Association Leven met het Land
Zoöp since: 2025 | Location: Ooijpolder, NL | Speaker for the Living: Helen Weeres
Leven met het Land works at De Kleverbergh in the Ooijpolder near Nijmegen on a regenerative estate where people and other life form one whole. At this special place, where they are neighbours of the river Waal, they are building on four pillars: a biodiverse landscape, healthy and local food, ecological building, and local and social enterprise.
Highlights
Highlights of the goals Leven met het Land is working towards as a Zoöp:
- Ecological understanding and compassion for other life
Residents and those involved learn to better understand the role of animals and other organisms in the ecosystem. Through exercises, sensory work and conversations, greater awareness and respect grows for all species living on the land. This leads to an approach in which other-than-human life is also taken into account in policy and management. - Living together with more-than-human neighbours
De Kleverbergh works on the core question of how living and estate development can be designed to be fully regenerative. They try to organise the entire design process – from dwelling to landscape – in a way that contributes to the recovery and richness of the ecosystem. To this end, they are developing a zoonomic design method in which human habitation and other forms of life are considered together from the very beginning. - Mapping all life on the site
Young people also play an active role by collaboratively researching which species and stories live at De Kleverbergh. They map the landscape from both human and other-than-human perspectives, including the history of the place and its inhabitants.