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250422 Building Dual Power Through the ReFi Local Node Network

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Building Dual Power Through the ReFi Local Node Network

Created: 250422 Monday, 22 April Tags: dual-power refi local-nodes cosmo-localism solidarity-economy network-state decentralization chico-mendes autopoiesis systems-thinking

Emergent Counter-Systems in an Age of Systemic Failure

For decades, the dominant global systems have boasted of their capacity to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Yet it becomes increasingly apparent that these systems are fundamentally incapable of addressing the most crucial problems we face—ecological collapse, expanding inequality, and social fragmentation. What initially appeared as isolated crises have revealed themselves as interconnected symptoms of a systemic disease. And as with any systemic problem, treating individual symptoms resembles a futile game of whack-a-mole—we are eventually overwhelmed by the recurring manifestations of deeper dysfunctions.

It is precisely at this moment, when authentic alternatives seem impossible, that true hope appears. While established systems fail to address systemic problems directly, they have inadvertently created conditions through which alternative organizational forms can emerge. The development of decentralized technologies—blockchain networks, distributed governance systems, and digital commons—provides the foundation for new organizational possibilities that challenge existing power structures and resource flows.

The emergence of local regenerative networks represents one of the most promising manifestations of this potential. These networks don’t merely critique existing systems—they actively build alternatives that embody different values and governance structures. They operate as nodes of dual power, simultaneously resisting extractive systems while creating counter-institutions that prefigure more regenerative relationships between people and ecosystems.

Understanding Dual Power Theory for Regenerative Transition

Dual power, originally conceptualized as a transitional phase during revolutionary periods, has evolved into a deliberate strategy embraced by contemporary social movements. At its core, this approach combines public resistance to oppression (counter-power) with the construction of alternative democratic institutions (counter-institutions) that embody desired social relations.

This framework has gained renewed relevance in our current historical moment, where movements must contend not only with political and economic power but also with technological infrastructure increasingly controlled by centralized corporate entities. The challenge becomes not just resisting extractive systems but simultaneously building viable alternatives that operate according to fundamentally different principles.

The power of this approach lies in its rejection of false dichotomies. It recognizes that we must both oppose destructive systems and create life-affirming alternatives. It acknowledges that we must work within existing conditions while simultaneously building the infrastructure for a different future. It understands that transformation happens through both resistance and creation.

For regenerative movements, dual power offers a strategic framework that avoids both naive utopianism and cynical defeatism. It grounds visionary work in concrete practice while ensuring that practical work serves transformative vision.

Historical Precedents: Chico Mendes and Ecological Dual Power

The application of dual power theory to ecological regeneration has important historical precedents, particularly in the work of Brazilian environmentalist and labor leader Chico Mendes (1944-1988). Mendes’ organizing in the Amazon rainforest created one of the most successful examples of ecological dual power in practice.

Mendes built a movement that simultaneously:

  1. Resisted extractive forces: Organized rubber tappers to physically prevent the destruction of the forest through nonviolent “empates” (standoffs) against logging and ranching operations.

  2. Created alternative institutions: Developed the innovative concept of “extractive reserves” (reservas extrativistas) where local communities could sustainably harvest forest products while maintaining the ecosystem intact.

This dual approach represented what Mendes called “socio-environmental struggle”—recognizing that environmental protection cannot be separated from social justice and economic alternatives for local communities. As he famously stated: “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”

The extractive reserve model pioneered by Mendes embodied the principle of “saving the forest by using it”—creating economic value from standing forests while maintaining traditional knowledge and community governance. This prefigured contemporary regenerative approaches that seek to align ecological health with community prosperity.

Local Nodes as Autopoietic Systems

The network of local regenerative nodes emerging across the world can be understood through the lens of autopoiesis—the capacity of living systems to reproduce and maintain themselves. These nodes exhibit several characteristics of autopoietic systems:

  1. Self-creation: They emerge from local conditions and self-organize according to the specific needs and capacities of their communities.

  2. Self-regulation: They develop governance systems that enable adaptation and learning in response to changing conditions.

  3. Self-perpetuation: They create mechanisms for resource generation and knowledge transfer that enable continuity and evolution over time.

  4. Boundary maintenance: They establish clear identity and purpose while remaining permeable to information and energy flows from their environment.

