Ep. 032: How to Build a Regenerative Nation with North Star Transition

·59 min·3 clips

The River Wye has lost much of its vegetation, fish, and 95% of its salmon population.

1. Wilder Podcast episode 32 focuses on North Star Transition's work on the River Wye and Wales Transition Lab. 2. Jyothi Banerjee, co-founder of North Star Transition, brings experience from entrepreneurship, venture funding, and corporate reporting, while Chloe and Tom frame the episode from the Grange project. 3. The episode asks how a systemic approach can turn a landscape like the Wye into something regenerative rather than degenerative. 4. Jyothi says the thousand largest corporations contribute about 40% of global GDP, which is why North Star asks what those firms are doing about climate, biodiversity, water, and health crises. 5. He contrasts that scale with companies saying they have a net zero plan, which he describes as largely a carbon plan. 6. North Star Transition began four years ago as Jyothi and Olivier Boutelis tried to solve multiple crises at once rather than a single issue. 7. The discussion uses Wales as a test case because a one-acre model farm would not be credible to the actors driving systemic harm. 8. Jyothi defines regenerative by contrast with degenerative outcomes such as climate crisis, biodiversity loss, inequality, and health crisis. 9. Wales Transition Lab brought together people from health, environment, and food or farming, then expanded to include water, local government, and national government. 10. Villindra, one of the NHS trusts in Wales, later created the first food strategy of its kind after the lab's work. 11. The River Wye is described as a landscape in crisis, with farm runoff, pesticides, fertilizers, and sewage entering the river. 12. Jyothi says the river has suffered a 95% reduction in salmon over 20 years. 13. He links soil degradation to flooding because damaged soils no longer attenuate rainwater in the landscape. 14. He also cites Public Health Wales on a near 20-year life expectancy gap between rural poverty in the centre of landscapes and wealthier areas at the bottom of catchments. 15. Jyothi argues that no single fix, whether changing farmers, restoring salmon, or targeting water companies, can solve the interlocked problems. 16. He says the key question is how to change the operating model of the stakeholders who currently cause nitrates and phosphates to enter the land every year. 17. He says government mainly keeps the current machine moving and is unlikely to create a full redesign on its own. 18. The Wye Transition Lab is presented as a free space for people to imagine, test, and package a different model before taking it to government. 19. The tone is practical and systems-oriented, with Chloe and Tom asking clarifying questions while Jyothi answers in long, structured explanations. 20. People interested in rewilding, landscape-scale transition, and systems change will get the most from it, while listeners wanting light chat or short answers may skip it.

As heard by us

A systems-minded conversation about changing the underlying model instead of just treating the symptoms.

Wilder Podcast treats a familiar problem with enough focus to keep it grounded: if climate, ecology, inequality, and mental health are all tangled together, where does change actually start?

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Press play if you want regenerative thinking with muddy boots on it.

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