Practices, methods and technologies are never neutral, they are always linked to outcomes and they shape the outcomes. This is even more so if you embrace the experimentation and observation which is emphasized in regenerative agriculture. “The path is the goal” as they say. And the distinction between outcomes and methods is not always very clear. To let cattle graze, or let the calf suckle the mother is both a method and an outcome (they can exercise a natural behaviour). To store more carbon in the soil might be considered as an outcome by one, but is a method to combat global warming according to others. Every farmer also know that even if you did everything right, some years the outcomes might be terrible as a result of factors out of your control – a flood, a draught or market failures.
Dear Hugh, thank you for this. The Regen10 Outcomes Framework is what the regenerative agriculture movement needs to scale both investments and impact.
I hope you included the work done at the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF): https://ebfcommons.org/what-is-ebf/, where 60 projects were compared and distilled into six core metrics that covered most of the impacts: carbon, water, biodiversity, soil, air and equity.
At ARARA (www.arara.earth) we are quantifying these six metrics and added what may be the most valuable one: cooling, through the regeneration of the biological water cycle.
Most regenerative frameworks stop at carbon. But carbon is the liquid on-ramp, not the ceiling. Water and cooling are the scalable yield drivers. Every major corporation with supply chain exposure already prices water scarcity as a balance sheet risk. Soil connects directly to regenerative agriculture capital. Biodiversity sits at the center not as the volume product, but as the quality certification layer: high biodiversity integrity signals investment-grade ecosystem; degraded monoculture signals sub-investment grade.
It's what tells an institutional investor whether the water and cooling credits will still be performing in year 25. And equity, as Ostrom showed us, is a functional driver of ecological performance, not an SDG smuggled in.
On cooling specifically: a healthy tropical forest returns close to 200 W/m² of solar energy back to space through evapotranspiration and cloud formation. Carbon sequestration stores roughly 0.5 W/m² as biomass. That's 100–200x more impact on the timescale that matters and it's almost entirely unpriced. In fact restoring about 1 mio km² of destroyed forest in the tropical zone or transform it to multilayer agroforestry would stop the planet from heating up within 20 years, 99% caused by strengthening of the biological cooling processes via evapotranspiration, bioaerosol production, cloud, rain and wind making and export of earlier caught latent heat up and out into space.
Stack these seven verified, largely satellite-monitored dimensions across meaningful land area into a Special Purpose Vehicle, and the result is an ecosystem performance bond, which issomething institutional capital can actually underwrite. Tropical forest ecosystem services are documented at roughly $5,000/ha/year. A basket capturing even a conservative slice of that creates an asset class that philanthropy and public finance alone never could.
What we're building with ARARA feels like a natural companion to Regen10. You answer the question of *what* we're trying to achieve. ARARA works on *how* we measure and finance it through a seven-aspect credit architecture (carbon, water, soil, biodiversity, air, cooling, equity) that's largely satellite-verified and designed to work at landscape scale, especially in the tropics
We combine this with a simplified 6 step of onboarding, regenerative landscape design, transition financing, MRV and credit production to pay the bond holders and produce an ROI for all stakeholders (apart from the cash flows of agroforestry produce that is measured as well).
This makes regeneration's impact measurable, transparent, comparable and, we believe, with that, investable.
How interesting - thanks for putting this on my radar! Going to look into it now. A challenge that I find seems to be consistent across all of these frameworks is that they lack an explanation or foundation of their own cognitive framework ie their metaphysical North Star. There is so much value in having a shared understanding of why we’re here, why we do what we do, etc. Some may argue that it’s too “fluffy”. But it strips down the most fundamental human questions. Outcomes are critical, no doubt. But I often find myself asking what these outcomes are based on from a very human level because ultimately, that’s what usually drives behavioral change.
