 So I guess we can get started. So welcome, everyone, to this fireside chat with John DiLiu, the founder of Ecosystem Reservation Camps, and Piero Franco, all the way from Matera in the south of Italy, manager of Camp Rocciaviva. John, would you like to start with the message or with some music? No, I don't think the music is. People said they couldn't hear it, so I'm going to avoid playing and spare you that. So you won't throw shoes at the screen or something. Hello, everyone. It's great to see you. And I actually have a fire today. That's different. It's a real one, not a virtual one. So that's also nice. I'm coming to you from Kansas. This is the home of my sister and brother-in-law and my mother. My mother is staying with my sister and brother-in-law. She's 103. And we have just survived COVID. So I came for the holidays. And when I got here, they were positive. And I became positive as well. And we all survived. So that's nice. I think the most important thing to realize is that we need to be grateful for everything. And we need to be in love with the earth. And we need to be kind to one another and work together. And it's so great to see what's happening with the camps movement. I'm getting ready. As long as I stay healthy, I'm going on Thursday to Kentucky to the Appalachian Renewal and meet Clifford Smith, who's been developing that for the first time in person, although I've been talking with him for several years now. And throughout the COVID epidemic, pandemic. And interestingly, I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. And this is just a little ways away from lovely Kentucky, where the Appalachian Renewal Camp is. And he has 7,000 acres. And it's about the work of the camp is about mountaintop removal. But it's also about the society and the community around there, which has been kind of depressed and in extreme poverty. And they have quite a lot of problems. So it's going to be exciting to think about this. And the ideas, which I've spread for a while about central kitchens, creator spaces, and cultural stages are all coming together in many camps. So Appalachian Renewal is one of the camps, which is working on central kitchens and creator spaces and cultural stages. And I think that's really important to keep up the spirit. So it's going to be hard for us. There are several issues that we need to think about. One is that in many parts of the world right now, there's going to be famine. I was talking with the World Food Program and their projections because of the war in Ukraine and with Russia has disrupted some of the industrialized food crops that mainly go to the Middle East and Africa and some other countries. And so there's going to be quite a lot of famine. And in the past, in the 80s, what was done, if you remember the food aid concerts and things where everybody was very worried about Ethiopia and other places, this started a movement to feed the people with this industrialized food. And from the United States, the United States sent genetically modified soy cornmeal. And this is not a very good food. I mean, it's not a food that I would want to eat, really. And also, this is not allowed to even be sold for animal feed in many parts of the world, for instance, the European Union. And so after many years of that in the early 20s, I was sent to Africa to share the lessons of the Liz Plateau with the Africans. And what happened was that somebody else's got not muted. But what happened was that the analysis there at that time was that having had food aid for 20 years had massively disrupted the agricultural systems in Ethiopia and destroyed the agricultural markets because free food is always less expensive than food that you buy in the market. So there was no market for locally grown food, and there was no incentive to grow food. And at that point, it could be me. Sorry. At that point, the problem was that millions of people were hungry, and they had been fed for 20 years. And the international community was spending about $380 million per year on food aid. But it wasn't changing anything. So they transitioned to something called the Sustainable Land Management Program and took the food aid money and paid the people to do restoration. Now, this was over 15 years ago, and there's quite a bit of data now on what happened in Ethiopia. Now, it has not worked well lately because of the, I think, in a sense, it was successful because it made the land more valuable and then the ethnic groups began to fight over the land. But what we need to see is that people by themselves can restore very large areas. And so while we're studying and working in small places, we really need to broaden our perspective and understand that the real task is to restore the earth and that everyone has a role to play. So it's nice if we get our communities and our families as resilient as possible. But really, the task right now for human civilization is that we do this on a planetary scale. And I think it's also very, very interesting what we're going to hear today. Because what we're talking about also is the impacts from very long historical time. And so this is what you're going to learn about today is that the places which have been degraded for a very long time can be restored. And it's a restoration not only of the landscape, but it's a restoration of the human spirit. It brings us together to make us happy. What makes us our efforts now serve our children and future generations. And it's what gives us satisfaction and lets us live in joy, even though it looks like if you read the news or listen to the news that everything is falling apart. But when you go out and look at the nature and the earth, you realize that there's really nothing wrong with the earth. The problem is human beings and human civilization. So we just need to do a better job. And that's really all I had to say today. I hope it's useful for you and that we can have a great talk. And I'm 70 years old, sitting in a nice warm place. So after the fireside chat, we can just keep it going with a little fireside conversation afterwards, if anybody wants to. So thank you so much. Back to you, Christina. Thank you, John. That was such a great introduction to Camcacha Viva. And before I will leave the floor to Pietro, let's just share some news from the movement. So I will share my screen. Here we go. So moving forward, just a reminder about our household rules. It would be great if you can hold your questions until after Pietro's presentation. You can either put them in the chat if you're a bit shy or if you're in a very loud and crowded space. Or we're very happy to hear from you and hear your voice. So you can ask your questions in person by raising your hand through the Zoom settings. And then the discussion would last about one hour. But as John also just said, you're welcome to stay for other questions and the longer discussion. So here are some events from the camps, next camp experiences and courses. The first one is in California, where Camp Fire Restoration Project is organizing several different events. We have one workshop on the 14th of January and two webinars, one on post-fire watershed restoration and resilience on the 16th and the other one on green building. So we will all learn how to build buildings with cobs, straw bales and other natural material. And this one is happening on the 10th of March. Another camp in California, the Bird House, is also organizing a workshop on the 14th of January on Art and Ecology Day. Moving forward, we will go all the way to Ireland now, where Camp Charles-Pakli will be running a course on how to develop the