Latest / Second Nature / E173 Tim Christophersen: The $7 Trillion Secret Destroying The Planet

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E173 Tim Christophersen: The $7 Trillion Secret Destroying The Planet · Second Nature

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I asked you early on about did you expect to get where you are?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: You have had an incredibly unique career path to this to this point.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: And we've got your your book sat on top of mine, taking pride of place there.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_04: How on earth does someone end up in a position of writing what is one of the formative books on nature of our time?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: How did how did the how did the contents page of your career make that book a reality?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first it's great to be here and great to meet you in person, Rich.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I um an admirer of what you're doing here, so um this is great.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just collected stories like yours and poured it into that book.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wrote the book before I knew about oxygen conservation, by the way, but uh my yeah, my career path, as you know, started in the United Nations.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was um there for 15 years before that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature with ICN, um, setting up our office in the Caucasus and in Southeast Europe and running what was at that point, our program for Commonwealth Independent States in Eastern Europe.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so nature's always been the red thread in my career.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that started way before university and started when I was a kid.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I did my first restoration project when I was 10.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the pond in my grandparents' garden.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so to me, it all makes sense, and I didn't really think about it, but I I see that it's actually not very common for people to shift from an NGO to government, to I worked for the European Commission for a while, to the UN.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had at the UN what is uh basically lifetime employment.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was a civil servant with a diplomatic passport and contract end date, I think somewhere in 2038.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I would, I actually never thought I would change to work for the private sector.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um but then four years ago, five years ago, Salesforce approached me because they were setting up what is called the Trillion Trees Initiative.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You remember in the early 2020s with planting trees was the thing, right?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was like, oh yeah, it's just plant lots of trees.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: That will solve everything.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um they were extremely well intentioned and um set up the Trillion Trees Initiative with the World Economic Forum.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I set up the UN decade on ecosystem illustration at UNEP.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so they asked for advice.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do you how should we go about this?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: How should we, which stakeholders should we work with?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do you what is a trillion trees?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I advised that initiative, and then over time they kept coming back to me with questions.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, what do we do now?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: How do we how do we make our own commitment of 100 million trees?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do we do that?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point that is the well, why didn't you come and work for us and uh set up a nature program, set up a water program?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's this thing called TNFD, you know, task force on nature-related financial disclosures?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: All those things were relatively new to many businesses just a few years ago.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um I thought long and hard about leaving the UN because I really believe in the mission and the mandate of the UN.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But um I thought at that point in my career at least, I had done what I could to set a framework for what needs to be done.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Setting up the UN decade on ecosystem restoration, setting up a strategy.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was part of many of these international agreements and discussions about the global biodiversity framework.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there was there was no oomph in it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there were the there were these decisions, but there was no engine to run it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: At least it wasn't running well-tuned and in the right direction.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when I researched Salesforce, I saw that they have about 200,000 corporate customers, all the Fortune funder companies, 60,000 NGOs run on Salesforce.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a trust relationship with all these organizations.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a catalyst within the private sector with connections to all these entities.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, wow, that's a that's a catalytic point where you can make sure they know what biodiversity is and nature and why it matters.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I made that shift.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't regretted it.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a super on, it's a super exciting learning journey every day.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now with the rise of AI, it's uh constantly catching up on what's what's new and what's the latest.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I then thought I should put some of that into a book so we can I can share that message of the basic shifts we need to value nature and to build global ecological literacy, which is partly what the book's about.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: When you go back to that time of making the decision, what what was the best thing about working at the UN?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: What did you enjoy the most about it?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The United Nations is, in my view, is the best idea humanity has ever had collectively.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we collectively, as one humanity, we haven't had that many ideas, so it's also perhaps in the first.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: But um you recall that it was really at a time when the world was in in tatters.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was really trust was broken.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And historians call this period we live in or we lived in, shall we maybe say, the long peace.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: 80 years, where the large powers of the world have not been in direct conflict with each other.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's very unusual across all of human history.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the achievement of the United Nations.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The UN is I like Dark Hamaskjull's quote about the UN, uh he was the second Secretary General, and he said that the role of the UN is not to take humankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the UN has been really, really good at doing that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: They get a lot of flack for being slow and bureaucratic, but think of peace and stability, or when we think of the environment.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, there's a lot of talk about the ozone hole.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's uh skin cancer, fear everywhere.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, pictures of these cows in Australia that had to sort of wear sunscreen all day and because they would otherwise get fried.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the UN fixed that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's probably the largest environmental achievement of the UN to date, um, the Montreal Protocol and closing the Ozan Hall.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of it's it's the only planetary boundary that's actually healing and improving.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think we can do similar things through the UN for climate.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the climate, and again, the Paris Agreement gets a lot of is under a lot of attack.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that attack is misdirected often against the UN, because the UN is doing what it's set up to do.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, we were set for four degrees warming by the end of the century, just ten years ago.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're now set at 2.7.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Still way too much, still tens of millions of uh people's lives at risk, but not hundreds of millions of people's lives at risk.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that delta is the achievement of the UN.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing about the UN is its product is consensus.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, consensus is hard to achieve among humans.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and once the whole world agrees on something, that is really powerful.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I still remember the UN General Assembly decision to proclaim the UN decade on ecosystem restorations was uh in March 2019.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um you see that the General Assembly debates this idea and then comes up with the plan to halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing that's a pretty big statement.