Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
394 Stef van Dongen - Trees don’t send invoices so a Catalan valley is rewiring water, forests and finance
A check in conversation with Stef van Dongen, founder of The Pioneers of Our Time. Sitting at the fireplace we trace how neighbors who barely spoke began phoning across ridgelines, how tourism money are flowing uphill to fund forest work, and how a dense, abandoned woodland started opening into a living mosaic that holds water, softens fire, and invites wildlife back.
We walk through the mechanics of a cost-based climate credit that pays for what a hectare truly needs over 15 years measured across water, carbon, biodiversity, and fire safety. It's a public–private framework that the regional government helps certify: pilots sold out, and a thousand credits are now in sight as the valley scales from dozens to thousands of hectares, all within a 40,000-hectare fire prevention plan designed to be holistic from day one.
The conversation goes deeper into governance and replication. How do you manage a watershed you don’t own? Start with trust, map the layers- forest, water, biodiversity, agriculture, economy- and build a campus where scientists, foresters, and investors can monitor, learn, and iterate. We compare desalination’s billion-euro price tags to the cheaper, cleaner gains from soil sponge restoration. We talk predators and grazers, “green deserts” and beavers, and the hard pivot from carbon-speak to water security, a narrative that resonates across politics because everyone needs a shower, a harvest, and a forest that won’t explode each summer.
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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From the Muga Valley, one of the largest watershed regeneration projects I know, we talk about nature credits, taking into consideration water, carbon, biodiversity, regenerative forest management, but most importantly, how to build trust again between communities living in the valley, trust between people living there, but also with local and regional authorities. This is a region which, if there isn't a strong series of interventions over the next years, most likely will be hit by a massive, massive forest fire, which will burn all the way to bus country. And slowly that sense of urgency is landing. What is needed is a lot of experiments and then a lot of public-private partnerships, which is easier said than done, as most of you know. But it seems to be going really fast in this landscape. And we try to find out why. We talk about why the small water cycle restoration space is still not really landing with people, policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs, and what to do about it. So make a cup of tea, a warm soup, and enjoy us in the very first ever fireside chat. Literally. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities, and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. We're next to a fire, you're gonna hear some logs falling. It's very hot here. It's very hot. It's not very cold outside. So we have the fire mostly for the atmosphere, not really for the temperature. It's true. It was 20 degrees outside today. But also to use some of the wood to regenerate the forest. It was easier to do a talk at the fire compared to a walk in the forest around the home of the pioneers of our time. And having a check-in conversation was March 23 that we were here. We're now recording in November 25, so that's two and a half years. And a lot of things are moving not only through the forest. We saw a fox literally 10 minutes ago outside the house trying to probably eat the food of the dogs. Yesterday we hear the wolves. Yesterday we heard the wolves, which weren't there three years ago. And I think it was one like walking coming, and now they're a pair.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They settled in the valley.
SPEAKER_01:So there's uh a lot of life coming back. There's still a lot of life. We saw a lot of deer on the hikes in the past days.
SPEAKER_00:Skies are filled with filtures. Over a hundred? Over a hundred four species. Two of the species are breeding already. And the other one you're inviting with puppets.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Which sounds very wrong, but we'll get to that. Anyway, you hear the laughter of Steph. Last time when we recorded, I remember many people commenting on the amount of birds we had, because I think we recorded around dawn, whatever it is, sunset. And the birds were absolutely playing a concert. So many people remember that episode of it. And now we're gonna have the one with the fire. So welcome back, Steph. Thank you. Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you after such a beautiful soil hangout. We had some amazing people hanging out with us, many fires. Not for the temperature. Walks, long walks, good sauna, swims. Yep. Amazing weather helped. It could be rainy and cold at this time of year.
SPEAKER_00:At this time of the year, it's during the day, it's beautiful, 20 degrees, and then at night it gets colder. So I like to experience the seasons.
SPEAKER_01:And not so much rain in this week, but I think in October you had more, which is which is important because that's one of the big topics in this valley water.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And the last few years were dry, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. This is the first year after I think six years of drought.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. And so just to paint a bit of a picture, of course, we'll link the previous conversation and how you ended up here in the northeast of the Pyrenees on the Spanish side, but very close to the French border. We're in the Muga Valley, it's a lot of forest, abandoned charcoal forest, abandoned forest, that's why it burned so well. In need of regeneration, and you landed here after a long walk and started listening and then building and inviting people. And so I would love to see and hear how that, apart from the wolves being back, but how that's been going. Because you said very famously last time you're ahead of schedule.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Is that still the case?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Has the schedule also evolved, or what's what do you sense?
SPEAKER_00:Actually, last year we made our new strategy plan for the coming three years, and this year we have to make our new strategy plan.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's going so fast. Yeah. Wow. And what is that? Or what do you feel? Right moment, like timing is always everything in any venture.
SPEAKER_00:I think that the time invested in listening and observing what's actually happening here, and then identifying that the themes and the interests that we have in common in the different communities is starting to pay out. So we've been investing a lot of time and effort and also resources in building trust and relationships between people and identifying what are really the hopes and the wishes, but also the fears of people. And so it turned out to be water, security, fire safety, work and housing, and then trust in society as the main themes that people are concerned about or interested in. Now the running GEC and our team, this we go with the speed of trust.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's one of the big issues and challenges. Not very common, even between villages that are super close to each other, share a lot of things, except maybe one or two cultural differences.
