Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
317 Willem Ferwerda - Kickstarted the restoration industry with Commonland 11 years ago, now finally big money shows interest, but we need billions
A conversation with Willem Ferwerda, one of the founders of the regeneration space, which barely existed 11 years ago when he started Commonland. How and why is it so fundamental to take a landscape view and get all the stakeholders to look at a map- yes, a physically printed large map- together? Because chances are they never have done that. The farmers, the real estate developers, the nature conversation professionals, the local politicians spent most of their time in their own silos and if they talk to each other often it isn’t very friendly.
How do you get them to develop a shared vision of what they want their landscape to look like in 20 or 30 years? How do you trigger that kind of inspiration? Nobody likes to live in a dying landscape where biodiversity has left, where people have left or are leaving, schools are closing, and shops as well.
We are at the beginning of what was barely a space 11 years ago, of course holistic landscape management existed in indigenous circles and ecology silos, but barely outside of that. And now we see the financial space starting to dip its toe into this and we will need them, as we talk billions of real green infrastructures, not hard infrastructure made of concrete, but soft, healthy spongy soils, thriving ecosystems, beneficial keystone species including people coming back to the countryside and managing landscapes holistically.
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A conversation with one of the founders of the regeneration space, which barely existed 12 years ago when he started his organization. How and why is it so fundamental to take a landscape view and get all the stakeholders to look at the map yes, a physically printed large map together, because chances are they never have. The farmers, the real estate developers, the nature conservation professionals, the local politicians, entrepreneurs spend most of their time in their own silos, and if they talk to each other, often it isn't very friendly. So how do we get them to develop a shared vision of what they want their landscape to look like in 20 or 30 years? How do you trigger that kind of inspiration? Nobody likes to live in a dying landscape, where biodiversity has left, where people have left or are leaving schools are closing shops, etc. As well. We are at the beginning of what was barely a space. 12 years ago, of course, holistic landscape management existed in indigenous circles and in ecology silos, but barely outside of that. And now we see the financial space, institutional investors starting to dip their toe, or a very, very small part of their toe, into this space, and we'll need them as we talk, billions of real green infrastructure, not hard infrastructure made of concrete but soft, healthy, spongy soils, thriving ecosystems and beneficial keystone species, including people coming back to the countryside and manage landscapes holistically.
Speaker 1:This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast. Investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors, big and small, and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt. Slash soil underneath our feet To make it easy for fans to support. Thank you, slash investing in Regenec. That is, camrocom. Slash investing in Regenec, or find the link below.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode today, a very special one, because we're going to explore landscape scale regeneration. We're going to explore that with one of the pioneers in that space, or one of the current pioneers, because we're standing on the shoulders of giants and we're going to explore that as well. So I'm very happy to do this in person. It might be a bit of background noise. There's a lot of rain today, which is very good for plants and not so good for cyclists, and we're in the office in Amsterdam with Willem Verwerda, one of the co-founders of Commonland and before that even was for Return Partners.
Speaker 1:We explored Commonland in different assets with quite a few people, which of course, we'll link below the interviews we've done until now with Yannick, with Gijs, with Tekela, with Matthijs, who should be out around this time, otherwise we'll link it later with Jasper and Michiel, which I think Michiel de man was at least number three or four or five, like one of the first episodes we've ever recorded, and so it's very, very nice. It took 11 years to have Willem on the podcast. So thank you so much for taking the time in your busy traveling schedule because it was quite a travel schedule until now and taking the time to be here with us today and reflect a bit on this journey and, of course course, to look forward as well. So welcome.
Speaker 2:Willem. Thank you very much, koen, and lovely to be in your podcast today.
Speaker 1:Finally, it seems like we've crossed paths many times and but it's been a while since I was in the office here, actually, so it's very nice to be back, and we always start with a personal question which people might have if they've heard you another podcast, you've alluded to this before and but in this case, what brought you to landscape scale restoration, let's say, and spending most of your awake hours thinking, acting and being busy with that? How did it lead to, to this profession, let's say, which didn't really exist, but now it does?
Speaker 2:Wow. Now, in a summary, I think my entire life I've been working with nature as a kid and later on as a biologist, a tropical ecologist, studying agronomy and ecology in Latin America, and have been working in the conservation world for many years, at IUCN for more than 17 years, funding projects and indigenous people, conservation organizations, you know, in many tropical areas, working with private sector. And what always fascinated me was the ecosystem approach that has been developed by IUCN and WWF end of the 90s and that was endorsed by COP5 of the Biodiversity Convention in Amman in the year 2000.
Speaker 1:Number five.
Speaker 2:I was there in Amman 24 years ago during the COP5. And this ecosystem approach and the 12 principles were so wonderful and holistic that that always was part of my DNA since then and my question was always how can I make this practical, how can I make the ecosystem approach practical? Because this was all theory, theory, and after 12 years being a director of IUCN in 2012, I thought now it's time to leave and think this through and make it practical in language and monitoring the evaluation framework that everyone would be able to understand and that led to the FORETUNES framework for holistic landscape restoration or healthy landscapes, and since then we have tried to to implement that and do it and see whether this can be replicated by others at scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you mentioned just before we started recording. Like none of this is new, necessarily, but what's missing is implementation at scale. And so what was holding back the space, let's say 12 years ago, when you decided to start to to start implementing at scale? We've seen that in other sectors as well. Um, if it's in renewable energy and there's like a lot of the, it's not necessarily we need new tech, let's say, also in region ag, and necessarily we need new things, but we definitely need implementation at scale. What was holding back the restoration space to do that?
Speaker 2:Now there was no restoration space. When we talk, you know, 20, 40, 20 or 30 years ago, it was about conservation and protecting areas which is super important.
Speaker 2:You know, which is probably the most important thing we need to do in this planet? First, conservation, because it is the cheapest way. So a lot of organizations like IUCN and WWF, conservation International, the Nature Conservancy we're all working and still are working on conservation, which is super important. But I see conservation as part of a wider landscape sustainable management way of our spatial planning, and regenerative agriculture is part of that, as well as conservation and protected area management and, you know, creating ecological corridors.
