Over the course of the next decade small instances of locally-oriented governance structures will begin to emerge, focussed around the rejuvenation and transformation of particular biomes or ecosystems. In many instances, the fact that these projects are running atop a decentralized technological substrate or sharing much of the same open-source codebase will be noticeable to the majority of users; whilst the structural protections of the lowest level of this tech stack will provide security in certain regards, this structure itself will be pushed to the background, allowing focus to remain on the maintenance and development of the project.

The legal form that these projects take will likewise be––at this stage––a matter of finding the best ‘workaround’ that allows them to exist whilst retaining the maximum autonomy from oversight possible. Each will be able to interface––in whatever capacity it can––with their respective legislatures (i.e. within those legislators of the state they are contained within). However, minimum-viable interaction aside, they will operate outside of the areas inhabited by stiftungs (foundations), NGOs, and corporate bodies. Over time, the ability for interaction along a vertical axis will emerge, leading to networks of inter-project financial and legal support and cooperation, as well as increasing pressure on legislative bodies to both reform existing laws and create new protections for these novel legal structures.

The important thing to note about these structures is that they will incorporate the efforts of any number of individuals, with the work necessary for their construction ranging from specialists’ input (read: ecologists, biologists, developers, etc) to maintenance work that can be done by anyone who wishes to volunteer their time. Furthermore, given their reliance on fitting themselves (initially) to existing legal structures, there will be neither a ‘one size fits all’ approach to development nor an attempt at reaching legal or even structural hegemony over time: each instance will begin by building on the same ideas and technology, but ultimately have to react and develop as their locale allows, in order to best fulfill their task of buoying-up ecosystems around the globe.