Reflorestar Portugal: Restoring People, Forests and Ecosystems
From November 12th to November 14th, Primal is hosting a reforestation gathering in the unique, village-in-the-making, Traditional Dream Factory. In this Gathering, we aim to plant 1000 trees in the increasingly eroded landscape of Alentejo, Portugal, in an effort to not only restore this land’s forests and ecosystems, but also restore people and communities while doing so. To leave beings and places better than how we found them, is our motto. This beautiful event will only happen thanks to the incredible support and profound pool of knowledge that’ll be shared to us by dear partners at Reflorestar Portugal.
Last week, I had the privilege of speaking to Susana Guimarães, one of the co-founding hearts and brains behind this citizenship initiative that was born in June 2017, after the devastating wildfires of Pedrogão Grande, with the dream of seeing Portuguese forests be reborn. In this conversation, I had the chance to ask Susana about the project’s genesis, mission, vision and development, as well as how these are connected to their partnership with Primal.
The Genesis of Reflorestar Portugal
When asked about what fueled the start of Reflorestar Portugal, Susana told me that “Reflorestar was born out of the need to encourage dialogue, at a national level, among all of those who are trying to create regeneration. At the level of nature, but also of our communities, through the integration of the human being back into nature.” It’s an attempt at gathering the people that are doing this work, in order to coordinate efforts and empower civilian communities into restorative action. Their main goal was to create safe spaces where different people, knowledges, visions and opinions could converge, so as to understand people’s varying needs and difficulties, as well as contemplate practical solutions to these. “The first two and a half years of Reflorestar, we were mostly dedicated to bringing that convergence; to dialogue, to integrate, to inspire, and try to find solutions to those necessities and difficulties we were hearing of and had already detected through our many years exploring regenerative practices such as permaculture and agroforestry,” Susana explains. What they came to understand through these many conversations and gatherings, is that it is only possible to regenerate the environment by involving the human being. “We cannot separate humans from the ecological situation,” she says. “Therefore, we have to respond to the difficulties and necessities of the human being, in order to have ecological restoration.” While Susana emphasizes that “nature will always keep having its processes,” she reminds us that “we stimulate nature. We act, and nature responds. It is studied that we have quicker, more abundant results if we’re involved in the processes of nature.” In this way, to Reflorestar, our participation in its restoration is imperative for us to curb the devastating consequences of human-induced climate change.
Reflorestar’s Vision, Mission and Strategy to get there
Their vision is to see abundant ecological systems, where the human is an active and integrated participant. Their mission is to regenerate both these ecological systems as well as human beings in order to get to that space of regenerative health and abundance. “That's why we work on these two pillars: on the technical pillar, which includes practical, hands-on ecological work; and on the social pillar – from the biannual national convergence we host to encourage people, help projects and stimulate this national dialogue, to our various other educational efforts such as workshops, courses, and gatherings such as Primal Gathering. These are the areas we are dedicated to, considering our mission and vision.”
The Reflorestar philosophy sees human beings as “Guardians of the Forest.” “We’re not parasites, as many of us seem to think nowadays,” Susana clarifies. However, “we have forgotten our role as stewards of nature.” Since this amnesia is considered to be at the root of the socio-environmental challenges we’re facing, their main strategy focuses on “telling this story of connection between human beings and natural processes.” Susana continues, “to make people understand this mirror relationship: how our health is inherently tied to the health of our ecosystems, how to see the parallels between the way our bodies function and the ways the soil operates, for example. These are all very connected. We can tell a beautiful story of these relationships. One that helps us understand our existence in this planet and why we’re here. Why it is important that we are here. We love to entertain this kind of thought, as to make people understand the role of forests and why we’re beings of the forest.”
To Susana, getting people to remember and understand this symbiotic relationship between human beings and forests – how, for example, human beings have an important role as dispersers of seeds, cleaners of the forest, protectors and caretakers of trees, amongst many others – is essential to restore equilibrium within our ecosystems. “We need to change the narrative, the lens with which we see nature and our relationship to it. We fear nature and its processes – a situation this past year and half has perfectly exemplified,” she mentions.
The idea is to leave what she understands to be “our fear of our own selves and of nature” behind: “The idea that we are parasites and are not welcomed: to leave that behind. To understand that, in reality, we are a planet of abundance, and that is why there exists complexity in this planet. We are complex beings precisely because there were the conditions for us to evolve up until this point. We are part of this system, and so, the more we give, the more we’ll receive. The more we give ourselves to nature and fulfill our roles, our needs will be met. We won’t be lacking food, water, oxygen, health. So, our point is to get people to understand what the basic values of being human are. Even our modern lives, the cities, technologies and such – all of this is compatible with being in harmony with nature. What we need to do is to get out of the extractivist, fear-based paradigm, and into one of reconnection with ourselves and, by extension, nature.”
Reflorestar At Primal Gathering 2021
Reflorestar’s very socially-focused work comes too with a fundamentally hands-on, practical, educational component. To them, this educational element is crucial in accomplishing their mission, as they believe empowering people with the necessary tools to learn how to do reforestation work autonomously is an extremely effective way of catalyzing change. “This is where our interest in Primal Gathering comes from,” Susana discloses. “It's about leaving a positive impact in ecological terms, but also leaving the seed of inspiration and education in the people who will participate. In technical terms, all the tricks we can share, as well as the vision of why regeneration and ‘reforestation’ is not just about trees, is an essential part of our mission. We know that reforesting Portugal is not a job of 9 people. We need the entire country together, so we want to share and inspire with our knowledge.”
While describing what Reflorestar has in store for us at Primal Gathering will not do justice to the experience, Susana did give an idea of what awaits us. “At Primal Gathering, we will focus on getting participants to understand what the structure of the forest is, why it exists, why planting a forest is not just about planting trees and how to do this correctly. In other words, what are the relationships between plants and us in this ecosystem, especially in the Alentejo, which is where this will happen. Basically, what are some seeds that we can find around us, how to maintain a small nursery and how to do a small reforestation wherever we are. We’ll dig into the families of different trees which will help them grow into adulthood, and we’ll share from our repertoire of tips, tricks and techniques that are accessible to anyone to help increase the survival rate of trees. For us, what’s most important at Primal Gathering is that people keep these understandings and knowledges, so they are able to later repeat, explore and apply them in a correct manner.” It’s going to be quite an adventure.
Make sure to not miss on this great opportunity to grow your regenerative tool kit alongside this beautiful community of active transformation-seekers. Find more info on the 2021 Primal Reforestation Gathering here, and have a little sneak peek into what awaits you here.