Speaker 2:It's all part of a wider scheme of spatial planning, and spatial planning means you need to think big, and spatial planning means also you need to think long term we need to think decades in an area and it also means that if you have more stakeholders living there so communities you need to bring them along and help them to create a new future in those landscapes. So that is about participation and stakeholder involvement or steering, and that is super difficult. So basically, there are two difficult things here and that's why it's so difficult to implement this. One is ecological awareness and long term thinking. Second one is bringing stakeholders in those areas into more or less the same direction to help them to beaut or an ecosystem is.
Speaker 2:And what a landscape wants to be that place of ecosystem loss was over the last decades a lot. It was already there, of course. You know it always had been there, first with indigenous people knowledge and then also within some expert groups, but especially in those expert groups it stayed there and now we're moving further and what I see and that's super helpful and exciting is that there is.
Speaker 1:You know, we are at the beginning of a movement and the movement is about ecology first, technology second and I think that notion of zooming out like it's amazing, of course, any individual farmer and a major company in a landscape, but you realize you're part of a landscape and if the landscape as a whole doesn't move from degraded which most landscapes are towards regeneration, your individual contribution is just not very relevant and it's very difficult as well, like you're rowing against the tide, which is Exactly I always wonder. We've done quite a few episodes on landscape scale, regeneration, what technology is needed, what is near, what kind of frameworks, etc. But how little actually is talked about that. We always talk about, especially in Regenact, the individual farm, the individual company. Okay, we do a loan there, etc. Without saying, yeah, but what is happening with the whole landscape? And very few farms are big enough to be the whole landscape. So by definition, you have to work with your neighbors?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So, by definition, you have to work with your neighbors. Yeah, exactly Exactly. And that's why we came in with the landscape approach, because when I, you know, I've been working so long with indigenous people, organizations and local NGOs but even local NGOs on conservation if they don't have a landscape approach, they will fail at the end because they don't have the power and the financial means to do this. And farmers for the same thing, you know you can have 10 farmers doing reach and ag while around those 10 farmers who have a soy belt of 100,000 hectares with chemicals, you know you will fail. You will be isolated islands that at the end, will disappear.
Speaker 2:So a landscape approach is the next step, it's the future. But to do that is damn difficult. It's very difficult and you need to be patient. You need to have the right capital, you need to have the right understanding and knowledge and, especially, you need to have the right connections in those landscapes with people who really want to make this happen. It's also about local leadership, and that local leadership is not only with farmers but also with conservation NGOs and also with conservation ngos and also with local, local city councils and mayors and local entrepreneurs. And that combination is is magic if you can make that moving, let's say into into a next phase, and that's.
Speaker 1:That's basically what we try to do yeah, because you see this notion of like we need to think in a landscape way simply because we need to manage space. Like you said, we need to manage different functions in different places. We need to choose what makes sense, where and why. And until now, somehow we're still. We seem to be still in sort of the settler's approach, like there's always other land, there's always, we can always, and of course, that's not true where we're like, the conservation space is suffering because the, the zones getting smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1:The areas we try to protect desperately, unless we we work with, with the areas around, are gonna eventually disappear. And do you see, like, what is preventing this? Or how have you circumscent the, the fact that you come into a landscape and you're again an outsider that says, oh, let's do this differently, let's work with the four returns and different zones, etc. How do you prevent, in a landscape which often degraded, many people have left Inspiration is one of your returns has almost disappeared in many places how do you get in sort of the positive flow in the landscape you've worked in? How do you trigger that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a whole tough process. We have an hour, so yeah. So what we've done over the last 11 years is that we basically tested the 4TWNs framework in Spain, in Southern Africa, in India, in the Netherlands and in Australia WA West Australia and for each of those landscapes, you have a different entry point. Quite often, people ask you to come over, and that's what we see now. We are now working indirectly and directly in more than 23 countries with local partners, so they come to us now with a request can you help us in this process? Because we have an approach that might help us and might help us to share a better understanding and to, let's say, to communicate with other actors, and that's exactly what we want.
Speaker 2:But in the beginning you know, in Spain or in South Africa, of course we didn't come in like for an actor. We started to have a conversation, a conversation about the crisis, the crisis on the land, the social crisis, the inspirational or lack of purpose crisis, and especially that one was the entry point where we could make a commitment and also building a relationship. And if you start to work with actors in a landscape and promise them to stay, to work together for 20 years, something will happen, because they have never experienced that before. They've never experienced that some foreigners in this case, some Spanish and Dutch people who were joining a group of farmers and local entrepreneurs, and some mayors and protected area managers in the southern part of Spain that we had that conversation for several days. We were sitting together for three days, using the theory U, which is a co-creation process of sensing and listening, to come up with a kind of solution, in this case for a landscape, and we just asked, ask them, what are your dreams for the coming 20 to 30 years for this landscape? And the dreams were not about productivity, they were not about soil health, they were not about biodiversity or protected area management, all about water. The dreams were we want to have our community back. We want to have our community back. We want to have kids playing in the street again, we want to have swimming pools open and the school open and the local, you know, panaderia open, bakery open. So these things were social things first, and through the social discussion on social things, you could talk about.
Speaker 2:But what does it mean? What kind of employment do we see, you know, in the future then? And what does it mean for the landscape? But what does it mean, what kind of employment do we see in the future then? And what does it mean for the landscape and what does it mean for water and what does it mean for productivity and the connection of protected areas or parks? So we had that whole conversation and we've had many of those conversations and at a certain stage, using this framework, which is basically simplifying the reality of the complexity of a landscape into three words losses, risks and returns, words that everyone understands, and because you use losses, risks and returns, you can create a relationship, because you can talk about trauma, pain, landscape pain, whatever pain or pain, because people, you know, because the community has disappeared, which is a profound cultural pain. And then you move further to how does that affect you know, the landscape, and how would that landscape look like if you start to dream a little bit, taking the time, because we know, you know that growth seasons in the Mediterranean are very slow, difficult.
