 Welcome everyone to our fireside chat tonight. We are here with John Diliou and Alejandra from Yerstikor Kovado in Pasarica and yeah I know that John as usual has a message for us all perhaps we'll play some music so go ahead John. Well I don't think I'm going to play any music today it would be nice I'm enjoying playing guitar and piano here maybe we could ask everyone who's not speaking to mute and we could if when when you're gone oh my goodness can you hear me yes somebody muted me my goodness don't mute me but mute the other people perhaps so it's really good to be here and it's always good to see that the movement is growing around the world I'm still hearing a child who has a child with us anyway um hello Ed from Kent so um there's many things on my mind actually and I think it's probably true for everyone I mean I've said it before okay we have some Spanish speakers could we ask in Spanish to have a mute okay so um you know it's it's really a kind of hard time for a lot of people right now in the world there's quite a lot of anger and and violence going on and winter in the northern hemisphere is coming so there's also the changes in the weather so the people who are homeless or the people who are hungry or the people who are fleeing from from violence in different places are having a really hard time and I noticed that a lot of people kind of get into a mood where they're angry and and there we were I was just in London I spoke at a at a event in London and there was this enormous demonstration and people were very very upset and huge numbers of people came out but I'm not really sure exactly what that does you know if you if you if we all get angry and we march around I'm not sure it actually changes too many things but if we work in ecosystem restoration communities it can change the soil it can change the water quality it can increase the amount of water it can hold the moisture close to the earth and alter the temperatures on the surface of the earth and and go back into a natural cycle where the soils are replenished with nutrients and with microbial and fungal communities which are the basis of making the mineral nutrients bio available to plants and ultimately animals including ourselves so what I like to think about is that in making this movement and working with everyone in this in this movement we actually can do something that is is useful immediately to restore damaged ecosystems we were just talking with our colleague in Iran about the desertification in many places and that's how I started in this in this idea of studying and documenting and learning about about ecology was looking at desert systems and the systems I was looking at were unnatural deserts so they had not been deserts they'd been beautiful places and they were transformed into terrible deserts so what I learned then and that was about 30 years ago was it's possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems and from that time on I considered restoring large-scale damaged ecosystems to be more important than anything else that we could do and I've also come to understand that as an individual or as individuals we can't do what needs to be done we can only do it if we all work together and what I'm really excited about with the ecosystem restoration first camps and then communities is that what can happen is that more and more people join this movement and when everybody joins this movement then we're going to have a different a different outcome and right now when we look at the society and we see all these things which are which make us angry we're pretty worried about the violence and the number of people who are not being served by the society and the civilization that we have now and we can look back at that and understand what happened historically but really what we need to think about is what's the future going to be are we learning from what happened in the past or are we if we because if we don't learn the lessons from the past we're destined to repeat them and now we're seeing things that look like world war one and world war two and so for a very long time like a hundred years we're reliving again the things that that the society should have already learned and now we also have even more dangerous weapons and the the the impacts when I when I look at many of the landscapes I mean ancient persia comes to mind even that the concept of destroying the landscape to defeat your enemies is the basis of some of the destruction in those regions and maybe all of the destruction in those regions because it creates feedback loops which then alter the hydrological cycle alter the soil fertility alter the biodiversity and ultimately it collapses the ecosystem and then what we see is the civilizations that are in these areas where the the ecosystems have collapsed they're terribly challenged and so I think we're now at a place where it's been called the Anthropocene now and we we look at evolutionary impacts or we look at geologic impacts or cosmic impacts on on earth systems and now we're talking about that human impacts on climate on biodiversity on soil fertility on hydrology are equal to cosmic or geologic forces that's extraordinary we we have a negative impact if we're thinking of it this way but what I've seen and what what I think more and more people are learning is if you can destroy ecosystems you can restore ecosystems and if we all restore ecosystems the if we if we see that you can restore them the inference is we could restore all degraded lands on the earth so if we can why aren't we doing that and I would say that the reason we aren't doing that is really because we've been valuing other things we've been valuing materialism how do we get a bigger house or more cars or more airplanes or whatever it is that we want more computers or whatever whatever thing but now go and look at the dump and realize that everything that we're making is ultimately ending up in this trash heap and we can't even we can't control it it's out of control there's too much I mean imagine the archaeologists a thousand years from now are going to be digging around and when they get to you know like if you if you do if you're studying archaeology or many different subsets from paleontology to a number of things you make core samples and when you make a core sample then you bring it up and you look at the core you can actually see through sediment layers and put the time on what what what you're finding when a thousand years from now they put these cores into the ground they're going to find the toxic layer and they're going to say what what what was the civilization thinking at that time because there's all these persistent organic pollutants that are you know carcinogenic or you know never never disappear not biodegradable why would they create and then live in a place that is so unhealthy and so here we are six years ago there was a seven years ago there was an article written called earth restoration piece camps I'll I'll put the the link in here later if you haven't already seen it share it with everybody and then after that thousands of people started to say well let's make ecosystem restoration camps and now we had to create a foundation to do that and so that was six years ago and six years ago there were zero camps and the first camp was built in Spain and now they're 65 so when I consider this kind of development trajectory there could be 60,000 in five years or 10 years if we're serious about this because it looks like everywhere in the world people are willing to restore their earth systems because it's immediately impactful on their soil fertility on their hydrology on their productivity of their agriculture of their biodiversity and of their peace and well-being so I think we all should not think about protesting too much and I think we should protest or or name what's wrong but we shouldn't spend a whole lot of time on that we should spend quite a lot of time on bringing people together in peaceful communities to restore ecological function in a way which will help everyone and that can ensure that the children and the next generations to come have the safety and the peace that they need and ideally those people who are being violent look around and they say