local food hub with the support of your ASMOS-PLAS program of the European Union. And it's going to be very exciting. Yeah, bless. I'm on, okay. So when you're ready, you're welcome to come. There will be leaders such as Vandana Shiva and John the new joining. And then we will go to Spain, another European camp, Camp Antiplano, and this planning a tree planting event. And then opening day at La Conquera Farm on the 18th of March. And plus, there is an ongoing opportunity to volunteer to plant trees until May this year at Antiplano. And you can check our website for further details about all these experiences, not only at Antiplano. And Embercom in England invited to their introduction to a wilding experience running from the 21st till the 23rd of March. And finally, last but not least, Green Pop in South Africa, that is getting ready to organize the next forest fest, which is an amazing and amazing event with dance and lots of fun and music. And of course, thousands of trees to be planted. It will take place very close to Cape Town in South Africa, just two hours and a half drive between the 7th and the 10th of April. Moving forward to the camp news, again, Altiplano, they're getting ready to host six volunteers, which is not great news because Altiplano has been hosting volunteers for a long time. But this time, the difference is that they are doing so through the European Solidarity Corps program, which means that the volunteers will be completely funded by the European Union. And also the camp will have some expenses covered. And this is a great opportunity. They will have people working almost full-time on the site and it will hopefully really impact the landscape. So congratulations to Altiplano for making this happen. And then Kings Garden in the Netherlands, that planted 86 trees last Saturday to create a habitat for three warblers. And then a new camp joining the movement, the Corcovada Foundation, a great initiative from Costa Rica, which also adds a new country to our map. Costa Rica is a new country and yeah, it's a great project. So we're very excited about this cooperation. And all the way now to Kenya, where Coromiri there that has been planted, planting trees in this autumn, managed to plant 14,000 trees in just two days with the help of the local community and volunteers. And also their planting efforts are still going on because there has been some unexpected rain. So this is also very good news. And finally, just a few impact numbers from 2022 from the full movement. In 2022, we have been working to restore over 3 million actors globally. Nearly 3 million trees have been planted at our ecosystem restoration camps. And the year CS provided a transformative experience to more than 21,000 individuals, which brings me to our next slide that is going to movement, exporting as and invite your colleagues, your friends, anybody who might have an interest. And perhaps hasn't heard from us yet or maybe could be interested in joining as a supporter. And thank you to all of you who are already supporting us. So now I would leave the floor to Piero. Are you ready, Piero? Yes. Great. Let's move down to the first slide. As I said at the beginning, today we have Piero all the way from out there in Italy, Basilicata region, Matera specifically. And he will talk about Roceviva, Campo Roceviva. Hello, everyone. First of all, I want to thank John for this opportunity and also for his message, initial message. And then Yang Heung that he's been following my presentations for ages. So I think, but you will know it by heart. But I'm happy that you are here. Then I want to thank all of you for the work we are doing. I think we are connected even though I, maybe I will probably never meet all of you, but I think we are connected deeply in the work we are doing. So thanks everyone as a human, I say thank you. And then, yeah, Christine, of course, that she came here last week, I think. And it was really nice to meet her in person. And I want to thank you, apart from our work, especially for the hope that we all carry. And then I think it's the most important thing. We don't know how things will go, but the thing that we keep that this hope, I think it's really, really incredible. And while Christina was here, maybe three, four times a day I would ask her like, Christine, are you ready to do what? To save the world. So I think I feel that I want to do all I can. And I'm really working hard, I think. And so I'm really happy to introduce you to our camp. I'm the camp manager and I created the, it's an ONG. It's called Rocha Viva. It was created seven years ago in theory, but practically we're been working for the last five years. We're being active on the territory. And I chose this photo because it's after day work, planting trees, and then we all sit down and share what we felt during the day. That's me in the photo sitting there. And then, yeah, you can keep on with the next slide. I think we have a short video I want to show you. It's in Italian, but with English subtitles. I hope you can, I hope you enjoy it. And thanks, Christina, for your help with the sharing. Together with this community Together with this community You will never be alone Together with the Poscot Together with the Pocotonale Together with the Pocotonale Together with the Pocotonale And change! Change! Change! Rocha Viva is here. We are the Rocha Viva Association. As you can see, we are on the ground. Well, our project with all the trees that have been planted and we are planning to plant them. We planted an area of land and we planted water. We planted a little bit of solar water which takes water from a well and goes down with a tube up to the cistern which is filled with water. And as you can see, so many small tubes as we planted the trees in line accumulation lines and abundance lines and abundance lines are the trees that grow together with the middle trees and the small shrubs. The accumulation lines will be the ones that will grow very quickly and we will be able to eat the other trees during the years. The species of plants are endemic. We have corbezole, phillirea, juda, bagolaro trees and many others. Today is a beautiful day. We are here to plant the trees. It's a wonderful sun. We are going to be young. We are so many, so many of us, and we are building a forest. And this makes us really happy. Come with us. I have done a lot of things together with my husband, with my daughter, with the people who live here. I think it's a great opportunity. What we want is that this enthusiasm can continue to grow and to be able to reach as many people as possible. That's our video. It's a short thing of what we did maybe it was two years ago. And as you could see from the images, most of our people are locals. So that's really, it was really a surprise for me when I came back because I studied abroad for 13 years. And then I chose to come back to my land and start this project. And I was really surprised because after one year being here and feeling kind of lonely, kind of saying, ah, in the south of Italy, a small city, maybe I will never find people who think like me. But actually, slowly I could meet so many people that were traveling all over the world and they decided like me to come back. So now we are a network of 40 to 50 people working in different lands and sharing apart from the work with trees and stuff, but also like the products we produce and it's like a spread community and it's really nice. And then we can host people from all over the world. You could see from the video, they were from Taiwan, my friend from Taiwan. So where we are, we are located