What we do

We inspire the belief in a different future and build the trust, connections, capabilities and leadership to turn bold ideas into collective action.

We focus our efforts and capabilities on Reimagining Food Value Chains, Finance for Resilient Regional Economies, and Inspiring Regenerative Leadership.

Reimagining Food Value Chains

Despite decades of effort, progress to transform how and where we produce our food has been slow and incremental. Deforestation and overfishing continue. Producers everywhere are struggling. The environmental and social costs are mounting.

To explore how our food value chains could be transformed to serve people and planet we focus on two specific areas:

Market Shaping: Across agriculture, fisheries and food, innovative technologies could meaningfully reduce habitat loss, emissions and overfishing. Yet many remain niche despite being technically validated and commercially available because market incentives and structures can often favour incumbent, less sustainable technologies. Ostara is applying market shaping in this area to accelerate the uptake of climate and nature-positive technologies.

Shared Interest Supply Chains: In the face of increasingly shared supply chain risks we need to urgently identify and champion ways to shift incentives beyond individual responsibilities to a wider focus on impact and system resilience. This includes ways to pool and mitigate risks, but also the benefits of cost sharing and shared value creation. Ostara is gathering and testing evidence of innovative mechanisms and initiatives that can help demonstrate the value of an approach based on shared interest to unlock collective resources and drive impact.

Finance for Resilient Regional Economies

The crises of climate change and ecological collapse are accelerating, threatening the very systems that sustain life. In response, nature finance has moved rapidly into the mainstream. But what looks like progress is too often optimisation at the margins of an extractive system. What kind of finance can truly be in service of life?

Inspiring Regenerative Leadership

The leadership models that have been upheld in the past and the skills taught are proving insufficient. A living systems approach is needed to understand, navigate and chart a course amidst increasingly complex, uncertain and dynamic systems. Ostara is developing and offering programs to equip leaders across generations with the regenerative leadership skills and competencies to resource and restore themselves, navigate complexity, cultivate resilience, and ultimately find the courage to lead the transition towards an economy that is in service of the living world.

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