SPEAKER_00:Never talked to each other. For years we were the first ones bringing people together. Yeah, so that's that's truly special. But it uh in practice it really works out.
SPEAKER_01:Which means people pick up the phone when they need something, they go to another village. Is it also trust with, let's say, the institutions? Both local government, regional?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it builds up. Yesterday there was a hunter here, and he said he got a phone call from Taradas, which is two villages upstream the muga. And he was really surprised that from Teradas they called to a hunter in Albanya to see how is this and this in Albania, and they asked a specific question. And he said that this is because of the festival, because now the festival is like growing into a festival of three villages: Albania, San Lorenzo, and Terralas. And people start to speak with each other and start relating to each other, that's really beautiful to see. And from the festival, also people start to express themselves, and there was the, for instance, an example, the need to install septic tanks in their villages. And so, like that coming from the community itself, interested the state government, so they started to become more and more engaged on this topic, but on several topics. And so that facilitation of the relationship between the neighbors, basically our neighbors, the different villages, the governments, the mayors, and then up to the different departments in the state government is really valuable. And the relationship with the state secretary, the minister, but also with local research institutes became much, much, much stronger.
SPEAKER_01:Also, because a big piece of the story here is the disconnect between, let's say, the seaside, which is the huge tourism industry of the Costa Brava Nord, and the mountain, and the mountains, because it leads all the way to Andorra, basically, and beyond that disconnect of water to begin with, but also other like water quality and quantity, obviously. Do you see, let's say, the tourism industry slowly turning around and not only looking at the sea, but also sometimes looking at the mountain and starting to at least engage, maybe also invest in where their water comes from and the stress that is there, because these years of drought put a lot of stress on the agriculture piece, and then finally also on the tourism piece, of course.
SPEAKER_00:Because people want to shower, they want their swimming pools, and that became difficult. During those years of drought, there was a state of emergency where people could not fill their swimming pools, couldn't wash their cars, crops had failed. So it was right in the face of people. And now is that a bit different in this year of quite a bit of rain. I think people forget easily, but I think there's a change in mindset that has been reached. Where before, when we started, there was an ultimate disconnect between the source area and the sea area. Where you see now also through the documentary that has been made, the media that we have been reaching out, that people sort of become aware where their water is coming from. And even the tourism industry is now willing to buy climate credits, the nature credit that we have developed, to actually maintain and work in the forest upstream. So that's, I think, it's a huge achievement.
SPEAKER_01:Because what are those credits and how do they work?
SPEAKER_00:We call it a climate credit here, but basically it has the same characteristic as a nature credit, as we know it in Europe. It looks at one hectare of forest with four indicators like carbon, water, biodiversity, and fire safety. And the credit is cost-based instead of a normal carbon market mechanism. This is a cost-based credit. If you look at what is the cost to actually improve this hectare of forest in such a way that those four criteria are actually increasing in value. The cost here is 4,000 euros per hectare to do the work. But if you look for more in the south of Spain, south of Catalonia, where also pilots have been executed, the cost of credit can be 3,000 euros. Per year or one time? It's one time for 15 years. So there's the it's a public-private partnership that we created with the government. The state government is actually certifying the hectare of forest before the works, then we sell the credit, then we do the works, and they come again and they certify the works after, and then they monitor for 15 years. So it's place-based, cost-based, climate credit with an holistic view. We actually connect it to our landscape plan to see, okay, where can we actually designate zones that need this improvement, of course, our ecological hotspots or fire prevention, or this is our strategic water capture spots. Yeah, because one hectare, of course, doesn't have a huge impact.
SPEAKER_01:You need it connected or concentrated to start influencing water flow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we sold out our first pilot this year, it was 58 hectares, and we're sold now almost 70 hectares more for the next step where we're going to scale up. And our ambition is to sell a thousand credits in the coming couple years to actually pave the road for the bigger scale-up where we need to work 10,000 hectares of forest.
SPEAKER_01:And the work does it depend on the different. Do you do tests there as well? Because of course it need to be certified. Like, what does the work intake just for people to imagine the forest here? There's a great short documentary as well. I think it's about 10 minutes on YouTube to see. Of course, there's the Muga Valley documentary, and which is about 30 minutes. So if you want to some visuals, you can find it. But just for people that are currently running somewhere, walking, cooking, etc., what's the forest look like and what does the forest look like after the works?
SPEAKER_00:So if you have to imagine the watershed, 100,000 hectares, of its almost 50,000 hectares, is dense, but a dense forest where you oak forest combined with pine trees that you basically cannot enter because of the density. This will this is actually causing a lot of problems ecologically wise, but also water security-wise and fire safety-wise, because of course, such a dense forest that is basically in a cycle of getting drier and drier because of the structure of the forest is vulnerable for fires, big fires. And it's also depleting the soil, so the soil cannot capture the water anymore. So that's why we're looking at improving the forest and helping it to bring helping the forest to become a diverse mosaic forest again. So before you see a super dense forest where that's basically inaccessible, and then after the works, you can find basically three types of forest density. That's a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01:Like you're going with a lot of people chopping down, mulching, reducing, etc. How much it's the cost of 4k per hectare? And then what happens after? Is there maintenance or what's needed to keep the forest in that state, or what's an ideal next state of the afternoon?
