Last week, New York became a gathering place for people thinking about the future of our relationship with nature.

Climate Week NYC brought together leaders across agriculture, conservation, finance, business, science, and policy. Among its many conversations were questions that feel increasingly urgent: How do we value a healthy forest before it is cut down? How do we finance biodiversity, not merely carbon? How do we support the farmers and Indigenous communities already stewarding some of the world's most ecologically important landscapes? And what might it look like to build systems that don't simply extract less, but actively help regenerate what they depend upon?

One idea in particular stayed with me.

At The NAT Gala, Tibetan-American climate investor Tenzin Seldon introduced a concept she calls Gross Domestic Regeneration, or GDR: a proposed way of valuing not only what an economy produces, but the natural systems it maintains and restores.

She described a fundamental problem with the way we currently account for nature: a mature forest has immense value while it is alive — storing carbon, regulating water, providing habitat, maintaining biodiversity and supporting communities — yet conventional economic accounting recognizes its value far more readily once it becomes something that can be extracted and sold.

As Seldon put it at The NAT, “The world protects what it prices.”

It is an economic proposition that made me think immediately about our plant ingredients.

What is an ingredient worth?

At LINNÉ, plants are our raw materials. They become the oils, hydrosols, extracts, powders and aromatic compounds that ultimately make their way into our formulas.

It would therefore be very easy to evaluate an ingredient only according to what arrives at our lab: its chemical composition, purity, freshness, efficacy, texture, aroma and performance on the skin.

Those things matter enormously to us.

But they aren't the whole story.

Before an ingredient reaches our shelves, it has already had a life. It grew somewhere. It occupied land and shared that landscape with other organisms. Someone cultivated it, tended it or harvested it. In many cases, generations of people learned how to work with that species long before its compounds could be identified in a laboratory.

So when we consider a botanical ingredient, we try to look farther upstream.

What does growing this plant make possible?

Can its cultivation support a more diverse agricultural landscape rather than another monoculture?

Can creating economic value for a species encourage the protection of the habitat where it grows?

Can harvesting or cultivating it contribute to restoring degraded land?

Can our purchase support small growers, harvesters and communities whose livelihoods are intertwined with these landscapes?

And can continued use of a plant help preserve the knowledge surrounding how it is grown, harvested, prepared and used?

These questions don't always have simple answers. But asking them changes the way we source.

From sustainability to regeneration

For many years, sustainability has largely been understood as reducing negative impact: producing less waste, emitting less carbon, using fewer resources, avoiding harmful practices.

All of that remains necessary.

But I am increasingly interested in what comes after less harm.

Regeneration asks a different question: Can participation in a system leave that system healthier, more diverse or more resilient?

This idea was visible throughout Climate Week. Programming explored regenerative agriculture, Indigenous-led conservation, biodiversity finance and food systems designed to rebuild soil, strengthen rural communities and restore ecosystems rather than continually deplete them.

For a botanical skincare company, this becomes very tangible.

Plants require land. Agriculture affects soil. Harvesting affects ecosystems. Purchasing creates demand. And demand can encourage very different outcomes depending on what we choose to value.

A botanical supply chain can simplify a landscape in pursuit of maximum yield.

Or, in the right circumstances, it can help make biodiversity economically viable.

That distinction matters to us.

Biodiversity is not an abstraction

A resilient landscape is rarely one composed of a single species.

Plant diversity supports interconnected systems above and below the soil: insects and pollinators, microorganisms, birds and other wildlife, water cycles, nutrient exchange and the resilience of the landscape itself.

This is one reason we are drawn to smaller growers, thoughtful wild-harvesting operations, regenerative agriculture and sourcing projects where botanical production can coexist with — or actively encourage — diverse ecosystems.

It is also why yield alone cannot be the only measure of a “good” ingredient.

Sometimes the most interesting sourcing opportunities are plants that already belong to a landscape: species grown among other crops, materials that might otherwise be discarded, native or locally adapted plants, or botanicals whose economic value gives communities another reason to maintain the ecosystems in which they thrive.

