Across regional New South Wales, pressures are converging. Climate disruption, rising cost of living, and social fragmentation now collide in ways that test the fabric of local economies.
Insurance premiums are climbing, supply chains are stretched, and many small businesses – the backbone of regional life – are under strain. When even one business falters, the impact travels fast: lost jobs, shrinking local demand, eroded trust.
For too long, climate adaptation has been treated as a technical fix or a recovery effort after a bushfire or flood. While those measures have been a vital part of the adaptation response to climate change, they rarely transform the conditions that make communities vulnerable in the first place. The challenge now is to move beyond patching systems to regenerating them, so regional economies can thrive amid uncertainty.
Re-stitching the local fabric
Across NSW, clusters of pioneering enterprises are already showing how transformational adaptation can take shape. Together they demonstrate that adaption becomes regenerative when collaboration, purpose and local leadership align.
New business models are harnessing local finance, circular manufacturing, renewable energy, eco and cultural tourism, regenerative food and farming. These locally-led, community-serving approaches generate employment, renew landscapes, and build shared confidence and connection.
What does this look like in practice?
Four enterprises based in one region (the Southern Highlands) are working at the intersection of community, ecology and economy, re-weaving the threads of local life:
- WinZero – A climate ‘backbone organisation’ turning community collaboration into tangible action through its collaboration with Regen Labs on the Highlands Homegrown Economy initiative, and through its Virtual Energy Network, which connects local solar producers and consumers to cut emissions and lower costs.
‘If we see a need, we just get on and do it.’
Gaye White, Deputy Chair, WinZero
- BDCU Collective Impact – A member-owned mutual redefining finance as civic infrastructure, reinvesting profits into housing, health and community capability.
‘We’re here to make profit with purpose, so we can invest it back into the community. That’s the point.’
Matt Sewell, Head of Marketing, Communications and Community, BDCU Collective Impact
- Challenge Southern Highlands (CSH) – A long-standing social enterprise integrating disability employment, health and housing into a regenerative, life-first model of care and inclusion.
‘We just want to be great people for people living with disabilities. Quality of life will always be our focus.’
Aaron Malouf, General Manager, Challenge Southern Highlands
- Southern Highlands Food Logistics Hub – A collaboration of local growers building shared logistics and procurement systems to make local food supply reliable, climate-ready and fair.
‘The problem wasn’t a lack of innovation. The problem was there was no framework for working together.’
Jeff Aston, Tractorless Vineyard and Southern Highlands Food Logistics Hub
Individually, each enterprise is impressive. Together, they show how climate adaptation can become transformative when they operate as connected nodes in a living system of collaboration.
A multi-capital lens
These enterprises create far more value than standard measures capture. However, much of this impact is unseen or unacknowledged. But applying the Eight Forms of Capital framework (2011) reveals how regenerative enterprises contribute to the vitality of their place and community.
When one capital strengthens, others often follow creating virtuous feedback loops:
- Restoring soil (natural capital) improves wellbeing (human capital) and pride of place (cultural).
- Collaboration (social capital) unlocks innovation (intellectual capital) and shared investment (financial capital).
These ‘ripple effects’ help us form a more complete map of regional prosperity – one that sees adaptation not as an outcome, but as an ongoing relationship between people, place and purpose.
Patterns from the field
When viewed as a holistic cluster, the four Southern Highlands businesses reveal consistent patterns:
1. Collaboration as adaptive infrastructure
Connection itself is an asset. WinZero’s regional convening, CSH’s co-design approach with the families of its staff, BDCU’s community spaces and the Southern Highlands Food Logistics Hub’s cooperative structure all show that trust and coordination are as critical to adaptation as physical infrastructure.
When collaboration is deliberate and resourced, it becomes the system’s connective tissue, allowing communities to act quickly and confidently when conditions change.
2. Regeneration through integration
Each enterprise bridges sectors that are usually siloed:
- CSH combines employment, health and housing.
- BDCU aligns finance with social impact and housing.
- WinZero links energy to community education.
- The Food Logistics Hub connects growers, logistics and procurement.
Integration reduces vulnerability and multiplies value across the Eight Capitals, creating efficiency and compounding positive benefits.
3. Circulating value across capitals
Positive ripples flow across domains:
- CSH’s garden and recycling work (manufactured capital) provides inclusive jobs (human capital) and restores biodiversity (natural capital).
- WinZero’s Virtual Energy Network reduces bills (financial capital) and strengthens local connection (social capital).
- BDCU’s community investment model builds trust (social capital) while keeping wealth circulating locally (financial capital).
- The Food Logistics Hub strengthens regional food security by coordinating supply chains (manufactured capital), deepening farmer cooperation (social capital) and building skills for regenerative agriculture (human and natural capital).
Each enterprise expands value well beyond its own balance sheet, showing how regenerative design creates public good through private initiative.
4. Finance and enterprise as civic glue
BDCU Collective Impact and CSH illustrate that finance and social enterprise can function as civic infrastructure. By aligning financial returns with wellbeing outcomes through housing, training and inclusion, they replace extraction with participation and shared ownership.
5. Local leadership and learning loops
Every organisation in the cluster practices learning by doing. WinZero partners with universities to measure impact. CSH co-designs services with families. BDCU evolves its offerings based on member needs. The Food Logistics Hub tests transparent governance.
Through these feedback loops, local experience becomes collective intelligence, allowing the region to adapt faster and more effectively together.
The Southern Highlands cluster: A living system of transformation
Together these four organisations form a prototype for polycentric adaptation, where many connected nodes exercise local agency while coordinating for the common good. Energy powers food systems, finance funds care infrastructure, social enterprise anchors inclusion, and trust connects them all.
Turning ripples into waves
These enterprises embody a core finding from recent research conducted by Regen Labs for the NSW Government – that adaptive capacity grows when businesses are connected.
Their collective success highlights three priorities for scaling transformational adaptation across New South Wales:
- Make the invisible visible
Measure and communicate multi-capital impact so regenerative value is recognised and rewarded. - Strengthen the weavers
Resource the intermediaries and backbone organisations that connect sectors and sustain collaboration. - Channel regenerative finance
Design funding and procurement systems that reward contribution and partnership, not just short-term outputs.
By amplifying what already works, regional economies can evolve from isolated successes to connected, climate-ready systems.
The stories of WinZero, BDCU Collective Impact, Challenge Southern Highlands and the Southern Highlands Food Logistics Hub remind us that resilience is relational, value is multidimensional, and transformation begins from the inside out – community by community, ripple by ripple.
These enterprises are not exceptions. They are early signals of a regenerative economy in motion, where collaboration is infrastructure and every investment in connection yields lasting returns for people, place and planet.
Further reading
Roland E and Landua G (2011) ‘Eight forms of capital’(PDF, 421 KB),
Permaculture Magazine, no. 68, accessed 13 November 2025.
Roland E and Landua G (2015) Regenerative enterprise: Optimizing for multi-capital abundance.