Imagine miles and miles of desolate savannah in eastern Colombia, without a tree or bird or child in sight, a veritable no-man’s land. For Paolo Lugari, this was the perfect place to implement a vision: if a sustainable community could be created in such adverse environmental, social and political conditions, it could be done anywhere on the planet. Las Gaviotas has done just that, and much more.

In 1984, after a meeting of the Club of Rome, Paolo Lugari and his team embarked on the project, and booked preliminary results. In 1992, in preparation for the Kyoto Protocol, the Japanese government funded the Environmental Research Center at Las Gaviotas to expand the planting as a means to substantiate the concept of carbon sinks to sequester carbon dioxide and stabilise the climate. Paolo Lugari planted 8,000 hectares of Caribbean pine trees in a savannah that had been unproductive for centuries due to the slash and burn approach. It was considered impossible to plant trees in such acidic, inhospitable soil (pH4) but thanks to the innovative use of mycorrhizal fungi - which acts as the saliva for the tree - regeneration of the rainforest was successful. More than just successful, this initiative to initiate economic activities and to validate carbon sinks unleashed a chain reaction of positive effects that surprised even the initiators of the programme.

Reforestation: A Challenge Overcome
Project Las Gaviotas is the most important reforestation programme ever initiated in Colombia. With a survival rate of 92%, it has been demonstrated that reforestation is feasible even in harsh conditions.

Protecting and Recovering Biodiversity
Planting of one species was considered by many to be an un-ecological decision. However, nature responded differently than expected. According to the last botanical count, some 260 new species are found in the microclimate of the Las Gaviotas forests. With all of these new plant species have come new bacteria, insects, birds and even mammals. The indigenous people of the Llanos are excited. They have rediscovered many medicinal plants that had been considered lost. Paradise lost is being regained.

Value Addition
The planting of the Caribbean pine tree provides another economic impulse. The 7 to 14 grams of resin a day produced by the tree is locally converted to colofonia, a raw material for the paint and paper industry. The tapping and the processing of the resin brings about industrial activities and has proved to be a value addition to the region.

Breakthrough Packaging
A cardboard box (from recycled material) was designed with triple layers and a hole in the middle to allow easy filling of the folded box with the hot colofonia, fresh from distillation. The innovative package weighs only 25 kilos, which can be easily carried by a single person - saving on handling - and eliminates the need for a separate cooling step.

From Cleaner Production to Zero Emissions
Colofonia is perhaps the cleanest natural resin factory ever operated and the target is towards zero emissions. All the polyethylylene bags used to tap the resin and the waste colofonia are recovered and reconstituted to pipes and building materials for local houses.

Good Quality Water
More than a decade later, the forestation of the original 8,000 hectares has resulted in 10% more precipitation (some 110,000 m3 per day), converting Las Gaviotas into a net supplier of drinking water, a crystalline water of superior quality. With the cost of drinking water exceeding the cost of petroleum, Las Gaviotas has demonstrated that reforestation allows us to address one of the most critical issues the world is facing: access to natural potable water!

Biodiesel
The pine tree plantation is being complemented with the development of some 300 hectares of palm trees. This additional forest provides a permanent supply of vegetable oil, which is rather easily converted into biodiesel. This local energy source eliminates the dependence on imported diesel fuel to power trucks and tractors. The first biodiesel plant with a capacity of 1 million gallons per year has already been inaugurated in Bogota in 2006.

Where Does it go From Here?
The next step is to expand this programme beyond the initial 8,000 hectares to reforest the 6.3 million hectares of savannah that surrounds Las Gaviotas. Colombia is not in a position to commit 6 billion dollars to a development strategy. However, it turns out that there is no need to do so.

The finance required will come from creative financial engineering driven by the portfolio of value-added revenue streams created by an integrated and systemic agenda! The economic power of drinking water (thanks to the forest), hydroponic food crops (thanks to the abundance of water), and biodiesel (from the forest) provide a positive picture for the country of Colombia, potentially creating 120,000 new jobs, securing a local source of drinking water, eliminating the need to import diesel fuel and reducing the national foreign debt! This is a remarkable portfolio of opportunities for a region considered to be the ‘centre of nowhere’.

The Las Gaviotas reforestation project is not only about planting trees for climate stabilisation; it is primarily about catalysing a development programme that will pave the way for creating a sustainable future for our children where society is able to provide for the basic needs of all in terms of water, food, health care, shelter, energy, jobs and education, all with local resources. Las Gaviotas is poised to do nothing less than reshape the face of sustainable development and, consequently, the world.
Gaviotas moved from a one problem - one solution approach to a system approach where all problems are tackled at once, and all solutions jointly provide more opportunities than ever imagined, thanks to an autopoetic process that seems unstoppable. Under these conditions, slowly but steadily, this initiative will create self-sufficient settlements and perhaps even biocities. The natural dynamics are surprising and the regenerative capacities of the ecosystem now offer insights in the new economics that will underpin this shift in paradigm.

The People Behind the Las Gaviotas Project
Paolo Lugari was born in 1944. He is a visionary and the founder of the Center for Environmental Investigations at Las Gaviotas. The eco-village Las Gaviotas can be thought of as a town that embodies the desire to reclaim the land, the ecosystem and a sustainable life from a formerly desolate environment. Lugari’s projects are an inspiration for the zero emissions concept.
Paolo does not consider himself to be an ecologist. He searches for a sustainable future for poor communities using all that the ecosystem is able to produce. Paolo has proved and has scientifically documented that in Las Gaviotas, it is possible to convert the Colombian savannah back into the tropical rainforest it used to be 100 million years ago.

ZERI
Gunter Pauli (1956) is the founder and CEO of Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), an international network of scholars, business people, government officials, and educators. ZERI includes academic networks with members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the World Academy of Arts and Sciences of which he is a fellow.

Gunter Pauli has visited Gaviotas dozens of times over the past decades. He has been inspired by this prime case of sustainable development, and the remarkable paradigm shift that has been implemented. Trained as an economist, and leading an international network of scientists and vigorous operators who are keen to make things happen, he has taken the responsibility to finance the ‘Renaissance of the Tropical Rainforest in the Colombian Orinoco’ through a fund managed by the United Nations Development Programme. The Fund was launched in 2005 in Japan, Europe and North America.

References: www.zeri.org, ‘The Renaissance of the Rainforest’, by Gunter Pauli.  q