User:Wikicommunities/sandbox

= Ecosystem Restoration Communities = Ecosystem Restoration Communities (ERC) is a global movement of everyday people that are reversing ecological destruction. The non-profit organisation is registered in The Netherlands.

History
The movement was founded by John D. Liu in 2016 as Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and the Ecosystem Restoration Foundation was registered in 2017. In March 2023 the Ecosystem Restoration Camps name changed to Ecosystem Restoration Communities, in response to the general opinion that it was time for a more expansive, inclusive name, encompassing the diversity of work now taking place, and better demonstrating that the movement is a living, growing, international community with common interests, ideals and goals.

Vision and mission
ERC envisions a fully-functional, peaceful, abundant, biologically diverse earth brought about through cooperative efforts for the ecological restoration of degraded lands. Their mission is to work together to restore ecological functionality, to build research, training and innovation centers for ecological restoration, to engage people in inquiry into ecological restoration, and train people in how to restore degraded lands in perpetuity.

Conservation approach
The organisation shares the belief of the World Resources Institute that "Local communities must be at the center of ecosystem restoration." , and that everyday people need to be be empowered to take the lead in restoring the earth, working together to change the broken system. The movement is a network of people and projects doing people-centered productive restoration to increase and build back the ecosystem functionality of degraded landscapes. This work draws carbon down and cools the surface temperature of the earth, thereby fighting climate change. Restoring degraded land also increases local biodiversity, restores water-systems, and re-establishes entire food webs to improve food-security and local livelihoods.

The Ecosystem Restoration Communities movement functions as a collaborative global living lab, where local, everyday people and volunteers from around the world not only take on restoration, but also innovate, learn from their experiences, refine their interventions, and share their learnings with the world. These local living labs collectively form a large, global living lab that is contributing to a knowledge base on how to create abundant and thriving regenerative practices. The ERCs are developing the proof-of-concept in local landscapes that will inspire and attract all who live there to join the worldwide effort to restore ecosystems and introduce regenerative practices that will make it possible for humanity to survive on this planet.

ERCs are able to support their neighbours in adopting these regenerative practices, by sharing their resources of knowledge and earth restorers who can physically undertake the restoration work.

The ERCs are also places where everyday people can go to learn about restoration and make a positive impact by physically taking part in bringing land back to life. The ERCs provide a meaningful, empowering experience that changes the way participants see their relationship with earth. It is this changed attitude of people – as they start to see themselves as part of nature and not separate from it – that will enable a personal transformation and build the strong foundation for our sustainable success.

How the organisation is achieving scale
The first ERC, Camp Altiplano, was started in Spain in 2017. ERC now supports around 60 communities in over 30 countries across six continents, with a goal of having one million active participants in hundreds of communities by 2030.

To date the communities have contributed to the restoration of almost 9,400 hectares, with more than 3.2 million plants and trees planted by over 24,000 earth restorers.

In addition to hands-on restoration experiences, the movement also inspires people through positive impact stories and offers rich, online learning opportunities to empower everyday people to become earth restorers. These include the Ecosystem Restoration Design Course in partnership with Gaia Education, the Rewilding Training in partnership with Embercombe, and Introduction to Ecosystem Restoration Course in partnership with Soil Food Web School.

At the restoration communities on the ground, earth restorers can learn and understand restoration and what regenerative economies look like.

ERC has also developed a Knowledge Exchange platform (KEx) supported by Zendesk, populated with a selection of relevant content from research papers, publications, articles, documents and live design conversations. On the platform restorers around the world can learn from each other as they share their successes and failures, and learn from experts in the field of restoration. The platform is curated by the leaders of the Ecosystem Restoration Community on the ground as well as other practitioners in the ecosystem restoration field.

Recognising that monitoring and evaluation is essential to improve restoration efforts on the ground, Ecosystem Restoration Communities experiment with, assess and validate different methods and techniques for restoring ecosystem functions across a range of diverse climate zones and biomes. The data emanating from these activities has the potential to contribute to global research on ecosystem restoration.

Leadership
ERC is governed by a Supervisory Board:


 * Francois De Keuleneer
 * Jane Nakhanu Wegesa Fraser
 * Paloma Caro
 * Loucky Spit
 * Rhamis Kent
 * Reem N Bsaiso
 * Nanno Kleiterp

Board of Directors:


 * Pieter van der Gaag
 * Jan Hein van der Hoeven

The organisation is guided by an Advisory Council comprising almost 40 leading figures in the earth restoration field, co-chaired by John D. Liu.

Key partnerships
ERC is an official partner to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.