- Cas Gasi -
Nature: a Gift of Life

Nature: a Gift of Life

Since many years, part of daily life is caring for and preserving the natural environment in Cas Gasi.

If one uses nature’s limited resources, one also has an ecological debt and has to try to give back to nature.

The land on which Agroturismo Cas Gasi is located is rich and fertile and blessed with water from our own well. Due to these fortunate circumstances, from the very beginning, we conceived the project of organically cultivating our farm. We set up olive tree plantations, from which we produce our delicious organic olive oil.

The agriculture at Cas Gasi is certified organic. Now we have orange groves, orchards and we grow our fruits and vegetables which are served daily at our restaurant. Furthermore, and as a special treat for our visiting guests, fig, almond, carob trees and local vegetation are part of the gardens’ design. We carefully wash our bed linen and towels on site with our own pristine water, always using biodegradable and non-aggressive soaps.

As all the waste waters are treated in our water treatment plant, and reused to watering the decorative plants, we feel really privileged to live this reality. The anthropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss takes the origin of our ecological debt to actually be a gift of life. Receiving a gift is seen as an obligation, which entails the unspoken debt to return.

And within this mindset, the relation between the earth and us humans starts, as soon as this gift is received and perceived as such. Nature has been given to us, as one of the wonders of life, and we need to give back. The alliance between the earth and us has to be a continually renewed process, in order to guarantee our existence.

If new technologies can recreate nature, there is no longer any gift nor any possibility of distinguishing between what is given and what is produced. In this case, Marcel Mauss says, if the obligation to receive disappears, with it also disappears the obligation to preserve and give back what has been given.

This concept is the origin of a global movement for the recognition of the rights of the earth – for a universal declaration of the rights of the earth.

We are thankful for what we have at Cas Gasi. Sustainability is not just about renewable energy and energy efficiency.

It is a daily attitude and we need to understand the connections between the environment, society and the economy.

As we strive to achieve a sustainability state of mind that permeates all aspects of our day-to-day lives globally, it starts here, locally, at Cas Gasi.