Speaker 2:So how to have a profound conversation on this? How to have a profound conversation on this, and at a certain stage we were mapping it out and we were able to, or they were able to, to set up a landscape partnership, in this case to work on it with local teams and we were able to fund that, and that's how it started.
Speaker 1:And as a biologist and conservationist as well. How natural did that sitting down and, and I'd say, holding the space for those conversations? Mostly or at the beginning at least most on the social side, not necessarily on biodiversity or this keystone species, or I mean the keystone species of humans, but, um, how did that the first time? I mean, now you're natural in it, I'm, I'm expecting, but how did that the first time? I mean, now you're natural in it, I'm expecting, but how did that happen the first time? How did you, did you want to jump to? Yeah, but let's talk about the wolf or let's talk about this, or let's this vulture we need to talk about.
Speaker 2:Now, maybe because I before already had 20 years of experience working with local NGOs in the tropics, it was relatively easy for me to do that, you know, when I was younger and working as a conservationist in Colombia and in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1:You don't see him now, but he's making a fix.
Speaker 2:It was more difficult because you know you become angry because of big corporations enter the rainforest and clear goods, you know, for soil, palm or whatever, or mining those areas, and you really are angry.
Speaker 2:I'm still angry about these topics, of course, because it's still happening in the agriculture frontier. I've been working for so many years in the agriculture frontier in the tropics and lost friends because they were killed, because basically it's a war zone, and so I think that what I, what happened with me, I think, is that that's what I only, you know. Only later I could see that process of transformation in myself, that I moved from a tropical ecologist, conservationist into a more social changemaker person and I was listening much better to two farmers and two farmers to protected area management, because there's always a problem with the two. Then you have engineers. They come up with a solution which is basically not, you know, an ecological solution. So listening was super important. I've learned a lot about listening and then I realized that most of the topics were first about inspiration and social before they started to really, you know, talk about those more technical solutions on agriculture or whatever, or water management.
Speaker 1:And then you mentioned mapping, one of the core pieces, obviously, of landscape, almost design. Are there different zones? Yeah, what are the different zones?
Speaker 2:So, as an ecologist, we have a lot of zones, ecosystem zoning you know it's a profession. If I go to an area, wherever I go, I see different ecological zones in mountains or in rainforests or whatever. But what we did is we simplified the zoning to give everyone a better understanding of where is she or he in his landscape, because people in general, including farmers, have no idea where they are. So you need to learn to zoom out. So what is the water catchment? Is that 100,000 hectares area? Or in Altiplano, is it a million hectares? What does it mean for you? If you are living there and you zoom out like a helicopter, you get a helicopter view where are you and how interdependent are you from others and from other systems, and then zoom in again. So if you zoom out, you can look from it from a helicopter perspective and identify. That's what we did. Three zones we again here. The simplicity helps you to understand.
Speaker 2:30 would not be good. Three zones no, yeah, I mean you can have 30 zones. 30 would not be good. Three zones no, I mean you can have 30 zones. I would love to talk about 30 zones, but what I did and that was really one of my most difficult things. I brought it down into three zones. One zone is where you have nature. Hopefully most of that nature is protected, so you can have national parks, protected areas or whatever. You have six categories of ISN, which are the protected area categories. So one zone is the nature zone. That is a place where nature thrives and where nature should thrive, and of course you need to connect such a natural zone to another natural zone and then you have an ecological corridor. Quite often those corridors do not exist, so you need to think about it and in the future plan that in.
Speaker 2:That's the first zone. The second zone is the place where you live, where you have urban areas, where you have infrastructure, hard infrastructure, and where you earn basically your money. But also that's the place where you have monocultures of what I call chemical agriculture or industry or mining. So we call that the economic zone. So basically you could say that the monoculture. In fact, what you want is that the more chemical agriculture would transform itself in the future into a more regenerative way of agriculture you can think about whatever. And then you come into what we call the combined zone and that is the place where you have productivity of two things food and fibers, or metal, if you talk about mining and you produce biodiversity. So you produce these two things. You combine biodiversity production with food and fiber production. That's why we call it combined zone. What is the combined zone? It is mostly not there. You won't find a combined zone. It is mostly not there. You you won't find a combined, combined zone in a landscape, because most of the landscapes have two zones a natural zone and a economic zone, whether that is urban or monoculture. We want, so we propose, that the economic zone shrinks a bit to, you know, to places where you process, have factories, have people living, schools and urban housing and a place where the monoculture development will gradually move into a more combined zone. Yeah, regen ag zone or agroforestry rotational grazing all those things come together there. Or agroforestry rotational grazing all those things come together there.
Speaker 2:And that thinking with using these three zones and talking about it and, yeah, you could say, implement that or make it more visible on the map as an imaginary tool, helps people to understand how they are connected in their own landscape and that is the process that we guide. So at a certain stage, you bring a lot of people together. First it's a small group, then it gradually moves into a bigger group in that landscape and you guide them, using the theory, into making it more practical. So what if we want to beautify our landscape and make it more green, more healthy? You know, better access to water, better, more increase of biodiversity, increase of food productivity, making more resilient to climate change all these things and more local, you know, more local economy. If you move that from A to B in 20 or 30 years, how would the zones then will move from A to B in those 30 years? And then talk about it with a map.
Speaker 2:So at a certain moment, you draw that on maps and then people start to understand aha, it means that I rely on this water catchment. I didn't know that before. Or maybe that aquifer you know my neighbor is trying to drill, you know, to get illegal water out because he wants to have or she wants to have, you know, I don't know broccoli fields. How does that work with my farm or my protected area or my village as a mayor, Because the aquifer is going down, you have a problem with water. You know high your cost will go up all these things.