well maybe it's not a good idea to have this kind of thing we've learned more we're older as a civilization we're older as a species and we have consciousness what are we doing with this consciousness what are we doing to determine our intentions individually and collectively so individually if we say well I I think I'd prefer to work on the soil and the water and the vegetation and the biodiversity and the wildlife and having everybody live together in harmony that's better than saying well I think I'll work to get as much money as I can and take care of myself and and not worry about anybody yet we can do this if we all have the same intention and we all work together for the good of all so today we're going to hear about a camp in Costa Rica and there are some very interesting things in Costa Rica but I'm I have never been there I've been in in the region and I've heard a lot about it I've met one of the former prime ministers in conferences who told me that they have no army and they don't feel that they need an army even if they had an army what could it do if if giant other armies decided to invade them they you know they would lose so what what is the reason for the army what they need is peace and and they need functional ecosystems and I think that's what we all need so that's what's on my mind these days and I hope that that is useful and I'm sure you're going to enjoy listening to the camp in Costa Rica and I think right now Christina is going to tell you news about the whole movement around the world thanks for listening thanks a lot John thank you so much for sharing this message and yeah I agree with you and I'm personally super excited about the presentation tonight because the foundation is from Costa Rica and I believe as you say Costa Rica as a nation has a lot to teach us and to teach many governments around the world so I'm really looking forward to Alejandra's presentation but before that let's quickly share the presentation with the latest news from our global ERC movement second here we go and then we leave the floor to Alejandra so as usual just some house roots please hold your questions until after Alejandra's presentation or post them in the chat during the Q&A you may ask your question in person but you're using your hands and you can also put it in the chat if you prefer and the session is scheduled for about an hour but you can you can stay on for an open discussion later and yes please mute your mic until the Q&A now talking about the opportunities to participate and learn we have two great courses coming up the first one is the popular ecosystem restoration design course the 2024 edition the year the course is a five-odd year course and is presented in partnership with Gaia education it will start on the 10th of February 2024 so the year the course is idea for those who are new to the world of ecosystem restoration and would like to gain a general understanding of how our planet's ecosystems work important we are running a webinar next week on Thursday so the 23rd where you can learn more about the course and its context directly from the teachers but and you also have the chance to ask your questions and there will be former students and they call so it's a great opportunity also because we're offering a webinar participants a 20 discount which will not be repeated on the full course so register for the webinar and my colleague Kath will be sharing all the links in the chat the second one is the Embercomb rewilding course which has developed in partnership with ERC Embercomb and it's a nine-month learning journey that will keep anyone with the knowledge skills and also context to be able to rewire the plot of land so whether you want to learn how to rewire your garden or farms or grounds a local park just in general your full life this is the course because it covers it all and it's also very interesting because it's part online and part of this event can you please show yourself who we are hearing okay great thank you so yeah I was saying that it's part online and part residential and that also makes it very interesting as passion and we had some great feedbacks from last year's students in brilliance and parts of it coming down as you know but Rasta please mute yourself thanks John so yeah we're running the webinar on the 27th of November to tell you more about this course and again the link will be in the chat then moving to some volunteering opportunities uh with the ERC at our ecosystem restoration communities we have a wonderful opportunity at Alti Clano in Spain and this opportunity is completely funded by the EU solidarity program and it's for youth aged 18 to 30 but this is not the only one we have an opportunity for each continent and for all ages ERC is also looking for volunteers to support them with their monitoring and evaluation efforts and also other tasks that are key to the success of their of the restoration initiative and then in Brazil we have ERC Sinaldo Vale who is looking for both short-term and long-term volunteers for supporting the many many many projects they're running a few more opportunities we have another one from ERC Coromi River and Arakupo farm again in Kenya represented Coromi River last month during our last fireside chat and Arakupo farm is also another location that is run by the same ERC leader the same team and it's also in the same geographical area close to the city of Malindi so check also this volunteer opportunity and finally a wonderful long-term opportunity at ERC Corcovado in Bastaica where the volunteers will get the chance to support their activities in ecosystem restoration regenerative farming and community support and I'm pretty sure that after tonight's presentation we will all be dreaming of traveling to Corcovado and volunteering with Alejandra and the rest of the team and of course head over to the ERC dot earth for more details on each of these rewarding opportunities some news now from the movement so wonderful news from ERC Mombasa mangroves in Kenya mobarak and his team they received an enormous donation from climate partner impact in Germany to plant 100,000 mangrove seedlings and this is wonderful news then an event from ERC Kings garden in the Netherlands during winter the winter brought and sorry for my horrible Dutch pronunciation by a diversity week that is happening from the 26th of November till the 10th of December so this is an event for Dutch speaking earth restorers and for more details my colleague chat my colleague Kat will again share the link in the chat and also we're looking for someone for a great volunteer who is willing to contribute their basic admin and coordination skills to work with the global ERC movement and the ERC team so well this is an interesting opportunity because it will allow the volunteer to be in direct touch with some of the ERCs and to directly contribute to have them plant as many trees as possible so it is a remote position but it still has a direct impact on the ground and it's a voluntary part-time role that can be done from anywhere in the world so yeah send us your applications the time investment is about five hours per week for about three months and again you will find the link in the chat and let's now travel to Bolivia we are still raising funds with our partner organization Global Giving to help almost 300 families at ERC Chocaya the fundraisers will close next Thursday on the 23rd of November so these are the last days to donate and it's a wonderful wonderful project because the funds will help building six new concrete water reservoirs and six water infiltration lakes and channels all in the Potosi Highlands in the Bolivian Andes so each reason work and harvest about 30 000 liters to irrigate 200 agroforestry plots in the dry season and provide drinking water at schools so it's a wonderful project and with your help we can restore the ecosystem and natural function of the land and enable sustainable long-term solution for this vulnerable community link in the chat again check it out and finally we really need your help to grow so please tell your friends tell them all about our mighty movement and tell them to tell their friends and also tell them to donate to support our work and remember you can always