Water Cycles – Investing in regenerative agriculture

What we learned in 2025 about making regen bankable, animals, water, chefs, scale, Al in ag, agroforestry, education, food as medicine, ROl, storytelling

26th December 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

If 2025 had a soundtrack, it would be the sound of stress: stress in the system, stress in humans, stress in animals and in all other non human beings.

And then the cycle of Heat. Drought. Fire. Flood. Over and over again.
And yet, between the headlines, something else seems happening. We spent the year in conversation—with farmers walking their fields, scientists questioning old assumptions, investors rethinking risk, and builders experimenting in the real world. Online and offline, we found ourselves in rooms where regeneration wasn’t an abstract ideal, but really happening.

As 2025 comes to a close, it’s hard not to feel cautiously optimistic. The signals are there. Regeneration works and the direction is becoming clearer.

Stef van Dongen – Trees don’t send invoices so a Catalan valley is rewiring water, forests and finance

2nd December 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

From the Muga Valley, one of the largest watershed regeneration projects we know, we talk with Stef van Dongen, founder of The Pioneers of Our Time about nature credits, taking into consideration water, carbon biodiversity, regenerative forest management, but most importantly, how to build trust again between communities living in the valley, trust between people living there, but also with local and regional authority.

This is a region which if there isn’t a strong series of interventions over the next years, most likely will be hit by a massive forest fire, which will burn all the way to Basque country. And slowly that sense of urgency is landing. What is needed is a lot of experiments and then a lot of public private partnerships, which is easier said than done, but it seems to be going really fast in this landscape, and we try to find out why.

We talk about why the small water cycle restoration space is still not really landing with people, policy makers, investors, entrepreneurs, and what to do about it.

Douglas Sheil – Why fixing water fixes carbon

14th October 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Wow, it seems so simple: healthy forests bring in and trigger their own rain. But, since most rain comes from elsewhere, shouldn’t we be more interested in this “elsewhere”? Why aren’t farmers, investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in agriculture, forestry, and land use more engaged with this bigger picture? For example, if China realises that most of its rainfall comes from beyond its Western borders- even as far as Europe. would they get involved in restoring farms and forests all the way to Europe? Big ideas. And you could argue: it doesn’t get much bigger than this.

Yes, we’re talking again about water cycles and this time with Douglas Sheil, Professor of Forest Ecology and Forest Management at Wageningen University, one of the most famous agricultural universities in the world. Why has it been so difficult to get scientific discoveries, like the biotic pump theory in physics, to enter other fields like climate science and forestry? We talk about the huge pushback biotic pump scientists have faced in publishing papers and gaining recognition over the past 20 years.

But we also talk about optimism, why water is a much easier sell than carbon, and how it could spark far more cross-border cooperation. Still, to make it work, we need to think big and get much better at working together, which is no easy feat. It’s a wide-ranging conversation on tropical forests, science, the Sahel, natural regeneration, and politics.

Rob de Laet – Water is key to cool the planet within 20 years

5th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Rob de Laet, project lead of Cooling the Climate and co-author of the book Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years. The science is pretty clear and getting clearer by the day: water cools the planet. The more living, healthy vegetation we have on this planet, predominately perennials and thus trees, agroforestry systems and healthy forests, the cooler the climate is and the less extreme weather events occur. Living plants literally make the Earth sweat and remove heat from the biosphere.

Humans have systematically devegetated the planet as Judith D. Schwartz likes to say, and the ongoing climate weirding suggests we may have gone too far. Now we’re seeing real calculations: how many square kilometres do we need to regenerate to lower the global temperature by just one degree?
If this is all becoming increasingly evident, why isn’t it common knowledge yet, especially in the headquarters of banks, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and governments?
This is the story of a successful entrepreneur getting drawn into water cycle restoration, planetary cooling and all the good stuff that comes with it. We share notes on why this movement, maybe the defining story of our time, hasn’t broken through yet and what we can do about it.

Antonio Nobre – If nature were a bank it would have been saved already

3rd January 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Antonio Nobre, Brazilian agronomist by training and world’s leading Earth scientist, serving as the scientific director of the Biotic Pump Greening Group. He has dedicated his career to studying the Amazon’s ecological dynamics and its crucial role in climate regulation and is an expert on water cycles, native Indigenous knowledge, and much more.

We talk about how Antonio found his way to the Amazon after being born and raised in São Paulo, how he rebelled against the Green Revolution during his time at agricultural university, and how he discovered the incredible workings of forests—especially rainforests.
We also explore the overview effect—the transformative experience of seeing Earth from space—and how it often turns astronauts into environmental activists.