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that then needs to be filled with action.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that that a General Assembly where you know Israel is there and Iran and Saudi Arabia and then the US and then there's Russia, and these moments are rare when everybody agrees on something.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular right now.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really powerful about the UN.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is of course not so powerful about the UN is that it's a super bureaucratic machinery.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, it can be very risk-averse and sclerotic in terms of speed.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So in my ideal world, I would we would have a UN that is as professional, efficient, and well-resourced as a multi-billion dollar company like Salesforce with the mandate that they have.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I really believe that AI and technology could help UN and all of us deliver better on our land.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: What was the what were the conditions for you personally at that time period that allowed you to make that leap and that change?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: Because so many you you you said it yourself, you had a you had a job for life.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: And so many people get comfortable, get set, and go, do you know what?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's so lovely here.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_04: That's me done.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: But you didn't.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: You reinvented and you took what I'm sure some in your life might have said, What are you doing, Tim?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_04: That's a massive leap.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's a completely different lot of colleagues said, Well, so what was it about you that made you feel able, motivated, and ready to make that step?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_04: It was COVID.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this was uh during the beginning of COVID, and it was it was a time of great uncertainty.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then and you know the saying never waste a good crisis.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um when everything is about to change anyway, you can really make drastic changes.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it was also combined with the fact that my wife and I, we've been speaking of buying a little farm somewhere in the countryside, and we've been talking about that since we met each other, like almost 25 years ago.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was finally possible with COVID relocate for a time out of Nairobi where we lived, go to Europe, stay there for more than a summer, and take the time to find our place, find our farm.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So in in 2020, um, end of 2020, we we bought a farm in Denmark and are now restoring that to hopefully soil health and more biodiversity, more water retention capacity, all the things you're trying to do here as well, um on a much small, much smaller scale, though.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been um that's been a passion project, but it was that opportunity that came through a crisis.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that is really important to recognize that every crisis has opportunity in it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have you always felt that way?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not in a crisis, no.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes very difficult to remember that in a crisis because when you're in a crisis and we're we're collectively in a crisis right now as humanity, it's very difficult to remember that because you're so focused on the short term and it's you tend to be fear guided.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fear is not a good long-term advisor, though.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um fear is really good at sort of short-term risk mitigation, but fear is not a good not a good long-term advisor.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Fear leads to hoarding and greed and fear competition that is more than it should be so in um in a in a crisis, uh it takes a conscious effort to to remember wait a minute, this is happening for a reason, it's not the end of the world.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what can we learn?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do better?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what can we take out of this and go forward?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as humanity right now, things are sort of the plot is thickening, right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have the rise of AI, great opportunity, but also immense risk.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have imminent ecosystem collapse at large scale, still, despite take and global restoration and conservation, we have climate crisis, we have growing inequality, which is at at historic even historically at very high levels.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that points to a transformation that is needed.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think a big part of that transformation is a new relationship with nature.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've forgotten who our family is, where our home is.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_04: You um it's a beautiful segue.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: You you open the book with a huge idea, with a first generation that actually has the tools, the knowledge, the money to rebuild nature as critical infrastructure.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_04: That that framing is beautiful.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: Can you talk a little bit around your realization of that and and how that informed the rest of the book?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So write the book took me about two years to write because I mostly did it on evenings and and weekends.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um so it was it was at a time where the the rise of AI was um was already becoming apparent, but this generative that the generative AI wave, and then now the wave we're in at the agentic wave where you have autonomous AI agents taking decisions on your behalf, that was that was not yet uh a thing.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I think every every generation is special in the sense that every generation has to make decisions that are formative.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um generations live in less interesting and some in more interesting times.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think we live in very interesting times.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we are indeed the first generation that has all the tools and all the resources and all the money.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's not forget how much money there is in the world and how many things are being paid for right now with our taxpayer money that make things worse, and that we could redirect fossil fuel subsidies, for example, into things like ecosystem restoration that would rebuild our economies.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we have all the tools we need.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: What we lack is imagination, which is really a critical ingredient, and it's not really to do with technology.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um we lack the imagination, and I in the book I also speak about shifting baseline syndrome.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I use this example of 50 years of trophy fishing of the Key West in Florida, where there's a photo series of the Gulf Stream 2, this ship that sort of for 50 years took tourists out to fish.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um you compare this photo line, and in 1957, you have these huge sharks and giant groupers that are bigger than the people.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in the 2000s, 2007, you have 90% reduced catch size of the fish.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: You have a fraction of the species.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Fish are really sort of that size suddenly, and you compare these photos side by side.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But what is striking is that the people in the photo, they look equally happy.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: But imagine that this would be happening on the same day.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: There was one one boat would come back from the charter tour with these huge fish and amazing catch, and the next boat would come in with hardly any fish.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: They would ask for their money back.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: They would say, Well, well, what's going on here?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why aren't we enjoying that wealth, that abundance?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that imagination that we can get back to that abundance of nature and diversity of nature, we have to instill that in people.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love to see a Netflix series that uses generative AI to paint the picture of what these restored landscapes could look like.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is it that we have lost?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think that imagination is lacking because we can get it back.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a in some cases, it will take, of course, very long.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a giant redwood tree is 800 grows for 800 years, doesn't even take eight hours to cut it down.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in in other cases, nature responds amazingly quickly to that intention to restore and diversity and abundance bounce back amazingly quickly.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're we're a special generation.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um at some point, I think I feel that there's really an a groundswell of that awareness.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you search for generation restoration, which is the hashtag of the UN decade, there's about 140,000 posts on Instagram.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're all like local projects, they're mostly young people, they're people interested in regenerative agriculture and farming.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there is something happening on that front.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a groundswell of of awareness.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this notion that we are part of nature and that we have to remember that is that is growing.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_04: One of the most powerful things in the book is you really exploring in detail that we are part of nature.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: Can you can you give people a view of where you think we lost that and how important it is to realize that relationship?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I traced, I tried to find that out for myself because I realized that I did not really see nature as nature.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I saw nature, especially after studying forestry at university.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: I walk around in a forest, it's like, oh, this is three volumetric meters of good oak timber could be turned into veneer.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth 2,000 euros.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: You walk around and you look at trees in that way, and you look at how to improve silviculture.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're trained to do.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point I was asking myself, what is what happened to the boy who was walking through the forest and was inspired by the energy that was flowing through the system?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: I could I have this sort of the sense of feeling the energy that pulses through an ecosystem.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Find that difficult, still difficult to explain, but I think I would have been a better forester as a 10-year-old boy than after graduating from forestry at university in terms of understanding what the ecosystem needs and how it works.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was trying to find a way to reconnect with that and then combine the best of both worlds.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: When I traced back how I think collectively as humanity, we lost that connection.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to the 16th, early 17th century, and especially uh René Descartes and his contemporaries who made this very clear distinction that only humans are divine.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is a commodity that is put here for our convenience.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, animals are soulless, machines that purely act on instinct.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was hammered into our collective Western consciousness so deeply that it really framed how we set up economic structures, how we set up the rules of the economy.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nature is still seen as a commodity in in modern economics, which it it isn't.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you can trace that back to the so-called era of enlightenment.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a misnomer that that era.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it brought a lot of progress and and um especially on in political structures, but it it also really blinded us to this connection with nature.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_04: You think the you think you swapped imagination or measurement during your education?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think it's a failing of how we educate?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would say in in general, yes, it of course it depends.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are there are educations that are all about more imagination.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but especially in um in the natural sciences, we have a tendency to then only take scientific evidence as our guiding star.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's there's of course a lot of merit to it because it's replicable.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only common language that we can speak as one humanity, because everybody can replicate those results.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you can actually also replicate other things in the same way, like the results of meditation.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you do it right and you do it often and long enough, everybody gets the same results after a while.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So these are these are also scientific techniques of understanding and knowing that we can use, but that we've Forgotten about.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that lack of imagination is also to do with the lack of our intuition and being in tune with nature.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean I'm saying all this, of course, knowing that this is an ongoing learning journey for me and all of us.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not perfectly in tune with nature.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I discover everyday things on our farm and with the animals and with the wildlife.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And where where I think, wow, this is um this is really, really so clever and so well done and designed that the best we can do sometimes is to watch and listen and observe nature and then react.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas we do it the the other way around at the moment mostly.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: We think we have all the answers.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We design ecosystems so they serve our purposes.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we've come to the end of that road.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have to re-re consider.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_04: One of the um one of the interesting approaches you take in the book is you tell the story about New York Bay and the loss of three billion native oysters and not just the nature loss and the ecological loss, but the infrastructure that was lost to the environment there.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_04: Um can you help people understand that concept and and describe that realization?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you would have sailed to into New York about 400 years ago, 300 years ago, it would have been a completely different experience because there were 200,000 acres, about 80,000 hectares of oyster reefs all across um Upper Bay, Hudson River, the estuary.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, oysters filter water and very effectively.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they would have filtered all that water about once a day.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oyster reefs are also the home to a whole array of other species, shoals of fish, um, even marine mammals.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: There would have been an unimaginable abundance of wildlife in that whole area around New York.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were, of course, also great protection against storm surges.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what happened then is um they were all eaten.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: The last commercial oyster bed closed in New York, I think, in 1927.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Before that, oysters were exported from New York to all over the world to Europe.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the water got too dirty for the oysters to live because of raw sewage influx.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you go today into New York and you ask a New Yorker in the streets, you know, this should actually be called the big oyster, not the big apple.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anything about that?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know about oysters?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: They would say, Well, I don't know, the oysters, what have we to do with them?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: People don't know.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: They've lost that imagination.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And instead we have things like Superstorm Sandy and other extreme weather events that could have been mitigated by that critical natural infrastructure.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really pleased about things like the Billion Oysters Project.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a project that's trying to reverse that loss of all these oyster reefs.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to increase those efforts at orders of magnitude, which is why I think it's so important that we see nature partly as critical infrastructure for all of our societies and for national economies, because it's only if we have massive public works projects that we can get to the level of investment that we need.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Take peatlands in the UK, for example.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to um re-wet a lot of the peatlands that were lost, you want to re-establish these huge wetlands, Somerset Downs, and all these very large, beautiful areas, Scottish peatlands.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's a project that is probably not going to happen based on the voluntary carbon market or other small payments.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: They have to be massive public works projects.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're still a bit away from that, but we are we are getting there.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: Really interesting.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: So um, you're the first person I saw put words on paper about nature being categorized as critical infrastructure.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um the first person I had vocalized, that was Rob Gardner at Rebalance Earth.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_04: And we spoke about, shout out to Rob.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_04: Hey Rob.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: We spoke about um his podcast before before we started recording.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's a really interesting challenge because we need that language, whether it's a public works program or whether it's unlocking institutional capital to come into these projects.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: By using infrastructure, we give a commonality of language, a terminology, a revenue profile that make it accessible to people.