Local nodes thus function as living social organisms, constantly evolving in response to their environments while maintaining their essential identity and purpose. This autopoietic character gives them resilience that purely mechanical or hierarchical organizations lack. Rather than being designed from above, they grow from within—adapting, learning, and evolving in response to local conditions.

This autopoietic nature resolves a fundamental paradox: how can a system be both structured enough to persist and fluid enough to adapt? Local nodes achieve this balance through continual self-renewal, maintaining their core identity and purpose while evolving their specific strategies and practices in response to changing conditions.

Digital Infrastructure for Analog Regeneration

The technological infrastructure developed within regenerative finance ecosystems serves as a crucial enabler for local regenerative activity. While technology alone cannot solve systemic problems, it can create the conditions through which communities can self-organize more effectively.

Just as in chemistry, where providing heat to a system increases the movement of particles and thus increases the chances of forming stable structures, the development of appropriate technological infrastructure increases the probability that communities can form stable regenerative systems. This infrastructure includes:

  1. Decentralized governance tools that enable participatory decision-making without requiring centralized control

  2. Transparent value accounting systems that make visible the regenerative contributions of individuals and communities

  3. Alternative capital formation mechanisms that direct resources toward regenerative activities without extractive intermediaries

  4. Knowledge commons platforms that enable the sharing of regenerative practices across contexts

This infrastructure functions as a scaffolding for regenerative action, not a solution in itself. The real transformation happens through the activities these tools enable—the regeneration of ecosystems, the strengthening of communities, the creation of circular economic flows that enhance rather than extract value from places.

From Empates to Tokens: Evolving Tactical Repertoires

The tactical repertoire available to regenerative movements has expanded dramatically through the integration of digital infrastructure with place-based organizing. The resistance strategies pioneered by movements like Mendes’ rubber tappers can now be complemented with digital tools that extend their reach and impact.

Contemporary regenerative networks are evolving these approaches by adding digital capabilities that:

  1. Measure and value ecosystem services: Creating verification systems for ecological services that historically went unrecognized by economic systems

  2. Enable participatory resource governance: Using digital tools to scale the democratic decision-making that was central to traditional commons management

  3. Connect bioregional struggles globally: Creating solidarity networks that can respond to threats with local immediacy while leveraging global coordination

  4. Generate resources for regenerative work: Developing funding mechanisms that direct capital toward regenerative activities without extractive intermediaries

These tools don’t replace the core strategies of resistance and alternative-building that Mendes pioneered—they extend them. The physical defense of ecosystems and the creation of alternative economic activities remain fundamental. Digital tools simply make these approaches more visible, more coordinated, and more financially viable.

Cosmo-Localism: The Theoretical Framework for Networked Regeneration

The effectiveness of local regenerative nodes connected through shared infrastructure can be understood through the framework of Cosmo-localism—an approach that combines “global knowledge sharing (‘cosmo’) with local production and governance (‘localism’)” based on the principle of “design global, manufacture local.”

This framework provides a theoretical basis for understanding how local nodes can remain autonomous while benefiting from global knowledge flows. It resolves the apparent tension between localization and globalization by showing how they can function as complementary rather than contradictory forces. Through this lens, we can see local nodes as manifestations of a broader pattern where:

  1. Commons-based Peer Production: Knowledge, designs, and solutions are shared freely across the global network while being adapted to local contexts

  2. Local Autonomy with Global Connection: Each node maintains independence in implementation while benefiting from the collective intelligence of the broader network

  3. Bioregional Adaptation: Regenerative strategies are tailored to the specific ecological and social characteristics of each place, rather than imposed through standardized approaches

This framework helps us move beyond the false choice between isolated localism and homogenizing globalization. It shows how regenerative movements can be both deeply rooted in place and widely connected across geography—gaining the benefits of local adaptation and global cooperation simultaneously.

Strategic Advantages of a Dual Power Approach to Regeneration

The application of dual power theory to regenerative work yields several strategic advantages that address limitations of other approaches:

1. Bridging Digital and Physical Domains

By connecting digital infrastructure with physical regenerative activities, this approach bridges the growing divide between virtual and material realms. It addresses a fundamental weakness in many digital movements—the difficulty in manifesting real-world change—while simultaneously providing physical organizing with digital tools that extend its reach and impact.