Speaker 1:Then you bring into the map of now and into the future of, of, of that certain landscape yeah, it's fascinating that zooming out always feels a bit like that moment we had as society when the first picture was taken of Earth and suddenly we realized it's a little blue ball. Or when people have experiences and they suddenly realize they're connected to everything else. And I think, printing a map I don't think it works on the screen, like you need it printed on a big table and drawing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we come up with our maps or they come with their maps and then we are for days around the table and say, okay, how you know? First we help them to understand what are the three zones. So the zone, the three zones, are a tool, a language tool and a visionary tool to help them to understand landscaping, to get landscape, to read their own landscape. Basically, because they don't read their landscape, they cannot read their landscape. Some, because they don't read their landscape, they cannot read their landscape. Most, yes, some of them can you know some protected area managers, they do it, but they, they didn't have the words for it. So we bring them all together and in a certain states we have the final, let's say the 20 or 30 years division implemented how to re, how to de, to deliver those four returns of impact through zoning, and then some of those farmers get the understanding.
Speaker 2:Okay, but that means that what I'm doing in my farm actually is not the right thing. But then the question comes how to move from A to B in your own farm? And what does that mean? I mean, if you only have corn that uses a lot of water and a lot of chemicals and you depend on. You know, whatever the chemical agro industry and you want to move from A to B in, let's say, 10 years, poorly cropping system, soil building, rotational grazing, all that stuff on your own farm, you know what does it mean for your own farm and for your neighbors and for you know the neighbors and if your farm is in the midst of two protected areas and actually we need to have a corridor in between what does it mean for your private land?
Speaker 2:So we need to have those conversations and understand.
Speaker 1:And they don't happen. They're not happening now. That's the interesting part, like I'm always wondering. I mean, you have the talks with your neighbors, like for sure the councils have their et cetera meetings. But I also remember from Stef Stef van Dongen we interviewed as well in the landscape in the Muga Valley and he was like it's very interesting to see these neighbors coming together for pretty much the first time to discuss their watershed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the beauty of Barrio de lauga source in Spain is that it's a relatively simple way because it's one water catchment. It's relatively small compared to many other water catchments in Spain. But the big problem is, of course, downstream. You have two million tourists coming there, while upstream living, you know, some few thousand people are living. There are some forests there Downstream. That's where you need to have the discussion and at the end you know, here again you need to move away from the economic zone. The economic zone of tourism at a certain stage needs to shrink a bit to be able to deal with the future water situation Already now Already.
Speaker 1:Now, I mean, they had a lot of problem with water.
Speaker 2:So these discussions, if you start to talk about it with you know downstream people and upstream people, and bring them together and see that whole water catchment as a whole system, you know, then you will have a real good conversation. And then again, time is needed, you need decades to make that happen. Policy will help if you bring on board the right policy actors, because quite often the policy system in those landscapes are against what we try to propagate. So you need to bring local policy actors as soon as possible into this discussion or landscape partnership?
Speaker 1:Are they so many follow-up questions? Are they the local policy people working in that? Do you see them embracing this as a tool to work with and potentially not saving the landscape? But there's severe degradation socially, ecologically, and people see and sense that and and like this could be actually a beacon of hope. It's going to take time, it's decades. This is 20 plus years easily, but we would love to have a school back, we would love to have a tax base, we would love to have people in general, and because most of these people obviously love their, their community and see it slowly degrading away, yeah, we see that.
Speaker 2:We see that with mayors, with members of city councils.
Speaker 1:That in these small towns, just as background. If you're a mayor in a small town, that's a work of love. I mean, the mayor is a farmer as well yeah, of course. Or a local entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:So, for instance, we see in many places we see that this bottom-up approach, they embrace it. Thanks to the framework to understand, they understand it better.
Speaker 1:They need language to talk to their people as well. They need the language to talk to their people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one of the things we've heard when we saw that in Spain, but also in other places in Australia is that people said you know, I finally now have the language to understand what I'm doing, especially those people who were already in a way working or bringing people together, whether that was their own interest or a farmer's interest, or could be a local entrepreneur interest or whatever. They finally had a tool to explain what they were doing. Because we also have developed some real generic steps that you need to make. You need to bring people together, you need to co-create a shared vision. As an effect of co-creation of shared vision, quite often some actors are stepping up to organize something. It could be a landscape partnership, it could be a local NGO, it could be a pharmacist association or a combination.
Speaker 2:The next step is that, thanks to the zoning, they start to map out where to do what in the future and where can you start immediately. And quite often you start already immediately and things many people already have started immediately, something maybe for decades already. You know small regenerative ag farms or local conservation, private conservation initiatives or whatever, but they can fill in those places on the map and that ends quite soon in kind of a plan so, which is an implement yeah, an implementation plan which actually is part of the exploration for the future. So if you look into the future, if you want to go in 30 years to have a landscape that is more or less that and that, what do you need to do now and how much will it cost? And we help them with writing down those plans. We help them with basically looking for the right funding to implement those plans and, at the end, those plans are about green infrastructure.
Speaker 2:We are talking about billions, not about a few hundred thousand euros or dollars, because we are talking about a landscape green infrastructure plan. And that's why we compare it in our last report. We compare these green infrastructure landscape plans with hard infrastructure landscape projects like the high-speed train between Madrid and Sevilla and then high-speed train between Madrid and Sevilla. To develop that and implement that cost 14 million euros per kilometer. So we're talking big money. If you have 400 kilometer, that you need to, you know, to connect to each other with a railway system. So these kind of things you need to connect to each other with a railway system.
Speaker 2:So these kind of things you need to. So that is where we want to go. We want to go towards To develop a holistic landscape restoration industry.
Speaker 1:And how has the finance industry responded to that kind of language and that kind of approach? Because I don't think they've ever seen that before. Let's say, the conservation sector hasn't, and there was no landscape scale restoration space, as you mentioned before. How has that, um, how has that landed until now in in the finance space that is finances green infrastructure, like somebody's findings in this 14 million per kilometer, yeah, of a of a record, which is amazing Because you can buy a ticket at a certain moment so they can earn it back, like the tollways in France or in the US or in other places.
Speaker 1:Super long term.