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yet we still see people push back and go, no, no, no, it's inappropriate to put a price on nature.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_04: How do you respond to that challenge?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's an it that's a fascinating question.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no easy answer to that because when we started to put a price on nature, and you know, all the way back in 2008, there was this project called the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity T that the UN started.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was a T for agriculture and a T for this and that.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that was part of when this started.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then a few years later, the UN launched, and this is probably not known widely because it's actually super technical, but the UN has a statistics handbook.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: 900 pages, probably the most boring book in the world.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it but it determines how governments measure what public wealth and national wealth is.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the UN statistical handbook.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2012, they introduced a concept called the system of environmental economic accounting, where for the first time you could measure natural capital.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't a thing before then for countries.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: What year did that appear?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: 2012.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then since then, more and more countries have adopted that.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a voluntary add-on to that statistical handbook.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: But things like that that happen in the background are super important for that understanding of nature as an infrastructure.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But with that study of the economics of biodiversity, also, of course, came the bit of a backlash, especially from indigenous communities, indigenous peoples, who said we should not commodify nature even more by putting a price on it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still somewhat in two minds about that because I think we have to do it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: That comes through in the book.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_04: I think you can feel how uncomfortable you sit between those two ideas.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do it because it is the language that the world speaks right now.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's money.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Money, money, money.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you then have to express your ideas in that language.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And to a certain degree, it makes sense because nature and the economics of biodiversity make a lot of sense, make a lot more sense than our current economic system.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I also love this idea of the bioeconomy that Brazil is pushing with the G20, where suddenly you the whole economic system is not no longer based on an extractive use of nature, but it's based on biodiversity and the abundance and diversity of our natural wealth.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I like all that.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yet there's a part of me that always feels when we talk about nature in monetary terms.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like somebody coming to me with a new study saying, you know, I calculated the value of your family, of your kids and of your wife, and they're they're worth millions to you because they'll save you, you know, they'll probably live longer, they save your insurance premium.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: They and I would be like, yeah, that might be true, but what are you talking about?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is irrelevant to me because this is my family.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would do anything for my family, and it's the same with nature.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: You we talk about nature in monetary terms, and at the same time, there's a much more profound connection that we have with nature and that we must have with nature.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I think both can exist.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you you know, I also invest in the education of my kids, and I pay for insurance for my family because I do care about them, and these are all financial decisions.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we can do both, but nature is more than a line on our balance sheets.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nature is our balance.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to really understand that there's a deeper, more profound meaning to it, and then it's all right to speak about nature in monetary terms.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's um it's incredibly complex because um people who want to throw out the moral argument of um it's wrong to put a price on nature, nature's priceless.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: We don't treat it as priceless, we treat it as worthless.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_04: And the way we need to communicate that in the language is to put a monetary value on it, and then if we get that right, if we recognize it's critical infrastructure, if we do have the imagination to imagine a restored world, then maybe we can say it's priceless.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe we can respect it at that point.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_04: But if we continue to fail to put a value on it, continue to treat it as an externality and move it away, we won't have the choice anymore because it'll all be gone.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's right.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think you have to have the balance about those two realities and they they can coexist.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love, I mean, for example, what you do here is is amazing, and I'm uh really impressed with oxygen conservation's success so far.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'll do amazingly well, and yet at the same time, part of your success will also be because nature is still declining, and of course, then it becomes more valuable because the ecosystem services of nature are more relevant than ever.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it is great for a company, but we need so much more for society as a whole.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: We want nature to be abundant, diverse, and free as much as possible for people.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this comes back to the public sector-private sector duality and why we need public-private partnerships for this, because we will only change this at scale.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I'd love for there to be a hundred oxygen conservations doing this all over the world and at much larger scale.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: But even at that scale, it will not be enough without a massive public shift of subsidies.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're outspending nature conservation and restoration about 30 times with harmful subsidies that are destroying nature and making the problem worse.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like your house is on fire and you're trying to get a sort of bucket of water and get your neighbors together, and then the fire engine arrives and they spray gasoline on your house.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the current problem with fiscal policies and fiscal incentives.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be massive, massive reprogramming, which is a huge opportunity.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Never waste a good crisis.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_04: That is gonna be a theme.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_04: That's gonna be a theme.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um what you said about uh essentially the worse the climate gets, the worse nature gets, the better it is for my business.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_04: I hate that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_04: I genuinely think that's probably the heaviest load I carry in terms of mentally about what we do.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_04: We did an event with the brilliant people at Foresight in the in the shard in London.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_04: They've got um Richard and Rob there, fantastic.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_04: They asked us to go speak with them.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_04: Guy in the audience raised his hand and said, Well, this is this is all well and good, but when um uh when the climate gets worse, when weather patterns are destroying landscapes, all these assets you've bought will be worthless.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, I'm really sorry to break this to you.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_04: It'll be worth a hell of a lot more because the ones that we have are more sustainable, are better managed, we'll keep more water in the environment, the soils will be more fertile.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, the worse everything else gets, the better our assets will be.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: And literally, you could see him go, Yeah, you're right, you're right.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: And and I don't want that to be the answer.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what we're trying to do is it's kind of as you articulate, we want to create, we want to inspire imagination.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_04: We want to show people what's possible.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_04: That's why we have a podcast and we write and we publish and share it because we want to inspire the next generation, which I totally think are coming.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_04: You spoke wonderfully at the start about all the challenges we're facing across the globe.