Manifesto
VERDE is a nonprofit organisation created to integrate the conservation and regeneration of nature into the routine of the Portuguese people. We know nature has the magic of making each cycle happen on its own. We aim to act on it like an invisible hand, by implementing direct actions with the minimum possible intervention to reach the maximum results in preservation. We create strategies meticulously studied by our team of biologists and ecologists dedicated to the sea and land, as well economists, jurists, designers, and communication professionals, with the goal of valuing the territory and ensuring its preservation through a strategic action plan with short and long-term impact. This is the big challenge that we want to honor.
We created VERDE in 2021. Meaning "green" in Portuguese, this name clarifies our intention of fusing, and not overlapping, with the existing landscape. VERDE was born as a result of the years of work devoted by its representatives to preserve nature. It was also born from the need to create an independent organisation that can embody and reinforce all the work developed in this space of time.
We are a non-for-profit organisation based in Lousada and we currently co-manage the Green Giants Project, together with the local government.
In Lousada, the municipality plays a determining role in the local environmental actions, adopting a strategy that has been awarded in the last years. The founding members of VERDE have had the privilege to help carry the implementation of these actions through a holistic vision of local needs. We found ourselves at the core of community involvement in favour of the conservation of nature. This momentum has shown VERDE the power of engaging the community with the surrounding nature. This momentum inspires us and shows us the urgency to replicate these and other actions in other places. A momentum that everyone involved has been waiting for. A momentum that should propel the implementation and promotion of a new vision towards the preservation and primordial connection of each of us to nature.
VERDE is born from this momentum, more specifically from a very special project for its founders. The Green Giants. Coordinated by our president, João Gonçalo Soutinho, this project came in the end of 2017 with the goal to asses the grove of big dimensions in the county of Lousada. Quickly he understood that the compiled information could be used to have a real impact in favor of the preservation of these natural structures, which are distributed all over the territory and are managed by the people from this land. VERDE was born in 2021, at a the point when we saw how fundamental it is not only, to know where our trees are, but also how we can find long lasting solutions to their conservation. A labor that started in Lousada and which we have the hopes to expand throughout Portugal.
It is with joy that VERDE presents here its manifesto, where we commit to a vision of the future by deploying actions in the field, and where the maintenance of ecosystems and the harmony of the relationship mankind-nature is our biggest mission:
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VERDE wants to value the territory and its natural elements;
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VERDE wants to work to restore and regenerate the areas and landscapes whose biodiversity must be preserved;
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VERDE wants to bring a holistic vision integrated with the concept of natural preservation;
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VERDE intends to create tangible, urgent, and realistic solutions for biodiversity conservation;
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VERDE considers it to be fundamental to elevate and empower the community in the protection and regeneration of natural elements of the landscape;
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VERDE intends to create mechanisms of direct and indirect income to support the conservation and maintenance of nature;
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VERDE intends to integrate nature conservation into the landscape, working on environmental but also social and economic issues, developing sustainable and non-profit business modules, and investing in the territory and in the growth of the organisation's activities;
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VERDE seeks to be the future, acting in the present and seeking constant learning. We are open to all the ideas that are yet to come, to all the concepts that still have to be reviewed, to all the strategies needed to be invented and adjusted, and to all the discoveries that we will be fortunate to implement, allowing our actions to be increasingly greener.