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Regen Melbourne's Collaboration and Investment Lead, Josh Devine, shares how his experience in the world of impact finance – from attending COP29 to time spent in the Indigenous business sector – helps inform his work at RM, developing new approaches to systemic investment.
Despite the growing global consensus on the urgent need for systemic change to address climate, ecological and social crises, financial flow remains misaligned with the scale and depth of transformation required. While many sustainable finance initiatives exist, the dominant financial paradigm continues to overlook the true risks we face, the scale of change needed and the opportunities for investment in system-level interventions.
Each of the roles I had prior to joining the Regen Melbourne team taught me different things about systemic symptoms, causes of inequality and how capital is largely the missing ingredient that can be leveraged for positive impact. All of those learnings can be applied to our work here, exploring how capital and resources can be directed toward a regenerative and just future for Melbourne.
Through my work, I've had the opportunity to engage with and contribute to dialogues regarding different forms of capital. In 2024 I attended COP29 in Azerbaijan (aka the "finance COP"), where I witnessed modest achievements in spaces like the carbon markets struggling against deep-rooted structural and geo-political challenges. As a current board member of The Nature Conservancy, I see how capital, science and traditional knowledge is utilised to protect and regenerate ecosystems, while empowering and supporting communities. And my time and ongoing involvement in the Indigenous business sector continues to highlight the power of different types of capital investment to create economic outcomes and self-determination for business owners, their families and the community.
"The dominant financial paradigm continues to overlook the true risks we face"
From these experiences, some key learnings emerged:
It's necessary to balance the immediate and short-term flow of capital into critical frontline regeneration and economic development work, with the urgent "upstream" work that addresses systemic barriers and builds the financial infrastructure and investment logic necessary to address root causes.
The need to fundamentally reimagine how we perceive, move and invest money and resources, in ways that serve both nature and people (which are intrinsically the same).
The opportunity and the quickly emerging requirement to better utilise and coordinate infrastructure and mechanisms that already exist.
Working to address these learnings is not straightforward. But as political economist Dr Katherine Trebeck recently said in her keynote address for the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation: we must move beyond "system-compliant fixes" and face the deeper questions – the kind that shift paradigms, not just policies.
It's this complexity, and the potential it presents, that has me energised in my new role as Collaboration and Investment Leader at Regen Melbourne.
What is systemic Investment?
My work as the Collaboration and Investment Lead at Regen Melbourne is focused on the growing field of work in systemic investment – an exploration into how capital and resources can be directed toward a regenerative and just future.
At its core, systemic investment sits at the intersection of finance, systems thinking and place. It draws on multiple levers of change, asset classes and points of intervention, in collaboration with a diverse set of actors. The aim is to build upon the MIST (Melbourne Initiative for Systemic Transformation) work commenced by Regen Melbourne in 2023.
Our approach is live and evolving. It blends systems thinking, financial practice and a deep connection to place, activating capital and resources in support of regenerative transformation.
How the work fits with Regen Melbourne's Earthshots
Alongside both local and global partners and stakeholders, we will be engaging in systemic investment field-building, prototyping, and capital activation across all three of Regen Melbourne's ambitious Earthshots projects.
300,000 Streets
Following on from our recently published report covering our first prototype exploring hyper-local distributed grant-making, we're now expanding this work into a second series of pilots, while exploring additional mechanisms for experimentation.
Swimmable Birrarung
The RiverBank vision highlighted within the MIST report was centred around the question: "How can we make capital flow in service of a healthy Birrarung?" We are exploring the development of a financial vehicle and mechanisms to support community-led investment along the Birrarung.
15-Minute Cornucopias
As food systems continue to face ongoing challenges, we're interested in the opportunity to explore the use of a systemic investment approach to activate food systems as a powerful lever for creating a just, resilient and regenerative future in Melbourne.
Want to work together?
Over the next few months I'll be connecting with Traditional Owners, capital holders, fund managers, government representatives, social enterprises, community organisations and thought leaders to support the advancement of this field of systemic investment here in Melbourne.
If you're curious about the intersection of systems thinking, finance, and place-based transformation, I'd love to connect. Reach out to me at josh@regen.melbourne.
