31. Holistic Landscape Restoration and Inspirational Returns – with Willem Ferwerda from Commonland

“I think we should give more openness to the deeper spiritual context of what I call restoration, or integrated holistic landscape management. It’s been ignored but it should be much more present.”

- Willem Ferwerda

SYNOPSIS:

Almost 40% of Earth’s land is degraded, meaning that the natural cycles that sustain biodiversity, water, food, and livelihoods are breaking down. This degradation is an ecological crisis, and, it also lies at the root of massive social breakdown, displacement, and conflict. And it’s accelerating. 

In this episode I speak with Dutch ecologist and entrepreneur Willem Ferwerda, founder of Commonland, one of the leading global initiatives tackling land degradation via large-scale holistic landscape restoration. Their work spans over 20 countries, with projects restoring millions of hectares from South Africa to Spain, Australia to the Netherlands.

We get into their unique 4 Returns Framework - a powerful, intuitive model that integrates ecological, social, financial, and inspirational/spiritual returns - and why long-term restoration also includes our own inner restoration.

We talk about:

• Communities building long-term visions together across sectors

• The importance of meeting different audiences where they are, including language that resonates across cultures and disciplines

• The role of storytelling, spirituality, and local leadership

• How restoring land helps restore meaning and purpose

And how, ultimately, all this work is about regenerating life.

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QUOTES:

• You heal the inside world by healing the outside world, and vice versa. I put it into a framework, so that the link between the inner and outer worlds could not be ignored.

• We need to understand and then move toward the bottom-up solutions, and how they resonate with your soul quest. That’s what people really understand and feel, and that’s where you unlock their passion and drive.

• Those stories are the foundation of the conversation, and also of the transformation process.

• I think we should give more openness to the deeper spiritual context of what I call restoration, or integrated holistic landscape management. It’s been ignored but it should be much more present.

• Playing with the language, you can say: if you maximize return on investment per hectare, it leads to degradation. But it also creates degradation in your own purpose, in your own soul, in your own being.

• Quite often they come back, and you start a conversation. And eventually you end up talking about the real essence of life, about purpose, about trauma.

• As a kid, I asked the snake that was dying, “What are they doing to you?” And the snake answered immediately: “They’re killing themselves.” That powerful answer changed my belief system.

• For me, being in the landscape, or being ‘outside’, is being inside. There’s no distinction. If something outside is broken, it hurts my inside. And it heals me if I can do something about it.

• That has always been my mantra: where can I heal myself and heal the landscape?

• I cannot separate them. The landscape is in me, and I am the landscape.

• I’ve learned that there’s no such thing as control. You can only be a guide, a mentor, a companion. But you can’t control people. You can’t control projects.

• I’m more optimistic and realistic than ever before—despite climate change—because nature is much more powerful than climate change and much more powerful than people. So trust nature, trust yourself, build a trustful relationship with nature, and everything will be okay. It may sound naive, but it’s not. It comes from many years of experience.

• Yes, you will go through pain and trauma. But if you’re able to face it and witness the wounds it has created in you, it will make you stronger, and a kinder, more generous person than before.

• In the framework we developed, for example with the zoning, we use 3 zones to understand what a landscape is. That’s not something new; it already exists in the Vedas in the Indian context.

• You can write books about landscape ethics with all kinds of principles. But it’s more about living it and doing it.

LINKS:

• The 4 Returns Framework in Practice: A guidebook for holistic landscape restoration

• 4 Returns Framework Publication

• The 4 Returns Framework for Landscape Restoration. UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Report (UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, 2021)

• 4 Returns Diagnostic Tool

• The Meaning of Laudato Si for a Landscape Ethic: Article

• Towards financing large-scale holistic landscape restoration in Europe: Recommendations for EU policy actors to attain inspirational, social, natural, and financial returns. Commonland.

• The Trillion-Dollar Promise Of A Landscape Restoration Industry, Forbes (2024)

• We must tackle global risks in an integrated way – here’s how (World Economic Forum, (2023)

• How the Ecosystem Approach supports “Cooperation in a Fragmented World, Medium (2023)

• Albania landscape project

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