As part of the ROAD project ERP sent out a call for “Inspiring stories of rural communities taking action on climate change and sustainability”

The winner of this Environmental challenge was “Los Portales Community”, Spain

Founded in Andalucía in 1984 Los Portales is an intentional community that practices innovative ways of life in different areas including organic agriculture, deep psychology, empowering governance systems, natural medicines, art, clean energies, an economy based on sharing. For the last 30 years we have been practising organic and biodynamic agriculture. We work to improve biodiversity, the quality of the soil and return all nutrients that we take out, using crop rotations and synergies, no dig beds, mulching, green manure, closed nutrient loops (making our own compost and biofertilisers; ash from our fires on the land).

We are totally off-grid, and water and power sovereign. Since we use renewable resources for our power needs (solar panels, self-built wind turbines and a hydraulic turbine) we do not pollute or deplete these resources in using them. We have taken measures to prevent erosion and desertification and to regenerate the land and landscape (ongoing reforestation, water retention landscape). We plan to continue with water retention measures and start implementing holistic management.

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