Bioregion 01
Hudson Valley. The first pilot.
The bioregion
A deciduous forest watershed. A long lineage of stewardship.
The Hudson Valley is a deciduous-forest watershed running south from the Adirondack foothills to the harbor, stewarded for generations by the Lenape and Mohican peoples whose lineage on this land predates the river’s English name. The ground holds post-industrial recovery ecosystems on one bank and a dense Northeast regenerative-agriculture network on the other; small farms, seed-saving collectives, watershed-restoration crews, food-sovereignty kitchens, and ceremony houses are already practicing what the Protocol invites. The bioregion describes itself.
The seasonal rhythm carries the work. Spring asks the bioregion to listen to itself; summer asks it to map what was heard; fall asks it to deploy through the Flow Fund; the spring that follows asks it to gather. Permatours has run positive-trace gatherings through this watershed for more than five years, and the relational ground with Northeast bioregional partners arrives into the activation already practiced. The pattern is not new here. It is being recognized.
The partnership
Bioregional Embassy holds the coordination scaffold.
The Bioregional Embassy is Susanna Choe’s organization, and the partnership routes Planetary Party’s coordination scaffold through the bioregional mapping infrastructure the Embassy already holds. The Embassy is where the Protocol meets institutional discipline; the mapping work the Embassy has been tending across the Northeast becomes the substrate the Hudson Valley activation grows from. The relationship is signed, not aspirational, and the Embassy’s practice gives the activation a coordination layer the bioregion can lean into from day one.
Partner steward
Susanna Choe
Founder, Bioregional Embassy
- Director of Innovation at GloCha Foundation NY.
- Co-founder, Peace Accelerators.
- Early Consensys; bridges grassroots stewardship with systems-design and climate-finance infrastructure.
Provenance: Planetary Party InvestOS dossier, 2026-05-06, §6 (Stewardship Team).
What the $160K activates
Line by line. Auditable six months in.
The per-bioregion Stage 1 budget is $160,000. Sixty-three percent goes to people work. Sixteen percent seeds the Flow Fund. Six percent captures the story so the next bioregion can fork the pattern. A foundation officer asking where the money goes can read this table and audit each line against the deployment ledger.
| Line item | Amount | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bioregional steward compensationOne named lead steward holding the bioregion for 18 months at partial FTE. In Hudson Valley the lead steward anchors the relational ground that Permatours and the Bioregional Embassy have already practiced through this watershed, carries the cadence of circle, ceremony, and decision through each phase, and keeps the bioregion in continuous relationship with the federation. Stewardship is the work; this is the largest line because the work is held by a person, not a process. | $42K | 26% |
| Community mapping and listeningPhase 1 SENSE and Phase 2 SEE costs. Circle convening, ceremony, listening sessions, asset and needs and offer and relationship mapping, bioregional intelligence data collection. Honoraria for community elders and lineage holders. In Hudson Valley the mapping pass listens for Lenape and Mohican lineage holders whose stewardship of this land predates the bioregion’s English-language name, for the small-farm and seed-keeping practitioners already running the regenerative-agriculture network, and for the watershed-restoration crews and ceremony houses the Bioregional Embassy has been weaving since before this Protocol named itself. | $28K | 18% |
| Activation infrastructurePhase 3 ACTIVATE. Training and facilitation for governance capacity, project incubation, peer support cadence. Travel and venue costs for cross-bioregion learning convenings. The Hudson Valley activation circle gathers at venues the Bioregional Embassy and the regional regenerative-agriculture network already convene through; the Permatours festival infrastructure (gathering economics, ceremony discipline, positive-trace logistics) carries forward into the cadence so the bioregion does not rebuild what already works. | $30K | 19% |
| Governance circle setupLocal Flow Fund governance setup, integration with Mycelial Law's living-contract framework, training the local stewardship circle. Integration with Kinship Earth fiscal sponsorship. The Hudson Valley stewardship circle is anchored by the lead steward and convened in collaboration with the Bioregional Embassy; its decision protocol is designed in the first SENSE phase with the lineage holders and practitioners the mapping pass identifies, so the protocol reflects the bioregion’s own grammar rather than a template imported from elsewhere. | $20K | 12% |
| Flow Fund seed capitalA small seed grant from the Planetary Party Trust to the local Flow Fund. Distinct from Kinship Earth's own deployment. Demonstrates the mechanism, attracts first-cycle proposals, creates the proof-of-pattern that draws additional capital. The Hudson Valley Flow Fund is listening for proposals from watershed-restoration crews, seed-keeping collectives, Indigenous food-sovereignty kitchens, and ceremony houses the SEE-phase mapping surfaces; the first cycle deploys whatever the stewardship circle chooses, ungated by Trust priority. | $25K | 16% |
| Documentation and storytellingMicelio Media production budget for the bioregion's case study. Films, photos, written case study, ceremony documentation. Becomes a learning asset for future bioregions. In Hudson Valley, Eslerh and Micelio are listening for the watershed’s own voice (the cadence of seasons, the texture of practice, the relational ground beneath the Protocol’s phases) rather than a polished campaign reel. The documentary frame holds the bioregion as it is, so the next bioregion can fork the pattern from honest material. | $10K | 6% |
| Contingency and reserveThree percent reserve for unforeseen ceremony, partner, or logistics costs. Held by the local stewardship circle, not by the core team. | $5K | 3% |
| Hudson Valley Stage 1 total | $160,000 | 100% |
Source: Planetary Party financial model, 2026-05-14, Section 5.
The 18-month arc
Spring 2026 to summer 2027. The five phases unfold.
The bioregion runs the Protocol’s five phases. SENSE in the spring. SEE through the summer. ACTIVATE in the fall. CELEBRATE in the spring that follows. REGENERATE from there. The cycle holds.
Phase 1
Spring 2026
SENSE opens
Pre-conditions met. Bioregional Embassy partnership signed. Lead steward named. The bioregion begins listening to itself.
Phase 2
Summer 2026
SEE deepens
Community mapping across asset, need, offer, relationship. Bioregional intelligence data collection. The map the bioregion holds of itself becomes legible to the federation.
Phase 3
Fall 2026
ACTIVATE
First Flow Fund deployment from the stewardship circle. Project incubation begins. Mexico City pre-conditions opening in parallel.
Phase 4
Spring 2027
CELEBRATE
First Hudson Valley Planetary Party festival. Cross-bioregion learning integration. The bioregion's work becomes visible to the federation and to the funder community.
Phase 5
Summer 2027 onward
REGENERATE
The cycle continues. Stewardship circle holds the rhythm. Flow Fund deploys subsequent cycles. The bioregion enters the federation as a steady-state node.
The lineage in this bioregion
Permatours has carried this work through the Northeast for more than five years.
The Hudson Valley pilot does not begin from a standing start. Permatours, the regenerative festival lineage co-founded by Syd Griffith, has run positive-trace gatherings across the Northeast for more than five years. The ceremony discipline, the gathering economics, and the relational ground with Northeast bioregional partners arrive into Hudson Valley already practiced. The Protocol inherits the lineage; the lineage is the asset.
Read the full lineage page: /origins
Read deeper
The other two pilots. The arc that holds all three.
Mexico City sequences in October 2026. A third bioregion enters discernment in late 2026 or early 2027. The horizon page reads the arc that holds all three pilots and the seven-year trajectory that follows.