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Scaling Landscape Restoration: A Commonland Success Story

Imagine vast areas of the Earth, once vibrant and productive, now degraded—suffering from issues like soil erosion, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss.
Commonland's holistic landscapes & 4 Returns Framework

Table of Contents

Introduction: Regenerating landscapes for a brighter future

Imagine vast areas of the Earth, once vibrant and productive, now degraded—suffering from issues like soil erosion, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. This widespread land degradation affects nearly a third of the world’s population and contributes significantly to global challenges like climate change and food insecurity. 

Commonland is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing people together to restore degraded landscapes and regenerate the Earth. Founded in 2013 by ecologist Willem Ferwerda and entrepreneur Wijnand Pon, Commonland recognized the urgent need for a new approach to environmental restoration that simultaneously benefits nature and human well-being.

What does Commonland do?

Commonland acts as a facilitator and enabler, working with a diverse range of partners—from local farmers and communities to businesses, NGOs, and policymakers—in over 20 countries. Their mission is to make holistic landscape restoration the new norm. They provide essential tools, funding access, knowledge, and networks to support these on-the-ground efforts. Their ambition is to support landscape-based partners worldwide to spark and scale holistic landscape restoration.

The 4 Returns Framework: Commonland’s unique approach 

At the core of Commonland’s methodology is their distinctive 4 Returns framework. This practical, science-based model offers a holistic approach to landscape restoration that benefits all stakeholders over a long-term horizon (typically 20+ years). It’s designed to reverse the four main losses associated with land degradation and instead generate four essential “returns”:

  1. Return of Inspiration: Seeks to ignite hope, purpose, and a sense of pride among the people living within the landscape, fostering a deeper connection between people and nature.
  2. Natural Return: Focuses on restoring healthy ecosystems, including soils, water cycles, vegetation, and biodiversity. This aims to revive nature’s capacity to provide vital services.
  3. Social Return: Aims to rebuild trust, strengthen local identity, and foster deep community involvement, bringing back jobs, education, and social connections .
  4. Financial Return: Involves creating new, sustainable business models and livelihood opportunities that provide long-term income for communities .

This integrated framework ensures that restoration efforts are not isolated ecological projects but contribute synergistically to a regenerative economy where both people and the planet flourish.

This case study will explore how OpenForests’ platform explorer.land, provides Commonland with the essential tools to overcome the complexities of large-scale restoration, significantly enhancing their ability to implement, monitor, and scale the 4 Returns framework globally.

The strategic imperative: Transparency and collaborative scaling

Commonland’s 4 Returns model, while robust, faces specific challenges inherent in its large-scale application:

  1. Visualizing landscape complexity: How to effectively represent thousands of hectares, diverse activities, and the intricate connections between natural, social, and economic returns in an understandable format?
  2. Engaging diverse multistakeholders: How to facilitate seamless and continuous collaboration among a vast array of actors—from local farmers and community groups to international funders, scientific researchers, and government bodies—ensuring shared understanding and unified action?
  3. Demonstrating verifiable impact: How to transparently track, monitor, and communicate long-term progress, from on-the-ground ecological changes to broader socio-economic shifts, in a verifiable and compelling manner for all stakeholders?
  4. Enabling global scaling and replication: How to standardize documentation, share best practices, and create replicable templates that can accelerate the adoption of the 4 Returns framework in new landscapes worldwide?

These are precisely the challenges that explorer.land is designed to address, providing critical digital infrastructure for the global restoration movement.

How explorer.land empowers Commonland’s vision and its 4Returns

To bring its 4 Returns framework to life, Commonland uses explorer.land to increase visibility, ensure transparency, and foster collaboration across entire landscapes.

“You need to picture something on the map to (..) understand the whole territory, where you’re having impact and where you could have more impact” — Lily Maxwell-Lwin, Head of External Communications, Commonland

When it comes to managing vast landscape restoration projects, Commonland can rely on explorer.land. The platform simplifies complex geographical and project data, turning it into clear, interactive maps, allowing organizations like Commonland to truly visualize and understand their intricate landscapes, making their impactful work transparent and easy to share with everyone.

  • Dynamic landscape views: Each Commonland-supported region features a dedicated, dynamic landscape view on explorer.land. These living maps seamlessly integrate project boundaries, specific activity zones, partner organizations, and key timelines, providing a comprehensive, evolving overview of restoration efforts. This capability is crucial for clearly articulating the Natural Return by visually representing ecological changes and progress across space and time.
  • Geo-located ground-level visibility: The platform allows for the direct upload of rich field updates, from drone flyovers capturing expansive views to photo-stories shared by local farmers detailing specific interventions. This geo-located content creates a verifiable visual record of transformation, directly showcasing the tangible Capital Return and the dedicated human effort behind it. This rich storytelling capability is also vital for inspiring hope and demonstrating the Return of Inspiration.
  • Integrated impact monitoring: By integrating diverse data sources—including satellite data, thematic data layers, and detailed on-the-ground monitoring reports—explorer.land provides Commonland and its partners with a powerful tool to track and communicate ecological recovery and restoration milestones effectively.3 This data-driven approach strengthens the evidence base for all 4 Returns, offering quantifiable insights into progress.
Commonland - Reserva de la Biosfera Sierra Gorda's landscape

Conclusion: a blueprint for systemic change

Commonland’s ambition extends beyond merely restoring degraded lands; it aims to restore the very possibility of a regenerative economy—one where people and the planet can thrive in harmony, for generations to come. Their strategic use of explorer.land plays a vital enabling role in achieving this far-reaching vision.

By providing unparalleled transparency, facilitating seamless multistakeholder collaboration, and enabling compelling visual communication of impact, explorer.land is a crucial digital tool supporting Commonland’s 4Returns strategy. This unequivocally demonstrates that addressing the restoration challenge at scale requires not only innovative frameworks and deep local engagement but also effective digital infrastructure to bring complex landscape stories to life, build trust, and inspire collective, sustained action.

The future of restoration isn’t built in silos; it’s built in landscapes, together. And with the capabilities offered through explorer.land’s diverse functionalities and tools, Commonland is powerfully leading the way.

Outline

This comprehensive case study underscores the profound importance of a holistic, long-term approach to landscape restoration. At the core of Commonland’s transformative work is its 4Returns framework, which strategically prioritizes the regeneration of Natural Capital, Social Capital, Financial Capital, and Inspiration across degraded landscapes worldwide.

To effectively manage, monitor, and scale these ambitious initiatives, Commonland strategically utilizes explorer.land. This powerful platform provides crucial functionalities that enhance every aspect of their work:

  • Advanced Landscape Visualization
  • Enhanced Multistakeholder Collaboration
  • Transparent Impact Monitoring
  • Compelling Storytelling & Learning

In conclusion, Commonland’s strategic adoption of explorer.land’s diverse functionalities and tools exemplifies how effective digital infrastructure is vital for achieving transparent, collaborative, and scalable landscape restoration. This approach is instrumental in securing a regenerative future where both people and the planet can thrive.

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