Speaker 2:So that's long term thinking with a return on investment, because you have a real price associated and so you can do your calculations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also the channel tunnel to the uk went bankrupt. I think the first two operators didn't make it and then the third one came in. So there's. But infrastructure players are quote-unquote used to that. But how have your conversations been? Um, I remember jasper coming on, an ex-colleague a couple of years ago on frameworks of how to calculate returns on a landscape scale. That that's I'm going to say four years ago. I think it was in the midst of COVID. I'm just hoping the answer is yes, but I'm thinking it might not be. How has the financial sector changed? Has it changed in looking at landscapes or not?
Speaker 2:yet yeah, I mean we are working on it. So we have now a landscape finance team, so we are testing and working with carbon, for instance, which is just a small part of it.
Speaker 2:You know, our work on creating those landscape partnership is merely paid by philanthropy, because no one wants to pay for it including governments, because we want to have long-term trust-based partnerships and we cannot do that with public funding so far, Although also there is a lot of debate in the public funding sector.
Speaker 2:If you look at the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank, there are talks there on longer term and more trust-based, but you still need to do a lot of reporting, which actually will not help if you want to work with trust-based funding. But if you look at a landscape finance or a landscape fund for, let's say, our work in southern Spain, which is a million hectare, so if you would have a landscape blended vehicle that could fund the landscape teams, could fund the protected areas, could work with payment for ecosystem service. If you talk about water, it might be easier. Carbon could be part of it, but then you need to have the right to legislation If you want to fund with loans or equity or investments all kinds of initiatives in those landscapes on regenerative ag or composting facilities or machine banks or local factories to process the almonds or process the pistachios or the olives locally.
Speaker 2:All these things need to be funded in a way, and so far the finance industry if we generalize the finance industry, they're not ready for that. There are some funds. You have the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund. They're now working on the second fund. They're looking for 350 million, but alone in Spain you need probably a billion. So that's only one landscape. So if we talk about green infrastructure and landscaping, I think we will go into that direction, because at a certain stage you can do the calculations on risks and returns, especially with climate change and the heavy weather events. If you would calculate all the heavy weather events damage, for instance, a few weeks ago in Germany and now in Switzerland.
Speaker 2:And now in Switzerland, so you find it everywhere in the world Then if you would include all those costs then at a certain stage and bring in the insurance companies we just heard that you know that in the UK you now have SCORE, which is an insurance company that had brought up a region sorry, a restore product. We are going to talk with them soon and see how that works. I think they did four or five years work on that before that score funds came up to implementation execution over the last few months. So there are initiatives popping up and these initiatives at a certain moment need to be embraced by landscapes. So how would the future look like? I don't know, but from my perspective I think we are heading there. What really helps are the standards on environmental social governments ESG in the European Union. Last year in January these standards became effective and we already see that some corporates are thinking about how to deal with that and what do we need to do?
Speaker 2:And they knock on our doors and other doors of many of those environmental actors and see if they can do something. So this is all starting. But of course, if you look from the global perspective, with all the wars going on and the geopolitics, it's difficult to look into the future. But also in China, you see massive things happening on this side.
Speaker 1:And so, looking at the simplification you've done, so the processes, like what are the steps or what's the process, the four returns, the three zones and the 20 plus years, obviously, or potentially obviously, in a simplification you lose a few things. You lose a bit of complexity, etc. Looking at it now, what do you feel that is missing? Like if you had to, you cannot add anything, because now it's like this feel that is missing, like if you had to you cannot add anything, because now it's like this is what you're going. But if you had to add one or two things, what do you feel like would have been?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Maybe this is the simplicity to ask people to participate and to help them to understand it and join, let's say. But underneath this we have, for each return, we have key performance indicators, same for the zoning, of course, the time is the minimum 20 years. It's minimum, it's the bare minimum. What we also see is that each landscape has, you might say have, its own customized indicators, and those customized indicators should be able to translate them into generic indicators, because then you can create a movement and a kind of an intel insight for the holistic landscape restoration industry, which is the dream and, at a certain moment, the thing that we need. Yeah, this is, you could say this this framework is just, it is a translation of the, the ecosystem approach. As I said that before, that was endorsed by the cop five of the Biodiversity Convention in Amman in 2000.
Speaker 2:Of course, there's a lot of things, a lot of things is missing and especially, we have learned a lot of lessons over the last 11 years, and one of the lessons are if you want to invest in landscapes, you need to have local entrepreneurs. If you have a barren landscape where people have left, you cannot find local entrepreneurs. So that's lesson number one it's very difficult to bring local entrepreneurs into a landscape where no one wants to live. So how to do that? Yeah, especially if you don't have a lot of money. The second lesson is yes, we see that the language of risks, returns and losses is working.
Speaker 2:People understand those words, but, on the other hand, there's a lot of friction of different groups in those landscapes. There are many actors that don't want to work, and especially, there are actors who benefit from degraded landscapes and there are actors who don't benefit from it. So you need to want to get rid of those actors who benefit from degraded landscapes and there are actors who don't benefit from it. So you need to want to get rid of those actors who benefit from degraded landscape, for instance, those ones who you know, who creates illegal boreholes everywhere, especially in dry land systems, or those ones who benefit from the scarcity of labor. So how to deal with that? Because you always have pirates or sharks in those areas.
Speaker 2:So that is a real issue and they have power. Quite often they build up power or they have cultural power, which is even more worse, or religious power, which is even worse. So those are the practicalities that you need to deal with, and what we've seen is we have 20% of groups who are really wanted. In such a landscape, that is more or less already enough to pursue an agenda that is more attractive than what the other ones want. Yeah, another lesson is, of course, policies, politics, policies. We, you know we need we deal with short termism. Four years, elections, right wing, left wing, you know, whatever wave we get Five waves in 20 years minimum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, you know whatever wave we get. She said five waves in 20 years minimum.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, if you're lucky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the bottom-up approach should be stronger than what those policies and political movements and elections can handle, can handle. Yeah, and another lesson is that the word return does not all resonate. So language methods. I give you one example. I think it was in Colombia, which I know pretty well, when we used the word return in Colombia, the word retorno was reflecting some feelings in the society, in the Colombian society, because Retorno was also used to give back something to the ex-guerrilleros in this case. So it was not always, it did not always resonate in a positive way in that country. So in that country, you need to use other words like beneficio or value or whatever. So you need to play around. So this framework is not a Bible or what it helps you to understand, but you need to be flexible enough to use it or not use it, or use it in different wording.
