Regeneration Begins with Relationships

Written by: The Palombar team

In the far northeast of Portugal, where mountains meet old agricultural terraces and villages continue to resist the pressures of depopulation, there is a small village called Uva. For many people, it is an unlikely place to start a story about regeneration. Yet for more than twenty years, it has been exactly that.

Palombar – Conservation of Nature and Rural Heritage was born in 2001 from a simple idea: that caring for biodiversity and caring for communities are inseparable. What started as a community effort to protect and restore traditional dovecotes (pombais) gradually became a much broader movement connecting nature conservation, cultural heritage, environmental education, community participation and rural development.

Over the years, we learned an important lesson: landscapes do not regenerate only through technical solutions, they regenerate when people rebuild their relationships with land, with each other, and with the past and future. This understanding became the inspiration for our project REGiMont – Mountain Landscape Regeneration Centre.

REGiMont emerged from a growing concern shared across many rural territories in Portugal: depopulation, abandonment of traditional knowledge, increasing wildfire risk, biodiversity loss, and the growing difficulty of creating viable livelihoods connected to the territory. At the same time, we observed something enthusiastic. Across northern and central Portugal, dozens of individuals, associations, researchers, farmers, artists, builders and community initiatives were already creating solutions. They were often facing similar challenges, but many of them worked in isolation.

The question became: What would happen if these people could meet each other? Rather than creating another project focused on delivering solutions, REGiMont was designed to create the conditions for collaboration. Its mission is to facilitate partnerships between individuals and collectives working on the regeneration of natural and built landscapes, creating a community capable of learning, imagining and acting together.

The project began with an open call that attracted around forty initiatives from across Portugal. Although resources only allowed a smaller group to participate in the first in-person gathering, the enthusiasm demonstrated how strong the need for connection had become.

In April 2026, participants came together for four days in Uva. Instead of beginning with presentations and technical discussions, we started by immersing ourselves in the landscape.They explored traditional crafts, visited local biodiversity conservation projects, shared meals with residents, listened to local stories and spent time understanding what makes this territory unique. Trust became the first output of the project. This may seem intangible, but for community-led regeneration it is often the most important foundation.

From these encounters, new ideas rapidly emerged. Beyond individual projects, participants began identifying shared challenges and complementary skills. This has been one of the most significant impacts of REGiMOnt so far: transforming isolated initiatives into a growing network of mutual support.

The project is also addressing inclusion in practical ways. Rural territories often contain forms of exclusion that are less visible than in urban contexts: ageing populations, geographic isolation, limited access to services and opportunities, and the gradual loss of local knowledge.

In many ways, this is our contribution to sustainability. Not only ecological sustainability, but social and cultural sustainability too. Biodiversity conservation remains at the heart of our work. Through projects focused on habitat restoration, wildfire resilience, forest regeneration and nature-based solutions, we see biodiversity not as a separate environmental issue, but as something deeply connected to community wellbeing and territorial resilience.

If we could share one message with policymakers, it would be this: Regeneration cannot be delivered solely through programmes and infrastructure. It requires investment in relationships, trust, participation and long-term community capacity. Communities need resources, but they also need time and spaces to learn, collaborate and experiment together.

This is where initiatives like REGiMOnt can play a unique role. Although still at an early stage, the project is already demonstrating that meaningful change often begins with small acts of connection. A shared conversation. A collaborative idea. A group willing to learn from one another.

For us, regeneration is not a destination. It is a continuous process of bringing people closer to each other and closer to the places they care for. And in a time marked by ecological uncertainty and social fragmentation, we believe that nurturing those relationships may be one of the most powerful forms of regeneration we can offer.