Lua Couto is a communicator, educator and advocate for regenerative narratives. She is the founder of the Brazilian collective Futuro Possível and Futures Generations Director at Latin Futures Association. Lua Couto is one of the lead authors of Unearthodox’s State of Knowledge Report, currently in the making as part of the Regenerative Futures programme.
In this interview with Unearthodox, Lua distinguishes regeneration from sustainability, highlighting its focus on deeper connections, healing and community. For her, regeneration is not just a practice but a way of being that acknowledges ancestral knowledge, embraces complexity and centres emotional healing.
Regeneration, for me, is wisdom – a wisdom that is inherent in nature. As part of nature, we share this knowledge with every living being on this planet. Regeneration isn’t just a field of study or a set of practices; it is a knowledge that we all possess.
What we are trying to do now is to study it as a field. It is our attempt to understand this natural intelligence – how it evolves – and to rediscover parts of ourselves that were hidden before, especially for those of us who have been westernised and colonised. This linear, exploratory and rational way of being and doing has dominated. But now we are trying to reconnect with a larger intelligence, trying to understand how we can live on this planet in a way that makes us feel a true part of it.
To me, regeneration is a process of relating to ourselves, to others and to non-human beings. It’s about understanding how we can practise these relationships with more awareness because the way we are living now is not sustainable for inhabiting this planet.
I think the main difference between sustainability and regeneration is that sustainability focuses on specific practices, while regeneration offers a more holistic approach. Sustainability often focuses only on the external aspects of how we interact with the world, whereas regeneration goes deeper, looking at the roots of our actions and understanding how we inhabit our bodies and live on this planet.
Sustainability is easier to understand because it’s straightforward, more linear and measurable using tools we already know. Regeneration, on the other hand, is about healing, relationships, understanding trauma and love – things that are harder to measure and for which we haven’t developed tools yet. This, in turn, protects regeneration from greenwashing.
I believe we should focus on these natural and subtle intelligences and ways of engaging with the world because they invite us to understand complexity.
The first thing is that we don't need a singular movement because a monocultural approach would be part of the problem. Regeneration needs to express itself differently in each territory, so our first step should be to localise our way of living. While we can share intangible knowledge and exchange ideas globally, our practices and material changes need to be localised. This approach aligns with ancestral knowledge – we have been doing this for centuries.
When we localise, we create space for other changes to emerge, such as community building, strengthening relationships and understanding our history to create a future together. Space and time are interconnected, as Einstein said, and right now we are only exercising time – everything is fast. Localisation slows down time, giving us the chance to be in our bodies, to connect not just with our minds, but with our spirits, our communities and the land we live on. This opens up space for the healing that needs to happen.
Localisation is the first key, the first door we need to open. Although it may seem small, it’s actually quite significant. Localisation is crucial, and it’s about embracing the diversity of ways of being. We often say, “We are one” or “We are the same,” but I think that’s part of the problem – we are not the same, and that’s okay. We need to create space for different ways of being. Here in Brazil, we have many traditional communities, each with its own identity. Building intimacy with otherness will help us discover and envision new ways of living together.
A very important part of my work is holding space for hard conversations because when we open up these spaces, people can be different in the same room. Without these conversations, we pretend to be the same, which isn’t good for anyone – not for us as individuals, not for society, and certainly not for the planet.
In Brazil, I started an organisation called Futuro Possível, which translates to “Possible Future” in English. The aim of the entity is to empower individuals and organisations to approach climate and social change with responsibility and imagination. Through workshops like Imaginação Radical (Radical Imagination) and regenerative leadership, we help people understand how their visions of the future impact the present.
When we talk about regeneration, it’s both an internal and external process, subtle and practical. Because of this, changes are often noticeable, as it's not just a tool – it’s a shift in perspective. I have noticed that many people who go through my sessions become part of a community that has formed organically. Interestingly, many of my current clients are women who attended my classes and wanted to help bring about change within their organisations.
My work is centred on change, not just understanding this as a concept but in feeling it happening through us. I believe that while we can practise change in various ways, true transformation only happens if we feel it deeply. The way we approach change needs to evolve. That’s the essence of my work: how can we change the way we enact change?
I often see transformation because people become alive again (how to measure that?). When I walk into a room, many people seem like zombies, functioning like machines with big heads and little bodies, repeating their daily routines, working just to buy more stuff. But when regeneration takes place, when I bring this energy and wisdom into the room, people feel that, and it’s easy to see the impact.
Change is a slow and subtle process. True change takes time, but I believe in what I do because I’ve seen many people engage with it. Sometimes they leave their jobs, other times they just change the approach of their careers and start focusing on more sustainable and impactful paths for their lives and companies. Sometimes the changes are big, others are very subtle. I mentor many women in Brazil, helping them transition from conventional careers to ones that positively impact the world. The change is definitely happening. However, our traditional ways of measuring change might need to evolve to fully capture and understand how this transformation occurs.
What I envision – what my imagination can achieve – is that we will make the changes we need to, not because of our awareness, but out of necessity. And that makes me sad. I believe we will be forced to change because nature won’t allow us to stay here if we don’t. Need is a very precious and sacred thing. Nature has a way of showing us what need really is, and I think this will accelerate the change.
That said, alongside this, there are significant movements for real change happening, not because we are being forced but because we want a better world. These movements are often led by people who have been shaped by violence, colonialism and sometimes by a deep consciousness. I believe these two forces – need and the people already pushing for change – will help us create a new space. Whether that space will be better, we can’t say for sure because we still have massive platforms, narratives and tools that are not regenerative.
I don’t think it will be a fight or a war, but it will be hard. We will have to do the work every day. And I’m prepared to do this for the rest of my life. I don’t imagine that I will see the world fully change in my lifetime, but I’m working for me, my community, my land and the next generations.
I'll give you some examples, one that’s more obvious and another that’s less so. The most obvious example is the ancestral regenerative narratives that come from Indigenous peoples and their relationship with the land as a sacred space. There’s so much we can learn from that.
But there’s also a less obvious example, which involves people who have faced violence and oppression. These individuals have learned to cope with this violence and have created new realities for themselves, building communities and escaping the dominant ways of living. For instance, in Brazil, there are some communities in favelas (impoverished neighbourhoods in Brazil), trans communities and groups organised by Black women – these are all examples of people creating regenerative narratives. They are building communal, grassroots movements that create new futures for themelves, their communities and the land in cities.
Another example of a regenerative narrative is from the time when people were taken from Africa and brought to Brazil. They created new gods, mixing African deities with Christian ones, and in the face of genocide, they created new worlds for themselves. I believe that everywhere, under any circumstances where new futures are being created, there lies a regenerative narrative. It's about how life reorganises itself and guarantees its continuity. While Indigenous knowledge is a clear example, regenerative narratives are all around us, all the time, everywhere on this planet.
