The purpose of the project is the promotion of new business initiatives and the creation of green employment from the endogenous, local and sustainable development potentialities offered by the use of the pastures, conserving and improving their socio-environmental heritage.

The purpose of the project is the promotion of new business initiatives and the creation of green employment from the endogenous, local and sustainable development potentialities offered by the use of the pastures, conserving and improving their socio-environmental heritage.

In this sense, the use of ash pastures in the case of the Community of Madrid has a triple potential contribution to the creation of green employment: livestock, energy and tourism.

The livestock contribution is due to the qualitative and quantitative improvement of the pastures that ash trees originate, especially in summer, when this resource is more scarce in the centre of the peninsula. The energy potential comes from the production of biomass that these pastures originate thanks to the practice of pollarding. This management, together with the maintenance of the pastures associated with the cattle herd, gives rise to landscapes of high aesthetic quality, an intangible resource of the first order for the development and improvement of sustainable tourism.

The recipients of the project are diverse, due to the triple potential – energy, livestock and tourism – that the ash pastures offer for sustainable local development. Thus, they will belong to different sectors:

• Forestry sector: foresters, forest biomass professionals and professionals linked to forest management in general.
• Wood industry sector: professionals in the wood and wood processing industries, both the first and second wood processing. Also professionals in packaging, packaging with wood and wooden structures.
• Agricultural sector: professionals linked to agriculture and biomass from it.
• Tourism sector: professionals linked to the hotel and restaurant industry for the tourist use of the landscape linked to these pastures.

In general, the project will be aimed mostly at SME workers and self-employed workers in the Community of Madrid, Castilla La Mancha and Extremadura. Likewise, the participation of women and those over 45 years of age will be promoted.

The various social actors from the local associative world (neighbourhood organisations, environmentalists, from the educational and cultural world, etc.) will also be invited to participate in the workshops, due to the indirect benefit that the policies on these pastures will generate in the citizens of these municipalities and the role of collective dynamism that these actors have in them.

The expected results of the project are:

• Training of 40 recipients, although the project will reach a total of 325 workers.
• Creation of two companies linked to the sustainable use of the pastures.
• Sustainable use of ten farms with the presence of pastureland ash trees.