in the south of Italy, you can see it from this photo. And this is our region. It's drawn like that. It's called Basilicata. And it's one of the region where they planted wheat historically. So since the Roman times, they've been cutting trees and basically now the landscape is only fields of wheat and crops basically with monoculture and there are no trees at all, almost. And the trees that are present on the territory, they're all planted, they've been planted in the 60s. So it's mostly pines and eucalyptus because they want you to do this fast reforestation. Unfortunately, the situation is really like a disaster because the soil erosion is really, really high. And you can go on with the slide. So why did I put the region, the entire region, because actually the lands we are working on, they are spread all over that region and even the Apulia region, which is the close region. So it's not only in Matera, but we have different lands all over the places and we're trying to connect all these lands and create a unified project. So this is the landscape in our region. And you can see there are few lentisco, I don't know the English word, these kind of shrubs and it's the Mediterranean shrubs. They manage to grow but you can see these white areas. It's like desert. Basically, we call them Kalanki and it's basically sand. So all the clay part of the soil, it went down to Valle and it's the only place where we can, where we could plant like oaks but maybe in 10 years time because now it's, most of the work is to rebuild the soil structure. So we keep on planting these shrubs and the Mediterranean bushes basically. So we have a lot of, a long period of aridity. Most, mainly it's like from May to October with no rain, maybe one day or two day rains and all the problems that go with this. So we have a high soil erosion because of over-exploitment and the biodiversity loss is huge. Of course the water is scarce and it's polluted because all the farmers are using a lot of chemicals and it's difficult to, because most of them it's an old population. Young people, they all left apart from us. So it's difficult also culturally and socially to make a change but it's, I want to see positively and potentially because really the potential is huge here because we talk about big owners of lands and most of them they have no young people to give the lands to so they maybe donate them to the church and so it's a really high potential of spreading into like ecosystem restoration. Christina, can you go on please? Yeah, so what is our mission? Our mission is to cultivate well-being like and social and environmental regeneration. I chose these photos because this was an Erasmus Plus program and we had like 20 people from the States helping us plant trees and so it's nice that we can start to collaborate even internationally thanks to the contacts I have also because I was living 13 years abroad so and it's getting bigger and bigger with this hospitality we like to have people here we try to find places to host them and it's nice when we work all together and so the thing that I was also telling John last time we met is that the beautiful thing about our project is really the networking with local people so we have collaborations with a lot of ONGs NGOs, sorry, in Matera but also in the Italian territory and a lot of young people wanted the change so we are really trying I think more than planting trees and restoring ecosystem we are also we are focusing on this we are focusing on creating projects and community and to become big in that sense so if we collaborate then really we can for example looking for new lands and it doesn't come from one individual or one organization but it's like a lot of contacts can you please go on so yeah the main activities are based on working on the territory, reforestation of the graded areas expanding ecosystem restoration so also the managing of water soil enrichment I will show you later what we're doing in detail spreading permacultural values so we host a lot of experts of permaculture institutes in Italy for example Saviana Parodi or Marc Mer even Jeff Lothan had a quick visit here we work in collaboration even with Iniazza Schettini who was the one translating the Bill Molyson book in Italian and we host courses basically permaculture course the official one but even weekends where we go in different lands and we can do like eco-building or like how to recognize wild plants, edible plants and things like this so we have a lot of opportunities educational and cultural opportunities for the communities and for the visitors and this is a photo of one month ago when 65 people came over a business they donated to the NGO and they came to help us so it was an army of people and it was only me organizing everybody it was crazy but it was fun and I was rewarded so you can keep on the slides so this is the let's call it the main camp so I would say our experimental phase started four years ago we planted on this hill the red circle here and we planted around in two years time we planted 7,000 trees only year you can see there were already shrubs of wild pear trees and other shrubs but we we really created it's the land you could see in the video and yeah, we used different techniques to plant one it was with irrigation system because it's too arid to try with no water at all but we also tried with the little swales and guilds of trees around the big trees you can see here on the photos so we call it like mother trees and we would plant around them so we could we could have a little bit of shade and we could have a little bit of yeah, spreading seeds also so the second year we were focusing on this circle up here so we were planting half of this land and so this is the experimental phase it lasted until last year you can keep on so this is a business called Maseriala Fiorita and I was working here as soon as I came back from my travels I was working here for five months and then I was on the owner's back for basically five months I was working there telling him we should restore land we should restore land we should restore land and so I was so fed up with my words that he said okay Piero, take five hectares of the water you want and so we started the project there and yeah so this is a photo showing you a guild basically we would dig a trench like a sway and then put the bag all the soil on this side and we will put a bio roll like pruned branches of trees on the side then we would mulch with straw or we would even use like paper it depends what we have availability and then we choose four to five different species of trees and we put them in between the soil and the bio roll and the soil they were given water some not and we try to see what works better I also like this part of our work is the research so every year we go to the land and we see what species they survived what kind of soil, how did it change so it's beautiful because I'm a scientist as like my for me my background I'm a marine biologist so it's really nice for me to have this research part and this is the first time this second photo is the first time that I saw flowers on a tree that we planted it's a I don't know the English word for it I can write it down later and it had these flowers and I had to take a photo of it so insects were coming back and all the birds as well yeah so you can you can go on yeah so this is our other photos this is during so as I told you we were organizing permaculture design course so we hosted it two years ago it was a 17 days course we were living in this farm and it was there were like 20 people participating plus us we were