stay connected with us and catch all of the updates of the ERC movement by following us on social media platforms and especially Instagram and LinkedIn so that's all from our side and I'm really really happy to leave the floor to Alejandra. Hi everybody well it's a pleasure to be here and definitely I'm very honored to be part of this community of doers and as John was talking about like how we like people's protesting but maybe not doing what they need to do I feel that there's uh you know people are looking for large solutions but the truth is that the small solutions are the ones that are going to make a difference and we're doing those small solutions on the ground and I'm very very honored to be part of this community of doers that are actually making an impact in their communities um because you guys definitely an area because you guys definitely an area that um still not going through like um tough the certification but we are seeing the impact of um bad management of soil bad management of erosion and uh the work that uh we're doing is definitely making making a difference and it's important that we um keep learning from these processes and that we understand that there are places places in the world that were not natural deserts and became um desertified because of our um mismanagement um and I'm really happy to be here with you guys uh I'm going to share uh my presentation did I say my name my name is Alejandra Monge and I'm the executive director of the Korko Foundation and see don't forget the um audio and yeah I got it thank you so much like I never knew that before so can you see my presentation wait you could also make it full yeah now we see it well okay okay so as I said my name is Alejandra Monge I'm the executive director of the Korko Foundation and I've been working with the foundation for like 23 years now pretty much have my life and the foundation is like my biggest passion and um my youngest song here here's Costa Rica um we're located in the southern side of Costa Rica so this area over here is called the Osa Peninsula and the Osa Peninsula in general including uh some parts of the um mountain range up here are considered some of the most uh biological intense places in the world and Costa Rica is a really really small place so well the country has only 0.03 percent of the world landmass it contains five percent of the world biodiversity and the reason of that is because um we are a bridge between South America and North America so mammals um and birds and all kinds of species moved between South Americans and North America through Central America and they many of them remained of course now biological corridors have been damaged so much that that is not a possibility but historically our country has a huge amount of biodiversity so every square meter in Costa Rica has more biodiversity than many places in the world and around 25 percent of the country in the areas is protected under national park systems or some kind of protected areas um and is the largest protected areas uh it is the largest percentage of protected areas in the world 13 percent um where in average everybody protects around eight percent and because of this Costa Rica is considered one of the most mega diverse country in the world meaning we have more species per square meter than many countries in the world for example Brazil and Colombia probably have many more mammals in general but because we're so small and we have so many mammals in in so little space we consider mega diverse so every time there's the destruction of rainforest in Costa Rica there's a little huge loss of biodiversity and as John said Costa Rica doesn't have an army since 1948 and we knock on wood we haven't needed that ever and it was a great decision and a strong decision by by a politician which shows that sometimes political decisions can really change the course of a country and in our case we invested all the money that we were spending on an army that as John said was not going to defend us anyway into um becoming um a more educated country bringing public education to many many people all over the all over the place and also providing um better social care for a lot of people it's not perfect it's you know we're still a very small country with a very small budget but we do what we can and at least we're not wasting it on uh weapons and going to the Curcua Foundation well our vision is to create thriving communities living in harmony with nature we know we're part of nature humans we're part of nature we can't think about a world where like humans do not exist i mean thinking about uh recovering every single square meter of land in the world might not be possible but we might be able to live in harmony with nature and see each other as part of um this web of um life that is um fundamental not only for the for the other species in the world but for us the foundation is a non-profit organization that has been leading conservation in Costa Rica we work with people to protect our natural resources so for us is involving communities is really really important in this whole process and our conservation programs are mostly based in the southern Pacific of Costa Rica where I show you um and and basically the reason why we did that is because the Osa Peninsula is uh so fragile and so intense and biodiversity and holds 50 percent of the biodiversity of the whole country so for us like keeping it pristine was is one of our priorities and this is uh this is gonna give you a little bit of a fun idea of like where we are and um where we are and um where we work I see the video was quite effective there's already people who are happy to say you want volunteers yeah that that is the the beautiful side of it right but the where we're working is the areas that are degraded right so this area is so beautiful and because it's so beautiful there's so many like international investors like you know big companies that want to buy land and and put a hotel in the middle of nowhere and say hey come to our eco development and buy all the people out and and develop everything so for us it's really important to work with the community to be able to help them generate um productive activities that can restore the ecosystem but also um help them have a uh uh a dignified living right so we've been um focusing on regenerative agriculture and community-based tourism that's why you saw all those tours which like all these people all those tours that you saw over there are tours that are in the hands of local people farmers um that because of because there's hoping that there's going to be tourism coming they want to protect their land but if tourism doesn't come eventually them myself so we're really trying to promote all this like local tours in the hands of local people community-based tours um that are actually going to be that can give people like the opportunity of staying in their land instead of like selling it to big investors that are going to destroy it and the other thing we've been working we've been working for 20 years in environmental education we've been working in ecosystem restoration in the last three years and holistic cattle farming which uh cattle farming in the area is very strong and it has caused a huge impact on um uh fragmenting the ecosystems and we've been trying to reach out to cattle farmers so that they can have a positive impact instead of a negative impact um so we've been promoting the nature solutions for community development and to do that we've been working with community members with local authorities with local businesses to promote restoration and training for sustainable tourism regenerative agriculture and holistic livestock management and and when I refer to productive restoration I know I'm sure you guys all know but yeah I'm just going to say just in case uh is the restoration of some some of the elements of the structure and the function of the regional ecosystem together with the productivity of the land so the idea is that uh the communities can still use and they can have farms that are actually welcomed in by diversity welcoming um uh in uh enriching soils and that kind of things and benefit in their communities and we're seeing also and I'm sorry for interrupting