Fjällgås: Hosting our shared edible future.
Founded by Charles to build thriving biodiversity and communities through tourism while radically improving our impact on our planet.
‘Accelerate the co-creation of a regenerative future.’
Charles is passionate about nature and is looking forward to inspire you to take action for a regenerative future, using external transitions as a rich place of learning for internal transformations. A regenerative future is a future with healthy soils, healthy biodiversity and a healthy community.
Curious?
Let me speed things up for you by providing the structure, framework and inspiration to understand regenerative tourism. So you can select which steps you can take to put your regenerative future into action!
Some of the organisations Fjällgås AB has worked with
Fjällgås creates connections.
Charles co-creates this future together with tourists, bird nerds, entrepreneurs, farmers, food nerds, nature conservationists, naturalists, educators, families, photographers, architects, designers, artists, chefs, students, mentors, researchers and many more.
He does that through inspirational talks and guided journeys; by setting up a regenerative tourism destination for people interested in food, food production, nature conservation, education, birds and birdwatching; by supporting farmers who are already producing food in a regenerative way and farmers who want to transition towards regenerative practices; by supporting our mental and physical wellbeing through sauna’s; by supporting our own health through healthy food and beverages; and with a dream to set up his own regenerative farm, accommodation, incubator, conference space and living bird collection.
Re
generation
Why
Regeneration?
Regeneration is an inner approach to take self-responsibility, to look after nature and the next seven generations. Charles is combining systems and is contributing directly to creating healthy soils and healthy communities by using the tourism phenomenon.
The planetary boundaries framework provide us with an understanding of what we need to achieve for a reliable functioning ecosystem. The six boundaries we have crossed over are all related to our food production and our food consumption. Changing to regenerative food production practices and healthy diets will improve the health of our planet, the health our nature and the health of millions of people. To achieve that we need to support farmers who are willing to transition to, or start with, regenerative agricultural practices. Our future depends on the health of our soil. The tourism industry relies on the supply of quality food and on biodiversity. There are many ‘lineages’ of regeneration and that’s exactly as it should be – diverse, complex and emerging from place and community: rooted in the soil.
Fjällgås Story
Lesser white-fronted goose
Fjällgås is the Swedish name for the lesser white-fronted goose (Anser erythropus). Marked on the IUCN red list as vulnerable, the current global population size ranges between 16.000-27.000 individuals. With only around 100 individuals in Sweden, the fjällgås is one of Sweden’s most critically endangered species. Since the 1970s, a local innovative conservation initiative, called ‘Projekt Fjällgås’, used Barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) as foster parents to teach the young lesser white-fronted geese a new migration route to safer wintering grounds in the Netherlands.
Why we are named Fjällgås?
The Swedish lesser white-fronted goose epitomises that an innovative initiative can positively change the direction of the future. Like young lesser white-fronted geese learn from the Barnacle geese, those who join us will hatch and grow their regenerative understanding of the world under our ‘foster wings’ and spread their own wings on the migration towards a better future for both planet and people.
Birds are the main characters in our storytelling
Birds are the green thread throughout our regeneration approach. Birds are found nearly everywhere and its easy to learn how to identify them. No wonder that birdwatching is one of the fastest growing hobbies. Researchers use birds as indicators for biodiversity and ecosystem health. Migratory birds show us the need for international collaboration. Ecosystems benefit when birds are used as keystone and umbrella conservation species. Birds have been domesticated thousands of years ago and play an important role in our food production. Birdwatching changes the way you look at the world, seeing birds as representatives of ecosystems and global processes, it allows us to gain perspectives in the face of global challenges. Birds literally fly us through all aspects we touch upon with our regeneration approach.
Charles van de Kerkhof
Charles has been brought up in the tourism industry with a passion for nature.
While traveling and working in several European and African countries he explored the local flora and fauna and first hand experienced our planet’s natural and social challenges. Charles spent a lot of his spare time on aviculture and exploring social and natural opportunities for species and ecosystem conservation. His curiosity and inquisitiveness gave him the passion and the drive to explore how we can look after our planet better. This led him to study tourism, entrepreneurship and foodscapes on an academic level which provided him with a critical, entrepreneurial and regenerative mindset and resulted in starting Fjällgås AB.
Fjällgås is situated in the heart of the Nordic entrepreneurial,
innovation, food tourism, agrifood and foodtech eco-system.
Charles founded Fjällgås AB during his second masters in Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Lund University, to explore tackling systemic challenges through tourism and entrepreneurship. Something he explored for his first masters at Wageningen University focussing on nature tourism and nature conservation in Swedish Lapland. Realising the importance of the food systems transformation he added a third masters in Foodscapes at the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences, exploring Change Agents in the nexus of Regenerative Tourism and Regenerative Agriculture in Skåne, the south of Sweden. His wide scope of practical and educational experiences with tourism, education, agriculture, food systems, foodtech, nature conservation and entrepreneurship gave him a holistic view of the world, our planets problems, and the drive to accelerate the co-creation of a regenerative future for a healthy planet.