2. Creating Economic Democracy at Multiple Scales

The dual power approach creates opportunities for economic democracy at multiple scales simultaneously:

  • Individual neighborhoods and communities
  • Bioregional economies
  • Global networks for knowledge and resource sharing

This multi-scalar approach avoids the limitations of purely local or purely global strategies, creating nested systems of democratic governance appropriate to different levels of activity.

3. Developing Funding Alternatives for Regenerative Work

A persistent challenge for regenerative movements is securing resources to build alternatives without replicating extractive structures. The integration of innovative funding mechanisms with place-based organizing demonstrates viable funding alternatives outside traditional capital sources, enabling communities to direct resources toward truly regenerative activities.

4. Reclaiming Technology for Liberation

By developing decentralized tools specifically designed for cooperative economics and ecological regeneration, this approach reclaims technology from its extractive applications. It embodies the principle of “building digital democracy”—creating platforms and protocols that can be co-designed and co-governed to serve collective needs over individual capital accumulation.

The Spirit of Mendes in Contemporary Regeneration

The mission of combining ecological regeneration with social justice that animated Chico Mendes’ work continues in contemporary regenerative movements. By developing approaches that integrate ecosystem health with community prosperity, these movements are implementing what Mendes articulated when he stated:

“Ecology without class struggle is gardening.”

This perspective—that ecological protection must be integrated with economic alternatives and community sovereignty—remains central to effective regenerative work. Contemporary digital tools enable transparent verification, global coordination, and resource pooling that Mendes could only dream of, but the core principles remain consistent: creating economic value from regenerative rather than extractive activities, maintaining local community control, and recognizing the inseparability of environmental and social justice.

Challenges and Open Questions

Despite its promise, this integrated approach to regenerative change faces significant challenges that must be addressed:

  1. Scaling While Maintaining Democratic Participation: As networks grow, how can they balance the need for coordination with the core principle of local autonomy?

  2. Technology Access and Literacy: How can these initiatives ensure that technical barriers don’t exclude the communities most in need of regenerative alternatives?

  3. Resistance to Co-optation: How can these alternatives protect against being absorbed back into extractive systems?

  4. Material Constraints: How do these initiatives secure sufficient resources to build alternatives while remaining true to their values?

  5. Measuring Regenerative Impact: What metrics can accurately capture the holistic impact of these initiatives beyond narrow financial indicators?

  6. Security Concerns: How can these networks protect their organizers from the violence that has historically targeted environmental defenders? Mendes himself was assassinated for his work, and over 1,700 environmental defenders have been killed globally since 2012 according to Global Witness.

These challenges do not invalidate the approach but rather point to the ongoing work required to manifest its full potential. Each represents a frontier of learning and innovation for the field as a whole.

Conclusion: Toward Autopoietic Regeneration

The application of dual power theory to ecological regeneration represents one of the most promising frameworks for systemic transformation. By simultaneously building counter-institutions while resisting extractive systems, and by connecting digital infrastructure with place-based regeneration, this approach addresses limitations that have constrained previous movements.

This integrated approach doesn’t merely resist extractive systems—it actively builds the infrastructure for a regenerative future while meeting immediate community needs. It demonstrates how technology, often associated with extraction and alienation, can be reclaimed as a tool for connection, regeneration, and community sovereignty.

As both ecological crisis and digital enclosure intensify, this convergence between digital commons and local regeneration offers a compelling path forward—not just imagining alternatives but actively building them in both virtual networks and the soil beneath our feet.

The most promising manifestations of this approach honor the legacy of figures like Chico Mendes by continuing his integrated socio-environmental struggle with new tools for the 21st century. As Mendes showed us decades ago, true sustainability requires both protecting ecosystems and creating economic alternatives for communities. Contemporary regenerative networks are evolving this vision by adding the digital infrastructure necessary to scale these alternatives globally while maintaining their local rootedness.

In the ongoing search for viable alternatives to extractive systems, the emergence of these networked nodes of regeneration represents not just a protest against what is, but a practical demonstration of what could be. At a time when systemic alternatives seem impossible, these living laboratories of regeneration reveal that another world isn’t just possible—it’s already being born.

References

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  • Kostakis, V., & Bauwens, M. (2014). Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel Publishing Company.
  • Mendes, C. (1988). Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in His Own Words. Latin America Bureau.
  • Rodrigues, G. (2019). Chico Mendes: Environmental Activism and the Politics of Memory in the Brazilian Amazon. University of California Press.
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