just a quick question are you still moving through your slides because oh you can't see it no okay oh to share your screen again oh sure okay let me see what what happened uh that sucks I'm like talking there like can you see that yes and that's if you go exactly presenter mode perfect yeah so um so as I said like we work it we're working with all levels of the community from leaders to government uh to local people just to like be able to learn share uh knowledge of like the different ways that we can do to nurture land to be more harmonious with the environment and I just said that so basically as part of our productive restoration we're talking about agroforestry and um agricultural tools like um eliminating all like agrochemicals and that kind of things so the first thing that we started doing was regenerative agriculture and we started doing that because of the pandemic we realized that the community where was like completely isolated uh they were um dependent on on tourism and when when costrica closed the borders they literally had no income whatsoever in no sources for food so some of them started planting some of them started fishing some of them started hunting which is legal in costrica um so we started uh promoting regenerative agriculture and and we thought about regenerative agriculture because it is a type of agriculture that focuses on restoring the richness of the soil by restoring the ecosystem under um under the soil fungi bacteria and micro fauna that lives um that live in the soil uh and they're essential um to enriching it and to make it more porous and to make it better at absorbing water and that kind of things um and so we've been promoting that uh since 2020 and um we have trained about 50 families to implement uh different projects in their farms some of them in the backyards of their houses some of them in the schoolyards some of them in their farms and right now about 83 hectares of land are producing food without using agrochemicals and respecting nature balance promoting like biodiversity product promoting like um the existence of several different plants in the same place instead of just thinking about monoculture um we we realized that promoting tourism as the only source of income because for the longest time we were promoting community-based tourism uh made the community very vulnerable to crisis like the covid and and now the climate crisis and one thing that is very important here is that just like nature we need to be diverse um diversity is nature's solution to uh sickness you know where there's many different plants uh you don't have the same attacks of insects and that kind of stuff it's the same thing when you have an economic activity if you don't rely on one single economic activity then you still can you can you can still be you can still stand up when like a crisis affects that particular activity and it's hilarious because I see it I see it in my yard um sometimes there's this bug that just like literally love these plants but leaves everything else alone so I know that if I have several different plants in my garden uh that's my my my um my insurance right something is going to survive because the whatever is eating it is going to eat what the whatever they prefer and not everything else but if you have only one plant planted for miles then you're going to have that insect just eat everything you have and the thing with regentic culture is that it helps local families produce their own food without needing to buy um uh agrochemicals it reduces the use of of agrochemicals in general it alleviates the economic situations of local families it reduces the pressure on natural resources because uh what we were seeing here in our communities was that people would be uh like their land their soil would like die because they were like burning it or cutting it down and so all the good soil was being gone and because we taught them a way to enrich their soil they don't need to expand they don't need to keep cutting they don't need to keep burning so it was um it was really really um wonderful how like we could help them become more efficient to be able to protect the rest of the land that they have and then um regenerative agriculture also has the amazing capacity of fixating carbon dioxide in the soil and providing um a viable ecosystem for many micro species to survive um so basically for communities is a great way to to adapt to climate change so for us it was really important to promote it um as i mentioned this is about promoting multiple crops um to to promote by diversity it's about reducing erosion and use compost for fertilizers so basically uh when we were in this huge crisis and everybody was talking about um how they needed fertilizers from Ukraine um we were like well we can produce our own fertilizers from our own farms you don't even have to go out of your farm to produce to fertilizers to enrich your soil and one of the examples that we had was we were working with microorganisms um that we would collect from the rainforest and we would like we call them a trap it's basically you put like some rice like cooked rice on the on the um untouched forest and the colonies of um of bacteria and everything get into the rice and then you put them in a in a place where you feed them and then you use that as a fertilizer and it's amazing and we had stories of people saying i had this tree for 20 years it never produced anything or my my uh my lettuce was never this big or my plants were never this big we had people saying i i did the test like i put fertilizer on one like the natural fertilizer on one and then i put the uh synthetic fertilizer on the other one and look at the difference like like the natural fertilizer what was double the size didn't cost them anything and basically was made with their own resources um so it is it is this is a great opportunity to reduce the impact of agriculture in the environment um and to keep communities engage and live in in good conditions and having a good health um and then we have um ecological restoration we've had a lot of uh activities uh working with people from from local people and people from all over the world uh helping the foundation to plant trees just in 2020 2020 no no that's that's not right um up to 2020 up to this point to this date uh our tree has planted about 4 000 trees in 2022 we have planted like 2300 um and these trees are grown to a point that they're big enough to survive and they you know but we're going to still care for them for the next three three more years um and we have volunteers as i said from all over the world hello my name is tayla and this is Philippe and we are planting trees today with the coca valley foundation and we are super excited we are gonna do 300 trees can you imagine that oh my god 300 trees oh so um did you guys could you guys see that you're yes yes okay um so um in the last project that we had uh we were working on um replanting around 383 3824 trees between 21 and 23 we had six restoration campaigns that included around 70 different types of um of um trees because we need to maintain everything very um by diverse as Costa Rica is but we start always with like the fast growing trees like the one you could see in the first in the first picture um our trees that actually have the capacity to survive on very poor soils that have been maybe cuttle farms or eroded by another reason or for like clear cutting and and we plant those and then we plant the ones that are a little bit more um sensitive to like to like poor soils or like too much sun or that kind of things um we've had in the last two years we had 58 volunteers that participated in illustrations and we had uh six camera traps installed for wildlife monitoring and so that's some of the things that our volunteers do they um help us um check on the cameras and kind of like be able to detect if there's like an improvement or an increase in in wildlife activity and this is the area that we were referencing this is a picture from restore and I apologize because this one is kind of blurred I took it from there too but you can see that what everything that was completely uh deforested now is growing back and of course not all the trees at the same size uh so it doesn't look