Practices, methods and technologies are never neutral, they are always linked to outcomes and they shape the outcomes. This is even more so if you embrace the experimentation and observation which is emphasized in regenerative agriculture. “The path is the goal” as they say. And the distinction between outcomes and methods is not always very clear. To let cattle graze, or let the calf suckle the mother is both a method and an outcome (they can exercise a natural behaviour). To store more carbon in the soil might be considered as an outcome by one, but is a method to combat global warming according to others. Every farmer also know that even if you did everything right, some years the outcomes might be terrible as a result of factors out of your control – a flood, a draught or market failures.
https://gardenearth.substack.com/p/regenerative-agriculture-what-works
Dear Hugh, thank you for this. The Regen10 Outcomes Framework is what the regenerative agriculture movement needs to scale both investments and impact.
I hope you included the work done at the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF): https://ebfcommons.org/what-is-ebf/, where 60 projects were compared and distilled into six core metrics that covered most of the impacts: carbon, water, biodiversity, soil, air and equity.
At ARARA (www.arara.earth) we are quantifying these six metrics and added what may be the most valuable one: cooling, through the regeneration of the biological water cycle.
Most regenerative frameworks stop at carbon. But carbon is the liquid on-ramp, not the ceiling. Water and cooling are the scalable yield drivers. Every major corporation with supply chain exposure already prices water scarcity as a balance sheet risk. Soil connects directly to regenerative agriculture capital. Biodiversity sits at the center not as the volume product, but as the quality certification layer: high biodiversity integrity signals investment-grade ecosystem; degraded monoculture signals sub-investment grade.
See the recently published: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ecuador-tropical-rainforest-biodiversity-rebounds.html#google_vignette
It's what tells an institutional investor whether the water and cooling credits will still be performing in year 25. And equity, as Ostrom showed us, is a functional driver of ecological performance, not an SDG smuggled in.
On cooling specifically: a healthy tropical forest returns close to 200 W/m² of solar energy back to space through evapotranspiration and cloud formation. Carbon sequestration stores roughly 0.5 W/m² as biomass. That's 100–200x more impact on the timescale that matters and it's almost entirely unpriced. In fact restoring about 1 mio km² of destroyed forest in the tropical zone or transform it to multilayer agroforestry would stop the planet from heating up within 20 years, 99% caused by strengthening of the biological cooling processes via evapotranspiration, bioaerosol production, cloud, rain and wind making and export of earlier caught latent heat up and out into space.
Stack these seven verified, largely satellite-monitored dimensions across meaningful land area into a Special Purpose Vehicle, and the result is an ecosystem performance bond, which issomething institutional capital can actually underwrite. Tropical forest ecosystem services are documented at roughly $5,000/ha/year. A basket capturing even a conservative slice of that creates an asset class that philanthropy and public finance alone never could.
What we're building with ARARA feels like a natural companion to Regen10. You answer the question of *what* we're trying to achieve. ARARA works on *how* we measure and finance it through a seven-aspect credit architecture (carbon, water, soil, biodiversity, air, cooling, equity) that's largely satellite-verified and designed to work at landscape scale, especially in the tropics
We combine this with a simplified 6 step of onboarding, regenerative landscape design, transition financing, MRV and credit production to pay the bond holders and produce an ROI for all stakeholders (apart from the cash flows of agroforestry produce that is measured as well).
This makes regeneration's impact measurable, transparent, comparable and, we believe, with that, investable.
Looking forward to a conversation.
Warm regards,
Rob de Laet
Thanks Hugh. We'll done
How interesting - thanks for putting this on my radar! Going to look into it now. A challenge that I find seems to be consistent across all of these frameworks is that they lack an explanation or foundation of their own cognitive framework ie their metaphysical North Star. There is so much value in having a shared understanding of why we’re here, why we do what we do, etc. Some may argue that it’s too “fluffy”. But it strips down the most fundamental human questions. Outcomes are critical, no doubt. But I often find myself asking what these outcomes are based on from a very human level because ultimately, that’s what usually drives behavioral change.