What if a logging license could become a license to regenerate?

Monty Merlin grew up in the English countryside. His mother co-wrote The Green Consumer Guide, and he was a teenage hacker who nearly got kicked out of school for breaking into its system. That mix of environmentalism and technology led him to regenerative finance at university in Bristol, and he has stayed in the space for more than five years with ReFi DAO.

We recorded this on his last morning at the Agartha residency in Fools Valley, Portugal, in a valley full of wind turbines, we sat down talk about designing new regenerative systems and what it takes to rebuild the economy from the ground up. We got into why finance may be humanity's most powerful coordination tool, and why paper straws won't fix a system built on endless growth.

Monty explains bioregional financing, where communities organize around watersheds and soils instead of national borders, with examples like the Indigenous-led Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, and the network layer that isolated eco-villages still lack. He talks about his new work with Localism Labs and the handful of Web3 projects he thinks are actually delivering, like Regen Network and EthicHub. The centerpiece is Kwaxala, which worked with the Canadian government on a new kind of forest license in British Columbia. The license protects the forest as an asset on the balance sheet, and the credits it earns go first to the Indigenous communities who look after the land.

The conversation ends with how anyone can start living a little more Solarpunk, a reading list, and Monty's dream campus, where a permaculture food forest sits next to a robotics lab.

Host: Nico · Guest: Monty Merlin

References Mentioned:
- Kwaxala, an indigenous nature regeneration network
- The Green Consumer Guide by Julia Hailes
- Bioregional Financing Facilities by Samantha Power and Leon Seefeld
- John Fullerton's principles of regenerative economics
- Doughnut Economics
- Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein
- The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Walkaway by Cory Doctorow
- Gelephu Mindfulness City, Bhutan

SHOWNOTES
00:00 — Last day at the Agartha residency in Fools Valley
01:08 — Growing up with The Green Consumer Guide
02:45 — Teenage hacker, economics, and finding ReFi in Bristol
04:08 — Finance as a coordination tool, and why paper straws won't cut it
05:15 — Where Web3 fits, and bridging to traditional finance
07:47 — Who's getting it right? Bioregional financing facilities
11:32 — Eco-villages and the missing network layer
12:28 — Localism Labs: local resilience in a world of shocks
15:27 — Web3's YOLO moves, and a more critical lens
17:35 — Kwaxala and the right to regenerate
22:22 — Five years in ReFi, and breaking out of the bubble
24:52 — How to join the Solarpunk movement
27:00 — Start small: composting, community gardens, visiting
28:45 — The Solarpunk reading list
30:25 — Magic wand: a food forest meets a robotics lab
31:58 — Bhutan's mindfulness city
32:42 — Thanks and goodbyes

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