as green as strong green as it um it looks for example word like it hasn't been touched but it looks much better and here in this area we hear this is an area that what we did was we limit limited the limitations uh we um reduced the the we eliminated all the cattle that was like getting in there and uh we are letting it um because it's so close to the rainforest we believe that the transit between um mammals and birds and this kind of thing is going to produce like a natural restoration so as you can see like this area is all um now restored and it's looking green and beautiful um and we're super happy about it and this is one of the findings that we had like a tapir or danta that is one of the biggest mammals in america um passing by happily um which we had not been seen in a while so that's how you can tell that um restoration helps and our next project is this finca sanjuan and as you can see it's completely deforested this is how the other four uh land looked before like no uh one or two trees here or there and lots of erosion as you can see here poor soils uh all these lines you here see here is the effect of erosion um on on empty is um empty lands and this is the land that we're going to be refreshed in and basically our goal is to refresh the 17 hectares uh basically we're going to have a density of around uh 750 trees per hectares and around seven different uh 70 different species and i know when everybody got there they were like oh this looks really bad so we're working on that and and what that what our volunteers are going to be doing is they're going to be planting trees they're going to be building fences to keep the cattle out they're going to be tagging trees and monitoring development so how much are they growing and they're surviving which ones are doing better uh they're going to be uh checking on camera traps providing advice sometimes we get volunteers that are very knowledgeable about different processes and sometimes where we fail somebody comes and says hey how about you try this and then we do and it works wonderfully so you know we love advice from people from other places in other countries with different experiences that might be useful for us and they also help us care for new planted trees and nurseries and then we have our holistic cattle farming which is kind of new but it's been amazing because the awesome thing about it is that um the area has a lot of cattle farming that has been degrading the land and that has been yeah fragmenting uh corridors and ecosystems and we got 10 um cattle farmers that when we show them like how they could do things better how they could like have an impact and protect their ecosystem and restore their water sources they were all for it and they were so motivated and we took them to see a successful project in the Caribbean side of Costa Rica and these guys came back saying we're all in and I don't know if you can see but um what Carlos here is who is holding is a map of his property and he has property that is like some corridors in here um some areas where where where he lived right and what he wants to do is he wants to restore all these areas for um rate for um secondary forest and he wants to create uh live fences and I don't know if you can see this but there's like numbers on each of these things and these things here are little um parcels where like the the the cattle feeds and the idea is that all these like areas are gonna have uh live fences planted by trees that they're gonna receive water in the different areas so that the cattle doesn't have to go to the to the river and by doing that they can also restore the river banks so it's a wonderful project that not also improved the efficiency of the of producing cattle but it also helps restore ecosystems in corridors fixed carbon and increase the income for the farmers and here what they're doing is they're measuring the capacity of the field to produce and then they can separate the fields in sizes that the farmers can guarantee that if they put all the cattle in the same place it can um it's gonna be able to survive and this is something based from like um um um mob feeding or it's based on like what um island savory from the savory institute um kind of like detected that was based on like the natural um the natural uh activity of roommates in Africa when there were predators when predators were gone then the the roommates had a different um activity but what if you put them like in in small spaces they will have like the same impact and as you can see for example here uh Carlos is saying okay so this area over here can be all restored around the around the river this is a this is secondary forest that I will keep this is an area that I can restore and this is areas that I'm gonna use for cattle because I'm gonna be more efficient and I'm gonna have a bigger impact um together this cattle farmer this cattle farmers own like about around 500 hectares and expectations that they will be able to map their lands and establish dedicated areas for cattle reforestation life fences and forest preservation we believe that because this is going to be so successful we're like totally sure that this is going to be so successful um that all other people is going to join and although you know many people is against eating meat I'm not a big meat eater uh but there's people that need to survive out of this and uh this is a way to help them do it in a smarter way and in a more eco-friendly way and to actually uh is not you know mitigate their carbon production and what volunteers do with and that is that they help farmers rewild river banks plant and live in fences and restore idle lands that are not going to be used because they are good they are able to to keep their their cattle in less space and these are some of the groups that we've had and then as I mentioned we've had a long-standing environmental education program uh kids are learning about how to plant to um produce trees how to produce their own food and this you know is wonderful people are so excited and what volunteers are doing there is they're teaching kids their experience they're talking about their countries and so with that helping them expand their experience their their horizons and thinking about like how the world might be different and from their little area and um they're helping environmental educators with activities and also their learning because it's also like a really great learning opportunity and also a really great learning opportunity of a new language right and since 2003 we've had we've worked with like more than 3500 children um and uh just this year we had 146 educational activities which are the only extracurricular activities that these kids have uh in their communities uh also besides that we also work with them uh Saturdays and other days to help them um catch up with in school so that they can finish school make sure that they can like um keep learning and finish their their high school uh because we know that the more resources you have the better you are with environment and these are some pictures uh here these are little researcher and here are kids um freeing uh sea turtles sea turtle babies so they're like seeing uh how they're freeing the sea turtles and um all these activities are based from our uh by a hostel which i think you saw some some shots over there on the video um and it's a very you know it's a very comfortable place people eat really well we have a bunch of local tours that are only available uh through us because nobody else sells them i mean if it's not for us like these people want to make a a dollar on tourism which sucks because like as i said like if they don't get benefits from tourism they will sell their properties to like big companies and become you know and become like big uh hotel uh developments and just so you just to finish i want to invite you like we're gonna have a okay so we have long-term opportunities for people that want to um participate with the foundation like for you know two or three months and um you guys can email me about it uh we also gonna have a reservation camp that's gonna be super fun uh from June 13th to the 27th and it includes transportation from from the airport in San Jose to the to the area