Integrated landscape management and large-scale landscape restoration should be in every company’s business strategy because in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goal on Land Degradation Neutrality (SDG Number 15.3) scaling up and acceleration of business-driven landscape restoration is urgently needed.
This requires business professionals with a vision, the right knowledge and skills. This MOOC aims to train the next generation of business professionals and developers to acknowledge business’ interdependency with healthy landscapes and understand the value of ecosystem resources.
“Historically, we have found countless ways to justify our continued exploitation of the environment: discovery, tradition, Manifest Destiny, even Chinese hoax. But we’re all out of excuses now. Each passing day swells the data on greenhouse gases and extreme weather, shrinking reservoirs and rising sea levels, and diminishing biodiversity. Our resources are finite, the window for change if not firmly shut, is certainly closing, and all life must adapt or be doomed.”
Téa Obreht,
The New Yorker, Dec. 19&26, 2016, p. 106.
It is a frightening prospect indeed – that all life on Earth must either adapt or be doomed. This course is about landscape degradation – a global and wicked problem that is contributing to the dooming prospect of depletion of Earth’s finite resources. But this course is also about the solutions to this problem – business driven landscape restoration.
So rather than leaving you powerless with the prospect Obreht puts fowards above, it is our hope that you learn how you can be part of the solution to making sure that Planet Earth still provides a safe and habitable home for future generations.
We must act big and we must act now.
With this course we want to pass on valuable knowledge and teach you useful skills that you can apply in your professional life that will enable you to tackle the issue of landscape degradation and restoration.
The issue is urgent, so let’s dive right into it.
This MOOC is developed by the ENABLE partnership, which is co-funded by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Commission and involves a diverse, international group of organizations including Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Commonland, United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme, the Spanish National Research Council and Estoril Global Conferences.
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Commonland projects: process, team-roles and skills involved
In this week, you will learn about a way of approaching landscape restoration projects involving business, termed the 4 returns approach. We will travel to the Commonland projects in South Africa, Spain, Australia, and The Netherlands to hear from farmers and business developers how degraded landscapes can be restored while simultaneously creating sustainable businesses that generate employment and income for local communities. Through these examples you will learn what kind of roles are involved and what skills are needed to initiate and carry out this kind of restoration projects. Moreover, you will learn what kind of stakeholders to involve in a landscape restoration partnership and which phases a 4 returns restoration project goes through. We hope that these vivid examples of real-life restoration projects serve as a jumping board for you to play your own role in such a project.
Dr. ir. Commonland Foundation, Science & Education
Rob van Tulder
Prof. dr. Department of Business-Society Management, Rotterdam School of Management
Johann Thorsson
Dr. United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme & Soil Conservation Service of Iceland
Nicola Favretto
Dr. University of Leeds; United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme
Ólafur Arnalds
Professor United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme & Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural University of Iceland
Asa L. Aradottir
Professor United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme & Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Agricultural University of Iceland
Steve Kennedy
Assistant Professor Rotterdam School of Management
Welcome.
Since 2013, Cumberland has started projects in Spain, South Africa, Australia
and the Netherlands to understand how the Four Returns framework
can be applied in a real life restoration initiative.
Each case presents a unique set of issues.
In this video, you will learn more about our approach
for landscape restoration in Australia.
I want to take you on a journey to the Western Australian Wheat Belt,
which is an ancient, immense and dry landscape.
Intensive agricultural practices, like monocropping - that is,
growing wheat year after year on the same land - and overgrazing have resulted
in the clearing of over 80 percent of the native vegetation in the past 200 years.
Severe soil degradation has taken place as well.
This has resulted in salinity, wind erosion, soil loss and decreased soil fertility.
This former biodiversity hotspot has the world's highest rate
of mammal and plant extinction.
So, both communities and ecosystems are struggling for survival.
The Wheat Belt area covers over 15 million hectares with only 75,000 inhabitants.
For Australian standards, this is a relatively small area,
but it is more than four times the size of the Netherlands
with a population that is about 220 times less.
Failure to attract investment to the Wheat Belt
has resulted in a stagnation of innovation in farming and landscape management;
the area is over-cleared, depopulating
and the remaining farmers are under significant financial pressure.
They are often trapped in a cycle of debt
because the land is yielding ever-lower production.
This means that land has to yield ever more produce year after year,
which forces the farmers to apply an increasing amount of conventional chemicals,
such as fertilizers and pesticides.
But as a result of these chemically-led farming practices,
the quality of the soil and the production are only decreasing.
Commonlands Australian business partner, Wide Open Agriculture,
is a company that has identified enough solutions to restore healthy ecosystems
in the Wheat Belt landscape and revive its economy by establishing productive farms.
These solutions include first, innovative farming
and horticulture practices in order to convert economic monocropping zones to organic
and regenerative farming systems.
Wide Open Agriculture has started with introducing greenhouses.
The greenhouse is actually a smart shadehouse with shade and drip irrigation systems
that are automated with high tech climatic sensors.
The smart shadehouse has been planted with high value premium vegetables,
including tomatoes, herbs and a range of bush vegetables.
Second, measures to restore the soils and biodiversity.
This is done in several ways.
Every farm involved dedicates 30 percent of its land to restoration of the natural zone.
Together with other restoration partners,
Wide Open Agriculture also wants to create biodiversity corridor
by connecting two national parks across a distance of 450 kilometers.
This can be done by establishing so-called ecological stepping stones to form
and connect biodiversity zones in the Wheat Belt.
Third, bringing new Australians to the area as employees
or business partners with a lot of potential for high quality employment.
And fourth, an approach to scale up through listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Wide Open Agriculture wants to list on the Australian stock market
as a first in class regenerative agriculture food and forestry company.
This will make it possible to attract equity from retail and institutional investors
and scale up from 30,000 to 300,000 hectares under regenerative management in 2025.
This scaling up will be done by leasing land to farmers that have proven their ability
to apply regenerative farming practices which repair soil health,
capture carbon, protect the waterways
and create hiding places for critically endangered mammals and plants.
Wide Open Agriculture has introduced their own brand on the market called
"4 Reasons Inspiring Food."
This new brand is being sold in the Perth area.
In this way, Wide Open Agriculture is creating a Four Returns company
that restores landscapes and revitalizes communities.
To learn more about our project in Australia
and how this Australian restoration company is expanding
and becoming ready to get listed on the Australian stock market,
please watch the following clip.
Wide Open Agriculture's vision is to offer large scale impact investments
that rejuvenate critically endangered ecosystems
and revitalize communities in Western Australia.
Our purpose is to transform highly degraded landscapes and create productive farms
and healthy ecosystems connect with biodiversity and cultural corridors.
We apply a three zone approach to regenerate degraded land.
The three zones integrate economic, combined
and natural zones to create profitable, restored farmland.
Wide Open Agriculture's philosophy is based on the Four Returns.
The first return, a financial return - making money like anyone else.
The second return being a social return,
which in terms of the Wheat Belt is bringing people back to the Wheat Belt.
The third one is - is the natural return, a return of natural capital.
And that brings back biodiversity to a place that was once as biodiverse as a rain forest.
And - and doing all these things together brings back,
what to me, is the glue that holds it all together,
which is a return of hope and inspiration.
Our aim is to make meaningful food in healthy ecosystems and positive communities.
Simon W. MoolenaarDr. ir.
Rob van TulderProf. dr.
Johann ThorssonDr.
Nicola FavrettoDr.
Ólafur ArnaldsProfessor
Asa L. AradottirProfessor
Steve KennedyAssistant Professor
