Climate Action Requires Bitcoin Mining

• Alex Gladstein — Bitcoin Is Humanitarian and Environmental

• TMA — Bitcoin for Conservation

This is part two of an essay that explores how the global monetary system quietly shapes the fate of ecosystems and economies through the eyes of an ecologist. Part I examined how reserve-currency privilege breaks the rules of natural selection, forcing countries like Ecuador, which are rich in biodiversity but poor in monetary sovereignty, into extractive survival strategies. In Part II, I ask what becomes possible when value, money, and survival are realigned with living systems, and how Ecuador could move from extraction toward regeneration without abandoning economic reality.

Part II: Designing a Regenerative Monetary Path for Ecuador

If Ecuador’s dependence on extraction is not a moral failure but an evolutionary response to constraint, then the obvious question follows:

What would a system look like where survival no longer requires liquidation?

A regenerative monetary system does not mean abandoning markets, rejecting trade, or isolating from the global economy. It means realigning incentives so that preserving life, maintaining ecosystems, and investing long-term are no longer punished.

For Ecuador, this begins with a simple recognition:

The problem is not a lack of natural wealth; the problem is how value is stored, measured, and defended.

Regeneration Begins with Feedback

In natural systems, regeneration emerges when feedback loops are intact.

When resources decline, pressure increases. When balance is restored, systems stabilize. These signals guide behavior automatically, without ideology or central planning.

Modern monetary systems (i.e. fiat-based) break these loops.

Money can be created without reference to energy, land, or labor. Debt can expand faster than ecosystems regenerate. Consequences are delayed, displaced, or externalized—often onto developing countries like Ecuador.

A regenerative monetary system must do the exact opposite:

• Restore feedback loops

• Respect natural limits

• Reward long-term stewardship instead of short-term throughput

For Ecuador, this means designing mechanisms that allow value to accumulate in living systems, rather than only through their extraction/ conversion.

The Core Constraint: Dollarization

Any serious proposal must start with reality.

Ecuador is dollarized. It does not control monetary issuance. It cannot devalue, inflate, or act as lender of last resort.

A regenerative monetary path for Ecuador therefore cannot rely on:

• a new national currency,

• central-bank experimentation,

• or traditional stimulus tools.

Instead, it must operate alongside the dollar, creating parallel value channels that reduce the need to extract simply to obtain liquidity.

This is not about replacing the dollar; it’s about loosening its grip on survival.

What “Harder” Really Means in Practice

When I say a regenerative monetary layer must be “harder,” I do not mean harsher. I mean more honest.

Hardness here means:

• scarcity that cannot be arbitrarily manipulated,

• rules that are transparent and predictable,

• settlement systems that reward patience instead of speed.

In practical terms, this looks like:

• paying for outcomes rather than promises,

• settling conservation income on rails that preserve value over time,

• limiting discretion so that political cycles don’t erase long-term gains.

Hardness restores time, and time allows regeneration.

Nature as a Store of Value, Not a Sacrifice Zone

In Ecuador’s dominant system, forests have value only when they are converted into timber, cattle pasture, oil blocks, or mineral concessions.

A regenerative system inverts this logic.

Forests, watersheds, and biodiversity become income-generating assets precisely because they remain intact.

This is not theoretical; it’s already happening—quietly, locally, and under real constraints.

A Living Prototype: TMA’s Community Forests Program

In Ecuador’s Pacific Forest, Third Millennium Alliance (TMA) is piloting exactly this shift through its Community Forests Program.

Working with local landowners and communities in one of the most threatened regions of the country, the program compensates participants for:

• protecting standing forest and watersheds,

• restoring degraded land through assisted natural regeneration,

• reconnecting fragmented habitats through conservation corridors,

• integrating regenerative agroforestry on degraded farmland.

In return, communities receive direct, predictable payments tied to verified conservation outcomes.

This is not charity or offsets — It’s a payment for ecosystem services that local residents provide through stewardship.

Why This Matters Monetarily

What makes this program significant is not only ecological success, but its economic structure.

In Ecuador’s extractive economy:

• trees earn money when cut down,

• land earns money when cleared,

• and ecosystems earn nothing when left intact.

TMA’s Community Forests Program reverses this incentive by ensuring:

• standing trees are more valuable than felled ones,

• time increases value instead of eroding it,

• and conservation becomes a rational livelihood strategy.

This is essential in a dollarized economy. When survival requires dollars, conservation must also generate them—otherwise extraction always dominates.

Reintroducing Feedback Into the Economy

At a deeper level, the program restores feedback loops that modern economies have lost.

Payments are triggered by verifiable outcomes:

• forest cover is maintained,

• regeneration established,

• ecological connectivity preserved.

When ecosystems improve, value flows. When they don’t, it stops.

