We work with partners in over 20 countries to restore degraded landscapes and regenerate the Earth. Together, we create worldwide impact.
We offer a practical, holistic approach to landscape restoration that everyone can understand and use: the 4 Returns framework. This approach delivers returns to all landscape stakeholders: people, nature, communities and businesses.
Planting seeds of hope for a better future and giving PEOPLE a sense of purpose
Bringing back jobs, education and social connections: the building blocks of thriving COMMUNITIES
Restoring biodiversity for healthy and resilient landscapes: reviving NATURE
Creating long-term, sustainable income for communities: new BUSINESS models tailored to each landscape
We facilitate landscape restoration from the ground up. From farmers to business owners, policymakers to NGOs, we collaborate with a diverse range of partners to restore landscapes across the world. To make the greatest impact, we are also building a global movement to accelerate holistic landscape restoration via our 4 Returns framework.
We provide landscape practitioners with the tools, funding, knowledge, and networks to restore their landscape for future generations.
We offer our local partners access to funding opportunities. We help them to create and roll out regenerative business models and carbon methodologies.
We connect people working in landscape restoration worldwide through the 4 Returns learning network – so that knowledge can be exchanged across landscapes.
We influence policymaking and raise public awareness of the need to scale landscape restoration through advocacy and campaigning.
4 Returns Labs are a series of workshops that bring stakeholders together to learn from and alongside each other. The emphasis is on learning as a mutual experience as all participants explore the underlying causes of land degradation, create a shared vision and formulate action plans for their landscapes together. 4 Returns Labs combine our practical 4 Returns framework with Theory U, an awareness-based method that enables systems change developed by the Presencing Institute.
Collaborative action increases our impact, enables us to support more people and organisations, and leads to the system changes that allow landscapes to flourish. In some landscapes, we co-initiate and co-develop projects with our partners in long term landscape partnerships. In other cases, building on the lessons learned from these partnerships, we connect and enhance the existing work of local initiatives through our global and regional partnerships.
The 4 Returns framework has sparked regenerative businesses across the world – from South Africa to Spain. These businesses produce healthy products and offer a sustainable income for local communities. They show us that healthy landscapes can provide a foundation for more nature-positive economies. Regenerative practices at farm-scale eventually become regenerative economies at landscape-level – leading to systems change. Find out more about the products made by our landscape partners by clicking the link below.
Antonio Maurandi, farmer and board member, AlVelAl Association, Spain
Our practical approach – the 4 Returns framework – is being used by people all over the world to restore their local landscape and keep it healthy for generations to come.
Explore Commonland's latest news, publications and events, and get inspired to restore the Earth.
In 2015, Willem Ferwerda, along with our colleague Dieter van Broeck and Commonland Ambassador John D.Liu, each contributed chapters to the Elsevier-published book “Land Restoration: Reclaiming La ...
Finance and investment are crucial to meeting the goal of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of nature worldwide. Therefore, Commonland united a panel ...
Commonland has come together with Landscape Finance Lab, as well as 19 other contributors, to issue a policy briefing offering guidance to EU institutions and Member States on why and how to leve ...
Commonland unites conservationists, farmers, experts, entrepreneurs, community organisers, businesses, governments, and finance professionals to transform 100 million hectares of degraded land into th ...