Unpacking the Beyonds: Regeneration

By Chellie Spiller, Professor of Leadership, Waikato Management School

Regeneration as intergenerational healing

In many economies today, wealth is imagined to flow from the top down. The model is one of trickle-down: resources held by corporations, governments, or wealthy individuals are expected to spill over into the lives of those further down the ladder. The reality is a pyramid – a meritocracy with few places at the top, rewarding inherited advantage, while many remain layered beneath.

From a Māori worldview, the economy looks very different. Wealth emanates from within and ripples outward. Families, not isolated individuals, are the building blocks of society. True prosperity begins in the collective heart of whānau and radiates through relationships, strengthening communities, ecosystems, and futures. This is the essence of regeneration: restoring vitality and balance through connection, not extraction.

An economy of mana

At the center of this vision is mana – the inherent dignity and worth of all beings. Rather than meritocracy, which privileges the few, Māori thought offers what might be called a ‘manatocracy’ – a society grounded in the mana of everyone. Mana is a collective quality vested in the whole for the greater well-being outcomes of all.

From this foundation arises an economy of mana. It is expressed through values that are not abstract ideals but living practices shaping everyday life. Three touchstones help illuminate this:

• Whanaungatanga – kinship, the recognition that all life is interconnected through relationship;
• Manaakitanga – uplifting care and reciprocity, ensuring the well-being of others and the world around us; and
• Kaitiakitanga – stewardship rooted not in domination but in consciousness, where humans act with awareness that they are part of, not separate from, the living world.

These practices regenerate dignity and belonging. They remind us that economies are not machines, but woven networks of relationships where the health of one is bound to the health of all.

Whakapapa and the woven universe

Māori philosophy offers a profound ordering principle: whakapapa. Often translated as “genealogy,” the word carries far greater depth. Whakapapa traces our shared origin with rivers and rocks, trees and birds, ancestors and descendants. It reminds us that humans are part of an unfolding web of life, not above it.

Whakapapa envisions the universe as woven. The threads of connection are both visible and invisible – like the gossamer strands of a spider’s web or the spirals of galaxies. Water cycles, seasons, and star movements echo this spiral logic. Regeneration here is not linear growth, but a cyclic process of remembering, returning, and renewing. Through whakapapa, regeneration becomes intergenerational healing – honoring ancestors, living consciously in the present, and calling the future into being.

Success as succession: Wakatū incorporation

This worldview is not confined to philosophy; it is alive in practice. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Wakatū incorporation – with significant holdings in seafood, wine, and property – grounds its governance in a 500-year intergenerational plan. Their decisions are guided by ancestral wisdom, embedded values, and responsibilities to descendants yet to come.
Wakatū shows that regeneration is not a choice between the short term and long term. The danger comes only when the short term becomes greedy and consumes more than its share. Intergenerational thinking demonstrates that we can meet present needs while also passing on a thriving world. In this view, true success is succession.

Square and sphere intelligence

The dominant mindset of modern economies is what I call ‘square intelligence.’ It privileges measurement, indicators, and deficit framings: what is missing, what is lacking. The SDGs, valuable as they are, often risk being treated this way – targets to chase, gaps to fill, problems to fix.

But square intelligence is not enough. Regeneration requires ‘sphere intelligence’: systems thinking of the highest order, grounded in attunement, creativity, and intuition. Sphere intelligence listens for signs in the environment, perceives patterns and relationships, and orients to purpose with clarity. This is the wisdom of traditional oceanic navigators, who are wayfinders that read stars, waves, and winds – not in isolation, but in relationship.

Sphere intelligence calls us to slow down, to dwell in intimacy with the living world, to tune into its frequencies. Regeneration emerges when we engage not only with measures, but with our full human intelligences – spiritual, emotional, relational.

Rāhui and activated hope

In Te Ao Māori, the practice of rāhui illustrates regeneration. A rāhui places a pause – on a forest, a river, a coastline – to allow nature to heal itself. It reflects deep trust in the life force of ecosystems. Applied to ourselves, rāhui invites us to pause, to ask: what within us needs healing?

This creates the conditions for activated hope. Activated hope is not passive optimism. It is an active stance of imagination and courage, a refusal to resign ourselves to crisis. In wayfinding traditions, navigators hold a clear line of sight to their destination. By aligning with signs and acting in accordance with values, they call the island to them. So too with regeneration: when we live in alignment, the future comes to meet us in the present.

Regeneration as intergenerational healing

From a Māori perspective, resilience is not simply the individual act of “bouncing back.” It is an operating intelligence woven into culture, carried in values, whakapapa, and wairua (spirit). Resilience is always already present – a remembering that we are part of life’s unfolding.

Regeneration is therefore both practical and profound. It is intergenerational planning, like Wakatū’s 500-year horizon. It is everyday values of whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, and kaitiakitanga. It is pausing with rāhui and orienting through activated hope.

Above all, regeneration is intergenerational healing. It is the movement of life force from within, rippling outward. It is a woven universe of threads – some fine as gossamer – that hold us together. In honoring these connections, we find not just sustainability, but the courage to renew, restore and call a flourishing future into being.

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This article was originally published on 8 October 2025 by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) on the SDG Knowledge Hub. It is part of a new Beyond Lab mini-series, in collaboration with IISD, themed, ‘Unpacking the Beyonds: Key Shifts Shaping the Future of Sustainable Development.’  The series aims to shed light on key concepts, or shifts, towards building a more resilient and sustainable future for people and the planet. The shifts, unpacked through this series, represent key themes of the ongoing Beyonds Challenge Initiative: constructive hope; regeneration; debt to the future; and the great unknowns. Also, in the spirit of the ‘Beyonds,’ they aim to sketch out the outlines of a future not yet written, aiming to take us beyond crisis narratives and fear, beyond resignation, and beyond short-term thinking, towards positive visions of the future and long-term sustainability.