This mirrors natural selection in two important ways:

• behaviors aligned with long-term system health are reinforced,

• behaviors that degrade the system lose support.

The selection pressure shifts from extraction toward regeneration.

Where the System Still Breaks Down

And yet, even successful programs like this remain fragile.

Not because communities fail, but because the monetary layer beneath them is soft.

Value earned through conservation:

• is vulnerable to inflation,

• dependent on short funding cycles,

• exposed to political and donor volatility.

Without harder settlement rails, regeneration struggles to compound over time.

This is the missing piece!

Toward a Regenerative Monetary Layer

A regenerative monetary system for Ecuador would not replace the dollar in daily life. Instead, it would add a parallel layer that supports conservation and long-term stewardship by:

• settling pay-for-performance conservation income on harder rails,

• allowing communities to store value without being forced back into extraction,

• reducing dependence on discretionary funding and political cycles.

In this framework:

• the dollar remains a day-to-day unit of account,

• harder rails function as savings and settlement,

• ecosystems become productive capital.

Ecuador as a Prototype, Not an Exception

Ecuador is uniquely positioned to pioneer this shift because it is:

• biodiversity-dense,

• economically constrained,

• institutionally capable at local scales,

• and already a leader in experimenting nature-based solutions under pressure.

What appears as weakness is, in evolutionary terms, selection pressure; the same natural pressure that drives adaptation and survival in nature.

Ecuador does not need to escape the jungle; it needs to change the rules of survival within it.

Final Thought

Regeneration is not idealism. It accepts limits, respects feedback, and it aligns survival with reality.

A regenerative monetary system would not make Ecuador wealthy overnight. But it could make Ecuador durable, both economically, socially, and ecologically.

And in a world approaching planetary limits, durability may be the highest form of wealth.

In my next article, I will explore potential ways a harder asset like Bitcoin might be the overlooked asset to help countries like Ecuador become more durable while also protecting their natural capital and wealth alongside the U.S. dollar.

This two-part essay explores how the global monetary system quietly shapes the fate of ecosystems and economies through the eyes of an ecologist.

• Part I examines how reserve-currency privilege breaks the rules of natural selection, forcing countries like Ecuador, which are rich in biodiversity but poor in monetary sovereignty, into extractive survival strategies.

• Part II asks what becomes possible when value, money, and survival are realigned with living systems, and how Ecuador could move from extraction toward regeneration without abandoning economic reality.

Part I: When Money Breaks Natural Selection: Why Ecuador Must Extract While The U.S. Can Print

In the natural world, survival is governed by immutable laws.

Energy is finite and resources are costly to obtain. Every organism must operate within the constraints of its environment. Those that adapt efficiently (conserving energy, responding to feedback, and balancing consumption with regeneration) persist. Those that do not eventually disappear (go extinct).

This process is what we call Natural Selection. It is not moral or ideological, it’s simply how reality works.

In functioning ecosystems, there are no permanent advantages. A species cannot consume endlessly without consequence. It cannot override energy limits, externalize waste indefinitely, or postpone feedback forever. When it tries, collapse eventually follows.

Economics, particularly in capitalist societies, often borrows this language. We talk about market discipline, competition, and survival of the fittest, assuming that efficiency is rewarded and inefficiency eliminated.

But when we look closely at the global economy, something strange becomes clear: Unlike in nature, natural selection no longer applies equally to all actors involved.

When Survival Becomes Artificial

Natural selection only works in the wild.

Once an organism is placed in captivity, shielded from scarcity, insulated from predators, and supplied with constant energy, the rules change. Traits that would fail in nature can persist, inefficiencies accumulate, and maladaptations are no longer punished.

This is not evolution; it’s artificial survival.

The global monetary system has created a similar divide between countries.

Some countries operate inside a monetary enclosure, protected from scarcity, buffered from feedback, and supported by the ability to create money. Others operate outside it, exposed to volatility, forced to adapt quickly, and punished immediately for failure.

The difference is not based on effort or intelligence; it’s monetary position.

The Zoo & the Jungle

This is where the metaphor of the Zoo and the Jungle becomes useful.

Reserve-currency countries (i.e. United States) live in a manipulated setting of a Zoo.

They import real goods, energy, and labor while exporting abstract claims on future value. When crises occur, they stabilize themselves by expanding money and debt. Scarcity is managed, and feedback is delayed.

Countries without monetary sovereignty (i.e. Ecuador) live in the wild, unpredictable setting of a Jungle.

They must hunt and convert land, labor, and ecosystems into survival. Mistakes are punished quickly, and there are no bailouts.

Both exist on the same planet, but under radically different rules.

The Reserve Currency Advantage

The United States issues the world’s dominant reserve currency: the US dollar.

