Hi, my name is Willemijn de Iongh and I am a Knowledge and Research Officer at Commonland. In the past few weeks, you have learnt more about the phase, steps involved in business model innovation in degraded landscapes. You've also seen practical examples of landscape restoration business cases in Spain, Iceland, and Portugal to help ground some of the things you have learnt so far through this MOOC. To illustrate the impact of our influence on the Planet Nine so-called planetary boundaries have been identified. These boundaries represents thresholds beyond which the stability of planetary-scale systems cannot longer be relied upon. Lancaster University Management Professor Gail Whiteman has called these planetary boundaries the key performance indicators or KPIs of our planet. We already seemed to have overshot the boundaries of climate change, biodiversity loss, and biochemical flows such as nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. We are coming close to crossing the boundaries for ocean acidification, freshwater use, and land use change. At the same time, there is hope because across some of the biggest polluting sectors, we can see market transitions from extractive, short and focus production towards sustainable ways of production that aim to reduce the environmental footprint of a product. So, the next phase of market transformation requires changing the market rules to incorporate the planet's KPIs by strengthening forms of production that explicitly enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services and build the natural capital that underpins production systems. By creating regenerative forms of production, positive returns of natural capital, social capital, return of inspiration can be created in addition to financial capital. In my work at Commonland, I look at how big landscape restoration efforts including business cases ultimately contribute to four returns instead of one, on a long-term 20-year horizon. We see that to achieve these returns, the landscape you were operating in can generally be organized in three zones, a natural zone, a combined zone, and an economic zone. A long-term approach is important as it takes approximately 20 years or one generation to restore a landscape. Now, let me touch on what a landscape approach actually is. In a landscape approach, the stakeholders aim to reconcile competing social, economic, and environmental objectives and to move away from the often unsustainable sectoral insider approach to land management. A landscape approach aims to meet the interests of different stakeholders within the landscape, while also considering goals and outcomes important to stakeholders outside of the landscape, such as national governments or the international community even. You could say that the landscape interventions are leveraged through business cases that deliver multiple returns essentially geared towards transforming an entire landscape. For example, the food and agriculture company, wide open agriculture in the Australian wheat belt is not just growing and selling healthy food, they are connected to a co-innovation network that forms a wider movement of farmers, landowners, communities, investors, local government, and NGOs transforming land use across the landscape. So, business cases are a vehicle for bigger landscape change, and that's where you come in. To make sure your business is regenerative and has positive effects on the landscape is vital that your business case is able to move from maximization of return on investment per hectare to maximization of multiple returns on investment in landscape. It's important that these value creating activities are organized to a 3-zoned approach and with a long-term 20-years timeline for the returns to really be achieved. So, how do you check if this really is the case? For this, we have been working with the landscapes that Commonland partners with to develop a 4 returns monitoring framework. This framework with measurable outcomes and indicators can also be used to quickly assess whether or not your business case is 4 returns proof or not. Given the differences in landscapes, it's hard to apply the same indicators across them. Therefore, we work with global aggregated four-returns outcomes that apply across the landscapes around the world, while indices and indicators are contextualized per landscape. An index is basically a set of indicators which provide a means for systematic comparisons of performance across the very landscapes. Each index has then underlying indicators that differ per landscape. The soil health indicators for the Australian wheat belt, for example, differ from the indicators for Dutch peat soils while they all unite at the natural capital outcome level, which means hectares under improved management. Warning, while it's important to measure and show your impact, the reality of creating four returns impact through your business is messy, it's non-linear and it's very complex. Expect things to constantly change. That is the reason we call landscape degradation a wicked problem. However, in some of the landscape we can see early signals of things improving. New jobs and networks created or people moving back to the landscape to work on landscape restoration. We also see that certain spots of land starts to regenerate where land use management measures have been taking place. Through reflective and adaptive monitoring, you can start to capture these results over a 20-year time horizon and show progress and results over time. It also helps you in your business strategy as in some cases trade-offs need to be considered, where natural capital can be inhibited by agricultural and economic needs and vice versa. As Steve mentioned in week five of this MOOC, finding opportunities for creating value can be done by considering what value is currently captured or destroyed in the way the system currently operates. When developing your business model, this model can be broken down into value proposition, value delivery and value capture. The triple layered Business Model Canvas hopefully helped you to consider all the necessary building blocks you need to successfully create, capture, and deliver the promised value. Remembering that your business often operates in desolate degraded landscapes, it's important to see how your business can create inspiration of value both to your stakeholders, buyers but also your customers and have a positive ripple effect in the wider landscape and ecosystem. So, how do you then check if your business case is 4 returns proof? There are basically two steps you need to take which also comeback in the exercise for week seven. Step one, define your 20-year outcomes for your business from the point of view of each return, which values are you creating over time across these 4 returns, starting with inspiration then social capital, natural capital, and financial capital? What does this look like with a real life landscape restoration business model? To check this out, we will broadly scan through what the 4 returns outcomes could be for the case of crop diversification in Spain. Let's start with return of inspiration. Early signs in the research project which is active in four countries shows that crop diversification and low input farming as a business case do hold a lot of potential for creating return of inspiration amongst all involved, by creating a pathway with the future of farming integrated landscapes, diversifying income opportunities, and stimulating sustainable development. Next step that will further inspire people, include dissemination of the results from the project through on and offline engagement and publications. What about natural capital? The crop diversification case scores very high in return of natural capital, as this way of farming will create important environmental benefits such as reduced contamination of soil and water resources, increased water availability, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. Okay, so social capital. It's clear that return of social capital carries a bit more time and work to show the positive effects in terms of increased social capital. Nevertheless, a crop diversification is further implemented in the landscape through a strong and supportive farmer network. We can arguably assume that this will lead to better and more stable incomes and entrepreneurial skills for the farmers, as well as strengthen social networks and knowledge exchange. This is, however, an assumption that we need to continually test through solution validation tests and trials together with farmers and other stakeholders. Last but not least, financial capital. The expectation is that crop diversification results in an improved cost-benefit ratio for farmers, especially as farmers have less spending on agricultural input, labor because of reduced tiling and higher output as a result of improved crop yields compared to conventional farming. This, again, is an assumption that needs to be tested through solution validation together with farmers. If you really pay attention to the crop diversification case, you can see that they are not actually creating a new product but are rather changing the way things are produced, which can form the basis for new business cases with diversified crops and products. Step two, lay your landscapes puzzle by testing if the current setup of your business model is connected to a wider system or landscape. For this, at Commonland, we use a 3-zoned approach. Is there natural, combined, and economic zone that you can identify? For example, where is your product or service directly grown, produced, shared, or created? Where does the manufacturing and selling take place? Are there indirect benefits that can be expected from your value chain? For example, improve soil health, regeneration, and protection of natural areas, waste streams that are repurposed such as grass cuttings for compost. In the table, you can see that the combined and economic zone create more or less similar values but to different degrees, whereas the natural zone activities seem to be distinctly different as this is not land allocated for agricultural production but rather geared towards recreational activities and more natural capacities. Of course, in reality, these zones are not as simple and fixed as they are presented here. There are many overlaps and multipurpose uses for land, but these zones are simply a guiding approach to think from a landscape perspective. I hope this reflection on how your business model connects to wider ecosystem has inspired you to also test this for your idea or business case. Four returns instead of one are achievable and make business sense. Together with Commonland's partners, we are already doing it. So, nothing is stopping you from trying to do the same. Thanks for your attention. Bye.