SPEAKER_00:The ideal next state is what we are figuring out. Like the most logical would be a cattle. Cow is like you have here the albera, which is a native cow that is in the threatened by extinction. So that's a cow that is actually adopted to this kind of mountain and climate. Goats, but because of the almost extinction of the profession of the shepherd. But also we look at rewilding strategies where you have wild grazers basically being managed by also a shepherd, but on a very less intense way.
SPEAKER_01:Because you need a large ruminant back into this. You have a lot of wild boar, a lot of deer, but no larger ruminant basically that keeps the forest intact.
SPEAKER_00:No. Actually, the wild boar is a big problem for this kind of forest. It's an omnivore. It eats everything, so including young plants, but also young animals. So biodiversity is like decreasing while this population is growing very fast. They reproduce like sometimes four times a year. So while having this abandoned forest becoming denser and denser, drier and drier. Underneath the only animal that can live there is basically the wild boar and a deer. And they actually deplete the forest even further. And so you get a green desert. How big is the problem? I would not know the numbers in the millions of wild boars. No, the thousands, thousands. Here in this area.
SPEAKER_01:And then by by having it more as a mosaic forest, their natural or their favorite habitat gets reduced and they might or move or get hunted.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and predators are coming naturally coming back. So we have now the wolf is back, the wild cat is back, but also different types of isles are coming back, the villages, of course, but the golden eagle. We're waiting for the lynx to come back.
SPEAKER_01:And so when waiting is in you're putting it actively out there, or you're waiting for it to naturally.
SPEAKER_00:We're creating the habitat for the lynx. So we're opening up. Oh no, the lynx actually needs rabbits and actually not opening up the forest, it's a forest animal. But we're creating habitat for the lynx. Yeah, and if those animals come back, you will see that the natural pattern of moving will come back also, but with those and with the wild boar and the deer, and they will start migrating again, or like I said, moving faster over the different areas.
SPEAKER_01:On the food side, you said last time that was going slower than you were hoping on the agriculture side because you discovered a lot of this wildlife loves a market garden, and the cows prefer the local football pitch compared to the forest. Yeah. How is the food side, like the agriculture side going?
SPEAKER_00:Actually, with the new love in my life, the project grew towards the sea in Palamos. That's why we now speak about from the source to the sea and the project. And so most of the agriculture has moved towards the sea area. Which has less pressure, more events. Also. So there we have now the market garden, three hectares, we have wine fields, we have olive gardens, we have sheep making our own milk and all kinds of products with the milk. Here still we have the chicken. And the moment we are we just bought a new property where we hope to invite a farmer to come back and work whatever this person wants to work with, but we hope with goats or like animals to bring back animals in this area, maybe rosemary.
SPEAKER_01:Who knows? Because herbs and of course the stuff that gets eaten less by our wildlife friends is interesting. Essential oils is then a usual quote unquote suspect. Has it been anything you looked into in terms of forest products or except for a lot of wood that we're listening to? But what can the forest even in transition quote unquote produce that could be of value, or has that been tricky?
SPEAKER_00:There's some obvious products, which is the truffle. So we have a lot of wild truffle here, and it means you could also like create a you know truffle plantation. So that's one lot of root products. So potatoes from the mountains are popular. Olive is a good product here. The olive tool and olive food consumption. And of course, meat and milk. Those are the most obvious pigs that are being fed with the acorns, acorns, those kind of things.
SPEAKER_01:And on the finance piece, you've done a lot of work as well on the governance, because basically what you're trying to do, and I think that's pretty unique in the world, is how to manage almost a full watershed. Of course, without owning it, how do you influence such a massive 100,000 hectares, which most people can't even phantom how big that is, and how do you regenerate that whole thing without, I don't know, raising a gazillion dollars and buy everything. Because it's great if you're doing your 400 hectares, even your 800 hectares, whatever the number is, but if around you the rest is still degrading and the fire comes, yeah, nothing will stop that.
SPEAKER_00:That's interesting because I think two and a half years ago our main vision was we're gonna regenerate the Mula Valley and the watershed. We were piloting many ideas by that time, like the cows and the rosemary, of course, tourism, many things. And I think our narrative has refined, but also our strategy has become much more clear. Where, of course, the main objective is to help the rivers, the forests, and the soys to become healthy again. I think that's one. And we knew from the beginning that the social fabric, creating this social fabric, this trust and relationship between the people would be vital to for actually doing our work.
SPEAKER_01:How did you discover that by the way? Like how that's such an absolutely fundamental piece to recreate connections, to rebuild trust.
