Reimagining the ancient Silk Road that carried innovation, wealth and culture across Empires, the Green Silk Road (GSR) connects communities working on Bioregional Regeneration through travel, training and trade.
Born in Auroville, India, the GSR now spreads across Georgia, Turkiye, the Balkans into Galicia, weaving place based initiatives together in a tapestry of alternatives. Challenging the status quo by prototyping wholesome ways to create and exchange value across borders of all kinds -geographical, intellectual, cultural, and ecological.
What started out as a quest for climate friendly travel between Asia and Europe turned into a multi-dimensional platform to create the conditions for a Life serving civilisation to emerge out of the ashes of the current Polycrisis.
The Quest for Bioregional Regeneration
The Green Silk Road belongs to nobody in particular, it is a shared expression of a deep desire by humans to live in harmony with the rest of the Web of Life. In a time when the dominant systems that shape modern society are leading us to collapse, we see many alternatives emerging across diverse landscapes and cultures: other ways of growing food, making products, running organisations, imagining the future, taking decisions, seeing ourselves and our fellow beings on the planet. What these have in common is that they activate people's innate care, creativity and collective intelligence. We call this "regeneration".
The ancient Silk Road was a lifeline connecting kingdoms and continents. Since then the globe has been carved up into nation states, which seem to be caught in a self-destructive race to the bottom, fuelling violence and extraction at the expense of both ecosystems and populations. Borders are social constructs and can be re-constructed. One way to re-organise territories is along the lines of Bioregions -socio-ecological spheres based on landscape patterns such as river watersheds, mountain ranges or deserts.
The Silk Road channelled goods, services, philosophies and innovation. It was a product of its time.
What would such a route look like today?
What kinds of ideas and valuables want to be carried along its path?
How can the exchanges themselves be an example of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible?
We hold more questions than answers. That doesn't mean we do nothing, it means we act from a place of curiosity, care and humility. The world is changing rapidly and today's solutions risk becoming tomorrow's problems because they are based on yesterday’s understanding. And even if we do our utmost best to capture all available intelligence there will still be unintended consequences. Our aim is not to design the perfect blueprint, but to participate in the world-wide movement of human consciousness trying to make sense of our shared reality, articulate possible actions and respond in the most appropriate way we can.
Polycrisis?
The climate crisis has turned into an existential risk, reaching tipping points which trigger irreversible collapse, but it cannot be understood in isolation. It is entangled with other ecological crises including mass extinction and vulnerability to pandemics, social crises such as extreme inequality, misinformation and political polarisation fuelled by an economy locked into overconsumption and runaway exploitation. Rather than a mono-crisis we need to understand this as a Polycrisis (or Metacrisis).
Regeneration?
Whereas "sustainability" meant protecting what is still worth saving (like untouched forests and mountains), regeneration asks us to leave Earth in a more healthy state than we found it. Not just doing less harm, but more good. This is important because humanity has already overshot too many planetary boundaries, leaving the Web of Life too frayed to recover by itself. Accepting our role as superpower in the Anthropocene means proactively changing the operating system of our economy, politics, science.
Bioregions?
One key advantage of organising human coordination along ecological boundaries is that it puts the shared stewardship of life-supporting … at the center of governance. Rather than extracting taxes for a state that inherited a random piece of planet from colonial wars of conquest and uses the money to prepare for more war and competition, public funds could be oriented towards restoration of habitats, held in common among all who depend on it for survival. Bioregional Councils are one possible way to imagine this shift: multi-stakeholder platforms with representation from land-users (farmers, foragers), conservationists, educators, and cities requiring clean water and air.
GSR travel
GSR travellers visit ecological and social projects across Eurasia to share stories, experiences and skills. Together we find ways to help each other out. This can take many shapes or forms!
These are some examples of activities that worked in the past:
-
A workshop on using a particular tool (like Business Model Canvas in Persian or Community Canvas in Turkish or Hungarian);
-
Sharing skills that travellers bring with them (like making videos on a phone, or upcycling tetrapak or swimming or juggling or stitching);
-
An educational activity (like games that teach about waste or ecology);
-
A creative activity with children (like painting on a collective art piece, or recording songs together);
-
Collective gardening (like setting up a school garden or a nursery) or building construction;
-
Informal sharing of challenges, success stories and failures;
-
Documentation of local initiatives (depending on available equipment).
Before you decide to book your train or bus tickets, we invite you to complete a Pre Travel Module, just to make sure you are clear about your intentions and expectations.
GSR training
Travel itself is a form of learning: when we are away from home we observe our own biases, assumptions, which is key to be able to receive new insights. And when we see how other people live, we learn not just the theory captured in books or computers, but become part of our host's life story.
But even without leaving your home Bioregion you can learn about systemic alternatives in embodied ways, using your gifts of attention and participation. The GSR proposes a network of Learning Guilds, communities of inquiry and practice who share questions and skills.
To help learners organise their time, to enable stacking of multiple topics into a comprehensive curriculum, and to support interoperability across schools, communities and employers we propose Open Badges - micro credentials that show what you learned and how it was verified. Think of them as alternative degrees / diplomas.
For organisations GSR can also provide bespoke advisory services / consultancies. Just drop us an email or chat.
GSR trade
The Silk Road was named after a tangible commodity, something that people could use, that they could build livelihoods around. We believe such products and services are key when regenerating landscapes and societies.
That is why we work with value chains for food and textiles and tourism.
We propose each value chain to contribute a percentage of its sales income to a Bioregional Treasury governed by a Bioregional Regeneration Council, investing in restoration ecology and community resilience.
Whether we exchange fairtrade foods or circular textiles, artisanal crafts or other artefacts of beauty and value, the market offers the possibility to bring people together in regenerative ways -prompting entrepreneurship and creativity.
However, given the grip of legacy paradigms of greed and extraction over almost everyone's imagination, this area of work requires deep trust and unlearning, which is why it has to go hand in hand with personal relations (travel) and training.
Get in touch with the GSR team to guide your brand through a process of value chain regeneration.