This gives it extraordinary evolutionary advantages (at least temporarily):

• It can run persistent trade deficits

• It can finance crises by creating money

• It can absorb shocks through debt expansion

• It can consume more than it produces without immediate consequence

In ecological terms, the U.S. exists inside a climate-controlled enclosure where scarcity signals are muted and adaptation is optional.

Ecuador: Life Outside the Enclosure

Ecuador lives deep in the jungle (both physically and metaphorically).

It is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth, rich in forests, rivers, minerals, and fertile land. Yet it remains economically fragile, not because it lacks real wealth, but because it lacks monetary leverage.

Ecuador’s exports are overwhelmingly physical: oil, minerals, agricultural commodities, seafood. Its imports (medicine, machinery, fuel derivatives) are priced in U.S. dollars. Its external debt is denominated in a currency it does not control.

And since the year 2000, Ecuador has taken this vulnerability even further by adopting the US dollar as its national currency.

Dollarized, but Not Sovereign

Dollarization stabilized Ecuador after a severe financial crisis (increasingly common in developing countries). The result: inflation fell and currency volatilityeventually disappeared.

But dollarization did not make Ecuador stronger—It made Ecuador dependent.

Ecuador uses the dollar, but its government can’t create it. This means that Ecuador cannot:

• Print money in a crisis

• Act as lender of last resort

• Devalue to regain competitiveness

• Absorb shocks through monetary expansion

When crises hit the U.S., dollars are created. When crises hit Ecuador, dollars must be found.

And the only way to find them is to sell something real (oil, minerals, timber, food, etc).

Extraction as a Survival Strategy

This is why extraction dominates Ecuador’s economy.

Oil remains one of the largest sources of government revenue. Mining is promoted as a fiscal solution despite deep social and ecological resistance. Shrimp farms expand into mangroves. Forest frontiers retreat under pressure from roads, cattle, and speculation.

From the outside, this looks like environmental mismanagement–and the world is quick to call them out for it.

But, from the inside, it is simple arithmetic under constraint.

When a country cannot issue money, it must generate real cash flow. When cash flow must be generated in dollars, ecosystems become sources of liquidity. Extraction is not a failure of values; it’s a rational survival strategy in a system that rewards liquidation.

GDP and the Illusion of Fitness

GDP treats extraction as growth.

A new oil field raises GDP. A mine improves export statistics. Deforestation registers as economic progress.

This is like an organism overworking and damaging its own organs to spike short-term energy output.

The numbers improve, but the system weakens.

Ecuador is judged by these metrics by lenders, investors, and rating agencies operating inside a dollar-centric system. To appear “fit,” it must consume its future.

The Asymmetry Becomes Ecological

The oil Ecuador exports powers consumption elsewhere. The emissions are global, but the contamination (spills, deforestation, water pollution) is local.

Whereas the U.S. enjoys energy security without sacrificing its landscapes, Ecuador sacrifices its landscapes to maintain fiscal solvency.

This spatial separation allows reserve-currency countries to appear sustainable while extraction intensifies elsewhere.

Returning to our analogy, the Jungle absorbs what the Zoo consumes. And this pattern has played out repeatedly throughout history.

Why Conservation Remains Fragile

Ecuador is often praised for its environmental leadership (protected areas, constitutional rights of nature, and biodiversity hotspots). Yet conservation remains economically fragile.

Standing forests do not service debt. Intact ecosystems do not stabilize bond markets. Biodiversity does not pay workers.

Unless nature generates dollars, it remains economically invisible.

Asking Ecuador to conserve without changing the monetary constraints is equivalent to asking a starving organism to fast.

The Deeper Contradiction

From a Darwinian perspective (interesting given Charles Darwin’s notorious work in Ecuador), Ecuador is highly adapted to its environment. Its ecosystems are resilient, diverse, and productive.

But the global economic system selects against those traits. It actually rewards:

• Speed over regeneration

• Liquidity over longevity

• Conversion over preservation

Ecuador is not unfit for this; it’s simply misaligned with the selection criteria of a monetary system divorced from the natural world.

The Questions We Rarely Ask

What would Ecuador’s economy look like if:

• Forests were treated as stores of value rather than untapped reserves?

• Biodiversity generated monetary resilience instead of fiscal vulnerability?

• Survival did not require liquidation?

Until those questions are answered, extraction is not a choice–it’s selection.

Final Thoughts

Ecuador’s forests are not disappearing because Ecuadorians value nature less (in fact, it’s quite the opposite).

They are disappearing because the global system values money creation over life creation.

As long as some countries can print claims on the future while others must deliver the future now, the Jungle (Ecuador and other developing countries) will keep feeding the Zoo (US and developed countries).

And the planet all of us depend on for our survival will keep paying the bill.

Coming Next…

Part II — Rewriting the Rules of Survival: What a Regenerative Monetary System Could Look Like for Ecuador.