Land stewardship
Land stewardship is an outstanding tool to help manage and conserve public or private spaces.
Land stewardship is an outstanding tool to help manage and conserve public or private spaces.
Agreements between civil society, entities and public administrations allow the landscape and biodiversity to be protected, restored and maintained beyond the classic use of private protected areas or land purchases.
Land stewardship consists in reaching voluntary agreements between land owners and private entities to work together to make land and nature preservation projects possible.
We reach agreements with entities to jointly manage estates owned by the Foundation.
We reach agreements with public administrations like town halls, the ACA and others to help manage estates which are not owned by the Foundation.
We reach agreements with private landowners to jointly manage estates of high interest for landscape and biodiversity conservation, especially if they are near the Foundation's own properties.
Reaching farm stewardship agreements with farm producers to help them produce following the guidelines of organic farming and to commercialise their products via MANS, the cooperative promoted by the Foundation.
Farmers’ NetworkWe began to develop stewardship in early 2000, and contributed to its introduction into Catalonia. In that first decade, more than 70 advisory agreements were reached to plan the management of public and private spaces, along with partnership agreements to implement some of the planned actions. Altogether this covered more than 160,000 hectares in Catalonia (equivalent to 5% of the country's land area).
To be considered stewardship agreements, they must span several years. Therefore, we have 6 current stewardship agreements, which are equivalent to 82 hectares, and we jointly manage 20 of the 27 natural spaces that are part of the Nature Spaces Network with other entities.
Furthermore, we use the stewardship agreements for the establishment of 33 forest preserves, as a payment for the environmental services of them, which cover more than 200 additional hectares.