Nadja Skaljic is a legal executive working across the green, financial and tech industries and is one of only two lawyers admitted into The Club of Rome, the global systems change think tank. With Unearthodox, she shares her socioecological systems logic for a future of complete synergy between humanity and nature.

You have long advocated for biodiversity conservation and environmental sustainability and currently, there is an emerging concept called ‘regeneration’. What does regeneration mean to you? How do you define it? What defines regenerative practices from sustainability efforts? 

Early in my career as an international lawyer, I understood that the critical connection between rights and our natural world makes pursuing environmental justice an urgent priority. However, I also understood the limits of litigation. We cannot sue ourselves out of the Triple Planetary Crisis. We cannot prosecute our way to a stable climate. 

During my graduate studies at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, I had the privilege of studying under John Ruggie, the architect of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which set the global soft law standard in this field. To my surprise, working with Ruggie sparked my interest in business. I supported his work with Unilever’s Sustainability Advisory Council and witnessed firsthand the potential of business as a powerful force for good—benefiting both people and the planet.

Since then, my career has spanned public and private sector work. I recognise that the dysfunction in our systems is a design issue. Most structures underpinning modern society are designed to foster competition, short-term profits and growth at all costs. We lawyers have significant ethical and environmental responsibilities. We can help free our societies from unfit anthropocentric frameworks and reinvent organisations and processes for a new purpose. There is a better way to practice law, do business, and finance.

We have made significant progress since Ruggie’s responsible business principles. Today, we have hard laws for environmental crimes, with financial penalties of 4% of global turnover for companies engaging in greenwashing or depleting water resources. Alternatively, fines can be up to €40 million, depending on the nature of the crime. Individual environmental offences today are punishable by up to ten years in prison. 

Yet none of these advances are helping us achieve real systems change. Most sustainability initiatives focus on preserving resources in their current state, such as reducing waste and using renewable energy sources. What is needed is a shift from a limited industrial and business logic to a holistic socio-ecological systems logic. This is where regeneration begins.  

Regeneration is an ambitious term with diverse meanings. At its most basic, it recognises humanity as a part of nature – the interconnectedness of our legal and financial systems, individuals and society with the natural ecosystems. 

It asks how we can empower nature in co-creation with humanity towards emergence. 

What are the biggest challenges you see in promoting and implementing regenerative initiatives? What opportunities do you believe still need to be explored or awaiting? 

In business and finance, we lack board competency for basic climate and nature governance, never mind regeneration. At the same time, regulatory pressure from the European Union and others now sets out specific commitments and actions, including, for example, establishing legally binding nature restoration targets. Corporate boards are putting extraordinary pressure on middle management responsible for implementing our transition into this new economy. The outcomes achieved thus far have fallen significantly short of expectations.

There is also tension between profit and sustainability. Many advocates insist that sustainability and regeneration create value for business and the environment. Business and finance remain sceptical, often paying lip service to change by only formally claiming to operate following ESG – the various environmental, sustainability and governance standards. This has most recently manifested in a withdrawal from ‘green’ commitments and investments. I often say you can be anti-ESG, but you cannot be anti-responsibility. That is, you may not like the existing sustainability laws, investment products or risk assessment tools, but your obligation as a money manager or business owner to act responsibly remains. 

We can no longer continue eating into the capital of our planet. Our transition towards regeneration requires us to answer: what is humanity’s store of value going forward? In most countries, nature only has the legal status of mere property. This means that our current laws protect nature mainly for the benefit of people and corporations and not for nature itself. Contracts are written to protect the property rights of individuals, corporations and other legal entities at the expense of nature. Even our environmental protection laws legalise environmental harm by regulating how much pollution or destruction of nature can occur within the law. If we were to grant legal personhood to nature, that may help us to begin to see it as a stakeholder in our governance and policy decisions. 

I see significant potential in a new generation of lab-based companies dedicated to addressing this question I too am focused on – what is the new store of value? These companies recognise the functional interdependency of Earth’s life support systems. They operate at the intersection of hardware, software, and wetware, seamlessly integrating organic components, such as in vivo neurons, into computational systems. At this nexus, we begin innovating both for nature and in collaboration with it.

How is your philanthropic work supporting regenerative initiatives? Any special examples? 