Speaker 1:And we talked about water quite a bit and I noticed in the landscape series we've done often it seems almost not easier, but it seems easier to relate to than carbon. Obviously it seems I mean flood, drought, fire is a lot of landscapes are dealing with that on a yearly basis. It seems easier to measure. Almost it falls somewhere and it goes somewhere if you're lucky and you're in a water catchment which is sort of a natural landscape limitation. Do you see a lot of? Do you see development there, like with insurance companies or with others that directly suffer from mismanagement of water or water that is not optimally slowed down, soaked in, etc. Because it almost seems like it's a way more logical first lever to pull when we start paying for outcomes, like if we manage water differently, we save a lot of money and we probably will take care of carbon to a certain extent. What do you see there in your work probably will take?
Speaker 2:care of carbon to a certain extent. What do you see there in your work? I see a lot of movement, positive movement, thanks also to the heavy weather events. We see, you know, in our country, the Netherlands, we see that people think more about water. You know how to hold the water, how to get rid of the water and have a more flexible system than we had before with the water management boards in the Netherlands. Same thing you see it in Spain, in the Alpine countries, but also in Africa. You see a lot of people how to absorb the water.
Speaker 2:In Bavianskloof in Southern Africa, we had a drought for five years so that hugely affected the farmers and the community there, and then certainly floods. So these things brings back to this question how can nature be of any help in water management? And quite often, especially in places where you had dams and your embosses, you know artificial lakes, especially in places where you had dams and bouts, artificial lakes and concrete places, areas of concrete watersheds. You need to remove those things. You need to think about the absorption capacity of the landscape for the good and the bad times, and that is a way of thinking where, especially, what I have observed over the last few years is that engineers and ecologists are talking much more to each other to seek for more ecological solutions where engineers can play their role. Ecoshape, one of those projects with some engineering companies in Indonesia where they have been working together to work towards more resilient coastal protection with mangroves instead of concrete dikes and so on.
Speaker 1:And it seems it's much more in your face. It seems like you're like too much or too little really affects the landscape dramatically. We've seen it in Muga Valley, where the tourist industry and the intensive agriculture industry is completely dependent on the water source behind them, basically without ever turning around and looking at it. But a few droughts, a few summers etc. Will force you to, because you cannot fill your swimming pool or run your irrigation scheme, and many other places the same.
Speaker 2:So the payment for ecosystem services is not in place. And the same thing, but even in a larger scale, is in Bavianskloof in South Africa, where we work upstream since 2013 with Livinglands, who were already there many, many years before, and downstream you have a huge city, a million city, port Elizabeth, that is working with citrus, you know, and a lot of citrus plantations and so on. There is no interaction between the two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is fascinating, and no payment for ecosystems. Have you seen examples where that started around water?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there are many good examples. I think there are two very classical examples. One is Bogota, where, in Parque Nacional Chingaza, which is a national park in the mountains in the Paramo ecosystem, is protected since the 60s, even protected by the army in the difficult times to make sure that the city has clean water and the city is paying for the protected area management, and the protected area is very big, it's a huge area and it's a hotspot of biodiversity. Another place is the Catskill Mountains in New York. Catskill is, you know, you have water reservoirs. Those mountains basically produce water for New York, so there's a scheme, a payment scheme and there you know. So basically you could do that everywhere where you have the situation, in, where you have the right situation. Moga Valley is an example, but there are many, many places where you can do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah which is, I think, in the next few years we're going to see a lot of that, because the water situation becomes so dire in many places and the risk of flood and drought are just enormous. Let's not even speak about fire, which is a whole different level.
Speaker 2:And just on the water, there are beautiful examples already. You know the Nature Conservancy has a waterfront system, so they help to establish these connections, even Coca-Cola. So water companies like Coca-Cola or Heineken Breweries are much more interested in these kinds of solutions than, let's say, companies who are not very much connected to the ground. So what we see is a difference between companies who work or depend on water, companies who depend on food, food producing companies. They are better accessible, like Danone or Coca-Cola, than the companies who are in the business of agrochemical production.
Speaker 1:The buyer in.
Speaker 2:Syngenta. They see these kind of developments more as a threat to their business case. Their business case depends on seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and if you want to get away, if we all want to use less fertilizers, seeds, you know, artificial modified seeds and pesticides their business cases are being threatened. So I think these developments, we see those developments and we also see that, if you look at water catchments coming back to the topic of water catchments that the first actors who really want to help this progressing are those companies and local governments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just saw another one, I think in France, where the water company, the public company of Paris, is paying farmers to switch to organic simply because the chemicals it's way cheaper than filtering the water and cleaning up the water to make it drinkable, compared to non-organic farms or non-organic farms in your catchment area. And it's a no brainer. It's not easy.
Speaker 2:You need to organize it.
Speaker 1:You need to pay, but the cost of another, let's say filtering installation usually runs in one, two, three billion Just do the calculations over time.
Speaker 2:Feed tanks in the Netherlands same thing. They are again and again making the plea for better soil management, water capacity, absorption All these things are in their plea towards the policymakers.