SPEAKER_00:I think my history with NVU, working in Africa and India, and Southeast Asia, that was one of the main issues. Not having trust, it's just finding ways how to create trust. When I first came here, what I saw is that the people didn't speak like there was a lot of gossip between people, two villages, but they never visited each other. So through the pizza parties I organized was basically the people got to know each other. But the trust was so low that to the level that people were stealing from each other. There's a funeral in the next village, and during the funeral, like the house was being robbed. And those kind of examples are not day-to-day but common. And also with my conversations with the politicians who were fearing the moment of chaos. Because if there's low trust in society, like chaos is easy to emerge. There were different signs that I thought that should be one of the topics to work with, especially a foreigner coming here. You are like three points behind.
SPEAKER_01:Of course. And so how did you because in the documentary, and also in general, I think when people ask questions, you're very clear on it's not you doing the work, it's not you running the foundation, and it's a very deliberate strategy as a foreigner in a valley that you don't have any roots of.
SPEAKER_00:I don't have any roots. The valley is traumatized by civil war and the dictatorship. There's something that's really alive here. Yeah, I made a clear decision that first we have a foundation and the business, and I feel I'm more of a value in the business the day to day, and I can be more of inspiration and coach for the foundation team. Also, to let highly qualified people leading the foundation and sitting in the board of the foundation is giving a big sign of trust from me to them, but also I think they're much more I say equipped to do the work. They talk to the people of the same nationality, same culture, same language.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it's often not an easy step to not just stay in the middle of the attention, and everything has to go through the founder. It's not an easy transition for many people, I think.
SPEAKER_00:I learned a lot at NVU. Previous experience. And also, I think it has to do with the urgency and the urgency can make you want to go faster. I see what needs to happen in this forest. Let's go and in this valley. My former mentors, I've got two quotes from them. One is the grass won't grow faster when you start pulling it. So that's one. Many farmers will remember that quote.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it's so true. The other one, if you want to go fast, you go alone. And if you want to far, you go together. And if the work that we have to do here has never been done before, it's so big you can never do it alone. So you have to go together, and those processes need their time. So people are ready when they're ready. And I felt here very welcome. I felt there's an energy and there's a very active community that want to do things together. And I think I helped them with new perspectives. And so one on one is three. And I think that's why it worked so really well. And one of the prerequisites for getting there was I felt away from the beginning, I should not go into the foundation. That will speed up and accelerate things if I won't. I can be the entrepreneur supporting the foundation with capital, with capacity, with network, with bringing funders to the foundation and expertise. This is how it went, and this is how it's going, and it works really well. Yeah. But going back to the story and figuring out our strategy, helping the forests, the rivers, and the soils to become healthy again, building this strong social fabric first to actually start working then next on bringing work and life back to the valley, to the watershed. And there we focus on basically finance. So, how can we build a financial vehicle or framework that's actually going to fund this regeneration and this regenerative economy, these nature-based solutions, that actually will accelerate the regeneration of the valley? So think of a biochar factory or a core processing plant or nature tourism. Those kinds of economic activities will bring work back to the valley. And so we are looking actually how can we lay the groundwork for this larger bioregional investment vehicle over the coming years? Because we need hundreds of millions actually to regenerate this watershed. 80% of Catalonia has a forest surface. And so you talk a lot of money. But before we get there, we think we need transition finance instruments, financial instruments like the credits, like a water fund, like perhaps other things that we can come up with. Then both slowly we'll evolve in this bioregional financial vehicle. And the third thing we discovered that we already started doing from the beginning, coming from this trust and relationship, is like what's actually unique perhaps in Catalonia is the government said, yes, we cannot do it alone. We need the private sector and we need the civil society and science to actually do it together. And I think that attitude actually accelerated a lot of our work as well. Because now we're working to a bi-regional governance system. So like having the watershed as a basically a unit of governance, which then will be the foundation for society and the economy and ecology. And again, we thought instead of proposing this bi-regional governance model, we said, no, we will start small with smaller examples so people start understanding what we're talking about, and then in the end combine things. And so the first thing we started with is the fire prevention plan. We figured out what is actually happening on the aspect of fire safety, and we found out nothing was happening. And so we created this fire prevention plan. The past three years we've been working on it, and by the end of this year, we actually will sign off the plan to actually govern 40,000 hectares of a forest in a way that it becomes fire safe, water secure, and brings back biodiversity.
SPEAKER_01:And is that very close to the interventions you're doing on those hectares connected to the credits?
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And so having such a plan, you can then say, okay, what are the hectares? So 2,600 hectares of basically a fire break, but then six and a half thousand hectares around those fire breaks, we actually need to improve the forest and we can work on the biodiversity and the water situation. And by making those forests less dense, also the fire intensity will be starting to lower down when like when they hit a fire break. What we did is basically the first public-private governance model here around fire, and we made it because we had a seat on the table, we could ask if it could be a holistic plan. So not only for fire, we're also using our fire as a preventative measure, but we also look really at biodiversity hotspots and we studied the water situation in a different area.
SPEAKER_01:How many people are in the foundation?
