Restoration works when it’s held by people, agreements, rituals, shared work, and governance that protects what is being restored.

That’s what I tried to name in a recent conversation on the TreesForDev podcast, alongside Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, Project PI of the TreesForDev project.

It felt like an opportunity to pull the thread all the way back: where I come from, why I’m here, and what stewardship looks like when it’s practiced as a commons.

A personal path: from systems thinking to living places

If I had to describe my work in one line, I often say something like:

“I’m a catalyst and a designer for positive systemic change in local communities.”

But that sentence hides the more human truth: I’ve always been pulled toward the places where something is breaking, and where, at the same time, something could be repaired.

I didn’t start with the ambition to “do restoration.” I started with a fascination for how communities coordinate, how trust forms (or collapses), how decisions get made, and how economies shape what becomes possible for people and for land.

And then, step by step, my work became what it is now: moving across ecology, social life, and local economics, because the boundaries between them were never real on the ground.

One of the clearest things I’ve learned is this:

“You can’t restore a watershed without restoring relationships.”

The episode: a conversation about reciprocity and real-world systems

In the podcast, we start with my background, how I got involved, what drew me into ecological restoration, and why I keep insisting on the “multi-layer” view.

Because what we call “environmental problems” are often the visible surface of deeper dynamics:

• how people relate to each other

• how power and hierarchy shape decisions

• how value is defined

• who carries the burden of care

• who benefits from “development”

• who gets to stay, and who gets displaced

Maria and I spoke about restoration not as a set of interventions, but as an ongoing practice of stewardship.

Kenya: learning stewardship through practice with Grassroots Economics

Today, my work is rooted in Kenya, with Grassroots Economics, where the most practical, powerful entry points has been something that is both ancient and deeply contemporary: rotational labor associations.

In the episode, I described these as community work systems where people come together, not because a project hires them, not because a funder demands it, but because the community recognizes something shared that needs care.

A phrase I used in the conversation (and that I often come back to) is:

“Restoration isn’t something you do to a community, it’s something you govern with a community.”

Rotational labor creates a real structure for that. A rhythm. A system of visibility and accountability. A way to keep stewardship alive from within and in healthy interdependance with others.

In practice, it can look like:

• groups rotating to maintain earthworks, nurseries, water systems

• neighbors pooling labor for shared ecological assets

• coordinated days of repair, planting, maintenance, monitoring

• decisions made together about what matters most this season

And this is where I’ve found something surprisingly radical:

“Reciprocity is not an ideal. It’s infrastructure.”

Trust-based systems makes us stronger

Sometimes “trust-based” gets misunderstood as informal or fragile.

In the field, I’ve learned the opposite: reciprocal systems often carry strong accountability systems, because they are witnessed, repeated, and socially enforced.

And yes, trust can break. I honestly hear that too often compared to “ Yes. It works!” And it does. And what matters then is not pretending it won’t, but having real ways to repair.

That’s why I keep coming back to stewardship as a cycle:

Do → measure → share → repair → adapt → redo.

And why I believe that ecological work without social repair is incomplete.

What I hope this conversation offers

If there’s one thing I hope listeners (and readers) take away from this episode, it’s a shift in where we locate “solutions.”

Not in the next tool. Not in the next market mechanism. Not in the next “scaled” model.

But in the living, ordinary, often invisible coordination that makes care possible.

“Commons aren’t an idea. Commons are a practice.”

And stewardship is what keeps that practice alive, season after season.

Listen + links

🌱 Learn more about Trees For Development:
www.treesfordev.fi

Listen to the podcast here: