Building Resilient Circular Economies in Cumbria
A place-based approach to circular economies that feed people, place, and nature.
Across Cumbria, a form of economic renewal is already taking place.
It does not arrive through large infrastructure projects or imported innovation models. Instead, it emerges through relationships, everyday decisions, and how people organise work around land, food, and livelihoods.
This is the work of readiness and coherence, and it often appears as what are called islands of coherence.
Why circular economy efforts often struggle
Many circular economy and sustainability initiatives focus on what needs to change:
reducing waste
shortening supply chains
keeping value local
designing nature-positive business models
These aims are sound. Yet in practice, many projects stall or remain stuck at pilot stage.
The question that often goes unasked is more fundamental:
Are the conditions in place for this way of working to take root and last?
This is the question of readiness.
What readiness means in practice
Readiness is not enthusiasm, ambition, or good intent.
It is about if people, organisations, and places can actually operate in circular and regenerative ways when conditions are uncertain or pressured.
In practice, readiness shows up through more subtle signals:
the ability to adapt rather than defend fixed plans
decisions grounded in place and lived context
honest conversations about money, limits, and trade-offs
relationships strong enough to share risk and responsibility
operating from care and attention rather than fear
Where readiness exists, small interventions can begin to create lasting change.
Islands of coherence explained
Islands of coherence are places where readiness has already formed.
Otto Scharmer explains them as localised pockets of change-makers, leaders, and communities creating positive transformation amidst global chaos, acting as vital connection points within a larger system to foster systemic change through deep listening, generative dialogue, and shared awareness, ultimately lifting the entire system to a higher order.
They are not formal programmes or centres of excellence. They are living systems where multiple elements align:
economic viability
care for people
care for land and ecosystems
local value circulation
An island of coherence might include a farm working closely with local processors, a community food initiative linked to health and education, or a small enterprise keeping materials, skills, and income rooted locally.
What matters is not scale.
It is alignment.
Coherence versus performance
We are often trained to look for performance:
growth curves
outputs
KPIs
replicable models
Coherence asks a different set of questions:
does this system hold together under pressure?
can people act without burning out or cutting corners?
does value circulate locally rather than leaking away?
is nature treated as a participant rather than a resource?
For resilient circular economies, coherence is often a stronger indicator of long-term viability than short-term performance.
Why Cumbria matters
Cumbria is frequently described as rural, peripheral, or difficult to scale.
From a readiness perspective, these same qualities offer strength:
deep connections between people, land, and food
strong place identity and stewardship
a growing ecosystem of regenerative businesses and social enterprises
real pressure from climate change, fragile supply chains, and the cost of living
Rather than importing solutions, Cumbria shows how place-based circular economies can grow from lived practice, feeding people, sustaining livelihoods, and caring for nature at the same time.
The hidden challenge: readiness is hard to see
One of the biggest barriers to supporting regenerative and circular work is that readiness rarely appears in funding criteria or economic strategies.
Support often flows toward polished proposals or standalone projects, while islands of coherence remain under-resourced because they do not look like innovation from the outside. The view needed is systemic, spotting patterns and flows, attention and energy.
Making readiness visible allows investment, policy, and business support to respond to what is already working, rather than constantly trying to create something new.
From islands to archipelagos
The goal is not to replicate islands of coherence at scale.
It is to connect them.
When islands begin to recognise one another:
knowledge travels
trust deepens
supply chains shorten
shared infrastructure becomes possible
This is how resilient circular economies grow, through connection rather than uniform expansion.
Over time, islands become archipelagos: networks of place-based activity able to adapt together as conditions change.
A different way of thinking about economic resilience
If we are serious about circular economies, regenerative enterprise, local food systems, and community wealth building, then readiness and coherence deserve as much attention as finance and technology.
Cumbria is already showing what this can look like.
The work now is to notice it, support it, and learn from it, carefully, and without forcing it into shapes that do not fit.
Sometimes the most important step is recognising what is already alive.
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