six organizers and we were four facilitators from the permaculture institute and during that period that was in autumn we planted lots of trees it was the beginning of our planting season and you can see it from the picture and this is the same Viburno the time we planted it the one with the flowers later you can go on so the conditions are really tough because the soil you can see the soil it's like no covering and it's really sandy in some areas and really dry so what we do we create huge bioreal like this photo we can reach the organic materials of the soil and then we would collect we would collect lots of lots of stones to make like small hills of stones that they would accumulate humidity during the throughout the year but especially during the dry season so at night all the humidity would condensate on the stones and that give it to the tree the small tree if we have no opportunity to give the water and then every time we and then every time we plant trees we throw a lot of seeds all kind of seeds this one I have in my hand they are like leguminosa and cereal crop tree so we would host the bacteria the seeds from for example wheat they host a lot of like micro microorganisms inside like they can host we call them like small cells that can host a lot of microorganisms and then if you plant them together with leguminosa they can fix the nitrogen and then they can start the same symbiosis with the plants and they can enrich the soil so we would spread the seeds during the autumn season then in spring if we can we can go back there and then cut and mulch the soil yeah you can keep on and then sometimes we would do really huge holes and we would fill them up with a lot of stones and we call it like accumulation holes and we would for example do a big hole on the top side of the hill and then we would start planting gild of trees below so all the water accumulated in that area would slowly go to the soil and this is all the photos from our per-cultural design course and the nice thing is that after four years three years that we did we're still all in contact we all communicate with these people so it's nice and they're from all over Italy you can go on please Tina yeah so this is an example of lines of trees as you can see so we would do the swale then we use wool to mulch this time and when we can we put an irrigation tube what we try to do is not to buy new irrigation tubes because it's plastic but we try to ask the farmers if they have them and then we try to use them all over the years it's not always possible but we try our best and then we use irrigation system where we know that the soil is really really sandy so it needs water otherwise all the waters go with all the nutrients to the valley and we have no opportunity to make the tree survive and yeah so this is another day planting all together and this is the hill I showed you on the map which is also in the video okay so after the experimental phase that I talked about we had phase one of the project which was this autumn so we had two locations so I chose two areas one is the same one Maseriala Fiorita but the second circle red circle I showed you on the map before and we planted one actor and then the second location it's a small town 45 minutes from Matera also still in the region and there we reforested two actors and the new thing that we tried this year is to plant 1000 fruit trees in that land that we will manage all together as a community so we will collect the fruit and then make jam for example or in many ways so it's the first time Rochaveva plants fruit trees and I hope it will go well we are really happy for it I will show you the photos of the Christina visited with me it's really beautiful work we did and so in total this autumn sorry I didn't translate total of plants planted it's 4000 for this year so this is called face one and then we had novelty we restored a lake so it was already there but it was empty it was so arid that it lost the water and it was full of shrubs so what we did we cleaned it we compacted more clay on the bottom then we planted a lot of seeds we found it and we hope for the best because we didn't know if the bottom of the lake would would stay with the water so we didn't know if the water would be collected or would go to waste as it happened in the past and it worked so you can go on maybe add some photos and Christina when she came she had the luck that it was our first day to see the lake full we were really happy so this is the what we did in Ophido the other land I told you it's two actors with the 1000 fruit trees and you can see it was really beautiful work this we have no irrigation system but we use the key line the key line project I didn't hear it was a microphone question something is happening with the audio can you hear me clearly I can hear you I can hear you well Peter now now I think there was another microphone open so as you can see we use the key lines basically a key line is a swale which follows the slope and it allows the water to be collected so that the water goes from a place where it's normally collected to a place where it's arid and it's not collected at all and so you can see that there are maybe like the land goes on we couldn't take it in the photo of it but it's like around 30 key lines the key line has maybe 20 species of plants not only trees, plants so we plant like shrubs we make the covering of grass of different species we have medium size fruit trees we have ox if the land allows it we have all kinds of species and then we take official plants like the insects like the plants that attract all the insects berries it's difficult with berries because you can see it's all exposed to the sun we have no shade but yeah we try with the more rustic ones at the beginning maybe during the years we can keep on adding up and I think this is a it's really and it's also really difficult land to reach you cannot go there by car you have to walk so to transport the trees the cisterns, the mulching the straw it was really tough work and we never used machines until now it's all volunteer so it was huge and I hope in five years time we will have a forest there, an edible forest it's amazing and you can see the lands around it it's like almost desert yeah you can go on yeah so this is the same thing taken from another so you can see all these key lines and normally because this part of the land, the downhill land is richer in soil here this area we planted all the fruit trees where you see like this kind of triangle yeah you can keep on now you can see the area is really beautiful with all the small villages on the hills and then you have some kind of some kind of woods there it's the first town that gets some trees around normally around Matera there are no trees at all this is the project with the lake you can see on the right side in the photo this man is kind of a guru for us he's amazing he can do all kinds of building, eco-building he knows a lot of plants he observed nature for many many years he's called Jean Claude and he helps us mostly with the permaculture design and what species to choose how to work is really nice man so this is the project with the lake so you can see this area it was originally a lake as I said so we cleaned it up and then we put a tube because when the water is too high then it would be collected in the tube so we replanted also a fruit tree garden so and then the next autumn we will start replanting the third circle it was on the map at the beginning of the slide which is a hill down here in the lake so the water from the lake we will use it down there to water the trees