Exploring LAND’s Nature-Positive Call to Action
At LAND, our exploration and research into Nature-Positive principles began in 2023, driven by Andreas Kipar’s involvement as an international expert in landscape and planning with the WEF Nature-Positive Task Force. This prestigious opportunity led LAND Research Lab GmbH (LRL) to adopt global models and terminology, integrating them into our multidisciplinary research and supporting our landscape design projects with a global, innovative approach.
Embracing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration
In just a few years, LRL has embraced the urgent need to reverse biodiversity loss and restore ecosystems through transformative actions that go beyond traditional conservation efforts. As a result, the Nature-Positive approach has become a core pillar of our Landscape Consulting Services.
Integrating Nature into Design Decision-Making
Our daily mission at LRL is to embed Nature into design decision-making, demonstrating how the well-being of people and sustainable development can align with the growth needs of cities and businesses. Through our services and research, we aim to make tangible the potential of public-private/ private-public partnerships that place Nature at the heart of socio-economic considerations. This balanced approach ensures that development supports both environmental regeneration and progress, fostering a harmonious relationship between urban growth and corporate interests.
The Nature-Factory Manifesto
In line with this vision, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos on 22nd January 2025, LAND and Porsche Consulting introduced the Nature-Factory Manifesto, a strategic vision designed to transform industries, territories and landscapes, combining environmental resilience with new models of profitability and competitiveness. This shift in mindset will revolutionize traditional models of sustainable urban development, placing companies at the forefront of ecological and social transitions by adopting Nature-Positive principles.
Nature-Positive Framework, LAND
Steps to a Nature-Positive Future
The first step in embracing a Nature-Positive mindset is accounting and assessing the value of Natural Capital, recognizing the vast resources and Ecosystem Services (ES) nature offers in urban contexts. By understanding this value, businesses can see the critical role Nature plays in long-term sustainability. The next step involves guiding municipalities, public entities, and private companies to commit towards nature-based strategies, encouraging investments that restore ecosystems. Implementing nature-based solutions locally ensures development proceeds in harmony with the environment, with the potential for local actions to create global impacts when scaled and replicated. Finally, acting and advocating through a collaborative approach is essential – engaging clients, communities, and partners to promote Nature’s growth and drive local benefits, fostering shared responsibility for both environmental and economic well-being.
Becoming Nature-Positive, LAND
A Holistic Approach to Landscape Design
In conclusion, tracking this journey through daily work enables us to see that every landscape intervention is an urban, architectural, and social project. The Nature-Positive approach not only reshapes physical spaces but also fosters new relationships, habits, and functions, creating lasting change in the context we live in. For the LAND group, landscape design and data-drive landscape consulting service, are two sides of the same coin, closely connected, ranging from the data-driven narrative phase to the realisation, always with the aim of improving the quality of collective life.
More about this in LAND’s upcoming newsletter in the article “Sustainability beyond numbers: rethinking the future of Nature at the World Economic Forum annual meeting”. Sign up here.
