Sustainable Development Technology Canada today announced an investment of $5 million to support the scale up of ALUS, a unique program for rural communities that promotes on-farm nature-based solutions to create resilience across Canada.
ALUS is a highly entrepreneurial Canadian not-for-profit organization focused on helping farmers and ranchers build nature-based solutions on their land through ground-up, community-based programs that produce, enhance and maintain ecosystem services. ALUS operates in rural communities across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island.
“As a major agricultural player, Canada has a significant opportunity to provide international leadership in the use of nature-based solutions to restore watersheds and improve soil health, making growers more resilient. SDTC is proud to partner with ALUS as they expand into new communities with their effective and unique approach to encouraging the use of nature-based solutions,” said Leah Lawrence, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) president and CEO.
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Although rural Canada is highly impacted by climate change, farmers are often left out of the sustainability conversation. ALUS offers a local, community-based approach to resilience that is tailored to individual farm needs. Using the power of tight-knit communities, ALUS brings farmers, municipalities and stakeholders together to propose projects that will help restore wetlands, improve soil health and enhance biodiversity. Through these projects, ALUS helps create more resilient farms and communities.
“ALUS’ success to date is impressive and it serves to validate our principles-based model as an effective tool to tackle climate change and other pressing environmental issues such as biodiversity loss and water quality,” said ALUS CEO Bryan Gilvesy. “For ALUS to meet the growing need for nature-based solutions, we must increase production capacity by further developing our ecosystem of customers, funders, producers, scientific advisors, technological partners and communication experts — this is what this funding from SDTC will help us to do. Looking forward, New Acre Project has the potential to harness new revenue streams to support nature-based solutions by providing value to corporations looking to enhance their ESG ratings and reduce climate risk.”
SDTC’s investment in ALUS will leverage partners and networks to support ecosystem growth that will strengthen Canada’s capacity and ambition to deliver a net-zero future.
With support from SDTC, ALUS will expand their reach into six new communities across Canada and will work towards building out their ecosystem services quantification models with the assistance of world-leading experts and researchers.
ALUS is driving the development of leading-edge quantification methodologies and metrics for nature-based solutions. This work has the potential to benefit the broader dialogue around sustainability impact measurement and is expected to lead to a network of demonstration sites where innovative technologies in regenerative agriculture and nature-based solutions can be tested.