and you can see the difference between the owner's land you can see green around and like far away in the photo you can see the soil the soil condition up there is the neighbor and it's normally the lands we have here so it's really a disaster and imagine in this area really behind the lake you have an ancient source of water it comes from the depth of the land and if it was for that neighbor it would already be destroyed but luckily the owner of this land owns it and he appreciates that it's there because it gives life to his business and his farm and what we told him is like to protect the source of trees with special roots not the one that goes deep so we can protect the source because in nature all sources must have shade so it's the first thing that nature does it's to cover the sources of water because for a matter of magnetism the water when it's in the shade it comes to the surface it's a long talk but we can discuss it and you should really look for the fourth phase of water by Pollock it's an amazing book about water discussing all this stuff yeah so this is the preparation for the lake that were done in November and then we wanted to wait for the rains to fill it up there were no rains today it's the first day it rained after two months so unfortunately we couldn't have this result as we wanted but because what we did it's not only clean up the lake but we also dig two trenches to collect water from the rain and unfortunately I don't have the photos of them because they're quite in difficult places to go and they're really close to the lake so they follow the slope it's like a key line and then it would bring the water from the rains inside the lake I hope they will work in the future when it rains I hope and yeah thanks Cap yeah you can go on with the photos so this is the lake after two months we were really really happy you can see Christina in the photo it was really nice to go there that day for me and so you can see the small red tube coming out of the lake how did we fill it up we already had the first time we intervened in this land we had a digging a canal to bring water from the source to the farm and to the forest we planted so we still had some tubes below the earth so what we decided to do is to open up this canal and fill up the lake with this water so it's still the water from the source which is behind the lake but we filled this up and now it's still kind of how do you say like stuck water but we will soon put some aquatic plants so they clean up a little bit and then I think with the rains because it will become higher than the tube so some of the water will go down and start like refilling I think we will dig another pond in summer down here so that we can use directly to the water for the next forest we want to plant and these are two of my close friends and also now they are really active with me with Rocia Viva Group Pasquale and Serena someone speaking Italian was that a question you didn't tell me I was not the only one yeah we can the question later right? yes yes if there is a question we will keep it for later so you can keep on with the photos so and then it comes to this new project we want to do it's called Magnus Lucas Magnus is like big Lucas is the word for sacred wood so I call it Magnus Lucas because it's a project of restoration of ecosystems in the south of Italy and you can go on with the next slide and it's a collaboration between Rocia Viva which is my NGO Ecosystem Restoration Camps which is us and then plan for the planet Italy because thanks to Ecosystem Restoration Camps they are contacted by the manager of plan for the planet Italy and they want to collaborate with us so we are starting this project collaborating the three of us you can go for the next slide so the idea is to spreading to new lands with Cristina we created this map and so I already have the contact with several lands around it's a total of 60 actors that are already ready for planting I have already the contact with the owners and they agree with us and it's so the red ones are the one ongoing collaboration because what I did until now is to taking contact with the owners of these lands which are my friends and giving them trees and see how they work no problem if you have to go thanks to you and so what I did this year is I gave trees to them if they can manage to plant them and how they care for them so basically we have two of these red circles that we intervene and then the other four I asked the people living there to work on them and I didn't count the trees because I want to see the survival rate next year but still this creates a lot of like networking so they start trusting us if it's not my friends then their families and we can build on it so I give trees to them and go and check up they send me photos update me it's working so the red circles I'm sure we can work with them the yellow one are the 60 actors we are ready to sign the contract with the new owners and then together with the white dots we have a total of 200 actors already available so these white spots it's that I have contact with the owners they you're right the south is where you see the sea on the right side down the south yeah so these owners they are ready to work for us it's too much work for me now so I said no wait I don't have time and resources to keep on but as you can see the potential is huge next slide so what this is like what all the three collaborators will do I hope will do so how we will build this team and the ecosystem is on campus we know like we are supporting fundraising international networking courses and opportunities knowledge exchange with this fireside chat and also the group what's up group we have storytelling and communication and monitoring and evaluation Rocha Villa will be like more active on the territory organizing of courses and planting trees and research of new lands and the plan design and then plan for the planet will be like more well also research of findings and help with the planning of the of the lands and try to reach the institutions that ignored us until now yeah next slide if there is a next slide I guess this is the end yeah so this is the work we are doing until now it was all volunteer work I hope that we can make a step forward it means that at least one or two or three people from the NGO can be can get a proper salary and then we can actually the main idea at the beginning was to buy a land a big land where we could do everything there like a tree nursery research planting trees but then in time I realized that we have already a network of contacts and why not doing like one actor there two actors there three actors there instead of like being like obsessed by this having one land if it happens then it will be nice also to have one pole but it's nice that we have this dislocated areas that's it I hope I didn't it was not boring it was not boring for me and thanks for thanks for your listening thank you Pietro that was not boring at all presentation very interesting amazing work and I think I saw a few questions in the chat already for you I'm just moving back yeah thanks Scott for your posting this so Ode was asking most very trees Ode would you like to ask this yourself you're here or should I read your question whatever you prefer well yeah I just I was just commented when you talked about berries this because I know what it is to to be in a dry land and wanting to eat some berries at times I had really good results with mulberry trees like have you planted some of them not yet mulberry tree even with cuttings and in the middle of the swales in southern Spain where it's still yeah we have like six months of drought or seven this year has been eight so we had really good results with this just sharing that yeah we will try next autumn there is another question in the chat from Maria who owns the land and the trees or the lake so the it's people from the NGO so at the beginning it was my friends then slowly they become interested in what I what my dream was and then they become part of the NGO and then started saying you know I have this land what can we do on it and then the land when we started where we started the experimental phase and the phase one so the lake and the forest it was a land of an old man working on his own that he has never used the fertilizer in his life and he has really nice dreams in his head so I worked for him for many months and then he gave me like the use of the land so we signed a contract and we we signed a contract with them and then it's normally 25 years they cannot touch the trees but normally the lands we are replanting it's the lands that they don't use anymore because they're too arid the website it's in Italian and it's like or you have the the Roceviva camp page on ecosystem restriction sorry it's not the right one this one I see lots of compliments about the presentation it was very inspiring the IO we can all do like for example everybody going to our camp and then another camp and then another camp I can host you I can host you here are there more questions for Pietro? thanks Carl yes Jonathan Hello Pietro thank you so much for your efforts and your courage and your intellect and your heart and your yeah everything I've become much more enthused in particular because of John Lu introducing me to the common lands foundation and the need for collaboration on large scales to attract funding and that's led me to be involved with the bioregional activation movement we're trying to work on a bioregional scale I've gone from my small 120 acre project with really less than 40 acres of land to rehabilitate to dreaming into 10 million acres of an entire watershed and I have no idea how I'm doing this but I'm just piecing together local interested folks who have small parcels up in the higher reaches of the watershed where they have springs or they might have dry gullies that once had water and kind of dreaming into how do we we all collaborate bioregionally and what you said inspired me in that we can have small parcels we don't have to have one big collective ownership but they can be held in the commons they can be held privately they can be federal or governmental or NGOs holding the land but that we could have a bioregional plan that we're all receiving support financially from and I'm wondering if you're at all involved in a bioregional movement or if you're familiar with the bioregional activation groups I can get you in touch with them if you're interested I think it's it's great what you said especially when you think of like imagining for example I work with two actors here three actors there even if they're not too like connected and then you have these old people around seeing these young people coming in like we have this opidolucana land it's like 8000 people living in this town and then imagine they all know each other and they see a movement of young people going to the land working on the land and they're like what? and then imagine in five years time when all these trees come up they're full trees and then we go and produce so the old people they start thinking you know I'm old I don't have any nephew that want to work with me why not joining this movement at least my land is at the obsession to buy the land to own the land because it's too much work and you need a lot of resources you just need a really detailed contract in which you specify of course there will be obstacles and problems but it's natural to have them obstacles I mean it's part of the game but imagine if more and more lands they see the work and they're like wow why do they have water I don't have water why when it rains it rains on their trees and it doesn't rain on my land then slowly people change their ideas and then together with these organized courses they can participate people are curious when they see a change they're curious and then you can get them to and then the last thing you ask me it's like I'm getting in touch with the lots of Italian big national foundations like IMF they work with the forest medicine or like the union of agroforestry of Italy I'm getting in touch with them because they together with Plan for the Planet Italy we're trying to make big collaboration with these big entities because I think if we have a huge project all together then we can really struck into the institutions and it's happening but it's really slow I think it's easier also to intervene in small towns because even Matera it's like World Heritage Capital of Europe and even if it's like 50,000 inhabitants not that big but still it's really difficult to get into the institutions so what we do is we go to small towns around Matera and there it's easy to get to the government really easy because they all know each other so if you know someone from there it's my uncle and then you can you can work all together I think it's becoming bigger and bigger I need to be patient and I think it's coming everything will be done but for this bio it's like I also have this idea that the more lands we can restore then you can have like a green belt of the south of Italy because it's becoming really deserted and arid and then you have a bio area, protected area but for that we need the involvement of big entities and institutions with which we're trying to make contact I see Peter, I think it was first Yes, thank you I can turn on my camera I just wanted to comment on that because that's something I'm really involved in working on lately for southern Europe how to activate the water movement and these bioregional regions we were talking about and I'm assisting a lot John lately the last months and we've been also in touch with Rajen Tracing which is now moving the worldwide movement on this and it's been approved on the last COP 27 and so the idea is actually to help develop and support those bioregional groups to thrive so one thing that could be done is also to connect with this on the European Commission also there's a lot of things moving and now I've just read that article around that today that they've been approving that every country within Europe should work deeper on that so by overlapping all these different missions and getting all the information together I really think that we can reach good impact in a way that we are thinking about doing this too is like activating festivals bringing people all together so to activate the local communities because of course that's the important point no and so we could also spread the information on the watershed management and how many other things around that I work really closely too with the neuroecology team for some years and so we are also gathering and bringing ideas together so I'm really happy to just be at service and meet with you any other time and with John and we can maybe think more deeply around that thank you thank you we can contact I will contact you later okay thanks yes thanks Oud Peter yeah further on the same subject actually how do you get regions to change and I think what we saw in your presentation is you just got started you asked one person if you could have the space to do this in and you were given that opportunity we see the same happening in the Altiplano where of course many institutions were already working at the large scale trying to get everyone on board at the same time that once things got started locally more people started to move into that direction and in the Great Atlanta I think you're often dealing with quite conservative forces you keep what you have because it's so little now and I think you're dealing with the same problem in Italy and I'm curious I mean Terrell is in the call and he's trying to do it in France starting small reaching out to others in the area somewhere that by a regional concept where many of the smaller initiatives start to come together and someone connects to the governing higher levels if that's going to work very fast Christina who is Italian but she lives in Jordan knows that in Jordan there's quite a few initiatives and now they're slowly growing interest on the national level to see if that can be taken to that national level and that more resources can be put into changing the way Jordanians interact with natural environments as you are slowly starting to show in Italy that if you do make that change there will be benefits so I think at ERC we have the spiral model it starts with individuals who are courageous enough to get started they inspire their neighbors and slowly this movement builds to where hopefully national governments or regional governments start to become involved and this can go to a regional scale and some of the Coomeland projects have camps in them because somewhere the start needs to take place and then that example can help the rest of the project become more successful so I'm really curious how this develops and Jonathan if this is starting to work I think that would be an incredible lesson to share with the other camps around the world because they're all sort of in the same position starting and now wanting to scale up and most of them do it through inspiration and they're running into the same problem as you moment there's more than five neighbors interested how are you going to manage all that all that request that is indeed a challenge there so I think this is one of the main knowledge questions we have how to grow in practice so let's prioritize so if you learn and your example if you can get that written down somewhere we can start talking about it yeah I hope I won't lose all my air there already but I bet you showed you had more here but that's no but it's been interesting even like the relationship with institutions because they they look really interested I also like have a lot of contacts with them but then then it doesn't but it's I said like it's it's easier to start with small towns around and also the other thing is I really see the potential here because it's an old population here like everybody's leaving so lots of lands lots of abandoned lands lots of small towns with no you can create an economy or with these projects hosting people from it's huge so I can see this just has to go step by step as nature does I cannot accelerate this is capitalism I need to okay one step at a time and if we bring together all this huge network like a mycorrhiza the roots then we can boom it will we need to be patient that's how nature does it my serial networks you see that I see Nick with the sound raised I think I think I think that's a great presentation my question is if you can speak from the lens of rewilding what are your aspirations for reintroduction of fauna I know we're working in California we recently in the last few years have wolves back after 100 years and we have bears coming back after 100 years and I know Italy has both the endangered griffin and the bearded vulture and you have wolves so I'm just when I think of southern Italy I think of one big olive orchard and so I'm very excited to get a glimpse of what you're imagining thank you I was also telling Christina when she came it would be nice yes at the beginning to get the lens availability where we can but then in time as soon as we grow then start to create ales like green ales between one land and the other so contacting all the owners of the land between what we already own and then start to create these ales for animals and fauna this is a huge project I'm thinking of and yeah you're right this is a huge challenge especially here that no more vegetation but actually we have imagine that we have the only wolf here adapted to eat it's the only wolf on earth because there were normal wild boars in that it's a really it's like 30 minutes driving from here it's a valley and then the wolf started to eat porcupine because we can see it from the pool and actually where we planted all our trees recently they get videos on wolves coming back so the more we create the ecosystem the more we will have nature coming back we are lucky because close to Matera we have a natural reserve and with lots of different birds even the vulture you were talking about but the only thing I could do to to start this process is to plant like attracting insect trees at the beginning and then the all the berries for the birds and most of all this to manage water so if you manage water in a proper way then even the big mammals will come back for example in the in the lake like close to the lake to the source they have a lack of fountain and we could see with Cristina like Salamander it's the black ones really small one then they are really rare in the territory so as soon as you have like a small ecosystem nature comes back and that's what she wants so we just need to enhance the first steps and then the bigger thing we cannot really control I think it's out of our human control but you can do your part with small things at the beginning and then to connect all these lands that's what I can say and especially with all the agricultural things Waterman he says because it's crazy here everything is because they get paid by the government to have these crops and the crops they don't even sell them it's just a law so they have these fields and fields and field kilometers see the animals where to go and to hide so as soon as you have a green spot everything is there because for example this farm we are working on is La Fiorita there are a lot of bird watchers coming because it's the only place where you have trees so all the birds go there yes I was lucky enough to visit both Rota Viva and Lauters project and yeah I saw the same dynamics as soon as you recreate even a small tiny habitat much biodiversity and nature it comes back so quickly and you have all the southern birds that were not seen in the area for decades they're back so it's pretty amazing yeah even I showed you Cristina like there was a when you get to the farm there was like 5 meters 5 square meters area with soil and you have I counted them there were at least 9 species of plants including 2 big trees so in a really really small area that's because all the area around is full of diverse species and then they colonize even small species I see Antonia has a question would you like to ask Antonia yes thank you wonderful presentation very inspiring I'm actually calling from Sicily I'm here between Trappany and Palermo we did a seedball event about 4 years ago here there was a there's persistent fires and we organized a little mini camp to do seedball restoration so we're still waiting to see those results and now we're in the process of organizing a bigger a bigger development similar where there's an older family with a farm their kids are in the U.S. and we're trying to figure out how to go about doing a centropic agroforestry system on their land and I think it gets really complicated in terms of how to set up a business or something long term so I'd be curious to know how you set