Ground Effect
is an animist
investment vehicle.

We represent the interests
of life on Earth to realize ecological and spiritual renewal.

PLEASE NOTE THAT GROUND EFFECT HAS EVOLVED IN NAIA TRUST: VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE HERE

WWW. NAIATRUST.COM

In our worldview the Earth is vividly alive, we are alive with it, and everything is kin.

This inspires our two central objectives:

1. To reunify humans as “nature,” and

2. To advance an animist worldview of interdependence between all beings



We support initiatives that place Earth’s living systems at the center of human economic and ethical considerations. This brings us into an active dialogue with emerging questions of how nature will be financialized, valued and priced. 



To approach this enquiry we set aside human exceptionalism, striving to include the perspectives of ecosystems, species and life-processes in our mindful capital deployment. Our investment commitment is to lend credence to daring undertakings that give nature and its stewards visibility and empowerment. 

We work to promote nature’s agency and regeneration within financial, political and technological systems. We do so with a sensitivity to how quantifying nature to satisfy market mechanisms could lead to its further abstraction, risking the alienation of humans from the aliveness of the world, and reducing our inheritance of billions of years of evolved life into an agreeable metric.


As Ground Effect, we seek to practice and advance multiple ways of seeing, feeling and relating to a wider planetary community of beings. We are electrified by the challenge of listening to, translating and embodying Earth’s many intelligences. This is how we try to humbly correct for the voicelessness and subordination of the larger web of life.

Our human bodies are thrillingly capable of perceiving and communing with all of life. We strive to awaken biophilia — the innate instinct to lovingly connect with the nature that we are — and to re-enchant humans to the beauty of the world. 

With these principles, our aim is to conscientiously seek long-term environmental, social, and spiritual returns, guided by a profound reverence for the interconnectedness of all the beings of our biosphere.

we are currently investing in

Earth's living processes

Human intervention has led to the decline of the planet's ability to regenerate its ecosystems. Ground Effect backs initiatives that partner with nature to assist life's inherent circularity, redesigning inefficient and linear agricultural and food systems, building biodiversity back into soils, oceans and landscapes, supporting local and indigenous knowledge, restoring wildlife connectivity and reversing the accelerating extinction of life.

Cairnspring Mills, Highlands Rewilding, At One Ventures, Aquaspark, Impact Finance, EcoTrust Forest Managment, Raincoast, Steward, Lowercarbon Capital, Rewilding Europe, CO Mexico, Re:wild, Tompkins Fundacion Rewilding Chile, Art into Acres, Superorganism, Landbanking Group, Ecoenterprises, NESst Lirio Fund, Alder Point

Ownership & Decentralization

People struggle to identify in mind and body with where they live because the fabric of their worlds are often owned and controlled by distant entities that drain them of what makes them unique. More people ought to own and actively create their local worlds – a meaningful financial and social entanglement leading to higher degrees of stewardship and a shared sense of place. We search for tools and systems that enable communities to self-organize, such that value is exalted and recirculated as the basis of a vital local economy.

Seed Commons, Eco, Walden Mutual

 

Human Wisdom & Sacred Ecology

The dire state of planetary heath is a crisis of meaning. Embracing the stewardship of the Earth asks humans to live as spiritual beings. Our own animism is an orientation of reciprocity with the world as our living kin. We are exploring how eco-centric worldviews could help a broader public restore wholeness to the non-dual self — one that is informed by ritual, practice, community belonging, reverence, and joy.
Kincentric Leadership, Global Diversity Foundation

Scientific research

Science is increasingly demonstrating that nature is a living, relational process. We back ambitious research that exposes advanced forms of communication and intelligence. With a focus on new modes of sensing and measuring biodiversity, we support endeavors that make the underlying ecological backbone of life visible, beautiful and undeniable. Our role is to then translate these advances into meaningful and practical applications for entrepreneurs and decision-makers.

Co-Renewal, Seed, SPUN

 

Multi-species jurisprudence & representation

Legal systems define the norms and ideals of a culture, reflecting society’s self-concept and holding it to an ethical standard. We make the human-centric legal system more inclusive by empowering approaches that advocate and litigate on behalf of the rights of all terrestrial beings and natural processes, giving them a voice and a seat at the table. This reaches beyond the rights of nature to multi-species representation, governance and value-systems.

Earth Advocacy Youth, Earth Law Center , Earthjustice

Activism and journalism

Extractive systems have normalized the separation of humans into privatized spheres of individual concern. Activists of all sorts are crucial voices in piercing this systemic inertia, representing and propagating emergent worldviews and stories of environmental desecration. They are also the ‘voices of nature’ who speak on behalf of subjugated ecosystems. We back those who can catalyse widespread awareness of inequitable power dynamics and help revoke the social license to operate from perverse actors.

The Narwhal, Canada Climate Leadership Research

hi@groundeffect.io

[ ground effect ]

The aerodynamic by which birds, insects and other flying creatures get more lift when they fly close to the ground.

We call ourselves Ground Effect because we gain buoyancy the closer we get to Earth.

Founded by Alexa Firmenich and Joshua Kauffman, Ground Effect was initiated to explore an animist approach to applying capital in the interest of living systems.

Our Thought Pieces

Extinction is Loneliness

A poetic tale of relationship and loss