SPEAKER_00:So we have now a core team of eight people in the foundation, and of course, they are surrounded by experts, freelance experts, like forestry experts or like agriculture region experts, water experts. And in the company in the low season, we have 60 people in the high season, 80 people. And the company has evolved into business activities, hospitality, the home of pioneers, and then Brugarol, which is more agritourism concept. And farming, of course. And then we have real estate and property management added to the equation because we saw if you want to bring back work and life and start investing in business here, people need to live and need to have a social infrastructure. And it was like an absent actually thing. So we thought, okay, we saw the opportunity, start building houses. And from building houses, we saw the opportunity for the replication. So some things were starting to work. How can we facilitate other landscapes in that way? And we thought instead of going out to the world, why don't we invite people to the Muga Valley? So that's why we started now building physical infrastructure for a campus to actually facilitate replication and education and attract scientists to do the monitoring of the work we're doing here, adding technology.
SPEAKER_01:Have you come across other places where this kind of work is happening at this scale? Or this intensity as well? Of course, there are people working on landscape scale regeneration and many parts of the world, friends of common land, and a thousand landscapes, etc. But I haven't seen yet at this, probably that it's happening somewhere, but this kind of speed and this kind of holistic watershed, really talking about okay, from the source to the sea, like attempt to make an impact there literally on rain, water, etc. Are people coming here to see that happening, or is it still like a well-hidden?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think in many places things are happening. Today I was talking to a landscape in Scotland. There are various landscapes in Spain, different levels actually of maturity. I think the big thing is that the level of maturity and the level of holistic working. I think there are not many that work as holistic as we do, but there are many others that are much better, for instance, in agriculture and region egg, or in water itself, or in finance. But I think because we try to combine the different elements and we learn a lot from others, so it's a big adventure, I must say. Yeah, no, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:And I think since last time we talked as well, specifically the topic of water, we've seen almost exactly a year ago. Devastating floods in Valencia, of course, many other places in general, floods, drought, that cycle has been, especially around the Mediterranean, but many other places, going quite bananas, let's say. And the attention is slowly starting to pick up. But then what follows or what needs to follow are entrepreneurial people that step in and say, okay, how do we put the puzzle pieces in a landscape together to actually at scale large enough to be able to influence a river and or rain patterns, etc. Because it's amazing on 400 hectares, it's amazing on 800, but that's not going to be enough. How has been that conversation around that kind of level of scale and almost science fiction? Can you actually influence a river? Can you actually influence rain patterns? I feel sometimes it's almost a lack of imagination that we can do that, even though we know we can do it negatively, so why not positively? How do you deal with that very day-to-day? Okay, we need to do this hectare of forest versus this hectare of forest, and we need the rabbits back, et cetera, et cetera. But actually, what we're trying to do is here stabilizing climate and bringing back summer rains that used to be here not so long ago.
SPEAKER_00:In essence, we are bioengineering a microclimate, and that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01:But we say that to some people and funders as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. This forest here, like not only this forest shed, but all the watersheds behind here, like it's all controlled by men for centuries. This forest is nothing is natural. And so why can't we help it to become healthy again as humans as well? So that's what I believe and that what we're going for.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny because people see this forest and they see a lot of trees. And I said it last time as well. If you don't have the intimate forest knowledge, you see a very dense forest meeting. Yeah, it's a very dense forest. Then you notice there's not a lot of life on the ground, actually, nothing growing. Then you start seeing, okay, actually, I cannot even walk through, let alone look through, because a lot of the paths here you would love to see the other ridge, and everything is more or less two and a half, three meters high, all the same height. It takes a bit of looking at and understanding like actually, this is a forest that's absolutely not healthy and suffering. But also for funders that come here or for investors, etc., it's not that you see that you think, oh, yeah, a lot of green, looks good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. No, that's why also I live here because it is beautiful and it looks good, but it is not. The approach that we take is going step by step in the sense of we did a pilot of a couple hundred hectares that's working, that convinced people, then we're going into a pilot that's a bit bigger. The end game for the real scale-up is to just convince governments that it's worthwhile to spend tax money on this approach of managing and governing a watershed. And so we think that proof is around between the five and the ten thousand hectares where we can show effects on water, on biodiversity, carbon, and fire safety. We are starting now a conversation with the European Investment Fund, the European Investment Bank. We're getting coaching from a really large public-private fund in the Netherlands that helps us to structure and to facilitate or coach us. Like, how do you talk with the government? How do you bring the big institutional funders in? And then those are two parallel paths. So making the case, building the value chain for regenerative forestry, so regeneration, on the one hand, bringing in science through the campus that actually can monitor the work that we are doing and create policy papers, opinion papers, and those kind of things. Creating an educational program for other landscapes that want to come and learn, and come and share, also, on the other hand, and then working towards that moment that we say, okay, now we have political will, there's scientific proof, there is institutional interest, and then we can do a first pilot, perhaps 100-200 million euros to work on a larger scale here in the watershed, and perhaps two watersheds. And with that comes then a new type of governance model, where we see okay, what is the life-supporting ecosystem that we actually have to govern to lay the ground for the new economy and society that we want to, the world that we want to live in, basically. And that's not a geopolitical way of looking or economic way of looking. It's like the water, like here's the canyou, that's France. Actually, it's a big mountain of almost 3,000 meters. It's guiding the clouds into the valley, it's bringing water from this high snow peak into the Muga Valley. It's much more logical to create this supranational governance model than how we have designed it now and build an economy on that. I know it's very far-fetched, and perhaps I will never see it, but I think that's the most logical way of designing our future societies and economies around those life-supporting ecosystems.
SPEAKER_01:Where water is such a much more logical connector than carbon is or or anything else. Because yeah, we it falls somewhere. We can trigger it, which is interesting. A lot of research shows we can influence it.
SPEAKER_00:Water is the manifestation of the climate crisis we have. Especially in the Mediterranean, what do you see? Forest fires and floods. Where do they come from? Dysfunctional watersheds. Because the sponge why the forest is drying out and turns into fire. And of course, the soil cannot hold the water anymore, because in the watershed, 90% of the water is being captured in the sponge that is upstream in the soil, and then releases the water throughout the year into the river systems and the atmosphere. That topsoil is gone. And those you get floods. Understanding that is actually the basis of our economy, it's coming more and more.
SPEAKER_01:Do you see that landing as well in those conversations with bigger institutional investors, players, insurance, re-insurance companies, and government as well that basically soil water holding capacity is the key, one of the key indicators to see if you have a risk of flood, basically?
SPEAKER_00:I think there's more and more air. The situation becomes so urgent and important. There's a need for solutions. So people are willing to listen and willing to try. I think the majority of our decision makers is still technocratic oriented. And so it's much easier to build a desalination plant than take care of a watershed. Which is much cheaper, actually, to take care of a watershed than build a desalination plant. This is what's happening here, huh? So they just invested half a billion euros in this desalination plants. And the whole Spain, I think, is three billion. That's serious money. Here with 200 million, we can restore this watershed.
SPEAKER_01:And do you have any indication then of how much extra higher quality cleaner water you can quote unquote produce?
SPEAKER_00:That's already scientifically proven. That 66% of the water we will lose, actually we can revive. The water you will lose because of climate, because of climate and because of I say that dysfunctional soil management.
SPEAKER_01:And forest management. And then the agriculture piece, because this first flows to quite an active agriculture region before it gets to the coast. How has been your interaction there?
SPEAKER_00:We purposely started with the forest because that's where the sponge is, and it's also more easy to address in the beginning. Now we're actually going downstream. First, we see if you go downstream, you see the extensive agriculture, animal feed or charts. And then in the delta, let's say like that, there's the intensive agriculture using actually 70% of the water of the lake of the Muga. 7-0, that's what. Yeah. We approach it in two ways. We are slowly starting building the coalition of region experts, soil experts from also the unions, farmers, research institutes that are actually looking at the water situation. We're not there yet, because I think there's still a lot of work to do in basically regenerative forestry, but also the natural protected areas that we are managing. We're managing now 5,000 hectares of natural protected areas. We are managing 3,000 hectares of forests for our neighbors. We meaning the company. The foundation. So in total, we have 8,000 hectares under management at the moment, and we are driving the governance of more than 40,000 hectares. So that's a lot of work. Now we have to execute there. So building the value chain and the collision of forestry is our priority at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:To increase the quantity of water before you work on, let's say, the decrease of the usage with the intensive agriculture part.
SPEAKER_00:But parallel, now we we work with an organization called ICRA, which is the governmental research institute on water. And they actually do an analysis on the water use in the intensive agriculture sector. It's shocking to see, actually.
SPEAKER_01:So we have to talk less about the hotels and campings on the coast, but a bit more about the 30%, but 70% probably more money in the coastal.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. I think it's 23% of the GDP in Catalunya or in this area coming from hospitality. Is there in the agriculture piece to connect? I think the sector is under a lot of stress. They lost so much crops in the past four years, five years. And demanding subsidies and more support because they cannot cope anymore. And if you look at a lot of the fields, you see a lot of corn, which causes a water-intense product. But it's an interesting sector to look at. And as I said, we're just touching it now, and feeling and observing again. Actually, it's a new exercise of emergence to observe, to listen, what's happening, what are the real worries, what are the triggers of change. Because it's very fundamentally different than the forest. Also, the political interest and economic interest are much higher.
SPEAKER_01:Fire is probably less of an issue. But water and work are massive ones. And so in a couple of years, what do you envision you and you meaning the larger you with the team have achieved? And then maybe five years out as well.
SPEAKER_00:So what I see emerging is working in layers. So you look at the watershed with a layered perspective. So you look at forest and fire, you look at water, biodiversity, agriculture, and then economy, of course, and trust level society. And we're mapping that, it's super interesting. So that kind of evolve, like developing that kind of way of working and approach and tool as a sort of blueprint to basically replicate into other landscapes. That's my big hope. That this campus will actually evolve in something a sort of a lighthouse. And that we are able to build this whatever it's called, bioregional financial vehicle. I call it now because I don't know what it actually will entail. In combination with this new governance model for a bioregion, like a water, like a different watersheds. I think that would be amazing. I think we don't know yet what is waiting for us because for now we've always been the teddy bear and very innocent, and we have a lot of factor. But I think now we're touching, we're going to touch the bigger interest in society, and let's see how that's if there's political will to do that. And if we can make it apolitical, that's actually our thinking now. How can we make this apolitical? And one of the ways that we think it could work is we're tapping into the security policy, security economics of Europe. Because if you look at the climate projections, it doesn't look good. Everybody is shit scared for social unrest because of the lack of food and water we will have and the fires that will come. So by bringing our projects and say, okay, we could be best practice for Europe to see how we can create security by bioengineering a microclimate in a global changing climate. Where we think if we can prove that we can keep like at least three to four degrees less than, for instance, in Madrid, because in Madrid it's a projection of eight degrees. So it's like this becomes unlivable. And so it becomes in the interest of everybody, it becomes a survival policy.