up the Societa or what it was for how you set up a land stewardship and we can connect more in that later if we don't need to go into the details right now yeah I can send you I can send you okay so until now we made like a simple contract with the owners we have because they're really close friends now so I trust them but if you want to spread from next autumn we are preparing a good like a really detailed structure document with the experience we're having with a lot of lawyers that we know and it's a network of people helping us to build up a document that yeah it's it's legally good and then it's good for both parts so we can share yeah I can share all the process with you if you want fantastic I appreciate it thanks everyone Peter? yeah I think some of us are ready for dinner but I have one maybe then the final question I don't know what Christina's plans are with you after this but I keep thinking about what Jonathan said and scaling up in your presentation you had the little circles the red ones you're committed to the yellow ones you are ready to have you be on board and the white ones you're thinking about and you sort of hinted at it your problem is your time and your resources so what is your dream? what can we do to help you achieve the dream so that all the circles become red and you can be active there because I think that's what you want to do but you're limited by time money maybe access to people what's the big dream? what is the future of Ratchadilla as an organization? Ratchadilla is a place that we could create really a green belt of the south of Italy with all these lands restored with even food production and places where people could meet up and do research on plants, on fauna and how to restore lands so it could spread like like that yeah actually I'm not worrying about the fundings and stuff I mean I'm searching for them so I'm trying to participate to fund raising and all this but what I want to do is like to see how much I can handle every year so this year for example with the 4000 trees we were able to do them in one month with no machines so that 4000 trees the first year we managed them in four months with no machines so we are improving more and more with our techniques the work, how we work with people for example the first year I would invite 60 people but then people that never had any tools in their hands but this time I like focus then I reach out the people I know that they can work well and then we go two hours and we work better first of all I need time to structure my work to see how I can improve what I do and limit the time so this is a permaculture value to maximize energy then I think the rest will come slowly because we are already participating to fund raising together with ERC we are participating to I'm asking for other projects how a plan for the planet is asking all the businesses in Italy to participate I think we can structure that but I don't want to even risk to have a huge amount of money and then I'm like okay I have all the resources I have people, I have even the machines I have the lands and everything but it's good that we had these experimental phases to see how we can handle it because my dream is not to plant two actors in one month but to be able to plant like I read before Cristina said 14,000 trees in two days that's my dream but to be able to do that you need a lot of social organization you need a team a really strong team you need time I have three jobs and then the rest is this project it's building up slowly and I think you are already doing everything Cristina is helping me so much so even the fact that she came here for me it was really good because it means that you care you really care for us and we I'm okay, I'm sure I will manage, I'm sure and if I lose all my hair no problem by the way in Italy we eat dinner at 9 it's 6.30 I know we're Dutch we eat earlier actually we're eating dinner in half an hour but that's late already for most Dutch people it's dark here, it's cold in Northern Italy where I come from also we don't eat at 9 depends where you are in Italy before the Dutch people here still the cooking has to start but I want to make a brief remark Piero made clear maybe we our projects themselves doesn't have to grow bigger but we have to inspire and reach out to even conventional farms to shift their agricultural practices and since we are very much in this same European Union partly for this audience and this common agricultural policy what in the past has been having had very bad effects on biodiversity, landscape climate but as mentioned in Brussels things are shifting slowly but for the conventional farms it can become very important if they are filming per hectare they get annually for now the conventional cropping system which is monoculture cropping which is a disaster and it's most times not producing food for us as well as Piero said it would be very useful to have our agricultural techniques based on perennial systems on food for us systems being regarded agricultural systems and being funded the same way or even better so then the farmers don't get punished to shift from a bad system to a good system and I think in the Netherlands we reached a national level fitting within some manoeuvring with the common agricultural policy but we might start with each European country being in the zoom and in our movement to search for the best practises and to put pressure to get this for all member states involved so this is just a last idea I caught up after a very inspirational presentation Piero therefore I'd like to thank you very much and keep up the good work Thank you, I think it's something that we can because as soon as I tried even if I am like at the beginning I was trying a lot with the government and the institutions but I think as soon as we get bigger as a name even with the RC, collaboration with the RCM plan from the planet that in the south of Italy that works you know south of Italy maybe it's really difficult because it's really corrupted and people are like but when you get names big names they are like wow what's that the more we grow the more we have a voice unfortunately it's like that but we have to face the truth I see there is one question from John perhaps this can be the last one I wanted to make sure that everyone understood that Valter von Eckt was able to encourage beaver to return and so in a sense the food forest is actually a kind of rewilding because it encouraged the beaver to return there I also wanted to mention that in the last week I've had some conversations with Carl Pretorius in South Africa he runs just trees if you haven't looked at this you should go to just trees in South Africa and look at his tree nursery I think it's the best tree nursery I've seen outside of China I can say that in China there are some larger and somewhat more effective tree nurseries but outside of China this is the best tree nursery I've seen and he has in discussing with him he suggested that it would be possible for him to host a training course or have some apprentices from the ecosystem restoration camps to come down to South Africa or I don't know how long it would take a month or two months or three months to apprentice to learn the nursery techniques but this would be so helpful for many people and I think we would need to fundraise to be able to bring people who are in need of this to come down to South Africa and spend some time there he certainly has many years and decades of experience so keep that in mind and let's continue to discuss this if the main part of the fireside chat is over and anybody was interested thanks