By Dominique Hes
Where is a political story that is nourishing, supportive, and builds our capacity to work together, to face crises together? Most of us probably think this isn’t even possible. But a regenerative approach can make it feasible.
Regeneration is not magic. It’s capacity building. For example, if you cut yourself you heal depending on how healthy you are. So in our human made systems of politics, law, education, and economy, what does this capacity to heal look like?
And why is it so important to talk about this right now? Because if we see politics as a constructed story, something we have inherited about what a good society looks like and who gets to ‘rule’, then we need to look at the outcomes of that story.
We have created identities: left wing, right wing, greens, libertarians, progressives, conservatives. What is this in service of?
These are created identities. And here is the rub… identities, once formed, tend to defend themselves. They become tribal. They become dogmatic. This is how we end up with political debates that feel disconnected from reality. We argue about symbols, not soil.
When we can’t listen to other views because we need to be right, we fight over narratives, not nutrients. We defend ideological purity while the rivers run dry.
I would much prefer a politics which is about the best minds coming together and harmonising our approaches. Where it isn’t about popularity but about creating our capacity to walk together. Where the measure of success is how well you can hold a space for decision making and consensus building, not right and wrong.
I looked at two thinkers and doers whom I really admire, and wondered what their work could contribute – Rob Hopkins and Daniel Christian Wahl.
Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Towns movement and author of How to Fall in Love with the Future, argues that the greatest crisis we face is not climate or energy or economics. It is a crisis of imagination.
A society trapped in brittle political identities cannot imagine alternatives; it’s often too focused on the stuff to look at the story. Therefore, it cannot imagine itself into a future worth living in.
Hopkins’ work is fundamentally about re‑localising imagination. He invites communities to step out of abstract ideological battles into the sensory, to explore the relational reality of place. That is how nothing exists in isolation, everything is connected – gardens, food systems, shared projects, local energy, neighbourhood resilience.
This is politics as practice, not performance. Politics as relationship, not rivalry. Politics as collective creativity, not tribal defence. It is all about relationship.
Daniel Christian Wahl’s work on Regenerative Cultures argues that thriving societies emerge not from ideology but from patterns of relationship. That is the connection between people, place, and the wider web of life.
Regenerative cultures are not built on dogma; they are built on feedback, humility, and the capacity to learn from the living world and each other. Wahl writes that cultures become regenerative when they ‘create conditions conducive to life.’
So, how can our political system behave like a living system? How can we create regenerative politics?
A regenerative politics would be one where the story we tell about ourselves is co‑created with the people who must live it, and is grounded in the actual conditions of the place we inhabit.
A regenerative politics would:
- Start with place, not ideology.
- Start with relationship, not identity.
- Start with capacity, not control.
- Start with health, not growth.
- Start with story – but a co-created story rooted in the living world rather than in tribal narratives.
This is not left‑wing or right‑wing. It is living‑systems thinking.
What if we take regeneration seriously? What would the health of a political system look like if we learned from the vital systems of the living world?
I would start with looking at First Nations approaches and seek their guidance and wisdom. Then have conversations in every community, discovering together how to listen and explore what is needed by paying attention to the real conditions needed to flourish.
- What does this place need to thrive?
- What do its people need to thrive?
- What does the land need to thrive?
- What capacities already exist here?
- What capacities need to be grown?
- What disturbances are coming?
- What possibilities are emerging?
These are not ideological questions. They are ecological ones. They are relational ones. They are human ones.
So, concluding as we watch the next political cycles, let’s keep an eye out as the old political stories crack, the tribal identities become more brittle, and the dogmas become more extreme. Let’s see it for what it is and let’s continue to share a better story of kindness, collaboration, listening and connection to the reality of life.
Dr Dominique Hes is the Zero Building Carbon Lead at the City of Melbourne. Dominique mixes theory and thinking, with doing and testing to discover how we can best contribute to the well-being and thriving of place, people and planet.
