These words still resonate in my head while I come back from my meeting with Johannes Schwegler, CEO of Fairventures Worldwide.

Johannes is a wood engineer who has spent his 30s living on the Kapuas riverside, teaching forestry and wood processing to Indonesian students. From his house on stilts, he used to watch huge boats transporting trees older than he could ever been. He was aware that these trees were cut from the primary forest, that they were taken from a peaceful life and brought out of their untouched environment in order to make place for palm oil. Johannes knew that this type of tree harvesting was not sustainable, not only because it ended the life of monumental trees, but also because it disturbed water cycle, increased soil erosion and threatened biodiversity.

An indigenous Dayak woman who joined the program © Fairventures Worldwide

Worried by this unsustainable practice, Johannes decided to take action. He created Fairventures Worldwide, a NGO which empowers farmers with sustainable practices. Unlike many non profit organizations which restore the landscape by planting trees, Fairventures Worldwide sows the seeds of knowledge and good practices in the minds of the Dayak people.

The Dayaks are the native people of Borneo, they traditionally manage the land by cutting the primary forest, burning it and cultivating on the newly deforested area. Fairventures Worldwide prohibits their Dayak partners to use this slash and burn method, for this reason the NGO offers them a sustainable alternative: the agro-forestry.

Farmers care for their trees and crops © Fairventures Worldwide

In an agro-forestry system, crops are cultivated under shade between the trees. To add complexity in this ecosystem and create habitat for the biodiversity, Fairventures Worldwide plants three layers of vegetation. The lower layer on the ground supports peanuts or local vegetable crops, the intermediate layer is made of shrubs such as cacao or coffee trees, and the highest layer is made of fast-growing pioneer trees such as Acacias or Albizias. The latter are used to make engineered lightwood products.

Booth, panels and glued laminated timber made of Sengon at the Trade Expo of Jakarta © Fairventures Worldwide

With the design of new products, such as the lightwood, the non-profit improves the lightwood value chain and introduces it to the Indonesian and global market. Moreover it is in touch with buyers looking for sustainable wood and its derived products. The company is also on the way to certify fifty tons of organic peanut they produce each year and thus sell them in Germany.

An App to monitor trees

Johannes is a social entrepreneur therefore he wants to educate and empower Indonesian farmers. For this reason, his organization is currently developing a mobile application to help farmers monitor their trees. This App will enable them to take a photo of the tree trunk, know its diameter and thus the amount of wood in it. By knowing exactly the value of their trees, they will have a better bargaining position when selling the timber. Moreover a precise monitoring of their trees will help farmers get the highest amount of timber by cutting their stand at the optimal harvest time which is yet a widespread practice in Indonesia.

Johannes Schwegler (right), Wolfgang Baum (left) visit a tree nursery operator © Christof Krackhardt/ Brot für die Welt

Thanks to Fairventures Worldwide, about 1000 Dayak farmers have switched their field into an agro-forestry system. These farmers have a sufficient income to live on the timber production and don’t cut the primary forest anymore. The success of this management doesn’t go unnoticed in the region and by word of mouth more farmers are reaching the company to get advice and learn sustainable practices.

The company has almost reached its first goal of planting 1 million trees and is moving toward its second goal: planting 100 million trees. In the future, Johannes also wants to engage in the Orangutan conservation effort. He is starting a partnership with WWF and BOS, the wildlife protection organizations, to connect primate populations by planting nest and food trees on farmers field. Thanks to this wildlife corridor, animals will move between tropical forest patches and access new habitats.

Although we may judge those who deforest, kill biodiversity and contribute to climate change, we often tend to forget that these are sometimes not evil but just people in need – struggling for a daily meal and a future. These are the realities happening in contrast to the European or American ones, where people enjoy a comfortable lifestyle with a 9–5 job, three daily meals and a safe future.

Efforts like the ones done by Fairventures Worldwide help indigenous people find an economic alternative to deforestation. Let it be in the form of agro-forestry or of tropical lightwood like Albazia, families are starting to generate a sustainable income from formerly misused landscapes.

Dayak woman harvesting her chili © Fairventures Worldwide

Written by Thuan SARZYNSKI

The post A German Social Entrepreneur is Saving the Indonesian Tropical Forest appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

The Landesnaturschutzverband Baden-Württemberg e.V. (LNV)

In Baden-Württemberg, one of the 16 German states, there are 3 large nature conservation organizations: the BUND, the NABU and the LNV. LNV is an umbrella organization with 33 member organizations including nature conservation organizations, fishing, hunting and hiking organizations.

