The living laboratory

Making every human activity a force for regeneration.

Our actions are not isolated programmes. They form a system in which the forest, water, agriculture, employment and knowledge strengthen one another.

≈ 250 haof territory

≈ 210 haof reserve

≈ 20,000coffee trees supported

≈ 500cacao trees supported

Act on the whole

Six fields forming one ecosystem.

The forest cannot be protected for the long term if families have no economic alternatives. Agriculture cannot endure without water, fertility, biodiversity and practical knowledge.

Protect forests and water

Preserve forest areas, springs and corridors on which the territory’s balance depends.

Develop agroforestry

Gradually reintroduce trees, fruit trees, cacao, food crops and biodiversity around coffee.

Regenerate fertility

Prepare compost, ferments and biological fertilisers from resources available in the territory.

Create dignified jobs

Fund the work of those who maintain, observe, cultivate and protect the land every day.

Strengthen autonomy

Diversify food, processing, aquaculture and production useful to families.

Observe and pass on

Welcome volunteers, researchers and partners to document experiments and share learning.

Tropical vegetation and Pachatopia forest

Producing with the living world

Bringing the forest into the fields.

Coffee and cacao are not meant to grow alone. We seek to integrate them into systems in which trees, fruit trees, useful plants, food crops, animals and microorganisms cooperate.

We carefully take certain resources from the forest to multiply their functions in cultivated areas: microorganisms, organic matter, seeds, knowledge and inspiration.

This transition is gradual. We do not claim to have reached perfection. We document progress, difficulties and the adaptations required.

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The real work

Regeneration is built one action at a time.

Maintaining, observing, opening a path, preparing soil and caring for a plot: visible transformations begin with patient human work.

Eider working among the vegetation on Pachatopia’s territory — 01Eider working among crops and vegetation.

Workers among the coffee trees on the Alicia plot in the mountains of San Carlos — 02Alicia plot — caring for coffee trees within a living landscape.

Manual soil preparation on a slope of the Pachatopia plot — 03Pachatopia plot — preparing the slope by hand.

Completed terraces and working lines on a slope of the Pachatopia plot — 04The land after the intervention: a clear structure from which to continue the work.

Work · forest · peace

Securing wages is also an act of protection.

When a territory no longer offers dignified work, the forest can become the last available capital: timber, hunting, minerals or new farmland. Creating jobs connected to caring for life changes this relationship. Protection ceases to be an external constraint and becomes a source of dignity.

In San Carlos, this dimension connects with a deeper history: that of a territory rebuilding after armed conflict. Sustaining peace means making daily life, work and the future possible again.

At Pachatopia, peace is studied through reality: relationships with work, land, water, resources, memory and others. We seek to document the conditions that reduce dependence on violence and strengthen the territory’s dignity, cooperation and resilience.

Creating responsible jobs can contribute to peace. It is not enough on its own to explain or resolve such a complex conflict.

Pond and aquaculture experiment on the territory

Diversify to become resilient

A laboratory that connects systems.

Fish farming, food crops, coffee and cacao processing, biomass recovery and biological fertilisers: every activity is designed to reduce losses and nourish another part of the system.

The goal is not to accumulate projects, but to understand how their flows of water, matter, energy and knowledge can cooperate.

These actions already exist. They need continuity.

Support the work on the ground