Biodiversity of Eco-Systems
We recognise there are many people and organisation working to positively transform places and landscapes across Western Australia. Together, we are all collectively acting across many ‘nodes of change’ to create more regenerative and positive futures.
We would like to celebrate and honour the great work that is happening—the parts that are visible and also the work that is currently invisible to us. Over the coming years there will be several ways we can amplify and accelerate our work together. More to come on this soon.
Commonland in WA:
An Eco-Systems Approach
Commonland is a Dutch-based holistic landscape restoration foundation that has been partnering with organisations and individuals in Western Australia since 2015. Initially this was with the organisation Wide Open Agriculture. In 2018 Commonland began to work with an ‘ecosystem of partners’ approach in WA; it now works with all the organisations listed on the Labs page. Commonland works alongside its WA partners and its WA-based team to create systems change in WA in five interlinking yet differentiated ways.
1. An Ecosystem of Partner Approach. Partnering with a range of backbone organisations from different areas of work in order to advance holistic landscape restoration and healing Country. Each organisation approaches the work from a different angle, and has its own network of individuals and organisations. These include Indigenous land managers, regenerative farmers, impact investors, regenerative food distributors, ecological-corridor creators, landscape rehydrators and systems-change practitioners.
2. A Multi-Capital Prototyping Fund. We recognise that there are many forms of capital that are valuable for making something happen (natural, social, financial and inspirational [knowledge, culture, spirit, purpose, passion etc.]). This fund is an experiment in supporting those who are already creating change in order to see what we can grow together. As a starting point it will focus on key ecosystem connectors and conveners, as well as those participating in the lab.
3. The Eco-Systems Innovation Lab. This lab aims to help catalyse a movement of movements, and a network of networks to collectively see and sense, and then grow the enormous amount of good work already happening across WA. It will do so through a transformative systems-change process in which the existing ecosystem of partners and other key stakeholders will also play a key role.
4. Embedding Transformative Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Practices. When co-creating change in systems we need to radically shift the way that we are seeing and sensing the system, making decisions and learning together to maximise our impact. We are embracing and embedding different ways of knowing, extended epistemologies and cutting-edge global and local practices to consistently learn and grow the change we want to see.
5. Shifting the Story. Through the ecosystem of partners, the prototyping fund, the ESI Lab and transformative approaches, we are collectively shifting the narrative of what it means to live on and care for this place. Of course, there are many networks, organisations and individuals who are currently working in this way and shifting the story of Western Australia; many have been doing so for decades; many have been caring for this place through story, song, dance and art since the beginning of creation; many are ready to begin their journey now.
The Lab Story
Individuals and organisations in WA and elsewhere have been embedding transformative learning-and-doing practices in partnership with Commonland for more than 10 years. In 2018 some of the ESI lab’s core team hosted ELIAS WA—a cross-sector systems change lab for eocsystem leaders in WA, also in partnership with Commonland. ELIAS WA helped inform Commonland’s first systems lab in the Netherlands ‘The Harvest of Tomorrow’. Both labs helped make clearer how to scale such an approach in WA, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
In 2022 Commonland, together with other partners, submitted an application to the ‘Dream Fund’ of the Postcode Lottery in the Netherlands in order to host a number of systems labs for holistic landscape restoration around the world. These labs would be designed, hosted and driven by local teams and local experts with support from Commonland in Amsterdam. The application was successful.
This success then combined with the help of ongoing support from all Commonland partners, including the COmON Foundation. Now, after a couple of years of refining the lab process and design, as well as reworking the partnerships to take the project forward, a number of labs are currently underway in various places: the Netherlands, WA and Africa. Soon, India, the Iberian Peninsula, and the UK and Ireland will also begin their own labs processes.
WA was one of the first labs to get underway, due to a recognition of a history of creating such labs amongst the team. The team has also been supporting, as well as learning from, the other labs taking place around the world.
The 4 Returns Framework
Together with partners from around the world, Commonland developed and continually refines the ‘4 Returns Framework’: a practical, holistic and adaptable approach to landscape restoration that anyone can use. The framework addresses the four main ‘losses’ associated with landscape degradation—loss of biodiversity, loss of social networks, loss of economic value, and loss of hope—and instead proposes the regeneration of the landscape to create 4 Returns.
Financial Returns
Natural Returns
Return of Inspiration
Social Returns