Speaker 1:One of the sponsors of Groundswell is a water company, rightfully so. And let's say we I love to ask this question we're in a relatively financial part of Amsterdam, but let's say we move to the South where the money is being managed, and we do this in a relatively financial part of Amsterdam. But let's say we move to the South where the money is being managed and we do this in a theater, and I'm sure you talk to a lot of investors in the past 12 years what would be the main message or the main seed you want to plant After the evening? They're excited about the zones, the landscape. We do this on stage, but we also know people forget and if we want them to do something in the morning and to remember one thing only, what would be the seed you would like to plant in their mind? Is it the time, is it the zones, this inspiration that this is even possible? Because I think that many people don't even like we sort of get used to the creation over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe it's a positive message that if we yeah, how to explain this? The seed is more about the next generation there's. No, we should not have a feeling of despair, because if we work with nature and we understand the power of nature, we can just live well and solve these issues. Basically, that is that?
Speaker 1:what makes you say that like, how do you ground that? Let's say in that optimism like we can, we can make this work in, in, in what you've seen in landscape. What gives you that hope?
Speaker 2:because I I have seen so often that the power of nature is of such a deep, intensive power that if we work with it, we make things much more easier.
Speaker 2:And you might say, yeah, but what happens if we are moving to 3.5 degrees? Because that's what I hear everywhere and I mean I cannot look into the future. But what we definitely can do is work with nature to make sure that we create a very resilient system that even can deal with 3.5 degrees. And yes, it means that we will face a lot of disaster and traumas and people need to move from one place to another, not only people, also other species, which is already happening, by the way. But we have seen inwe have seen crises of this before, although we weren't there at that time to witness it. Now we witness it. Now we can think about it and we can even try to steer it a little bit, a little bit, because we should not overestimate our own way of working. But I've seen so often that if you do the right thing in a system, in a landscape system, things will go fast and faster than you thought.
Speaker 1:What's an example?
Speaker 2:Now, of course, I come up with examples from the tropics, because the tropics is the fastest way, where you have the fastest growing season. So I agree. But let me come up with another example, not from the tropics, because the tropics is the fastest way where you have the fastest growing season, so I agree. But let me come up with another example, not from the tropics, but from a very dry area, kuwait. I was there 15 years ago for a meeting and they brought me to an area which was fenced, fenced area, a large, huge fenced area. That area was, I think, probably 100 hectares, and they said they had fenced that area for 10 years ago, 10 or 12 years ago, I can't remember exactly. Within the fenced area you had grasses and shrubs like this one meter, while outside, the outside the fence area, everything was overgrazed. It was a desert sand, only sands. You know the, the classical desert, as you if you, probably the classical desert of of kuwait. And so I asked him you know how is that possible? I said, yeah, no grazing animals. Oh, it's overgrazed. Outside you couldn't see one animal because it was overgrazed. Overgrazing in the desert means you only have one animal per few hectares, but it was overgrazed.
Speaker 2:So the resilient way of nature in that very desert area, nature in that very desert area, you could say it took, you know. The summary is many deserts are overgrazed and are dry step systems with perennial root system. So if, if you do the right thing and if you understand how a system works, so if we understand how an ecosystem works and and if more people start to understand it and that moving is now building you know they're coming from from everywhere. You don't need to study biology, you just can read, understand, think. You know, think about logical things and learn from podcasts and, like yours and others, you understand that that if you work with nature, you can gradually move the needle from here to there. And that makes me an optimist Because after so many years, I still think I understand a little bit of how nature works Only a little bit. But it makes me an optimist, an optimistic realist.
Speaker 2:An optimist is a well-informed pessimist, as you know, and an optimist is a well-informed pessimist, as you know.
Speaker 1:And what made you decide to step down, let's say, from the daily leading organization Comiland, which grew into quite an institute around the world? What informed that? Or what made you decide this year I don't know how long you've been thinking about that to to step down and say okay, this, this part of that journey is, is done. And now on to to other, like you other faces. Is it the face of the organization, the moment? Okay, this is the pioneering species. I don't know what your reasoning was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now the reason is, um, you know, I've done this for 11 years, so, as an executive director, so I founded it and started it and brought in the funds, with all the teams.
Speaker 2:We did it all together, of course, and at a certain stage, I realized that when I met my first funder, I told him give me 10 years time to do this, to make this successful, and after the 10 years, I will hand over my management skill, my management task, to another one, because I want to have more time to move to the next phase of this organization and the movement.
Speaker 2:So, and that means and that means focusing my time on building relationships with experts on the ground as well as the institutional experts, which takes a lot of time being out there in podcasts and conventions and meetings to share our lessons learned and to explain what this is all about. Give more guidance to landscape partnerships on the ground, because I know how it works and I can speak the languages of both top-down institutions as well as bottom-up farmers and local ecologists. I speak both languages and finance people. And, yeah, we need more funds and I need to raise, and we need to raise more funds, and I hope that I can work on that for the coming years to bring in more funds for landscape partnerships, whether that is philanthropic, public or commercial funding. We all need these things or commercial funding. We all need these things. So I need time to do this all.
Speaker 1:And if I?
Speaker 2:run this organization. We have more than 42 people now here in the office, while we work in 23 landscapes. I cannot give enough attention to my team. So that's when I decided last year to move into, to make this transition possible, and so, basically, what we did, what I did at that time, I wrote down two terms of references, one for a new managing director and one for the founder, and they are very complimentary and we started the process of recruitment and finally, we hired Gabriele Tausz, who came from a different world and is very good in building this organization further. We work very close together and I stepped out of the management team last May, but I'm very, yeah, I'm here and my role now is to hold the space to bring CommonLand and the movement to this next phase, with the relationships I've built and the track record I have and, mind you, I'm turning 65 this year, next week, by the way and I will continue, I mean.
Speaker 2:I love my work, but sometimes you need to understand that life ends somewhere. Life is not eternal.
Speaker 1:So how difficult you make it sound like it was an easy stab. How difficult was and is that process of letting go the daily, not chores, but the daily stuff. And of course it's nice to have time to focus on the bigger picture and the long-term relationship and to raise the money. And I don't think you have more time now. I think it gets filled up in a second.
Speaker 2:You're right. My agenda is filling up with all these other things and of course, I need to choose and say no, quite often, unfortunately, but that's how it works. It is not difficult and that probably has to do with my personal and private situation. I know what loss means because we have lost our son at one or two, almost two years ago. So I know what losses means and this is compared to that loss. This is not a loss. This is just nothing.