“Sometimes there are conflicts between freetime activities like mountain biking, climbing, diving and nature conservation”, explains Gerhard Brönner, director of the LNV in Baden-Württemberg.  “The LNV tries to find solutions together with all stakeholders. Nature conservation is successful only when it follows the principle “use it or lose it”. For this reason, it has to provide benefits to everybody, otherwise it is not effective in the long run.”.

Since those associations have different opinions and ideas, the LNV mediated the creation of agreements consisting of position papers followed by the 33 organizations. These position papers are important for county working groups as they serve as a directing line for working volunteers. Brönner deplored the recent difficulty to find new volunteers:

“Most of the work is done by volunteers. That is why it is essential for us to find dedicated people. Sometimes we have the chance to be in contact with relevant persons and try to get them to volunteer at the LNV, retired public servant for instance”, he says. According to Brönner, the LNV  is recently facing difficulties to engage young people in nature conservation.

“I guess it’s due to new technology distractions, a lack of commitment or a change in generation mindset and interests”, he says.

With so many different stakeholders it takes a long time and effort to develop a common position paper — the last one took about 1 year to be written. LNV was facing difficulties with a hunting regulation, but it finally found an agreement pleasing everybody. Some of these positions are very sensible and if one of the member organization has a different opinion it cannot speak about it in the name of the LNV. It has to stay in a “grey zone” with its own opinion. However, most of the time the 33 organizations cooperate and stay united to defend their view in front of the politicians.

Budget, funding and subvention

The LNV is mainly financed by the local state subventions and organization membership fees. “The state budget varies and has to be approved annually, it is rarely sufficient”,  complains Brönner.

Each of the 33 organizations belonging to the LNV pays a membership fee based on their size, which means based on the  number of individuals in the organization. Usually only NGOs can be members, nonetheless individuals can support the LNV by paying an annual membership fee of 300€. “Those supporting individual members don’t have any voting rights. In addition, they have to be approved by the LNV’s executive board to avoid any conflict of interest. For the same reason, the LNV refuses money from companies and corporate. Unlike famous international foundations such as WWF and Greenpeace sponsored by rich donors and organizations, we prefer to be as independent as possible. Even if we received two third of our budget from state subventions, we would still criticize it openly and freely”, the director of the LNV says.

For specific projects requiring extra expenses, the LNV raises fundings through donation campaigns. “Although donations vary, most of the fundings are constant over time as public subvention and membership fees are fixed”, says Brönner. All this money is used by the LNV to act politically as a lobbyist,  so that they can pay their office staff and defray their volunteer expenses.

LNV’s role at the state level

The LNV is a consulting organization, it doesn’t deal with practical environmental protection but gives detailed opinions about projects impacting nature and organizes lobbying legal actions. Currently, there is one court case against a windmill built in an area of the red kite (Milvus milvus).

Although the planning process was done by the company together with the public and the local authorities, the planning documents were never made public. Since the windmill was composed of less than 20 turbines, the LNV had access to the planning documents only at the court. The windmill project documents contained weaknesses and the LNV asked the court to review its decision about the construction project.

The LNV aims to  mediate conflicts between renewable energy and nature conservation. The organization ensures that wind turbines don’t harm migrating birds, bioenergy land doesn’t compete with food production and hydroenergy doesn’t disturb aquatic wildlife…

“On the one hand, we don’t have enough space in Baden-Württemberg to produce all the energy we need. On the other hand, in the north-western states of Germany there is more electricity produced than needed. To solve our energy problem, there is a project to bring electricity from Morocco with windmill on the coastline and solar panels in the Sahara. Only 5–10 % of the electricity would be lost during the transport and it could provide energy to all Europe” says Bronner.

The LNV helps county administrations create landscape conservation unions and mediate nature conservation actions between towns, farmers and conservationists. It also tries to convince the state government to provide funding for every county to have his union. Since there is an increasing demand of space for infrastructures and settlements, the LNV ensures the efficient use of the scarce urban land and abundant cheap rural land. “In the countryside, we try to integrate agriculture with nature conservation. We try to make farmers have a more biodiversity friendly and still economically viable management. We need to change the policy and get away from the current agri-environment scheme which subsidizes farmers on a hectare based evaluation”, Brönner says.

To control the implementation of impact compensation in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the LNV is also creating a system where all compensation measures are documented.

Once per year, in autumn, the LNV holds the “Zukunftsforum” or translated “Forum of the Future”. The aim is to bring different stakeholders together to discuss about pressing issues: last year’s conference, for example, they discussed about the declining insect diversity. Two years ago, the forum was about environmental education and the LNV tried to convince the local government to put back the basic identification of plants and insect families into the school curriculum.