Sacha inchi is one example of what this can look like. Native to the Amazon, it can be cultivated within diverse agroforestry systems rather than as a single-crop plantation. When crops like this provide meaningful income within a living forest landscape, they can help make standing, productive ecosystems economically viable for the communities who depend on them. That matters in regions where forests often face competing financial pressures from land conversion. For us, the value of an ingredient like sacha inchi extends beyond its extraordinary seed oil (in REPAIR); we are equally interested in the agricultural system its cultivation can help support.

Not every ingredient can accomplish all of these things. We don't believe in dressing an ordinary supply chain in regenerative language.

Instead, we look for opportunities where our purchasing decisions can genuinely support something beyond the ingredient itself.

Conservation through value

There is a complicated relationship between commerce and conservation.

Demand can place enormous pressure on natural resources when extraction is unmanaged. But thoughtful economic value can also create an incentive to keep a landscape intact.

A forest that provides an ongoing livelihood through responsibly harvested plants has a different economic proposition than one whose only recognized value comes from clearing it.

This same question surfaced repeatedly during Climate Week: nature performs essential work that rarely appears on a traditional balance sheet. Healthy watersheds protect communities. Forests support biodiversity and water systems. Soils underpin agriculture and food security. Yet financial systems have historically struggled to assign value to those functions while they remain intact.

We encounter a much smaller version of that question when sourcing ingredients.

Where possible, we want our purchasing to contribute to a reason to keep something growing.

The people are part of the ecosystem

Regeneration cannot be separated from the people who live within and care for these landscapes.

One of the most important themes within this year's nature conversations was the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities — not simply as stakeholders in conservation projects, but as rights holders and long-term stewards of land, water and ecological knowledge. Climate Week programming specifically examined Indigenous-led conservation, land governance and the need for finance to reach the communities doing that work.

That matters in botanical sourcing as well.

Much of what the modern beauty and wellness industries know about plants did not originate in a laboratory. It comes from generations of observation: knowing when a plant flowers, which portion to harvest, how it should be prepared, what grows well beside it, and how it has traditionally been used.

I think about this as ethnobotanical continuity — keeping alive not only a species, but the relationship between people and plants.

Those relationships can be fragile. Agricultural consolidation, habitat loss, migration, changing economies and declining demand for traditional crops can all interrupt knowledge that once passed naturally between generations.

Responsible sourcing cannot preserve an entire culture, nor should a beauty brand pretend it can. But purchasing from people who continue to cultivate and work with culturally important plants can help support the economic conditions that allow those practices to continue.

There is value in that continuity that doesn't show up on an ingredient specification sheet.

A different way to choose

None of this means we choose an ingredient simply because it has a beautiful provenance story.

It still has to earn its place in a formula.

We evaluate quality, freshness, chemical composition, compatibility, sensory experience and what the ingredient contributes to the formula as a whole. But when several sourcing possibilities exist, we have the opportunity to consider a broader definition of value.

An exceptional ingredient can be one that performs beautifully and supports a diverse landscape.

One that provides income for a community committed to maintaining its habitat.

One that creates demand for regenerative agriculture.

One that makes continued cultivation of a traditional species economically meaningful.

One that connects contemporary botanical science with generations of knowledge about a plant.

These are the opportunities we seek.

Not because every bottle of skincare can save an ecosystem, but because supply chains are ultimately made from thousands of individual choices about what — and whom — we are willing to support.

What we want to leave growing

I came away from the conversations in New York thinking about Seldon's proposition: that perhaps our accounting systems should recognize what we regenerate, not simply what we produce.

There is something powerful about applying that question at every scale.

What remains because a business exists?

What becomes more diverse?

What habitat has a reason to stay intact?

Which communities are able to continue caring for their landscapes?

Which plants remain economically and culturally relevant enough for another generation to know them?

At LINNÉ, we will continue asking those questions as we source.

The ingredient inside the bottle matters.

But so does what we leave growing behind it.