Commonland Case Study: Spain

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来自 Erasmus University Rotterdam 的课程

A Business Approach to Sustainable Landscape Restoration

13 个评分

Erasmus University Rotterdam

A Business Approach to Sustainable Landscape Restoration

13 个评分

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.

从本节课中

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.

Commonland Case Study: South Africa12:05

Secondary Effects of the Commonland Project in South Africa8:00

Commonland Case Study: Spain13:06

Commonland Case Study: Australia11:59

与讲师见面

Simon W. Moolenaar
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 back.

Since 2013, Cumberland has started projects in Spain,

South Africa, Australia, and the Netherlands to understand how to 4

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 Spain.

The first and main reason to start a project in this region of Spain

was the quality of the people on the ground who could drive the process.

They were already active in various entrepreneurial projects,

some restoration related.

Second, the rain fed organic elements grown in this region presented a strong

potential business case.

And third, a restoration project in this region offered good opportunities for

scalability.

The Altiplano area of Andalusia in Southern Spain

is a high altitude area with plains at 1,000 meters above sea level.

It reaches high temperatures in summer, at times as hot as 40 degrees Celsius, and

very cold weather in winter, often well below 0 on the coldest days.

Such climate across barren plains makes for very tough conditions on par

with areas at similar altitudes in countries such as Mongolia.

Today, the region is home to 130,000 inhabitants, most of whom

rely on agriculture, livestock, and forestry for their livelihood.

Almonds and cereals are the most common types of crops grown.

And the region is one of the world's largest areas of cultivation for

rain fed organic almonds, with 100,000 hectares dedicated to

almond growth of which 45,000 are certified organic.

Land degradation is a serious problem that plagues the region.

For generations,

the farmers have employed unsustainable farming practices such as overgrazing,

poor water management, growing mono cultures, and excessive plowing.

These practices have led to soil erosion processes, nutrition depletion in soils,

and substantial decrease in water quality and quantity.

In the past 50 years, the pace of degradation in the area has accelerated

to an alarming rate with the introduction of industrial agricultural techniques.

The chemical plowing has allowed for more frequent and

deep plowing, which results in heavily eroded soils.

People are leaving the area in search of a better living.

This leads to a depopulated countryside with a marginal economy

characterized by about 40% unemployment, and

high dependency on governments as subsidies for agriculture.

So, like many other areas in the Mediterranean, the region suffers

from severe land degradation and from rural abandonment and unemployment.

The area is now one of the poorest regions of Spain despite its splendid

natural parks, rich biodiversity, and cultural history.

The good news is that a growing group of frontrunners is reversing this trend.

Hundreds of farmers and

entrepreneurs are organizing themselves to restore the degraded lands.

The local community is teaming up with government, businesses, and

research institutions.

This joint initiative resulted in creating the AlVelAl association named after

three large counties in the Andalucian provinces of Granada and Almeria.

They cover 630,000 hectares of occult

semi arid step up planes covered mainly with grass and very few trees.

The AlVelAl association actively promotes landscape restoration initiatives, and

supports business and farm development.

On this picture, you see the participants of one of the first stakeholder workshops

that resulted in a joint vision on how to apply the 4 returns, 3 zones,

and 20 years approach to the region.

This slide shows how this joint vision translates into business and

restoration initiatives aiming at full returns in

the three zones of the AlVelAl area.

Farmers are directly involved on their own farm by introducing more sustainable

agriculture practices that help build soil health.

They call it regenerative farming.

Some farms will be used as demonstration farms as well.

You can also see a wide diversity of business cases like tourism, bee keeping,

livestock, aromatic crops, and element production.

Some sites in the neutral zone have been identified as potential new

restoration projects.

The AlVelAl Association has developed an innovative concept that offers an economic

alternative to the current degrading agricultural practices in the area.

This concept is called Almendrehesa.

It is an integrated production system that combines almond trees and

local trees with aromatic oil crops, bee-hiving, and lamb-breeding for

premium quality, organic meat.

The Almendrehesa concept forms a basis for a company that is called

Almendrehesa as well, and that has almond production at its core.

The combination of diversified crops and

trees needs to improve soil quality and higher productivity.

Production, processing, and marketing, of high quality almonds

by the farmer's cooperative, results in added market value.

So this integrated system leads to improved soil quality and

higher productivity.

This enhances farmer's incomes and stimulates the local economy.

Many of the farmer's growing elements for the Almendrehesa have already started to

diversify the crop types they grow by planting rosemary and lavender.

The next step for Cumberland together with AlVelAl Association may be to establish

a subsidiary of the Almendrehesa for marketing and processing of the harvest of

those aromatic crops to produce aromatic oils and other derivative products.

Moreover, this productive ecosystem decreases erosion, restores

the water balance, enhances biodiversity, and beautifies the whole landscape.

Local pride and inspiration have just been stimulated by these new activities.

This is a clear example of achieving four returns simultaneously.

To learn more about the project,

please watch this clip about the AlVelAl association.

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>> Adjacent to the activities in our AlVelAl other landscape restoration

projects have started that involve new partners.

For example, Heineken Spain has implemented its water balancing strategy,

and has made plans for water balancing projects for its four breweries in Spain.

Heineken Spain has partnered with common land for this purpose.

The first project involves the restoration of three lagoons in the wetlands of

Doñana, the famous and iconic natural area near Seville, and

a hotspot for biodiversity.

The restoration of three lagoons will return substantial amounts of water

to the watershed.

It offers opportunities for unique biodiversity to develop there as well.

The second project involves an agriculture innovation integrating barley production

in all of growths.

The aim is to improve the infiltration of rain water in soils by planting barley

between the olive trees.

In turn, the barley conserved as a sustainable local supply for

one of Heineken's key ingredients.

Partnering, and even leading in these restoration activities enables Heineken

to meet the other balancing targets effectively.

To create a positive impact in the supply chains.

To increase the brand value for Spanish consumers.

To set an example in the corporate sector for water stewardship.

And to set an example for innovative stakeholder corporation.

The positive results of this partnership have triggered Cumberland to stimulate

restorative practices to improve the land management in other epicultural sectors

like olives as well.

This example has given you a better idea about rationale for

corporate involvement in restoration partnership.

In the next interviews with Thekla Teunis and Silvana Paniagua,

they will share additional insights about the reasons for

corporates to be involved in landscape restoration partnerships.

If AlVelAl and the Almendrehesa takes off,

it has the potential to have significant and

scalable restoration impact in terms of the number of hectares of land restored.

The farmers that have joined the company are motivated by the prospects

of increasing the revenue generated from each hectare of cultivated land and

every kilo of harvested elements.

In addition to providing financial and natural returns,

the Almendrehesa can add to the social and inspirational returns.

The aim for the Almendrehesa is not just to be a simple trading company that

buys elements from the farmers.

The company's envisions to create value added jobs in marketing,

sales, product design, and

other functions, that provide attractive employment opportunities to the younger

generations who have been migrating to cities for improved livelihoods.

A shift towards sustainable agriculture will hopefully be part of the solution

to reversing the trend of rural abandonment.

This video has given you a better idea of the Cumberland project in Spain.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Our next video will be about a project in Australia.

A fascinating story about setting up a company to transform the degraded

wheat belt in Western Australia into a sustainable food belt.

Stay tuned.

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