“In the forum we promoted so called Naturpark schools which are primary schools in the south of the Black Forest where children go outside and learn practical subjects about nature. Pupils also meet rangers, foresters and carpenters to widen their view on the world”, says Brönner. “Nonetheless it is difficult to create these schools because teachers lack training about nature. Thus, they are afraid to go out of the school because of security and responsibility issues. Not to mention the difficulty to get parent permission and logistic funding. Another problem is the lack of experts in various conservation fields, people who know the insect or plant species. This is mainly due of the low wages in this sector.”

LNV’s role at the national and European level

As mentioned before, the LNV is a state run organization. Nonetheless, at the federal level, the LNV is part of the “Deutscher Naturschutzring” (translated German nature conservation ring) organization which assesses and shares the most efficient policies and practices among states.

“The Deutscher Naturschutzring regularly publishes reports and organizes meetings, so there is a communication between Federal states. A good example is a recent study searching for the best conservation regulations among states. We submitted the best ones to the Ministry of Baden-Württemberg and some were added in the state law.”, Brönner says.

The organization reminds the state government about their commitment to European environmental laws such as the Habitat, Birds directives and Natura 2000, in extreme cases it can complain to the European court of justice in Brussels.

To conclude, I would like to remind all of us that “alone we go faster, but together we go further “.

If we want our Earth and people to go far, we will need to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize partnerships. Organizations like the LNV are already doing this, enhancing cooperation between different stakeholders and acting for sustainable development and use of Central European landscapes.

Written by Thuan SARZYNSKI

The post Inside a German Organization of Nature Conservation appeared first on Global Change Ecology.

This is how Martin Abelmann and green citizens of the city of Stuttgart in Germany created the project Stadtacker. Their goal is to give small pieces of land to city dwellers who want to grow veggies and fruits by themselves.

They are not the only one who want to grow food in the city. As more than 50 % of the world population is living in urban settlements, many projects worldwide are flourishing to bring food closer to people. This trend is called urban gardening.

Urban gardening is not only about growing food to feed the near 8 billion earthlings, it’s also about creating a healthy environment, improving people knowledge about Nature and building a sympathetic community.

On an Abandoned Land © stadtacker

The space humanity needs on Earth is increasing so cities are becoming a new home for insects, birds and small mammals. Organic gardens are a biodiversity friendly habitat as fruits and veggies are greatly appreciated by wildlife. Moreover the countryside is saturated by dangerous agricultural pollutants and doesn’t supply enough resources anymore, therefore cities may be a good refuge for biodiversity like bees and pollinators.

There are many benefits of gardening in the cities. They improve people life with small services such as air filtering, temperature cooling and CO2 absorption. Thus, they reduce greenhouse gas emissions by shortening the supply chain; food doesn’t travel thousand of kilometers anymore, instead it is produced locally and eaten directly by the gardeners.

Whoever Can Grow Their Food © stadtacker

Did you know that carrots grow in the ground and not on trees ? I hope yes, but imagine young children who were born in a city and never had the chance to go farming in the countryside. I guess, nowadays they are many who don’t know at which time of the year strawberries are grown or on which tree zucchinis are grown. Urban gardening is an opportunity for these children to learn about the food they eat. Even adults may not know how to seed and then thin carrots. Urban gardening makes people aware about the resource and labor needed to grow food. City dwellers are running further and further away from Nature and they are sadly forgetting the basics : food.

“During the sunny season, we meet weekly every Sunday afternoon. We talk, we ask advice about how to grow this and that. We make friends. Sometimes in the summer, we organize events like music concert, workshops etc.”

As Martin Abelmann highlighted, a community garden is a meeting point. Neighbors meet, talk and have fun. They exchange their know-hows and recipes, the garden becomes a school, a school of Nature, a school of Life.

The green area also encourages the new formed community to participate in the city development and planning. It becomes a place to create planning alternatives, a place to defend environmental ideas, a place to strengthen democracy.

“The gardening area is threatened by a housing building project and even if our garden got a city award and a United Nation price for the decade of the biodiversity, we still need people to militate. We need to show that such a green place managed by citizens has a higher value than building houses. Through public awareness, we hope to be able to keep this green area and continue to grow an environmentally friendly community.“ Martin Abelmann

Written by Thuan SARZYNSKI

The post Picking Fruits and Greening Cities appeared first on Global Change Ecology.