Building the pathways for a thriving bioregion
Every resilient future needs a route to get there. We utilize transition pathways to lead from where our region is today to a more circular, sustainable economy — across food and land, materials, housing, and health — and we travel them alongside the people already moving that way.
About Transition Pathways
Transition pathways are the Co-Lab’s evolving areas of focus that connect projects, learning, and investment into coherent regional strategies. We are developing these pathways through regional analysis, early sense-making workshops, ongoing community engagement, and targeted grants designed to surface anchor organizations and aligned initiatives.
A transition pathway is a structured sequence of actions designed to:
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Remove key barriers that prevent systemic change
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Amplify existing efforts that already move the system in the right direction
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Fill the missing conditions or capacities needed to shift the whole system toward a circular, regenerative, and equitable economy
At this stage, we are defining pathways at an orientational level while staying transparent that they will continue to sharpen and expand through learning and community input, with a preliminary focus on four outcomes that emerged strongly in our conversations thus far:
Our Four Transition Pathways
Circular Materials & Industry
Closing the loop on regional supply chains — turning byproducts into inputs for the next industry up the chain.
Regenerative Food, Forestry, and Land Systems
Regenerative producers, regional processing, and the distribution that connects farms to the markets nearby.
Stable, Secure, and Affordable Living
Workforce and mixed-use housing that is stable, affordable, and climate-resilient to grow with the region.
Health, Community Resilience, and Prosperity
Strengthening the conditions for people to live good, secure, and prosperous lives in the bioregion.
Within each transition pathway and across pathways, we coordinate portfolios and poly-capital to support this transition
PORTFOLIOS
Building together
Your work doesn't happen in isolation, so we don't support it that way. We build coordinated portfolios of efforts that strengthen one another, pairing each with what it needs so they succeed together rather than alone.
POLY-CAPITAL
Support that works
You need more than money to make this work. Knowledge, technical help, trusted relationships, the right people — we support by bringing what the work actually calls for, in the combinations that fit and the moments they matter most.
A diverse network of experts is helping to bring these transition pathways to life
Our collaborations span entrepreneurs, community organizations, academia, indigenous, minority groups, capital providers, policymakers, cooperatives, social enterprises, and creatives - creating a powerful ecosystem of knowledge and action:
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Policy advisors shaping resilient regional governance
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Circular material and industry experts
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Capital providers interested in place-based financing collaboratives
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Filmmakers capturing impact media