The case is about a Dutch organisation, Commonland which scouts, launches, and manages business-driven landscape restoration projects. In 2014 it started a new landscape restoration project in the Southern region of Spain in an area that covers 630,000 hectares of land spanning across three municipalities; Altiplano, Los Vélez, and Alto Almanzora, or AlVelAl for short. Decades of unsustainable agricultural practices in almond and cereal farming having resulted in severe landscape degradation, and the region also suffers from a host of social problems including rural abaondonment and unemployment. Commonland has launched several smaller and some larger initiatives in the region designed to promote sustainable agriculture, increase income of residents through high-quality, organic agricultural produce, boost employment, and return inspiration to the region. There have been some successes but the project is not delivering the results Commonland had hoped for, and it now appears that the initiatives launched will only restore a small portion of the total land area. Michiel de Man, business developed with Commonland, now needs to revise the organisation‘s strategy in AlVelAl, with the objective to come up with initiatives that will restore larger portions of the land and bring about financial, social, cultural, and inspirational returns to local residents, farmers, authorities, and investors involved in the project.
This is an ENABLE project case. ENABLE is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union under agreement number-2016-1-NL01-KA203-023013.
Based on field research; 27 pages.
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The Teaching Note is available on request, you can contact us at https://www.rsm.nl/cdc/contact/
1. Understand there are no limits to solving environmental and social problems we are currently facing, as long as you are creative enough. 2. Explain how the cornerstones of sustainable business practices – collaborative, holistic, inclusive – can be taken into practice. 3. Select an appropriate framework to analyse the economic aspects of an environmental or social project and apply it to the project. 4. Develop a holistic, feasible, and concrete business model for an environmental or social project.
