Institute for Planetary Intelligence
Concept Note (v2b)
Incubated by Possible Planet / Center for Regenerative Community Solutions
Revised draft, April 2026
Overview
The Institute for Planetary Intelligence is proposed as a new initiative incubated under Possible Planet and the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions (CRCS), emerging directly from the intellectual, ethical, and practical work now underway through Possible Planet Lab. Possible Planet already frames its mission in terms of restoring the Earth, regenerating communities, and advancing practical solutions for people and planet, while Possible Planet Lab explicitly explores advanced intelligence for a regenerative future, including planetary intelligence, bioregional intelligence, AI integrity, ethical AI, and practical research programs for developing planetary intelligence.
The Institute will be designed to help address one of the defining challenges of our time: humanity has acquired extraordinary technological power without yet developing the corresponding capacity for wise, whole-system perception, deliberation, and coordinated action. The original scientific framing of planetary intelligence, developed most prominently by Adam Frank, David Grinspoon, and Sara Walker, asks whether a technological civilization can mature quickly enough to become a stabilizing force within a coupled planetary system rather than a destabilizing one. Adam Frank is at the University of Rochester, which adds a meaningful regional resonance to this work.
At the same time, the Institute will enter a wider and already-emerging ecosystem of related work. Around the planetary intelligence frame are adjacent lines of inquiry in regenerative design, collaborative intelligence, democratic innovation, bioregional coordination, and planetary regeneration. Some of this work uses the language of co-intelligence: diverse forms of intelligence learning and acting together in ways that serve the whole. That broader ecosystem includes the longstanding co-intelligence tradition associated with the Co-Intelligence Institute, as well as regenerative design and planetary-regeneration work associated with figures such as Stuart Cowan and regeneration networks convened by David Hodgson and others.
The Institute for Planetary Intelligence will respond by developing a practical platform for planetary co-intelligence: connecting human, ecological, institutional, market, and AI forms of intelligence in service to life. Its role will not be limited to research or tools alone, but will include mapping emerging efforts, connecting people, projects, solutions, and funders, identifying best practices, and building practical intelligence capacities for restoration, resilience, and regenerative transition.
Why now
Humanity is now operating in a period of systemic overshoot, ecological stress, political fragmentation, and institutional distrust. At the same time, AI is rapidly becoming part of civilization’s basic operating infrastructure. That combination creates both danger and opportunity. The danger is that increasingly powerful AI systems may be folded into extractive, authoritarian, or ecologically blind institutions. The opportunity is that AI, if governed wisely and aligned with life-serving purposes, can help people and institutions make better sense of complex systems, evaluate tradeoffs, identify blind spots, and coordinate restorative action.
This is also the right moment because an emerging field needs institutions that can do more than theorize. It needs visible places that can connect ideas to use cases, prototypes, demonstrations, networks, and services that help real communities and organizations act more intelligently in relationship with the Earth. The current philanthropic landscape around public-purpose AI and civic infrastructure suggests there is growing interest in institution-building of this kind.
Possible Planet and CRCS are unusually well-positioned to incubate such an institute because their existing work already bridges:
- regenerative community solutions
- climate and clean-energy finance
- ecological restoration
- bioregional and community development
- systems thinking
- practical experimentation
- public-purpose AI inquiry
- network-building across adjacent regenerative initiatives.
Initially, the proposed Institute will not be a wholly separate institution. It will be a next-stage institutional expression of work that is already visibly underway.
Mission
The mission of the Institute for Planetary Intelligence is to develop and apply planetary intelligence in service to life by advancing the science, ethics, institutions, tools, and practices needed for humanity to become a regenerative participant in Earth’s living systems.
In practical terms, this means helping people, organizations, communities, bioregions, and public institutions:
- perceive reality more accurately
- make sense of complexity more coherently
- deliberate more wisely
- coordinate action more effectively
- align human systems with ecological limits and possibilities.
Institutional logic
The Institute will function in three mutually reinforcing modes.
First, as a field-building institute
It will help establish planetary intelligence—and more specifically, planetary co-intelligence—as a serious field of study, inquiry, and action. This includes conceptual development, essays, reports, convenings, fellowships, curricula, and a regular State of Planetary Intelligence publication.
