{"id":133119,"date":"2025-10-04T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/?p=133119"},"modified":"2026-01-27T10:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T10:43:27","slug":"time-to-go-clubbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/time-to-go-clubbing\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to go clubbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mint<\/em> editor, Henry Leveson-Gower<\/strong>, describes how joining the club could raise the tempo of environmental regeneration.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a group of farmers who had formed under the banner of regenerative farming, focusing on improving the health of the soil, water, and biodiversity, said, \u201cEnough.\u201d After years of trialling carbon markets, they announced they were walking away. The promised income never matched the costs, the paperwork was suffocating, and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 the system didn\u2019t reflect how soil and water really work. Their revolt tapped into a growing unease: perhaps turning nature into a set of tradable credits in commodity-type markets is the wrong path altogether (see box: The\u00a0<\/em>Revolt<\/i>).<\/p>\n

At the same time, billions are quietly flowing into golf clubs and country clubs worldwide. These organisations, some of which are centuries old, manage vast landscapes for members who willingly pay subscriptions to enjoy them. They don\u2019t trade \u201cgolf credits\u201d or commodify time spent on the fairway. Instead, they rely on rules, governance, and community norms.<\/p>\n

The Revolt<\/div>
In early 2024, the farmer-led group Climate Farmers<\/em> issued a blunt statement: they were out of the carbon markets. After years in Europe\u2019s soil carbon space, they concluded the system was fundamentally flawed.<\/p>\n

Their position paper<\/a> argued that voluntary carbon markets demand simplicity, quantification, and a single metric \u2014 design principles that clash with the complex, dynamic reality of regenerative farming. Soil health, water cycles, and biodiversity can\u2019t be reduced to neat tradable units.<\/p>\n

Their walkout sparked a wider debate across Europe. It also sent a clear message: if regeneration is to succeed, it needs institutions that respect ecological complexity. Clubs may offer exactly that.<\/div><\/div>\n

So, why are landscapes managed for biodiversity and water resilience tied to speculative carbon and biodiversity markets, while leisure landscapes thrive under the much older, simpler model of clubs?<\/p>\n

Rethinking economics<\/strong><\/p>\n

In mainstream economics, the concept of \u201cclub goods\u201d originated with Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan, who proposed them in 1965 as a third category between private and public goods. His insight was simple yet powerful: some resources \u2014 such as parks, swimming pools, and even landscapes \u2014 can be shared until congestion sets in. Clubs, he argued, provide a way to collectively manage access and rules, ensuring benefits are shared without overuse.<\/p>\n

The parallel with today\u2019s food and farming systems is striking. Industrial agriculture maximises private profit but erodes public goods, such as biodiversity and water quality. Seen through Buchanan\u2019s lens, landscapes are precisely the kind of shared resource where club economics could provide a practical analytical framework in a way that commodity economics doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Clubs, after all, are everywhere. From scout troops and football teams to golf courses worth billions globally, they operate on subscriptions, rules, and governance. They can be open and inclusive, or closed and exclusive\u2014as the Garrick Club\u2019s belated decision to admit women reminds us. What matters is that they provide a structure for people to pool resources and manage them together (see box, Clubs and commoning<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Clubs and commoning<\/div>
Commons scholar David Bollier argues in this issue<\/a> that clubs are too exclusive to be considered commoning. Yet the line is somewhat blurrier. Clubs \u2014 from book groups to sports teams \u2014 are everyday spaces where people self-organise, share resources, and set rules.<\/p>\n

At their best, clubs can capture the essence of commoning: citizens collaborating directly rather than separating into producers and consumers. True, some clubs are hierarchical or patriarchal. But so too are many commons. What matters for me is the process of agreeing on rules fairly, not whether the institution is labelled \u201cclub\u201d or \u201ccommons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seen in this light, clubs may be the most familiar\u2014and often overlooked\u2014form of commoning in modern societies.<\/div><\/div>\n

From theory to practice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagine a club that unites landowners with members willing to fund environmental benefits. Instead of rigid contracts, it could develop flexible agreements \u2014 on restoring rivers, cutting fertiliser inputs, or removing drainage \u2014 guided by science and adapted as circumstances change. Monitoring would provide feedback, and the portfolio approach would help spread risk.<\/p>\n

The beauty of the club model is its pragmatism. It avoids the impossibility of writing contracts that cover every future scenario. It can prevent the powerful from shifting risks onto the less powerful. And it creates space for adaptive, long-term stewardship.<\/p>\n

This approach also speaks to where real money is flowing. UK water companies alone are committing billions to nature-based solutions over the next five years \u2014 far more than carbon or biodiversity markets are likely to deliver (see box, “The money is in water”<\/em>). For them, ecosystem services like clean water and resource resilience don\u2019t fit neatly into a nature markets framework but are central to their business. Clubs could provide the institutional vehicle for this investment, blending it with other sources of funding. Meanwhile, we have seen regenerative farmers declare that voluntary carbon markets are fundamentally incompatible with their approach.<\/p>\n

The money is in water<\/div>
Forget carbon credits: the most significant potential funding for nature-based solutions is coming from the water sector. \u00a0Our water systems depend directly on catchments. Regenerating their natural systems can create much more resilient supplies as well as more resilient agricultural systems.\u00a0 This is also likely to be much cheaper and less controversial than concrete solutions.<\/p>\n

This is increasingly recognised in the UK: Following the UK regulator\u2019s 2024 review, English and Welsh water companies are expected to invest \u00a33 billion in environmental outcomes over the next five years. An additional \u00a36 billion will address nutrient pollution, alongside \u00a31.3 billion annually for flood and coastal defences from the Environment Agency. The recent review of water regulation also clearly indicates that nature-based solutions are the way forward. There may be a need to improve the regulatory system and evidence base to support this effectively, but the overall direction remains clear.<\/p>\n

Overall, this easily surpasses the government\u2019s projected Biodiversity Net Gain market and exceeds the uncertain outlook of carbon trading. In Scotland, publicly owned Scottish Water is also competing for significant investments in nature-based projects.<\/p>\n

For anyone designing landscape regeneration finance, water is where the flow of money is strongest.<\/div><\/div>\n

The role of government<\/strong><\/p>\n

What about the state? Here, the late Nobel laureate, Elinor Ostrom, offers a guide. Her research demonstrated that sustainable resource management doesn\u2019t stem from heavy-handed regulation or centrally designed incentives but from enabling institutions crafted so that communities can make good decisions themselves.<\/p>\n

Governments already recognise this logic when they regulate charities to ensure public benefit. They could do the same with landscape clubs: requiring diversity of membership, alignment with regeneration goals, and transparent reporting \u2014 without smothering them in red tape. It can be seen as an adaptation of the thinking behind the geodesic dome designed by inventor Buckminster Fuller, which creates stability through tension between its elements. Applied to institutional design, this could deliver integrity in governance, keeping systems resilient while preventing capture by narrow interests, a concept Fuller referred to as tensegrity.<\/p>\n

From markets to membership<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shifting from commodified credits to club-based collaboration would mark a profound change. It would mean moving away from speculative financial instruments and towards institutions rooted in shared responsibility.<\/p>\n

The model is not alien. Clubs are part of everyday life. By applying their logic to landscapes, we could create regenerative systems that are more robust, more democratic, and better suited to the complexity of nature itself.<\/p>\n

The real question is no longer whether nature markets can be made to work. It\u2019s whether nature clubs can deliver the regeneration we urgently need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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