Social Finance in the Anthropocene

Today, most social finance initiatives remain as small niches that are unable to alter the capitalist system’s destructive course. Governments remain blind to social finance as potential leverage for pursuing human and natural wellbeing. This chapter proposes a framework for financial innovation that focuses on fostering a regenerative economy. In the current “Anthropocene” era, human activity impacts the Earth’s geophysical processes. Most societal institutions stem from the previous Holocene period of relative stability and manage subsystems separately, ignoring the feedback among them. Finance, too, is approached as a sector pursuing its own growth, using people and planet as mere resources, and disregarding their actual needs. The escalating exploitation of Nature pushes the Earth toward an unstable state. Due to its extractive design, finance no longer functions as a means for human and natural wellbeing but is now the economic aim. In contrast, many indigenous peoples’ worldviews align their practices with the Earth. Nature and indigenous wisdom offer insights for shifting our cultural narratives, so we can redesign our socio-economic (including financial) practices and institutions. Ultimately, for finance to become sustainable, it must shift from a bank money monoculture to a diverse financial ecosystem. Resilient social finance initiatives are living labs where humans learn to reconnect with Nature and each other. Today, they are abundant yet lack the ascendency to impact the system. Innovations in policy and academia can offer leverage to strengthen their impact. These can include policies supporting Agenda 2030, legislation, education, research, and taxation.