which is far and room and board and all the activities except like optional activities because like some of the activities we have is like we have um well we have like some workshops about how to make bio inputs and vermicompost and that kind of thing uh some activities like tree planting some field lunches uh beach cleanups and then we have do we have this we have Kukua National Park which is considered one of the best national parks in the world uh it's very close to us so you can for an additional 110 dollars you can do that that that um that national park you can go dive in also which is also one of the traditional tours in the area you can dive in uh Canua Island which is right the best dive in in continental Costa Rica the best diving in the country is Cocos Island but that's a lot that's like ten thousand dollars to get there uh but you can do um Canua Island which is beautiful diving amazing lots of sharks lots of eels we'll do um seed collections and learning how to like um making seedlings and plants out of that you can participate in educational activities you can do farm work um you can do gardening reforestation and work on the national park too with the location and and train train uh improvement trail improvements and the last day we'll have a beach barbecue so it's going to be really fun so that's uh a little bit of what we do we try to make it something that is restoring the environment also making tourism become an average restoration tool and making communities participate in the whole process because as John well said we can't do this all alone everybody has to pitch in and everybody has to be motivated to to help and so if you want to join us like just email me and that's my presentation did I take more time than I was supposed to wow what a wonderful place I guess yeah I think we we took a bit longer but I I I enjoyed it so much it's uh it's such a beautiful beautiful natural area and you work the work that you're doing at Corcovada Alejandra is really uh also uh so holistic like the approaches you're working on so many different uh uh sides from ecotourism to education working with the communities with uh holistic grazing and and regenerative farming so I mean yeah I guess the presentation was much worth over all of that I think wonderful thank you now perhaps there's already a few questions as we say feel free to raise your hands and ask your question in person or just put it in the chat whatever you're more comfortable with I actually have a good question I was wondering since you're now working on so many different uh uh programs let's call them what was it that pushed you to start the project because I I don't know if you mentioned it but Corcovada is at least 20 years old if not more than that so what do you want to say well we started working because um the we're neighbors like basically we're neighbors with Corcovada National Park and Forestry Reserve and the government was giving permits uh to cut the Forestry Reserve and we were seeing like gigantic trees like being like taking out you know every day um and we were like this doesn't look good this doesn't look good um so the founders of the foundation at that time they the uh hire a lawyer and they hire a forestry engineer and they said can you revise all those permits because it doesn't make sense that they're like cutting all these trees like that um and what happened was they found that many of the permits given were illegal uh were not well studied by the government and um so we were able to cut down permits from 68 to 8 so it was uh it was huge so we started doing that and we started hiring park rangers with funding that we would like try to like fundraise um so that people couldn't cut the forest and then at some point we're like you know this if people don't understand why why we're trying to stop them to cut the forest if they don't see that this is their heritage that one day is going to generate them income or also the fact that is that this ecosystem is providing them water and protect them from flooding and you know all these things people are not going to protect it so we can put a park ranger in every corner and we're not going to be able to stop them so we started doing that 20 years ago with environmental education but then we realized that there's poverty when communities are forgotten by the by the government and they don't have the minimum conditions to survive you can tell them as much as you want but they have to eat right so that's when we were like we turn into like let's find ways for communities to generate income and also survive by protecting the forest right so that would that that's like that's been the transition right and we focused a lot on uh community-based tourism and then we realized that uh it was not enough and when the covid hit and tourism because it was was dead like that everybody everybody that had been doing well with tourism were like literally like figured out how to survive so that we're just changing oranges for tomatoes or eggs or fishing or you know so that's that's how we we've been learning a lot right on 20 years so like it's not we just didn't we have been evolving I guess but a journey wow the questions in the chat so Bart asked did the cattle farmer sell his land sorry my my question is more on holistic grazing so in Africa it works because it's on very large uh thousand and thousand hectares where the predators are gone or less but you have 10 farmers uh commonly owning 500 hectares um so I guess it will only work if they have less cattle to share and maybe they think this will be less income because cattle gives lots of income so was this difficult to to convince them to have less cattle and and go to more permaculture ideas that's that's so basically what we're doing is no actually there uh the projections is actually that they can have more cattle so basically so when you have extensive cattle farming you have a few cattle like roaming around and damaging the soil all over the place when you have mob cuddling like basically like all the all the cattle is insane the cattle is in the same place all the cows are basically in a smallest space it's not it's not a stable it's an open space they have water and and when you do and I'm gonna like go back to a slide I had here because that's that slide is key um so for example when you see this slide let me share okay so if you see this okay um no I don't know I can't pass it to okay there you go let me see can you see this bigger yes can you see it now okay so because we don't have predators what cattle farmers do right now or or the holistic proposal is is that for example see that this this whole have numbers so I don't see number one here's I think it's here is number one or two so basically like the ten um the ten let's say Carlos has 15 15 cows he will have his 15 cows in this space this is the plant the the planting he has he will have 15 cows in this place on on um number one and then two three days later he will move it to number two number two probably has been restoring uh grass and absorbing carbon and doing um and and and growing in the last for the last um say three months or four months that that that means that this grass is really big and really rich and um growing fast in the meantime number one because they were in the same little cluster you know they were eating but they were also peeing and pooping and enriching the soil and bringing microorganisms over there so by the time they go back to one which is going to be three months later uh or six months later number one is going to be super rich so you can have the same amount of cattle or more in less space and is amazing and it like we've seen it we've seen it in the Caribbean working amazingly of course like how rich and how much your grass grows obviously depends a lot on um humidity because it's a very humid country so we'll have a lot of uh fast growing grass but it also works in there's um all these success stories in New Mexico in Arizona in areas that have been completely degraded and where they're trying to do this and just the the effect of the cattle being together in one place helps restore the soil like enriches the soil provides humidity and stops the certification so one of the biggest impact of this process is that it stops the certification and what's going to happen to the cattle is going to have to place water sources like in all these different places here uh it's going to mean that the cows are going to have to walk less to their water but also it's going to mean that it's less erosion and it also means that the water sources can be restored did that answer your question yes uh you're doing a great job and it's nice to see it works on a smaller scale as well thank you that's great thank you my pleasure uh christine you are muted yeah right so i think the next question is from runo and he's asking can you measure carbon sequestration as the restoration expands the restoration work and results are remarkable cattle management as well is there a way to get involved wait i didn't get the whole question uh so can you measure carbon expansion carbon sequestration as the restoration expands and perhaps Bruno wants to explain his questions well we we we're like we're putting our place yeah go go ahead but just just you know like we are using a couple of um uh tools there's restore echo which is a site that um um you like send your um location they take a picture of the place when you first started and then they keep taking pictures of the place as it grows and that shows like the growth of plants and i think that is a great tool i think everybody should try to go in there and use that because it gives you the possibility of showing um after and before and after right and then he was also adding are there measurements of net carbon flux on various project lands and coastal areas um well yeah um definitely for example in areas where and and it's hard and i gotta tell you like i've done a little research and and i've talked to many people that is involved in uh restoration processes and the numbers are always very variable right i mean some trees grow so fast that they like fix carbon so fast uh but some some of them are to have so much density that their growth is a lot smaller but the density of the carbon that they're fixating is bigger right but it takes longer uh there's also the carbon on the soil we have a project that i didn't mention here because we don't bring volunteers for that is um a mangrove project and mangrove uh holds so much um carbon on the soil as much carbon in the soil that on the on the on the top so um there's many variables there that have to be um measured but yes i mean there's some tools they're not all exact uh with the mangrove for example we have the help of a university that comes here and you know takes a basically like a tube in collects all the uh soil takes it burns the all the organic matter and measures the carbon right but it's it depends on your resources and for example with like the restitution the restoration areas that we have we don't have that kind of resources we've been working with um ecosystem restoration there's a there's a couple of companies that actually help you measure the carbon that you're restoring in the in the land in our case like those like some like when we're restoring land in public lands it's not interesting for it's interesting only for conservation efforts right um we know that because we're restoring and because we're using a big biodiverse um amount of plants and trees we know that we are bringing back an ecosystem that was lost and that we're producing a corridor that was gone and that we are removing an area that was fragmented and now that there's going to be more um movement of animals and we've seen it we've seen the growth of fauna in the area um just because of that so we can't measure as much the carbon but more like the ecosystem functions that are being restored I hope I answer your question Bruno yeah he's answering okay thanks in the chat um there was a question also from Bob uh Bob from Coramiriver the year C that was here last month for the Far Side Chat so he's asking why only 500 trees in two weeks or is it very volunteer well it has to do a lot with um getting the volunteers so you know if we don't have the the volunteers to help us it's really hard to do it it has to do with budget it has to do with weather sometimes for example we had planned um a restoration for a week and a half ago and the we had so much rain that the the volunteers couldn't cross the river so we have to cancel it so it's this is an area that is basically you're crossing you're crossing rivers with your car and you're um you know sometimes you don't have electricity and no way to communicate with anybody and you know cell phones are gone and you're like how do I keep calling all these people if like I can't you know I can't communicate so yeah this is like the this is like the Amazonas of Costa Rica right this is like the end of the the last frontier so yeah that makes sense and hopefully tonight we help to find a few more volunteers wonderful videos that you showed us yeah I gotta say volunteers are so crucial for us I mean not only they help us uh but like included into that things a little bit of like the materials that we need and it's hard I mean I know that here most people here are probably non-profits or individual people working on their own to try to make an impact so I know you guys all know how hard it is to maintain this effort we all do it because we love it one of like somebody was telling me like really like you're asking me for money again this is harassment I'm like well that's my job like we're doing the job we're planting trees for you dude it's like if we don't do this I mean your like lifestyle is going to go to somewhere else and and yeah I know it's not easy but yeah we need we need funding and we need hands and we need support and you know it's hard and I'm sure everybody here kind of like relates to it because you know we're all in the same boat right doing doing a fight that um maybe it's not easy but it's the it's what we love right we want to leave this place a better place yes yes completely agree love your attitude as well this is the work that matters and yeah especially people who are doing it on the ground are real heroes facing all this difficulties and still going strong because it's so important to honestly it is um I wonder if there are more questions otherwise it's well it's 7 30 in Europe I'm not sure what's what's the time in Costa Rica but we've been here for one hour and a half with Eddie um so I mean I'm also mindful that you have many things to do Alejandra and those are the other people here so if there are no other questions perhaps we can wrap it up and if there's someone who wants to stay longer to just chat and have a conversation I think Kath will leave uh the link open if that's possible and the the the call can still continue oh there's a few more questions Bruno is still asking have you considered revenue from carbon sequestration yeah we we can't do it because the property but we we want to generate revenue for like the farmers that are doing it we're wanting to do it for the cattle farmers that are like trying to say okay so since I'm planning better like this land is going to be idle like it's they I should never had had like cattle there because it was like very eroded and you know poor soils and stuff like that I should just let that grow so what we want to do is we want to be able to create um uh carbon revenue for people that actually are actually saying I'm going to put apart oldest land to protect it so that um so that it can be a good area so so that it's not going to fall on me to start with because like rainforest protects from like um um what do you call um landslides um so that it's going to stop erosion and you know it provides a bunch of services for them but um definitely having an income from doing something good for the humanity would be great for them too because we're talking about very poor people that are like you know scrambling to make it make make ends meet right so it's it would be great if we can like create create a system where we can like make sure that these guys get paid for the the areas of the property that can be restored and I put my email over there if anybody has the question or if I can help anybody with anything I'll be super happy to um answer them on my email wonderful and I think John has something to say well yeah I'd just like to say that um in terms of the economics we have to really consider what is carbon trading about how much money are are people who are sequestering carbon getting and how much does it and how long has this been going on so I've been observing it since 1997 and I don't think that the program of carbon offsets has been very effective and especially now there are some exposés of of programs to offset carbon pollution or carbon excessive emissions of greenhouse gases by corporations which have turned out to not actually do anything but re reinvest money into the people who cause a problem so what is it seems to me very important is to have a holistic understanding of what's happening to the climate and this is everyone so if everyone understands this then it's impossible to be moved by some sort of impressionistic meme about like well this is how we have to to restore the earth or this is how we have to deal with climate change we need to understand that it's there's systemic dysfunction in terrestrial ecosystems and also now in ocean systems and so this is not something which is small it's something which is really quite large and it's very complex and so we don't want to really get hung up on the complexity either but we do want to arrive at collective intelligence and collective understanding of where we are in in human history at this time other civilizations have destroyed their ecosystem but then maybe that civilization would fail but another civilization could come up somewhere else in the world but now we're actually facing this on a planetary scale so it looks like the danger to human civilization and humans humans as a species is much larger than it was in the past because it was only threatening the civilization that was damaging its its landscape and now actually some of the people who are most affected have very little to do with the causes of of the degradation so there is somehow karma connected to this as well and also these people who are being heavily affected may have very little in the way of resources and they may have even lost their human rights because some of the things that we're seeing were caused by colonization or slavery or genocide in places so we really need to come to grips with what's happening now some people in the past caused some really serious disruptions and some people really benefited enormously and to desperation and into poverty and and and when we look at what is happening with ecological restoration we have to realize well that's nice for the rights of all the people who have been damaged and heard in the past and who actually have the door of the earth and to do that we have to change the economy and the polluters and just giving a few a little bit to the people who have been massively affected for them to to it's not enough it's not okay we have to realize that the the value of functional thing that human beings have ever made beings will ever make and when we do that we can pay because the economy will then be based on something which is real based on extraction and manufacturing and buying and selling and worse and interest bearing debt so the reality is the global economy is more based on speculation not actually a thing to enrich the people who control and not something which benefits and so if we don't really fully understand this we better have this conversation and we better do everything we can to restore the soils the water the vegetation and the biodiversity but in the process of doing this we should give back the human rights to the all the turn the habitat for have to consider money as material things and we certainly don't have to consider our interest bearing debt so you know when we also look at the fact that you can make new currencies currencies that are serving oh their communities and when we look at the we think of money I was recently and instantly because I I paid for my visa with a hundred dollar bill and I got a million 250 000 rupiah back and I thought oh my gosh you know what has happened since the last time I that there is this kind of hyperinflation and they have to print new bills with like six figure bills what is wealth what is abundance when we look at a flowing river when we look at the beautiful landscapes in Costa Rica that's much more valuable than the money that's coming over and the people who have that money from the developed world are thinking that they're richer than the people in Costa Rica well that's not really true they just have a currency that has been part of a dominant political economic reality that comes from domination of of people we should be careful about these kinds of things and be honest about these kinds of things and we need to be forgiving and grateful and compassionate about what's happening because I mean really nobody who's alive today started this mess but we're all in this together so we could all solve it by doing what's right for everyone instead of saying well that happened in the past so we just have to accept it and leave the people who are miserable to be miserable and those who have who have benefited just let them carry on that's okay John sorry to interrupt yeah I just wanted to thank Alejandra for being here with us and for her presentation thanks a lot wonderful and yeah I think we all enjoyed it and you're now the host so please feel free to stay on the call and continue the conversation with John and thank you so much everyone for being here tonight well anybody who wants to stay and and if Alejandro is not in a hurry you know you could ask her anything I think about her or maybe you could volunteer to go and just sign up with her I can't stay too long I gotta say because I'm actually I'm taking care of my mom who just had surgery so I need to go feed her but I can stay for five more minutes if anybody has a question well is there anything that you would say you need the most from from help from people from all over the world well I think that what I what I would say that is the most important thing is that we don't feel hopeless that we don't think that we are we have uh uh that we don't feel powerless and to change your attitude towards um making a difference I think everybody can make a difference from their apartment from their backyard from you know from their everyday consumption activities as you said like you know buying is not necessarily going to make make you a happier person um I believe that definitely my my biggest um my biggest concern is people feeling hopeless and powerless but um as an organization definitely we definitely need to port um we need exposure and hopefully people hints on the ground um helping us plant trees and working with farmers and making a difference and and sometimes you know it doesn't have to be on the property it could be like just helping us promote our work and I'm sure like everybody here as restoration camps um are also in the same need right um definitely like having the opportunity to present our project to you guys is like definitely a great um help so I'm I'm very very thankful that you guys gave us an opportunity to present our projects thank you again and thanks everyone um I just wanted to share my email but it should be iCloud and I clearly have made a mistake and something I have a German computer keyboard so it's very strange but it should be iCloud.com so if anybody wants to talk to me um and if I can help you in any way Alejandro please please let me know and uh thank you oh yeah somebody put it in now correctly thank you thank you so much I appreciate that and I'm I'm very I feel very honored to be here done with you and uh with every oldest wonderful people too making a difference and not sitting idle and doing nothing just like you know just making change so um good for you all and um keep keep you good work and I as I said in the beginning I think that is all about like small solutions and little acts that get together and make a difference so very very very proud of all of you very very very honored to be here with you all wonderful people so that will for you guys thank you very much Alejandra and all the best for your mom okay all the best thank you you guys take care thanks Alejandra bye thank you bye see you all bye everyone