Sedative philanthropy—initiatives that create the illusion of progress while ultimately preserving the status quo—is a relic of the past. Its time is over. The new era in philanthropy is human. Together with André Hoffmann and Carlos Alvarez Pereira, I wrote an article for the World Economic Forum explaining why we support this evolution in our ecosystems. In essence, we believe how we make money should matter the most, not how we spend it. 

As a board member of several foundations, I carry various fiduciary responsibilities. Some time ago, I committed to holding myself to a standard of accountability that surpasses legal requirements by asking, ”If nature held this board seat instead of me, how would it vote? Would it approve this investment of our foundation's capital?” What started as an intellectual exercise to align decisions with deeper values has since evolved into the guiding principle of our operational policy.

Unsurprisingly, in most jurisdictions, nature cannot be formally appointed to corporate or non-profit boards. However, we can appoint directors to serve as ‘nature guardians’ – individuals empowered to represent nature and vote on its behalf, provided they possess the requisite expertise. Their role is to ensure that boards consider the environmental impact of the company or charity on nature. 

I worked to define the duties and responsibilities of the ‘nature guardian’ in the terms of reference and contract with the appointed person. In a corporate context, this requires also amending the articles of association and determining the scope of the nature guardian's reporting obligations to the board – but it is feasible.

In my view, the main limitation of this model for representing nature is the burden placed on a single individual. I envision this role evolving within our ecosystem by rotating it among different people, each bringing their unique expertise in service of nature.

How do you see the role of philanthropy evolving in the next decade to support this vision? 

The lines dividing philanthropy from other industries will continue to blur. We are already witnessing public, private and philanthropic partnerships, so-called 4P models, where philanthropic entities are integrated into traditional P3 delivery mechanisms. Notable examples of such models include the 100 Resilient Cities initiative by the Rockefeller Foundation or Kenya's M-Pesa Financial Inclusion Ecosystem.

The corporate world finally understands that philanthropies can be powerful allies in tackling the planetary emergency. They have longer time horizons, higher risk tolerance, intergenerational and justice perspectives and so much more to offer. On the other hand, philanthropic organisations themselves are looking inward. Difficult conversations are taking place about the decolonisation of wealth and the end of philanthropy as a tax shelter for the wealthy. 

My greatest challenge in moving the philanthropies I am involved with towards regeneration revolves around questions of power and impact. Perhaps philanthropies aiming for regeneration should abandon authority and control and instead act on principles of reciprocity, such as those found in natural systems. Does moving forward mean ceding power, for example not being in charge of selecting the enterprises to support? If the future of philanthropy is human, as we believe it is, should the beneficiaries be the only ones to determine how, when and where to use the designated resources? 

Closely tied to power is the question of impact and who gets to define what it means. Assessing success in philanthropic efforts can be subjective, with definitions of impact often formed within echo chambers that overlook the critical perspectives of those most directly affected by the issues at hand. 

Most recently, I have been contemplating whether our philanthropic ecosystem should focus on preserving its capital indefinitely or work towards redistributing resources in a way that ultimately makes it obsolete, fostering a network of mutual stewardship. I have created a regulatory sandbox with partners to live-test one innovative solution. Let’s see what lessons we can learn from one another. 

What is your personal vision for a regenerative future? 

It is a future of complete synergy between nature and humanity. I see human innovation and nature’s processes becoming one while recognising that the interconnected whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. However, the challenge with innovation lies in its ability to reshape the world fast, without democratic consent – that is, the consent of the people it impacts. We must remain ever mindful of the fundamental importance of participatory governance in shaping a just and sustainable future for all. 

In this new regenerative world, we grow products made from CO₂ via carbon-degrading technology. 

After humans finish consuming the item, the product returns to the soil to grow, for example, an edible fruit plant. Before we get there, however, I am profoundly concerned by the far-reaching impact of escalating geopolitical volatility worldwide – across industries, supply chains, and asset classes. As states, ecosystems, and the global economy unravel before our eyes, the fragile thread of world peace grows ever more tenuous.

We cannot find peace among ourselves without also finding peace with the larger entity from which we originate – life, nature. So how we live matters enormously. Changing the world requires us to live, relate, produce and consume in fundamentally different ways. Regeneration urges us to recognise that what is existential for the planet is equally existential for ourselves.