A new open-access review published in the journal Green Technology, Resilience, and Sustainability proposes a governance framework designed to push natural resource management beyond conventional sustainability, toward actively restoring ecosystems, livelihoods, and institutions. The paper, authored by Abhijeet Das, Satchidananda Mishra, and Krishna Pada Bauri, introduces what the authors call Regenerative Resource Governance, or RRG, a framework that integrates occupational and environmental safety assurance, circular resource management, and community-led restoration into a single adaptive governance system. Rather than presenting new empirical measurements, the paper is a conceptual and review-based contribution, illustrated through the Chilika Lagoon system in eastern India, where fisheries, tourism, and biodiversity conservation intersect within a multi-stakeholder governance context.
The authors argue that humanity is operating beyond the Earth’s ecological limits, with wildlife populations reported to have dropped by more than two-thirds over the past half-century, trends they describe as profound social development challenges affecting livelihoods, food security, and institutional stability. In their framing, conventional sustainability approaches have focused on reducing harm and maintaining acceptable standards within environmental constraints, often prioritizing symptoms over root causes. Regenerative approaches, by contrast, seek to restore, renew, and recreate ecological and social systems, explicitly linking ecological recovery with social equity, decent work, and community resilience. The paper traces the intellectual roots of regeneration to indigenous well-being practices, regenerative food and land management systems, and place-based stewardship traditions that emphasize reciprocity, collective responsibility, and long-term stewardship.
At the core of the framework is a continuum that moves from adaptive governance, which builds capacity to respond to uncertainty, through resilient governance, which strengthens the ability to persist through shocks, to regenerative governance, which aims to transform and restore systems. The authors contend that adaptive and resilient approaches, while valuable, often stop short of restoring the regenerative capacity of socio-ecological systems. Resilience as a goal, they write, can imply persistence rather than progression, and maintaining the capacity to recover from disturbances does not inherently regenerate degraded ecosystems or address embedded socio-economic inequities. Regenerative governance instead embeds renewal as an active design principle, treating disturbance as an opportunity for renewal and drawing on living systems theory, regenerative development, and regenerative community development.
A distinguishing feature of the proposed framework is its explicit integration of safety management with circular economy principles. The authors argue that embedding safety management into regenerative processes, including waste valorization, habitat renewal, and eco-infrastructure design, ensures that restoration and innovation do not generate emergent hazards or transfer risks across ecological or social domains. This supports preventive, learning-oriented safety cultures in which system feedback, risk governance, and ecological regeneration evolve together. Circular economy principles, in turn, introduce regenerative material and energy cycles that convert wastes into resources through reuse, recycling, and bio-based valorization, transforming linear end-of-pipe control into closed-loop safety systems where hazard reduction, cleaner production, and eco-efficiency are interlinked with restorative design.
To operationalize these ideas, the framework maps onto internationally recognized management standards rather than proposing new regulatory instruments. ISO 59000 series standards establish material and resource flow logic for circular economy performance, ISO 45001 safeguards occupational health and safety, ISO 14001 aligns ecological restoration with verified environmental performance, ISO 26000 embeds social responsibility and equity, and ISO 31000 supports anticipatory resilience and adaptive learning. The authors also connect the framework to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the global biodiversity strategy for 2022 to 2030 that replaced the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and put biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2050. The paper notes that emerging biodiversity management standards complement this alignment by embedding ecosystem integrity and nature-positive performance within organizational governance.
The RRG framework is structured around five interdependent governance domains: resource circularity, systemic safety integration, ecological regeneration, community co-creation, and digital transparency and learning. Its process logic follows an iterative governance cycle aligned with continuous improvement principles embedded in ISO-based management systems. The cycle begins with system scoping and regenerative diagnostics, in which material, energy, and water flows are examined alongside occupational safety conditions, institutional arrangements, and ecosystem health indicators, with participatory approaches ensuring that local and experiential knowledge complements technical assessments. It proceeds through integrative regenerative design and institutional alignment, coordinated action with monitoring and governance transparency, and finally adaptive learning and regenerative feedback, in which performance data, stakeholder feedback, and ecological signals are jointly reviewed to reassess priorities and refine governance instruments.