A signature contribution will be a quarterly State of Planetary Intelligence review: a disciplined scan of what is happening across this emerging field. Each review will synthesize relevant scientific developments, practical pilots, new tools, institutional experiments, AI applications, governance innovations, funding flows, and unresolved questions. Over time, this could become one of the Institute’s defining public goods: a trusted overview of where the field is maturing, where it remains confused, and where promising opportunities for collaboration are emerging.
Second, as an applied lab
It will build practical tools and prototypes: bioregional dashboards, scenario rooms, integrity infrastructures, restoration copilots, collective-sensemaking systems, network maps, and policy-support tools. This is consistent with the Lab’s current emphasis on AI integrity, ethical AI, and practical methods.
Third, as a service platform
It will provide intelligence services to mission-aligned actors such as environmental organizations, local and regional governments, foundations, multilateral institutions, and selected financial and policy bodies seeking better decision support for resilience, regeneration, and systems transition.
Just as importantly, it will help connect people, projects, solutions, and funders across the emerging field. It will offer advisory support, field scans, best-practice synthesis, network mapping, and curation of promising initiatives, helping mission-aligned actors find one another and learn from what is already working.
Areas of demonstrated competence and initial niche
The new institute will not present itself as a generic “AI for good” platform. It will identify the areas where it can already point to demonstrated competence, distinctive perspective, and practical relevance.
Possible Planet / CRCS can credibly begin in several such areas.
1. Framing and synthesizing the field
Possible Planet, Possible Planet Lab, and related book and essay work have already developed a substantial body of thought around planetary intelligence, bioregional intelligence, ecological crisis, regenerative futures, and ethical AI. This provides a base for serious field-building rather than a purely speculative launch.
2. Bioregional intelligence and place-based systems thinking
Possible Planet’s work in the Genesee Finger Lakes bioregion points toward a practical model of bioregional intelligence: integrating ecological, social, and economic indicators; making place-based conditions visible; and developing tools that support deliberation, stewardship, and action at the scale of a living region.
3. Regenerative finance and transition intelligence
Through CRCS and related work in C-PACE, climate finance, and regenerative community solutions, this ecosystem already has experience in aligning finance, institutions, and community outcomes. This gives the proposed Institute a concrete niche in helping bridge intelligence, governance, finance, and implementation.
4. Public-interest AI, integrity, and knowledge design
Possible Planet Lab has already begun articulating practical needs around AI integrity, epistemic standards, provenance, transparency, and responsible intelligence in public-purpose contexts.
5. Connecting networks, initiatives, and resourcing pathways
The Institute’s niche will not be only analytic. It will also be connective. A major practical contribution will be helping map an emerging ecosystem, connect aligned actors, and surface the best available practices, projects, and opportunities for support.
Taken together, these suggest a distinctive starting niche: planetary co-intelligence across human, gaian, market, institutional, and AI systems, with a practical emphasis on restoration, resilience, and regenerative transition.
Program areas
The Institute will begin with five interlinked program areas.
1. Planetary Intelligence Theory, Ethics, and Civilizational Learning
This program will clarify the field itself: what planetary intelligence means, how it relates to individual and collective intelligence, how wisdom differs from optimization, and what forms of governance and ethical discipline are needed in an age of ecological overshoot and machine intelligence.
2. Bioregional Intelligence and Living Place Systems
This program will focus on the scale at which people can actually learn, deliberate, and govern together: the bioregion. It will translate bioregional thinking into dashboards, indicators, stewardship tools, network maps, and place-based scenario processes.
3. AI for Regeneration and EcoRestoration
This program will use AI to support ecological restoration, adaptation, and stewardship. It will build on the existing Possible Planet Lab orientation toward regenerative AI and partner with adjacent initiatives already experimenting with restoration-oriented intelligence tools and ecosystem mapping. Its purpose will not be to automate ecological wisdom, but to make knowledge more accessible, integrated, and actionable. Related public examples already exist in restoration-oriented mapping and ecosystem-building work, which strengthens this as an early proof domain rather than a speculative one.
4. Collective Intelligence, Governance, and Democratic Resilience
This program will address a core feature of the present predicament: societies are flooded with information but weakened in their capacity to reason together. The Institute will develop methods for structured dialogue, tradeoff mapping, contradiction detection, stakeholder synthesis, and responsible AI-assisted deliberation, especially in complex and polarized settings.
5. Regenerative Economics and Transition Intelligence
Incubated under CRCS, the Institute can draw directly on existing experience in regenerative financing, community resilience, and systemic transition. This program will support better alignment of capital, policy, and ecological reality through intelligence services, scenario analysis, and regenerative economic design.
