Both resilience and regeneration are relevant
concepts in sustainability science. Resilience thinking has
led to improved understanding of cross-scale cycles of
growth and renewal, regime shifts, and planetary
boundaries. Regeneration highlights the role of positive,
place-based and partially self-perpetuating social-
ecological dynamics and seeks to foster mutualistic
relationships between human and more-than-human
entities. This paper lays out similarities, differences and
overlaps between work on resilience and regeneration. The
concept of regeneration emerged both independently of
resilience as well as playing a role within resilience
scholarship. We show that the literatures on resilience and
regeneration have elaborated complementary ideas and can
be combined to derive guidance for improved governance
of social-ecological systems. Because of its explicit and
proactive future-orientation, the concept of regeneration
could help boost nascent efforts to enact biosphere
stewardship and develop positive visions for how to re-
build a world that is dominated by regenerative rather than
degenerative dynamics.