Words by Yasmin Tills

19 August 2025

The Thread of Thought

The Harder, Slower Path

Why we choose nature-based solutions — and what they demand of us.

In climate discourse, the loudest solutions are often the sleekest: optimised, digitised, built to scale. But some of the most meaningful interventions happen off the spreadsheet — in soil, in wetlands, in living systems that don’t perform on command.

This piece reflects on why nature-based solutions matter not because they’re easy or quantifiable, but because they’re slow, local and rooted in relationship.

At Sheep Inc., this belief underpins our support for regenerative farming: we’ve chosen the harder path — not for virtue, but because it’s the only one with integrity.

We live in an age that adores abstraction. Where carbon is traded like currency, and impact is plotted on pixelated dashboards. Where solutions are scalable, measurable, frictionless. If not in reality, then at least in pitch decks.

And yet, beneath the metrics, the land is still there.

Weathered by use.
Unconcerned with our net-zero plans.

The climate doesn’t speak in graphs.
It speaks in drought, in flood, in ecological collapse.

And increasingly, something is shifting.

Nature-based solutions are making their way back into the conversation.

Not because they’re new — they are ancient.

Not because they’re perfect — they are wildly imperfect.

But because something in us, and around us, is tiring of the frictionless fiction.

What We Mean When We Say “Nature-Based”

Nature-based solutions are often framed as technical fixes: Reforestation. Wetland restoration. Soil carbon sequestration.

But that framing misses the point.

The soil doesn’t store carbon because it’s fashionable.

It does so because it’s structured that way.

A hedgerow isn’t just a quaint border.

It’s a habitat and a history, both visible and underground.

Ecosystems aren’t technologies to optimise.

They’re inheritances to understand.

They don’t scale.

They don’t slot neatly into offset schemes or investor roadmaps.

But they do what they’ve always done: Store carbon in soil. Buffer floods through root and wetland. Filter water. Cool air. Feed pollinators. Grow life in tangled layers, not sterile lines.

Yes, nature-based solutions are climate interventions.

But they’re also reminders. Of how land once worked. And how it could again.

Restoring balance — slowly, imprecisely, without asking to be measured.

To call that a “solution” is to flatten something far older and wiser than us. These are not innovations. They’re continuations. Of knowledge. Of relationship. Of what worked before we forgot how to look.

Why the Industry Struggles With Slowness

We’ve built a climate narrative around clarity: emissions in, offsets out. We’ve built companies, policies, entire markets on the idea that if we can measure it, we can fix it.

But nature-based solutions resist that logic. They take longer. They involve more variables. They ask for proximity.

They require us to work with land — not just model around it.

This is not what most modern-day systems are designed to reward.

Slow results don’t suit quarterly cycles. Field trials don’t make sexy headlines. A farmer restoring soil biodiversity doesn’t slot easily into your ESG deck.

And yet, this is where the work is happening.

At Sheep Inc., we’ve committed to this slower path. Committed to asking the hard questions.

The why. The how. The who.

Through our Radical Farming Fund, we support practices that restore ecosystems at the pace they need — not the pace that suits us.

At our Sheep Stations, that includes: native planting and predator control. Fencing wetlands so regeneration can begin. Testing how soil can heal when left to do what it knows.

None of it is instant.

All of it is real.

What It Demands of Us

Nature-based solutions don’t just challenge our systems. They challenge our assumptions:

That progress must be fast.

That value must be measurable.

That impact can be neutralised without changing the story underneath.

To back these solutions is to accept that we won’t always have neat answers.

That some years the land will need rest.

That some gains won’t show up in a dashboard.

That trust — not control — is the starting point.

To restore a landscape is not just to plant something.

It is to stay. To observe. To be implicated.

It’s to believe that restoration isn’t a line graph, but a loop. That climate work is relational. It asks us to show up, stay close, and stay with it. Not hover above it.

Field notes. Local knowledge. Imperfect data.

And perhaps, that is nature’s greatest gift:

It reminds us that we are not separate from the system we’re trying to fix.

Why We Choose It Anyway

We don’t pursue nature-based solutions because they’re fashionable.

We pursue them because they are honest.

Because they remind us that our job isn’t to dominate the land — it’s to live with it.

It requires us to ask questions we can’t always answer:

What does it mean to design with the climate, rather than around it?

Can a product be “sustainable” if the system it sits in is still extractive?

What if longevity wasn’t a luxury, but a basic expectation?

Sometimes the most enduring innovation is ancient. Rooted in place. Tuned to rhythm. Uninterested in being optimised.

Nature-based solutions aren’t the shiny thing.

They’re the slow burn.

The unwavering commitment.

The work that demands more of us. Not just in numbers, but in care.

Just as our pieces are designed to last — to be repaired, reworn, remembered — our environmental commitments must be built the same way.

Durable. Grounded. In relationship.

Because if we want climate solutions that last, they won’t come from abstraction.

They’ll come from where we began: the land. The people. The systems we choose to stand with.

Field / Notes

International	XS	S	M	L	XL	XXL
UK/US Chest	34	36	38	40/42	44	46/48
EU	44	46	48	50/52	54	56/58
IT	44	46	48	50/52	54	56/58
UK	6	8/10	12	14	16/18	20
US	2	6	8/10	12	14	16
FR	34	38	40/42	44	46	48
IT	38	42	44/46	48	50	52
AU	6	8/10	12	14	16/18	20
Neck Label Sizing	0	1	2	3	4	5