Speaker 2:It's lovely to be part of the next phase. It's lovely to see Comalands growing. It's super exciting to see the movement growing.
Speaker 2:You know, I will play my role, like everyone, hopefully, can play its role, and I hope that the thousands, millions of people can play their role in this movement and it will not go away. So I will play my role until you know, physically I can't, or mentally I want to do something else, but definitely I will be here for the coming years, as long as I can do this job and, yeah, together with many others, and I hope I can inspire many others, especially outside the movement, to join, also people with big pockets, also people who have no purpose, because I think this is very purposeful and inspirational work. You could even say the spirit is looking for a purpose, and we all have a spirit, or a soul inside of us or a soul inside of us, and the fact that you can heal something in your inner life by healing something in your outer life a landscape, for instance, or a farm or whatever is a very powerful. If you understand how that works, it can be a very powerful tool for your own meaning of life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. We usually start that question like we did as well. Now, most people, if not all, that work in the regeneration space, the restoration space, really want to be there. They choose to be there. It's not the easiest career path. There are many easier things to do and somehow it's starting to attract it always has, but it's starting to attract people that really make a very conscious decision based on life-changing moment a movie, plant, medicine, whatever the trigger was to realize they're part of a bigger picture and they cannot imagine doing anything else, maybe inside the space something else, but, like within the restoration space, it's starting to attract, um, people that really, really, really want to be there and not saying making others, but others that are not haven't found their purpose necessarily, like, look at that, not the weirdos in the corner, but people that really the drive drive is there, which is fascinating. We still need way more people, obviously, in that movement, but the purpose is there and then almost the working with nature becomes logical in a sense because you're part of it. So how can you not work with and that sort of definition is, or that sort of transition is, very interesting.
Speaker 1:I want to ask a few. Be conscious of your time as your agenda is busy. But a few final questions. If you had a magic wand, it could change one thing in the restoration space. What would that be? Could be a mindset change. Could be a big fund that understands things. Could be measurement tool, could be consciousness. But if there's only one thing, so we're not doing aladdin, you can get three, you get only one. What would that be?
Speaker 2:now it would be. One would be that everyone would feel that he or she is part of nature and not separate from it. That would be enough, because if you have that feeling and understanding and deep consciousness, then everything will change and have you seen people realize?
Speaker 1:I mean for sure, many different stories, but the most surprising one, let's say when people realize that, or when that moment came, or moments, yeah, I think you know, we have, we've colleagues here who came from the business world.
Speaker 2:They were earning three times more and they joined us and they had a family and but they still joined us, have joined us. So it is in a way and I try to explain that by bringing in also our deep indigenous knowledge so we are all indigenous to this planet but we have lost the connections, and I'm talking about the Western or Eastern society, the more capital society, and of course, there's still some indigenous people out there. There are, you know, a very small number of people still live or think and breathe in an indigenous way. What I've learned when I was young is that I was able to, thanks to a kind of magic moment when I was a kid in nature, that I was able to suddenly understand the whole, deeply feel and understand the whole. What does it mean?
Speaker 2:The whole means that you're part of the whole. What does it mean? Yeah, it's basically as simple as that. You feel that you're part of the whole. As simple as that. You feel that you're part of the whole and and if you could hold that during your entire career or life span, then you take different decisions, you take decisions, take that, take care of the whole and think about the whole. Tiny, tiny things like you know doing recycling, or big things. You know if you have millions to spend them in the right way.
Speaker 2:Or your career, or choose your 80,000 hours that you work, or yeah, your whole career I mean my whole career is about ecology, nature and so on, and it started when I was a very young kid of eight years old. Looking back, I often now refer to this as the moment that your heart, your indigenous heart, is being rediscovered again. And we all have an indigenous heart. We have forgotten about it. So where to find that place and reopen this and then start to talk also and learn from indigenous people to fuel it with knowledge, with their indigenous wisdom, bring it together with other scientific wisdom and knowledge and make the best out of it.
Speaker 1:I think it's a perfect moment to wrap up and to give some advice. Go outside bare feet, go to functioning landscapes, I mean, don't go to a monoland, as Matthijs of World Island likes to call it, which I now start using everywhere. Thank you, Matthijs yeah, it's nice Like monoland is not what you want in general Monoland in people, monoland in companies, monoland is not what you want in general, monoland in people, monoland in companies, monoland in agriculture, monoland in nature.
Speaker 2:You don't want mono, no and bare feet is probably a good thing, depending on the weather and experience nature, because you're not going to reconnect with your indigenous self in a concrete jungle.
Speaker 2:It's difficult, but I've had. You know, when I was at IUCN I had three people from the Koki tribe of Colombia visiting my office at that time bare feet. They've never been outside their own land came to Europe during a conference and they were working there in the subway with bare feet in the winter. So it's possible, but we are maybe not too customized to that.
Speaker 2:But there are places where know you know, it's all about diversity and and uh, wrapping up, I I always like to use the quote of one of our colleagues from um, from west australia, aboriginal noongar people or mcquire, who says you know, biodiversity is the manifestation of the spirit, and I think that includes everything. That's what it is. So we can talk a lot about it.
Speaker 2:We can talk about economics, about landscape finance, about Wall Street about you know big corbets about carbon credits, but the whole, the essence of life is that biodiversity is the manifestation of the spirit, so we are a manifestation of that spirit as well. So we need to deal with it. And why not open up our heart, use it, use our technology. You know technology follows ecology, it's not the other way around. And do it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. It's a perfect moment to wrap up. Thank you for the work you do and you have done and, of course, the work you're going to do or you are doing. It's a perfect moment to wrap up. Thank you for the work you do and you have done and, of course, the work you're going to do or you are doing. And thank you for hosting us here in the office and have a quick look. I feel like there are many other rabbit holes we can go into, but we'll do that another time when we're somewhere in a landscape, and thank you for this conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.
