How to Create Sustainable Landscapes

Published on: 28.05.2020

Sustainable landscaping sounds like a hobby or a recreational activity you can do in your backyard, especially during a lockdown. Yet, it goes far beyond building your garden in a better way.
To understand this, let’s start with your yard, balcony, or terrace. Even the tiniest apartment can have a small sustainable garden. They come with a lot of benefits. Plants beautify the space where you live, and if you’re a city dweller, they keep you connected with nature. You want to enjoy those benefits but at the same time spend less time working or taking care of your green area.
Find the plants that will thrive in the local environment or native plants and trees. They are used to the local level of rainfall and already have created immunity against local pests and diseases.

Identify invasive plants. Usually, those are non-native plants or alien species and are considered a threat to native species. Invasive plants grow too fast and spread quickly, disrupt local ecosystems, and even cause biodiversity loss.
Harvest rainwater and make homemade compost fertilizer.
Use eco-friendly materials. For example, you have seen vertical or hanging gardens also known as living walls that have been a growing trend during recent years. Although they can look pretty expensive, you can create your indoor living wall by using pots made of recycled materials or get creative with bottles or fabrics. The important part is to pick plants that will thrive in small pots and find the right position depending on sunlight. It takes a little planning and creativity to create not only a thriving garden but to turn it into a carbon sink and give a little help to combat climate change.

All these ideas on sustainable landscaping can be applied to local parks or natural areas in your community. Sustainable landscaping helps to restore degraded land and water ecosystems, to prevent biodiversity loss, and to help against climate change. Speaking of climate protection, different studies confirm that some of the world’s best-protected forest landscapes are lands of indigenous people and managed by indigenous people.

A publication from nature.com shows that Indigenous Peoples manage or have tenure rights over at least 38 million km2 in 87 countries or politically distinct areas on all inhabited continents. This represents over a quarter of the world’s land surface.
The role of indigenous people in landscape management and their knowledge are essential to meeting global conservation goals.

Goal 15, Target 15.2: “By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally.”

Another survey from the ELD-initiative shows that degraded land costs the world USD 6 trillion annually in lost services, goods, and livelihoods. This is enormous damage, but on the other side, the opposite or land restoration would provide employment, goods and food, income, and conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity.
In such a situation you can either plant a tree or the seed for an entrepreneurial idea that can help socio-economic growth and nature protection in your community.
Join the Entrepreneurship Campus, get free online training on sustainable entrepreneurship, and be part of the 2020 Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition.