Renewables & Environment - Leiden, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Foundation Sol Nascente is a regenerative initiative that longs to reforest the north of Portugal and Spain by proving that a forest can be ecologically sound as well as wildly productive.Our mission is to take degraded lands and to transform them into flourishing forest communities. To acquire lands weakened by generations of neglect, manage them with regenerative agroforestry to build soil and resist wildfire. And in the same space, nest several forest roductions which we then process into goods with a high added value. Simultaneously yielding natural beauty, carbon credits, conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and the very forest models which tie them together.Through diversified yields, we catalyze a new trend in which people don't simply return to rural life, but embark on a new form of country living where healthy forests are synonymous with a healthy rural economy. We demonstrate a clear alternative forestry, capable of reinvigorating local communities and incentivizing a lifestyle in which people manage and protect forests. In the end, the only thing capable of preventing wildfire is human action. It's community participation which can directly reverse the underlying cause of wildfire: systemic abandonment of the countryside. The architect of the project, Mathijs de Bruin, migrated from Amsterdam to Northern Portugal specifically to start forest communities. Still a serial tech entrepreneur, he specialises in networking, economics, legal structures andcommunity design. Diego Reymondez is our forest designer. He grew up in New York from Galician parents. Five years ago he took on the management of his parentsland, near Santiago, which is now a thriving forest. He has been consulting since in the design, planting and management of forests.