Theory of Change for Sustainability

Aligning economy and Nature through value signals

This Theory of Change reflects the evolution of my drop in the oceans from a foundational vision to a framework being actively applied through real-world initiatives such as mydio.com. The core idea is systemic: economic systems can be improved for lasting impact by correcting how ecological value and natural capital are recognised, priced, and made economically legible.

If you want supporting context, explore related essays including Nature is Not a Charity—It’s an Economic Imperative, What if stewardship was financially recognised?, and Why the Swiss Said No to Free Money (on legitimacy and public acceptance).

From Sustainability Commitments to Systemic Change

Sustainability has moved from the margins of public debate to the centre of economic and political discourse. Governments set targets, companies publish commitments, and individuals express growing concern. Yet progress toward durable systemic change remains uneven.

This is not primarily a question of awareness or intention. It reflects a deeper structural tension: the economic systems shaping everyday decisions continue, in many cases, to reward short-term extraction more reliably than long-term regeneration.

As long as environmental and social value remain only partially reflected in market signals, sustainability initiatives face inherent constraints. Efforts to improve outcomes operate within systems whose incentives were not designed with ecological limits or social resilience in mind.

The challenge, therefore, is not to persuade individuals to act against prevailing incentives, nor to rely solely on voluntary commitments. It is to realign the underlying value signals that guide economic decision-making — consistently, credibly, and at scale.

Transformation, in this context, means redesigning how value is defined, recognised, and circulated so that regeneration and resilience are not exceptional choices, but structurally supported ones.

Recognising Natural Capital as Foundational Wealth

If value is to be redesigned, the starting point must be clarified. What, ultimately, is being valued — and for whom?

Modern economies are built on forms of capital that are interdependent but unevenly recognised. Financial capital is measured with precision. Human and social capital are increasingly acknowledged, though not always consistently integrated into decision-making. Natural capital — the ecological systems that underpin all economic activity — remains only partially reflected in market signals and institutional accounting. The recognition and stewardship of natural capital is essential for a resilient future.

Yet Nature is not an external input to the economy. It is its precondition. Every form of wealth, public or private, depends upon ecological stability, biodiversity, water cycles, and climate systems that no balance sheet fully captures.

Recognising Nature as foundational rather than residual shifts the logic of value creation. It moves the conversation from mitigating externalities after the fact to structuring economic participation around long-term system health.

Citizen’s Dividend for Nature: A Structural Recognition

It is from this reframing that the concept of a Citizen’s Dividend for Nature emerges.

The dividend is not conceived as a subsidy, nor as a compensatory payment. It is a structural recognition that natural systems constitute shared wealth — and that economic activity derived from that shared wealth carries reciprocal responsibility. In this sense, the dividend represents both entitlement and obligation: entitlement to benefit from regenerative systems, and obligation to contribute to their continuity.

Crucially, this is not a moral appeal. It is a design question: how do we make ecological value economically legible enough to compete with — and complement — the conventional signals through which good stewardship is recognised in the private sector (wages, profits, dividends, investment confidence)?

Putting the Theory of Change into Practice

Translating this recognition into practice requires mechanisms that operate within the everyday economy.

If natural capital is to be treated as foundational wealth, its value must become visible not only in regulatory frameworks or institutional reporting, but within the ordinary decisions that shape economic life. Households, businesses, and communities encounter value signals daily — through prices, incentives, and the circulation of benefits.

For systemic alignment to occur, these signals must gradually reflect regenerative priorities rather than contradict them.

It is within this context that practical instruments emerge — instruments designed to embed recognition of shared natural wealth directly into transactional activity. Initiatives such as mydio.com represent one attempt to apply how value signals and economic incentives can be recalibrated at the level of everyday participation: aligning immediate economic benefit with longer-term ecological and social resilience, and shifting value creation from extraction toward regeneration.

In this sense, implementation does not replace the theory. It subjects it to lived conditions — allowing refinement, accountability, and continuous learning.

The theory of change is therefore not static. It is being examined in motion.

The Direction of Travel: Building a Regenerative Economic System

Systemic transformation does not occur through declarations alone. It unfolds through the gradual realignment of incentives, institutions, and everyday participation.

The theory of change articulated here is therefore not a fixed blueprint. It is a framework grounded in the recognition that natural, social, and human systems constitute real forms of wealth — and that durable prosperity depends on their regeneration within a truly regenerative economic system.

As practical initiatives test these principles under real-world conditions, the framework evolves. Its purpose is not to prescribe a single solution, but to clarify the direction of travel: toward economic systems in which regeneration is structurally supported, responsibility is shared, and value is defined broadly enough to sustain the future it seeks to create.

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