Ali Bin Shahid, one of the few who can model and calculate water cycle restoration

17th December 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Ali Bin Shahid, an engineer with a deep background in permaculture (and a military one too), a passion for modelling and one of the very few people using data and engineering approaches to tackle critical questions about regeneration. We explore how to put numbers to abstract ideas like slowing water down, spreading it, and soaking it. What does “slow” actually mean? How do we measure it—by kilometres per hour, or some other metric? How much regeneration is required to restore rivers or trigger rains in a given landscape? And, for example, where globally do we have the biggest potential? Where is the biggest gap between the forest and water potential and the current situation on the ground?

It’s definitely possible to manage a few acres or a few hectares through observation, if you’re there for many decades or even through different generations. But as soon as we start talking about regeneration at the landscape level, we need numbers. We need numbers and models. Surprisingly, a lot is already possible: we can calculate to a relatively detailed degree, what certain flows of air, water, and moisture will look like in a landscape. This means you can start to calculate and imagine, almost at a parcel level, where we need to regenerate in order to restore, for instance, summer rains and year-round rivers.

The surprising part is how few people are doing this work. Ali is trying to quantify these ideas: how much water to slow, where the global potential lies, and the vast gaps between current conditions and what’s achievable.

Jesús Areso Salinas – Building towers to trigger rain, to help nature sweat and cool

29th October 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Jesús Areso Salinas, retired from work as patent examiner at the European Patent Office and now active with his project to fight climate change combining water, katabatic tower and moisture. Another record-breaking summer in the global north, where temperature records were shattered repeatedly, prompts us to ask: is there a sustainable future for places like the Mediterranean? Jesús wondered how does nature cool? and, crucially, could we help nature kickstart the cooling of ambient air?”

Imagine cooling our surroundings during a heatwave—cooling town squares, vegetable gardens, or farms on a small scale. What if, over time, this approach spreads, with more people cooling their surroundings, allowing plants and trees to continue growing through the summer and helping to cool the air? Could this restoration of local cooling contribute to rebalancing water cycles, bringing back summer rains, and even creating a lasting cooling effect? These are big, almost magical questions, and they are exactly why we tackle them here with Jesús, an engineer turned permaculture expert, who is now building towers to help nature “sweat” and cool.

Sure, we could retreat to air-conditioned spaces, but air conditioners only worsen the problem by using energy to move heat from inside to outside without solving anything at its core. And what about plants, trees, and animals? They need a humid, comfortable environment to thrive, yet during hot, dry summers, they’re focused on survival rather than growth—or the cooling process essential to their function. Mediterranean farmers, in particular, take note: during the peak of summer, your plants and trees often stop growing because it’s too hot and dry.

So, how does nature cool itself? Through transpiration, plants and trees release moisture, which cools the surrounding air. However, as heatwaves become stronger, it’s often too hot for them to function, meaning they can neither grow nor cool the air. This lack of cooling is a problem farmers and investors need to understand—especially those in warmer climates, where plants and trees may be unable to photosynthesize or grow for weeks. Cooling ambient air is essential, and air conditioning isn’t the answer.

Our Vital Role as Keystone Species in restoring Water Cycles

22nd February 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

The disparity in attention between water vapour, constituting 60–70% of the greenhouse effect, and CO2 at 25%, prompts a crucial question: why is water vapour seldom discussed in climate discourse? Perhaps because addressing its role requires extensive global reforestation and regeneration efforts across the planet.

Do we even have the imagination needed to restore marshes, mangroves, and perennial pastures with trees, and strategically reforest and revitalise ecosystems?

This approach- the intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system to counter climate change, called climate engineering- highlights humanity’s urgent role in environmental conservation and restoration. The call to action is clear.

Rodger Savory – Restore the water cycles and reverse desertification in California, regenerating 150.000 acres with 600.000 cows

17th November 2023 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Rodger Savory, ecologist, land manager, and ranch owner, about scale and cows, how to kickstart regeneration in desert situations, changing local weather patterns, abundance, soil bacteria, conventional agriculture, WW2 and much more.

Ichsani Wheeler and Lenka Danilovic – How to make water our friend again thanks to hippies with satellites and indigenous water management

7th November 2023 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Ichsani Wheeler and Lenka Danilovic. Ichsani is a scientist, co-founder of OpenGeoHub and EnvirometriX, while Lenka is an hydrologist and intern at OpenGeoHub. In this conversation, we talk about the world of remote sensing, and we unpack what the eyes in the sky can help us learn about indigenous land and water management.

Category: Water Cycles