SPEAKER_01:Do you see that shift in the conversation going? We see that sort of now in regen, food, and egg, going from regenerative to resilience and food security. I don't think we've done a good job yet in really hammering down that point of this is way more than poison-free food production or carbon in the soil. This is nutrient security.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And have you seen that language change or the narrative as well? Absolutely. Again, because I think water speaks. And here people experience that if there's no water, life stops. That's I think an advantage that we have over agriculture. Like you say, nutrients is not yet that people didn't experience not having nutrients in their soils. Water is like something very visual in your face. You experience it right. It's like a direct feedback loop. So I think it's a very strong narrative. And people love water. We are water. People can really identify with it. So I think that's that's a narrative we found that works. And that we are uh thriving on at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:So even in changing, more extreme political climates, you don't see water going away.
SPEAKER_00:Water is uh apolitical in that sense. It's a basic necessity for life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which is very interesting as a narrative. Because in the climate movement, etc., we've always been carbon emissions, etc., which became, especially in the last years, absolutely a political theme and not a good one. Do you fear that water could go the same route, or is it almost impossible to make that a political?
SPEAKER_00:I won't see how they can make it political. They can make it political and to exclude groups from water. But I certainly hope not that will happen. Because then the water is really far away from where humanity should be.
SPEAKER_01:From the Netherlands, etc., where you're originally from, where water is a very different issue, even though droughts now are becoming a huge issue. But usually the Netherlands, we are a country where water is always there, probably a bit too much in some cases. Does that the story of water lands, because you're trying to find investors, funders, etc., from a place where water has never been an issue to actually hear a place where water is an issue and has been for the last decade?
SPEAKER_00:It's difficult to sell that narrative, let's say, to large, like asset managers or people that are I think the people in the Netherlands that work with water are shit scared. The salination of the soil because of the changing water levels is huge. The fact that transport over rivers would not be possible anymore in the coming not 10-20 years in certain rivers, it's a big problem. And actually, the water quality in the Netherlands, in the natural water reservoirs, is decreasing. I think I heard it from an engineer. They would not pass the European norms at the moment. So it's a bigger topic than hydrogen. Yeah, no, water quality is next.
SPEAKER_01:And you probably don't want to swim nor drink from a lot of rivers, etc. I don't know how forever chemicals has hit a nerve a lot more than water quality. I think the story is not out yet. We need a good Netflix document, or so somebody listening interested in that. I talk to, of course, quite a few investors and funders, and we talk about water. The first response, not always, is hi, irrigation is very important. I'm like, yeah. But this is about water cycles, the small one, the big one, landscape scale regeneration to attract water or to stabilize water flows, water vapor that cools the planet. Like this is a whole different. And there you like already in the first two words, you basically lost half of the audience. And so I'm very curious what are narratives, what are pieces that work and that land with not with everyone, but at least with people that are leaning in and interested, to get, first of all, the knowledge up to speed of where we are now in terms of what we know and what we don't know. And then that there's an action alternative, like there is a way of leaning in and doing stuff. And there's a potential scale. We don't know how much, like we don't know what is the tipping point in a watershed, but we can start asking those questions to large language models, to big models, and not only language models, but actually compute power to say, okay, where in a landscape, how many hectares of the 50,000, 60,000 hectares is it 20,000 meter effect or 10 or 30? That's quite a difference in planning any money before you see rivers influence, but also before you see rain patterns, basically. And those kind of discussions are coming way more than a couple of years ago, but I still I see them mostly infringes on some substacks, which are interesting, but not necessarily in boardrooms.
SPEAKER_00:I think the water world is such an interesting space, mythical, mystical, almost spiritual in what in a sense. We don't understand how it works. Does the water cycles from the sea to the source? Like clouds, like you say, like trees inviting the clouds to rain.
SPEAKER_01:We had it here at the table when I said that, I think, and somebody was like, What? How does that work? And the forest releases certain particles, I don't remember the name. They trigger, attract, and make it rain or not. And so you could say that the trees make the rain, or and I think there were some jaws dropped.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and humidity in the forest and cooling down, like atmosphere, the underground natural deposits, no water deposits. It's it's like fantastic how that that whole system works. And then if you speak to a water scientist, like how the clouds move and create basically zones of humidity, like hundreds of kilometers of humid soil guided by mountains, it's fascinating. How if you cut a tree line, how the how clouds cycles are disturbed. It's like super interesting. And we haven't designed our societies like that.