Initial demonstrations
To establish credibility, the Institute will begin with a small number of visible, high-value demonstrations.
One will be a Genesee Finger Lakes Bioregional Intelligence Node, or an equivalent place-based pilot, showing how a bioregion can monitor its ecological and social condition, deliberate about priorities, and coordinate action around restoration and resilience.
A second will be an AI for EcoRestoration prototype or service layer, developed in relation to existing restoration networks and maps, demonstrating how mission-governed AI can help practitioners, students, communities, and funders navigate projects, compare approaches, surface relevant knowledge, and make better decisions. This could be framed not only as a tool, but as part of a larger connective intelligence function for the restoration field.
A third will be a Planetary Intelligence Commons prototype, establishing practical norms for provenance, transparency, methods, assumptions, and epistemic integrity in public-interest intelligence work.
A fourth will be the launch of the quarterly State of Planetary Intelligence review, giving the Institute a recurring, visible role as a field cartographer, synthesizer, and convener.
These early demonstrations will give the Institute a grounded identity: not only a philosophy, but a working practice.
How the Institute will use AI
The Institute will take a clear position: AI should be used as support for life-serving intelligence, not as a substitute for human moral responsibility.
Its best uses include evidence synthesis, scenario analysis, ecological monitoring, claims comparison, integrity checking, educational support, structured deliberation, and the curation of complex fields of practice.
Its worst uses include black-box authority, anthropomorphic manipulation, surveillance-heavy governance, and optimization detached from ecological and ethical limits.
The Institute will therefore advocate not for AI maximalism, but for mission-governed, transparent, ecologically literate, democratically accountable uses of AI.
Governance and incubation model
The Institute is being incubated under the Possible Planet / CRCS umbrella for at least its initial phase. That offers legal, fiscal, and narrative continuity, while allowing the Institute to develop its own public identity over time.
Governance will include:
- a small Stewardship Council for fiduciary and strategic oversight
- a Scientific and Methods Council for rigor and evaluation
- a Council of Place, Practice, and Wisdom to keep the work grounded in real communities, ecological practice, and lived complexity.
Initially, these functions will be undertaken by a Founding Governance Council responsible for developing the program, recruiting new members, and seeking funding.
Funding opportunity
The Institute is now at a point where seed support could have outsized leverage. Early philanthropic support will enable Possible Planet / CRCS to:
- formalize the Institute concept
- recruit founding advisors
- launch initial pilots
- publish the first State of Planetary Intelligence review
- build the first tools and methods
- develop a network map of aligned actors and initiatives
- begin partnerships with public and mission-aligned institutions.
Because the Institute is being incubated rather than built from scratch, donor support will not be funding an abstract idea alone. It will be accelerating a visible, coherent evolution of work already underway through Possible Planet and Possible Planet Lab.
Year-one priorities
In its first year, the Institute will aim to:
- establish its charter, advisory structure, and operating principles;
- publish a founding paper on planetary intelligence in service to life;
- launch one bioregional and one AI-for-regeneration pilot;
- produce the first two quarterly State of Planetary Intelligence reviews;
- develop a basic Planetary Intelligence Commons framework;
- create an initial network map of projects, people, and partner organizations in the field;
- convene a small circle of scientific, practical, and philanthropic allies;
- secure at least one institutional partnership or advisory engagement.
Invitation
The Institute for Planetary Intelligence is an effort to help humanity become more capable of inhabiting Earth wisely. It begins from a sober view of our present condition, but not from despair. It assumes that intelligence worthy of the name must be joined to care, truthfulness, restraint, reciprocity, and a willingness to learn from life itself.
Incubated within Possible Planet and CRCS, and growing organically out of Possible Planet Lab, this initiative seeks support from partners who recognize that the great challenge before us is not only to invent more powerful tools, but to cultivate the forms of intelligence, governance, and regenerative practice that can help keep a living planet livable.
For more information, please contact:
Jonathan Cloud, Executive Director
CRCS / Possible Planet, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
908-581-8418 • jcloud@possibleplanet.org
The main improvement is that the note now has a more defensible center: not just “planetary intelligence” in the abstract, but a practical platform for planetary co-intelligence with visible outputs, demonstrated lanes of competence, and a connector role across projects, practitioners, and funders.