A unit of account issued at the bioregional scale, denominated in the ecological and coordination capacity of a specific place, and designed to circulate within and between bioregional coordination surfaces. The term names a class of instrument, not a single design. Multiple lineages converge on the idea; none has yet produced a bioregional currency operating at the scale the term implies.
The Emancipation Architecture specifies the most complete design: a demurrage-based currency earned through verified regenerative activities (the Regenerative Participation Income), ecologically backed, bioregionally issued, and interconnected through a mycelial clearing layer that enables trade between bioregions without requiring a single global unit.
The Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF) architecture identifies the Bioregional Bank as the institutional entity that could issue a bioregional currency, and Power and Seefeld (2024) name the issuance of “nature-based currencies or other complementary currencies” as one of its functions. The BFF report, however, stops short of specifying a currency design. It proposes the institutional vessel (the bank) without prescribing the monetary architecture the vessel would carry. The currency question is left open for each bioregion to answer according to its conditions.
The Obligation and Invitation concept supplies the demand-side theory: a bioregional currency acquires circulation not through a tax obligation (the mechanism that drives demand for national fiat) but through access to goods and services that exist only within the bioregional coordination surface and cannot be purchased with the national unit.
For the full treatment of this instrument class, see Bioregional Currency (framework).
Related terms
- Demurrage
- Regenerative Participation Income (RPI)
- Bioregional Financing Facility (BFF)
- Bioregional Economics
- Commitment Pooling
Related pages
- Bioregional Currency (framework)
- The Emancipation Architecture
- The Bioregional Financing Facility
- Obligation and Invitation
- Tax-to-Commons Pathways
Sources and associated figures
- Samantha Power and Leon Seefeld (BFF report, 2024)
- Gesell, S. (1916). The Natural Economic Order.
- Lietaer, B. (2001). The Future of Money.
- Mqamelo et al. (2022) (Community Inclusion Currencies, Kenya)
- Stodder & Lietaer (WIR Bank, Switzerland)
- Ruddick, W, Commitment Pooling (Kenya)
Provenance
Written 12 September 2026 as a glossary entry synthesizing the monetary-design thread across the Emancipation Architecture, the BFF report, and the Obligation and Invitation concept. The observation that the BFF stops short of proposing a currency design is the wiki author’s analytical distinction.