From diplomacy to ecological transformation : For more than three decades, my life has been closely connected to China and to the relationship between Europe and China.

I served Belgium as a diplomat in Asia and Europe, including as Consul General in Shanghai and Hong Kong, Director General for Consular Affairs, and Ambassador of Belgium to China and Mongolia.

When I left the diplomatic service in 2013, I chose not to leave China.

Instead, I began a very different chapter of my life in the mountains of Yunnan.

Kabissa : Since 2012, Kabissa has been developing as a living laboratory for permaculture, ecological regeneration and rural development.

At an altitude of around 2,100 metres, Kabissa is a place where ideas have to confront reality: soil, water, plants, food production, biodiversity, people and time.

The purpose is not to create an ideal garden.

It is to explore how we can produce food in harmony with living ecosystems rather than at their expense.

Permaculture, in this sense, is not simply a collection of agricultural techniques. It is a way of looking at the relationship between human beings and the living systems on which our societies depend.

Kabissa remains an experiment. It is precisely this experimental character that gives it value.

From the field to the wider world : My work today seeks to connect three dimensions of experience:

• Diplomacy — decades of working with China and with international relations;
• Ecology — direct experience of restoring soils, producing food and working within living ecosystems;
• Dialogue — creating opportunities for European and Chinese researchers, entrepreneurs, institutions and citizens to learn from one another.

In 2017, I co-founded the European Union–China Joint Innovation Centre (EUCJIC), an initiative dedicated to strengthening cooperation and innovation between Europe and China.

I believe that the ecological transition is not only an environmental necessity. It is also an extraordinary opportunity for cooperation between China and Europe.

China’s enormous ecological transformation and Europe’s experience in environmental protection, regenerative agriculture and sustainable development offer areas in which genuine dialogue and practical cooperation can take place.

Europe and China : My continuing interest is therefore not simply in relations between governments.

It is in the broader relationship between European and Chinese societies: their ideas, their knowledge, their technologies, their rural communities and their approaches to the future.

Through initiatives such as EUCJIC, Wutong Acacia and other Europe–China projects, I seek to contribute to this dialogue from a position that is both international and deeply practical.

After a lifetime spent around negotiating tables, I have come to appreciate another kind of diplomacy:

walking through a landscape together, looking at the soil, growing food, exchanging knowledge and discovering what can be built together.

A continuing journey : I no longer see my diplomatic career and my work at Kabissa as two separate lives.

They are two stages of the same journey.

The first taught me how countries and cultures interact.

The second is teaching me how human beings interact with the living world.

Kabissa is where these two journeys meet.

And the work continues.