SPEAKER_01:We used to do in in India there were the holy rain gardens that you were very strategically through the landscape. I don't remember which part of India. Please correct me if I'm wrong. We had it with avant of uh safe soil. And they were absolutely forbidden to cut. Of course, they were using the religion to make sure you didn't because they knew that was where the rain was making its trip inland to make sure inland it would rain. And you need to strategically place large enough, not enormous, I don't remember the exact size, but large enough to be very well wooded, healthy forest to make sure the rain would make its little jumps all the way. And so it's not, but of course that was and now isn't. And so I think we'll be surprised how little is needed to influence that, but how strategic probably in a landscape. Which will be fascinating to find out. Yeah, we're on the journey. And with that, I think it's a good moment to wrap up. The fire is quiet as you can hear, temperature is still warm. I want to thank you for your hospitality, for the work you do in this massive watershed. But there are, I think, I don't know, a number out there. 5,000 other ones around the Mediterranean. We're the smallest. The smaller watershed in the Iberian Peninsula. So you pick the right one to stay unknowingly. I'm not sure if that makes it easier or more difficult, but it's definitely an interesting one with the tourism industry, have heavy, intensive agriculture and a huge ex-charcoal forest, it's still, which creates a lot of challenges, but also a lot of you can see when you visit the plots the impact of reduction and just reducing the wood, the number of trees and wood, and you immediately the light hits and life starts sprouting and animals change, etc. It's very fascinating to see to see that. And of course, the big animals, the very famous one, the vultures, the wolf, etc., help, but the little rabbit also, because otherwise you're not gonna get a lynx. Yeah, exactly. The turtle, the beaver, like the river animals back as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Do you have beavers yet? Not yet, no. But we've been doing some tests at river artificial beaver dams. Just to see if it floods. How it would work and what would yeah. But the beaver is coming also towards this direction.
SPEAKER_01:Um it's interesting how these animals travel. Who if you can imagine great distances, but a beaver is not the best walker, I think, in terms of let's walk a hundred kilometers to get to the next watershed.
SPEAKER_00:But I have heard they've been helped by uh particular Englishman. Which won't be named.
SPEAKER_01:No. But yeah, we know. Anyway, shout out if you're listening. Yeah. Which is an interesting group of people, by the way. But that's for a whole different podcast. I love them. The pot uh the beaver, the beaver crew. There's a fascinating book about beavers, which I'm blanking on the title, which I'll put in the show notes. It's yeah, it's the biggest, what is it? Land engineers. What would happen if they're back here? Would they be protected? Because they were hunted everywhere. Would they be protected? Would they be welcomed? Would it be as scary as when the forest came?
SPEAKER_00:The otter was welcomed very much. The beaver.
SPEAKER_01:The beaver makes dams, otter.
SPEAKER_00:And they live more upstream because there are no people there. So I think the first 20-23 kilometers, I think they will be living in peace. Because people are in the first three villages here. People are really nature lovers. So that's I think is a big advantage to work here. They really love their valley and the forest here.
SPEAKER_01:But do they see beaver dams with the flooding around, etc., as a an okay part of their valley? As long as that's not affecting their house. Doesn't affect their house, yeah. That's usually there are ways to manage that. It would be fascinating to have them have them back. And yeah, looking forward to checking again on the finance piece, how to get the hundreds of millions.
SPEAKER_00:I'm super excited about that. And also I'm super excited to see how other people are so super excited about it. Because it's something so meaningful if it works.
SPEAKER_01:We don't know if it's work, but if it works, yeah, then we have a potential solution for other watersheds that you don't have the luxury of being able to reach a large Dutch asset manager with your network, obviously, you can be that pioneer that maybe other watersheds, bigger ones, don't necessarily have. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening to this conversation. It's the first ever we had on the podcast a real fireside chat. Of course, we had some some others in the past, but it was always without a fire for good reasons. I think we had John Kemp at Groundswell, which was incredibly warm, so a fire would have been a bit out of proportion there. And let me know what you think. I was really looking forward and really enjoyed checking in with Steph. So much has happened since the last time we spoke and we recorded, and so much still, of course, needs to happen. But it's really interesting to see how fast this work in a landscape can go, and how fast trust gets rebuilt, how suddenly government programs become available if somebody puts together, and not necessarily Steph, of course, the people of the foundation, put together the puzzle pieces. Like so much needs to be done, but so much fuels that is already going in a massive valley, which is one of the smallest watersheds in Spain, which raises a very interesting question. What can we learn here and apply elsewhere? How do we look at protocols, lessons learned, steps they said, they put, because of course it's great if one watershed gets restored, regenerated, etc. But what about the others? And we can only start really drawing down a lot of carbon, really restore biodiversity, and increase the small water cycle if we do this at scale, which means repeating, which means other watersheds, etc. So I'm very curious how this public-private partnership spreads through Catalunya first and then through the whole Iberian Peninsula, and of course around the Mediterranean. Like the Mediterranean is one of those focal points together, I don't know, with the Amazon, with the Congo Basin, and some other places where you just really feel the need of regeneration at scale very soon because the damage is already happening, and I don't think the rest of the world realizes how important some of these hotspots are, not only just for biodiversity, etc., but really because of weather patterns. So we're gonna see, I think, a lot of movements in this space, and we are looking forward to keep bringing them to you. So thank you for listening and see you at the next one. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investing in regenerative agriculture.com slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? And get in touch with us on social media, our website, or via the Spotify app and tell us what you like most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
