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Draft:Willem Ferwerda

Willem Ferwerda (born 1959) is a Dutch ecologist, conservationist, entrepreneur active in landscape restoration. He is founder (2013) and director of Commonland, a global organisation working worldwide to promote sustainable development by restoring large degraded landscapes. He is involved in several international organisations in the field of nature conservation, restoration and sustainable agriculture, as an advisor, board member or director. In 2016, Ferwerda ranked first in the Sustainable 100, the list of Dutch people with the most influence on the environment and sustainability compiled annually by the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

Work

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Ferwerda studied tropical ecology, environmental sciences and agriculture in Amsterdam en Bogotá. He started his career in ecotourism and worked in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe in projects on conservation, ecosystem management and restoration of natural and agricultural areas.

In 2000, he became director of the Dutch office of the international nature organisation IUCN - International Union for Conservation of Nature. There he was, among other things, the initiator of Leaders for Nature, a network of prominent business people who act as advocates for corporate social responsibility and biodiversity. In 2006, he took the initiative to have 84 CEOs of large Dutch companies such as Rabobank, Unilever, Shell and others to sign an open letter to the government, calling for more to be done about nature and climate. This letter was published in the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad in December 2006. This led to the first biodiversity agreement between nature organisations and business, through the Netherlands employers' organisation VNO-NCW in 2010. Between1995 and 2012 Ferwerda set up grants programs at IUCN Netherlands to support more than 1,500 projects of conservation and indigenous NGOs in 40 tropical countries

In 2012, Ferwerda left the Dutch office of IUCN for the Erasmus University where he is still affiliated with the Rotterdam School of Management. In March 2013, he founded the organisation Commonland, with support from Erasmus University, IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, and the COmON Foundation. Commonland focuses on stimulating sustainable development through the restoration of large landscape and natural areas; its starting point is the approach developed by Ferwerda in 2012: the 4 Returns framework for landscape restoration. Ferwerda also became CEO of Commonland. Commonland has since been active in 23 countries to roll out the 4 Returns framework with local partners in large areas.

He has served as an advisor or director to the World Land Trust (UK), the Charles Darwin Foundation (Galapagos, Ecuador), the Lippe-Biesterfeld Foundation Nature College and the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management. In 2016, the Dutch newspaper Trouw placed him first in the Sustainable 100, the list of Dutch people with the most influence on the environment and sustainability. He addressed the sustainable royal address in 2017 on restoring the landscape as the basis of the economy and received the Groeneveld Prize for sustainable landscape management in 2019. In 2019, a whistling frog (Pristimantis ferwerdai) was named after him in Colombia in recognition of his years of commitment as a conservationist. In 2021, he and others published a new report on the 4 Returns framework for landscape restoration as a partner of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. In 2023 he received the Wubbo Ockels Brandaris oeuvre prize. This prize honours him for his lifelong commitment to a sustainable future for the next generation, showing courage, perseverance and imagination.

Since 2009, Ferwerda has been working with Chinese-American film and documentary maker John D.Liu. He was involved in the documentaries Green Gold 1 and Green Gold 2 broadcast on the VPRO series Backlight (TV program).

References

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Category:Dutch ecologists Category:Restoration movement Category:Landscape Category:Ecology Category:Conservation Category:Dutch businesspeople Category:UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

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