The framework is illustrated through the Chilika Lagoon, Asia’s largest brackish water lagoon and a Ramsar-designated wetland of international importance, which supports high biodiversity including migratory birds and fisheries, and sustains livelihoods through fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, and transport services. Governance is coordinated primarily by the Chilika Development Authority, which has implemented documented hydrological restoration interventions such as the 2000 outer channel opening, dredging-based water exchange management, and fishery regulation zoning frameworks. The authors are careful to note that the illustration is not intended as a hypothesis-testing case study or methodological validation; rather, it situates the framework’s components within a documented socio-ecological governance setting. The lagoon has faced multiple documented stressors, including hydrological alterations, sedimentation, water quality fluctuations, fishing pressure regulation conflicts, and inter-agency coordination constraints.
Mapping the lagoon’s existing governance against the framework’s domains reveals a mixed picture. Resource circularity is partially reflected in regulated fisheries management systems, including fishing season restrictions, mesh size regulations, and designated fish landing centres, but official reports indicate limited integration of waste recycling, nutrient recovery, and tourism-linked resource loops. Occupational safety exists in informal and regulatory measures governing boat transport, fishing practices, and seasonal tourism, but safety governance is not structurally integrated into environmental or fisheries management planning. Ecological regeneration is evidenced through documented hydrological restoration interventions, notably the post-2000 channel opening, which improved fish catch statistics and biodiversity indicators in Chilika Development Authority monitoring records. Community participation is institutionalized through Primary Fishermen Cooperative Societies and consultation mechanisms, though governance assessments indicate participation remains largely consultative, with limited formal decision-making authority delegated to community institutions. Digital monitoring systems generate periodic ecological data, but integration into real-time participatory governance remains limited.
The paper also identifies anticipated barriers to implementation and corresponding mitigation strategies. Regulatory misalignment across environmental, safety, and circular economy policies may undermine systemic regeneration, which the authors address through integrated policy frameworks, cross-sectoral coordination mechanisms, and inter-agency governance cells. Technological gaps in digital infrastructure or analytical capacity may constrain adaptive decision-making, potentially bridged through open-source platforms, public-private partnerships, and targeted capacity building. Socio-cultural resistance and power imbalances, including mistrust and unequal participation of local communities, can weaken legitimacy, requiring continuous dialogue, participatory monitoring, and co-design processes. Funding limitations may restrict long-term regenerative investments, with blended finance models combining green bonds, community funds, and circular reinvestment mechanisms proposed as a response. The authors also caution that ISO systems are designed for organizational management and may not fully capture the complex social dynamics of community-based resource systems, and that certification-focused approaches can encourage procedural compliance rather than deeper systemic transformation.
Looking forward, the authors propose a phased governance pathway beginning with policy and institutional alignment across safety, circular economy, and environmental governance instruments, followed by pilot-scale application in representative socio-ecological systems such as wetlands and tourism landscapes, establishment of integrated monitoring and digital feedback systems, and progressive institutional scaling through regulatory integration. They recommend strategic actions including a national or regional regenerative governance mission, harmonized regenerative audit protocols, local capacity training in participatory regeneration, real-time digital monitoring linking ecological, social, and occupational indicators, and pilot projects in tourism, water governance, and bioeconomy systems. The framework is positioned as aligning with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 6, 8, 12, and 15, and the authors describe it as a transferable governance scaffold for wetlands, tourism landscapes, and other resource-dependent systems, while acknowledging that its outcomes would require longitudinal monitoring, composite performance metrics, and participatory evaluation frameworks to verify in practice.
Subject of Research: A proposed Regenerative Resource Governance framework integrating safety, circularity, and community stewardship, illustrated through the Chilika Lagoon system in India.
Article Title: Regenerative resource governance for sustainable social development: integrating safety, circularity, and community stewardship with insights from the Chilika Lagoon system
Article References: Das, A., Mishra, S., & Bauri, K. P. (2026). Regenerative resource governance for sustainable social development: integrating safety, circularity, and community stewardship with insights from the Chilika Lagoon system. Green Technology, Resilience, and Sustainability, 6(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44173-026-00036-w
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s44173-026-00036-w
Keywords: regenerative governance, circular economy, Chilika Lagoon, natural resource management, occupational safety, community stewardship, ISO standards, sustainable development, wetland restoration, adaptive governance, regenerative tourism, socio-ecological systems
News Source: Sloane Callahan. (October 28, 2026). New Governance Framework Aims to Move Resource Management Beyond Sustainability Toward Regeneration. Scienmag.
