RECIPROCATE BIOCAPACITY to sustain Life and Culture.

Biocapacity projects re-establish Earth’s biological capacity. They are fundamentally wholistic and long-term; they establish natural resources that sustain life and culture.

Iwi, organic farmers, rural communities, towns and their organisational structures (Local Councils, NGOs) are well placed to scope long-term environmental sustainability issues and respond by restoring resilience of local biocapacity and thereby its community.

A region’s biocapacity results from the organisational capacity of its (biotic or human) community to establish resilience from the efficient use and cycling of a locality’s available energy, nutrients and water in plants and soils.

Charitable RECIPROCATE BIOCAPACITY Ltd was set up in May 2008 to advance a culture of ecosystem guardianship and help sustain Earth’s biocapacity.
It does this by accepting Biocapacity Bond donations from individuals, Philanthropists, business, industry, Government and other organisations. Biocapacity Bond donations mitigate unsustainable ecological footprints by wholistic means.

RECIPROCATE BIOCAPACITY forwards donations received to competent and committed recipients, private or public, who are prepared to establish natural resources for future generations on their land.

RECIPROCATE BIOCAPACITY typically provides funding and guidance for reforestation and / or agro-forestry design and establishment until such time (generally 2-10 years), as land guardians (families or communities of private or public land) acquire necessary expertise to care-take established permanent-canopy ecosystems and its natural resources.

A biocapacity project applies advanced ecological reforestation techniques to fast track a natural succession[1] from a state of depletion of natural resources to:
1. productive and site-adapted indigenous trees, managed as permanent canopy forest and / or
2. compatible agro-forests / parkland forage / nut-tree alley-cropping
that yield materials and energy on a sustainable basis and establish premium quality resources for future generations, while maintaining indigenous biodiversity and effectively offsetting sponsors’ ecological and carbon footprints.

Between years 2 to 10, Biocapacity Bond funding will phase out, as recipients qualify as experienced ecosystem guardians, committed to protecting a genuine natural asset and improving the vitality and resilience of established woodland ecosystems. Guardianship will be rewarded by a growing sustainable yield of quality natural resources; a wholistic gift, from one species and generation to another, in perpetuity.

Any biocapacity project integrates and mitigates major environmental and sustainability issues of our time, as:

1. Natural resources are established for future generations, while
2. Ecosystem functions are restored to maintain biodiversity
3. Carbon pollution of the air is sequestered as useful carbon in permanent canopy forests, compatible agro-forests and in soils, thus re-establishing
i) Soils’ storage and exchange capacity for water and nutrients and
ii) Resilient Environments that can provide for Communities’ sustainable natural resource needs.

Figure 1: BioCapacity Indicators: Biomass and Soil Carbon. Example of land-use type effects (Janssen 1995, Tate 1997, Ford-Robertson 1999, Valentini, 2000,2, Scott 2000, 2006).

Note: Soil carbon depletion under fast growing trees (compare Pinus radiata) result from ecological strategies of fire-adaptation that specialise in effective soil nutrient extraction. Such ecosystem strategies are incompatible with native and indeed most temperate forest ecosystem strategies that instead specialise in evolving efficiencies in the cycling and storage of nutrients in plants and soils. (Janssen 1995).

[1] Ecological afforestation models apply species’ synergies to establish in excess of 100 top quality canopy trees per hectare, as opposed to 1-3 top quality canopy trees per hectare, if a forest was to be left to regenerate from depleted natural sources or conventional planting.