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_04: The thing that gives me optimism are the people like Penny who sat behind the camera and the amazing young people we have coming into the team who wouldn't have looked at the environment sector twice five years ago.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: But now we are the coolest place in the UK you can work if you want to work on natural capital, on data, on tech, we're the place to be.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_04: And the talent that's coming in now, I think they will save the world.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_04: We just need to write big enough checks to allow them to do it.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree with that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in Salesforce, we call them ecopreneurs.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you're an ecopreneur as well, right?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: You make it your life's mission to solve these hard problems, and you take what all the amazing tools we have, including AI, and you make it a reality.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that ecosystem of ecopreneurs is thriving worldwide.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: We work with uh World Economic Forum.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a place called Uplink.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: They have a network where they've now about 50,000 ecopreneurs are collected there.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the the WEF is very good at introducing people to opportunities and making sure they have the right technology.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we I this is a big part of why I also love the the job at Salesforce, because that's there's a lot of funding that goes also into ecopreneurs.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, in our hundred million tree effort, we we're now making a bit of a shift from mostly grants to NGOs, which were all successful and all good, but towards seeding a little bit more this for-profit nature restoration market, so that we can make what you do here more mainstream and make it more the norm.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I agree with you that um I think over time people will realize that this is not a luxury to do things this way.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the only way we can afford to keep a healthy agriculture, food production, agri-food system, and overall a healthy economy is this way of treating nature with more respect and a very different mindset.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've been at Salesforce five years now?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_04: Four.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_04: Four.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_04: How has the business changed in those four years?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_04: And how have you changed as a result of that?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is now dominated by the rise of AI.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a fast-paced and exciting time.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when I joined four years ago, it wasn't really that was not really the main uh driver.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Salesforce been using AI for over 10 years, and a lot of the lot of the predictive AI is actually fairly um, it's not very energy intensive, not very resource intensive.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the latest large language models and generative AI use a lot of computing power, and that's of course also where some of the environmental impacts from AI are negative on energy and on water.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: How I've changed, I think I've I understand the private sector now much better.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I also understand much better how ideally there should be private public partnerships, how the private sector can be catalyzed into collective action, because there's enormous peer pressure and group pressure in the private sector.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: You always, people, big companies in particular, always look around what are our peers doing?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is happening, and what are the trends?
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Few large companies want to be the first.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to be the last of doing something.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can be among the first to set a new trend, and Salesforce is a place like that, you can pull a lot of companies with you.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to do that with early adoption of TNFD and helping them to develop this leap framework with task force and nature-related financial disclosures.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to do that with a voluntary carbon market, with things like the Symbiosis Coalition that we launched in 2024 with Meta, Microsoft, and Google.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we've made a 20 million ton market signal that we will offtake 20 million tons of high-quality nature-based removals.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um give people an idea on scale with that.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_04: So we have the biggest portfolio of voluntary carbon credits in the UK at 2 million tons.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: And you've collectively signaled 20 million.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_04: So that is an astonishing number and has the sort of ability, you know, some of the names there, including yourselves, they are creating the market through those types of signal.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that's very important.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's of course also a little bit too small, that pool of companies, and technology companies are a little bit special because our profit margins are so large.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's basically there is the capital to do this at scale.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think every large company, every Fortune 500 company could do more, including engaging in the voluntary carbon market.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm quite bullish on the voluntary carbon market again.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's gone up and down.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um because of the laws of physics.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I feel like the guy in the big short, I forget his name, but you know, he who keeps saying this, this is this can't work.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: The math doesn't compute, right?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So um, if you look at the physics of climate change, the carbon removal industry has to become one of the most important industries of the centuries.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just a necessity.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And markets are the most effective way of connecting and channeling capital.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's all the market or the basic function of a market.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you put those things together, and there has to be a market, whether it's a voluntary market or compliance markets, but there has to be a market as part of climate action that channels money to where there's good projects and where there's good action.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a necessity.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It has to happen.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_04: What makes a good project?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's a okay.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: How how long do I have for the answer?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: As long as you're like, I've got an answer too, but you can go first.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: What makes a good project?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: The the short answer would be I know it when I see it, which is of course not very helpful, but um but let me explain that a little bit.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you see that there's improvements in biodiversity, you see that there's improvements in soil organic carbon, you see there's improvements in livelihoods of the people in and around the project, it's a great project.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: I so you can make it endlessly complicated.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually it and it's starting to become endlessly complicated.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are now rating agencies that pre-rate before we even do our due diligence on carbon projects.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_04: We had Tommy Ricketts, the founder of B Zero, on the podcast last week.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the role they will play in creating a market is fundamental because lots of people don't have or won't want to have the finances, the technical expertise to make an objective assessment there.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I think they're so, so important.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: He his podcast hasn't been released yet, but he was, oh, I suppose it will be by the time this goes out.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_04: He was astonishing.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um I I love your line, know it when you see it.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I hadn't realized that's effectively what I've been telling people.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_04: So whenever anyone asks about our projects, I say, come and see it.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_04: And that that is the only answer because yes, we can talk about the verification and the monitoring.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, we can do tons on AI.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_04: We we have got a proprietary method of individual tree-level visualization and scanning to measure carbon now, which um we were approached by one of the leading strategy consultants in the world that said, you have the best tech to do this on the planet.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_04: But ultimately, come and see it.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_04: Come and see it, interact with it, understand what's happening on the ground, see the positive environmental and social impact.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: And then, so we've been really fortunate.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: We've broke the world record for the highest price received for woodland carbon at 125 a ton.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't think I've mentioned this one to you yet.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: We've just broke the world record for peatland at£100 a ton for the same principles, because every aspect of it is authentic and honest and optimized to do the right thing for people, wildlife and the environment.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you only know it if you see it.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: That that's wonderful.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think it's important to remember that at least in the voluntary carbon market, that it is voluntary.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we also as large companies, what we want to invest in are also good stories.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't want negative headlines.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: If I go to our chief finance officer and I say, well, this is going to cost X million and all we get are negative headlines, they're gonna say, What?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make any sense.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we want good stories, we want stories that are powerful, that are of course accurate, that are true, that we that can build trust in the voluntary carbon market.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think over time, though, the the V will drop from the VCM more and more because of that physical necessity that we have to build carbon markets at at scale.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And compliance markets are already much, much larger.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the ET, the European trading scheme is already many orders of magnitude larger than the voluntary carbon market.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: But where the VCM can play a really important role is in the research and development of exactly that.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is a good project?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: How does it work?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: How can it be scaled?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: What are the technologies that work?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Salesforce is an investor in Silvera, which is one of the other rating agencies, Calyx.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Global is one.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: We we work with with them with all of them to pre-rate our projects, but often it is that sort of we want to go and see the projects and want to really understand what is happening.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had the chance to visit Bombak in November when I was at COP30 for the climate summit in Belang in Brazil.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so impressed with what they're doing.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I to everybody out there who's a project developer and who has this drive to solve this defining challenge of our time in terms of climate change and biodiversity loss, um, I have a huge respect for everybody who does the work you do, the work that project developers all over the world do.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not easy.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a good project is not easy and it's um there's no blueprint.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no every project is is in some ways different.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can, of course, learn over time.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: But this is not yet a fully established industry.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we're we're getting there.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope also we'll have a sort of a nature industry association at some point globally that can lobby more for fiscal policy reform and those kinds of large public works projects that invest in nature at scale.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_04: Why I'm fascinated, and I and I want to borrow some of your positivity and optimism here.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: Why are you so I'm not sure if you're hopeful or confident, but which of those are you about the public-private partnership?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: What gives you the hope or the confidence that they'll present?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're actually talked about a lot.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the only person who's talking about that, but there are very few that actually work.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my problem.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's your problem.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: I've spent a lot of time in UK government and I just don't believe they're gonna do anything.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when you when we look at things like concessional finance.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody talks about concessional finance for these great projects.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And but if you dig a little bit deeper, there's there's very of that actually existing.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the gold dust um somewhere that that in some cases makes projects feasible.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we would need massive multi-billion dollar de-risking facilities.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: We need massive early start, low or no interest capital for feasibility studies for projects.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I would love philanthropists to step in here more, family offices, big investors who can say, yeah, I'm I'm gonna, sure, if I get my money back, that's great.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need the interest.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if I lose the money, then I've learned a lesson.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where are the philanthropists that that think like that?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and family offices.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: More and more family offices and unfortunately also multilateral development banks, they operate like commercial banks.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: They lend money, they expect very high rate of return.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's not their role.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, we needed more daring, more bold role.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: But to come back to your point, why I'm confident, I think I learned that from Christiana Figueres and her global optimism.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying by the economist Paul Romer, and I talk about that in the book.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that optimism is not something that happens to you based on data or what you know what you observe in the world.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mindset, not unconditional optimism, like a child waiting for presence, but conditional optimism.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: More like a child wanting to build a tree house and you know, walk running around and getting all their relatives and friends and parents to chip in and say, what if we get this and a few right tools, and suddenly something amazing happens because you believe that it happened?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're now at this critical mass where there's enough amazing people.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: You just spoke about the amazing talent you can attract.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's thousands of people now, tens of thousands, that are putting their minds to solve this issue.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it will be solved.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think we will have public-private partnerships.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_04: Have you um either heard of or met David Hill?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: He um he's essentially the the godfather or grandfather, sorry to aid you, uh, of BNG in this country.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_04: So he's he's the reason it exists.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_04: He went across the US and studied their water mitigation markets, brought back the principles, and he he is the the father of BNG in the UK.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_04: And um he has a fact, and and he double-checked it after his podcast.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_04: There are more people employed in the natural capital space than there are in the steel industry in the US now.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which is so you can the the same is actually true for solar and wind on the energy side, is by far a larger share of the job market that is now in renewables than in um in fossil fuels.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_04: I I don't think the government are coming.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think the governments are coming to help.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_04: I think it will be a private sector solved problem.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: But I hadn't realized this until you advocated so strongly for that public-private partnership.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_04: I think the role that used to be played by government will in the future be played by the AI companies.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: I think they will be the ones that provide that level of funding.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_04: So um I I've written a few pieces that will will come out at some point about how the more digitally obsessed we become, the more reliant we are on nature.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_04: Each of these massive data centers, they're called clouds, but they live in physical spaces that require cooling and carbon footprints and energy and all these real physical things.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_04: So, in a model whereby Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, you guys, all the hyperscalers are going to be generating hundreds of billions of pounds of cash year on year with very little opportunity to deploy those into anything that diversifies what they do.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: So they could invest in more microchips or more data centers.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_04: But to invest in real assets at the scale at which they would need to to offer any form of diversification against the actual risks they face, climate, nature, space, their human talent and resource base, they're going to be the ones that will provide the funding to do that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_04: And they won't need the return on investment because, uh, and I hadn't thought about this until you articulated it, but the balancing effect is they will be swapping the return for the risk management that they need.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting hypothesis.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I would not write off government just yet.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we see right now how much money there suddenly is when there's a conflict.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we see how much money there is when there was a crisis like like COVID.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget that governments actually also make money.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: They print money.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is the one of the nice things about government.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it has to be in balance so you don't fuel inflation.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: But governments can decide to um to borrow against that future return on impact.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at it at some point, if Germany or then maybe even Euro, Europe as a whole decides to issue euro bonds, um they can they can raise massive amounts of capital that are still um much, much larger than any profits of the air companies.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_04: Which country do you think is most likely to be the one that goes first?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_04: Who would be the one that said, you know what, we are gonna solve this, we are gonna make a big national level infrastructure investment in nature?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um there is a country that's already doing it.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a large country, it's Brazil.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you look at what they do in terms of restructuring their portfolio of development bank lending, nature basically has unlimited um capital access at fairly low rates from BNDS from the Brazilian Development Bank.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um of course they also have existing infrastructure and oil and gas and others, but they are making that shift to the bioeconomy already, which is why I'm so keen to sort of support that bioeconomy narrative of Brazil in the G20.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because consider that if you think of subsidies that are going into fossil fuels or that are going into agriculture as usual, chemical agriculture, it's depending how you count it, it's sort of between five and seven trillion dollars per year, trillion.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no AI company that's sort of will sort of make that kind of not yet cash and turnaround.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_04: Somewhere Elon's going, watch this piece.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: There was a not that podcasts existed at the time, but if they had, we'd have been sat here having this conversation about railroad investment and then road investment, and we'd have been asking the philanthropists from the previous industrial revolution to be paying for stuff.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_04: I think I'm just projecting and thinking, I I I think the philanthropists have of of certainly in the UK context in which I'm talking to, thank you.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_04: They've done the heavy lifting, they've funded the Wildlife Trust and the Rivers Trust and the National Trusts.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_04: They've done enough.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_04: I think for me, it's time that industry stepped up and and wrote its checks that it needs to, and businesses did.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I just I'm 42 years old.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_04: I've waited a lot of years for the government to give a damn about the environment, and each one's just not.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: And um, that's why my view is we'll try and push through quicker because otherwise.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_04: And I hope I'm wrong.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: I hope, I hope they do announce a big I think once the government sees that what you do and what others that are similar like-minded are doing, and that that is generating more profit, more livelihoods, better outcomes for local communities, for the environment, the government will shift and then they will support that.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's at the moment also it's a gap and it's a vacuum of lobbying as well.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that there's very powerful vested interests that are lobbying that have vast amounts of money.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Fossil fuel industry spending upwards of$200 million a year globally just on lobbying specific politicians and specific legislations.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's there has to be a counterweight to that, that does that lobbying.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think it's important we have we're more organized as the especially the nature restoration space in that sense that we can really lobby more effectively.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we have we have science on our side.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: There is a right and wrong side of history here.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're on the right side.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have the young people on our side.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, all of that does count in politics with with decision making in government.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, again, let's not write off governments because they do have an important role to play.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're just not playing it at the moment, but they they will eventually.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_04: I do agree.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, there's a guy called Benedict McDonald, who runs a company called Restore, who are who are at the leading edge of um the ecological side of restoration.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_04: He's a beautiful author too.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, he advocates for the exact same thing that you just articulated.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, um, he he is in awe in the worst possible way with the lobbying power of the NFU and farmers, and he's just constantly demanding the sector come together from a natural capital perspective and try and organise and communicate in the same way.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_04: We actually had Tom Bradshaw, the president of the NFU, on the podcast, an incredibly impressive man, an incredibly uh educated and eloquent macroeconomist in terms of how he thought about the flows in and out of the country of capital.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and they are seriously organized.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: One of the brave things I think you did in your book was really call out how agriculture and and farmers are held in a completely unique perspective from other professionals.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, did you think twice about including that perspective in the book?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: I I did.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: I also have to say that since we bought a farm, um you've decided farmers are right.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: My my respect for anybody who's a farmer has grown by leaps and bounds.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is a really it's not only very hard physically, it's very demanding, but you have to be, you have to know so much about climate, the weather, tax regulations, botany, chemistry.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it it's farmers are amazing.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_04: Accounting, economic work, documentation, regulation, accounting.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: Huge respect for everybody who's a farmer.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think they should be a revered profession, just like teachers and you know, professions that really shape our society.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's of course at the moment not the case.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're between a rock and a hard place.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: Most farmers want to do better by the environment, they want to do um the right thing, but they're just caught in this um in this economic conundrum where they have to have to rely so much on external pesticides and inputs and um and fertilizers that eat up all their profits.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think getting out of that will take an initial infusion of cash.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And on our farm, it's you know, we I subsidize the farm with my day job, but not everybody can do that.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that is again an important role where we have to the$40 billion that Europe spends per year on the common agricultural policy, or it's even more now, reprogram that slightly.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's happening.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm again coming back to my optimistic view of that governments will eventually have to do the right thing.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can reprogram part of that so it can restructure, it can restructure agriculture.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_04: Really interesting.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_04: You you tell a story about um a neighbor's use of pesticides on on their land and the potential knock-on effects of next door.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um we we said that across across the country.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_04: And um Do you think that's an education issue?
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think it's a an awareness issue, a social issue?
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_04: Why do you think we still have those people who don't consider the knock-on effect of those activities?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good question.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: In our case, it was really obvious because the field where the those there were potatoes last year, this year, we're we're not sure yet what they're gonna have, but it's right where our borehole is, where our drinking water comes from.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a really clear um interest in seeing what is happening with that field.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so that makes it really drastically visible for us, but the same exists for everybody.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pesticide runoff is uh threatening drinking water in a lot of and nitrate and other runoff in a lot of countries, including in the UK.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: So think about we we need to think about more where does our food come from, where does our water come from, what decides its quality?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of that ecological literacy that I call for in the book.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have an easy answer how to change that, but I think what I've learned about farmers is that the most powerful way to spread an idea is to show that it works.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once you show that it works, farmers will do, even if it sounds crazy or it's uh it's a novel idea, they will do it if they see it worse, if they see it it it works.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's why um we have a lot of open days community events.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_04: I I often get asked, what would you tell the neighboring farmer to do?
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_04: My answer is nothing.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's their land.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_04: You know, what I will say is if you're interested, come and take a look.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_04: You're very welcome.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_04: I think farmers are uh from the conversations we've had, they're fed up of being patronized, lectured, and lied to.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: That was one thing I agreed with Tom that farmers have spent decades being promised X and it never appearing.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_04: But there's no wonder that they're told to change everything.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_04: As soon as they retool, they change.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_04: And it's not like a line of code, you can't rewrite it in seconds.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_04: You need seasons and years and sometimes generations to change things on a farm.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_04: I agree with you, it's an incredibly difficult, challenging profession.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_04: I I think I think in the UK, the food security angle is overplayed and used as a reason to make sure we don't change some of the subsidy practices we have, uh, as much although we have starting to see some of those come into fruition now.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um, nature markets do offer something exciting, though.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_04: I I think BNG especially is something that for the first time does offer land-owning farmers and families a route to diversify in a way that can provide an economic return.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think nature markets and um also the carbon markets are are a promising route to diversify farm income.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the the carbon markets were of course trying to do what we can at Salesforce to stimulate that market further.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is, um, I think it it will grow, but ideally, I would I don't want to have a carbon credit here and a nature credit there and a water credit there.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would like to have one good outcome environmental certificate that does all of the above because a good project and a good nature-based carbon project does all of that.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we we also invest in technology projects.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: Salesforce also has made a$100 million carbon dioxide removal commitment with the First Movers Coalition.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we also invest in enhanced rock weathering and even direct air capture, all those things that are on the technology side.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: What sometimes upsets me in the in the VCM is this confrontation between the technologists and especially the techno-optimists and the and the nature circles.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is there's too much infighting in our in our circle.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think that debate between technology carbon credits and nature carbon credits is definitely overplayed.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: We need, of course, durable solutions, but we need a portfolio of solutions that work right now and that includes nature.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: We need the massive co-benefits of nature carbon projects.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: We need ecosystem restoration at massive scale, which will be durable, and we also need more investments in technology.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, it's it's an either, it's not an either-or, it's an uh and to all of the above.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's about a portfolio of approaches.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we approach the VCM.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: I absolutely agree.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_04: So um I I don't think we can solve for the climate without some form of technological solution or to some scrubbing technology that does mechanically extract carbon from the atmosphere.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I I love the stuff climb works and people are doing, but even even their portfolio is now pairing the technological advancements with a nature product as well, sit alongside of it.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_04: Because once we do fix that technology, I would still like a planet to live on that we can enjoy in the nature parts of what's there.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: When you think about the nature side of things, so you mentioned water and biodiversity.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_04: What are some of the emergent areas that you think we might see us go to next in terms of those markets?
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think the voluntary market is small, as I already said.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a little bit fatigued on the company and buyer side.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: I sometimes ask myself the questions, where is everybody when I'm when we're on panels or I mentioned symbiosis?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Always the same faces.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's always the same faces, very limited number of companies.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: So where where is everybody?
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of fatigue um in investing because there's because the market tends to be complicated and it used to be intransparent.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: That has all improved.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: You said earlier it should be as easy as sort of ordering something online, and you get a carbon credit that you know is is of high quality.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if it isn't, you can give it back.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that that complexity we solved for for the carbon market.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now I see there's nature credits, there's water credits, but to me, that's a little bit as a corporate buyer.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is um that's a little bit hard to explain to our chief finance officer who bought into the carbon credits because it is part of our overall climate um action plan and climate transition plan.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: But um making that same argument again for different credits for almost the same thing, if it's if you look at the projects that produce them is uh is almost impossible.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's really important to merge and combine those into multiple outcome credits.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: The the c the compliance markets might take a different turn again, because governments might decide we want nature, water, and carbon in one bundled credit.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would be a great way forward.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that will come from necessarily from corporate buyers, though, because we we still have whiplash from the carbon market.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now that the carbon market is much more transparent, it's much better, it's much improved.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: We we first have to get lots more companies into the VCM before I think we can branch out into nature and water.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything the developers like us can do to help in that process?
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think the good start is to is to demonstrate well what the co-benefits are through storytelling, through measurements, through biodiversity surveys.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's of course amazing advances also with with biodiversity monitoring, with e DNA, with bioacoustics, with AI driven.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I even heard about we don't have one on our farm yet because I think they're also quite expensive still.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there's uh soil biodiversity acoustic monitoring, where you basically have AI help you with.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Interpreting the changes in soil acoustics based on this on soil biodiversity, which is is is is amazing.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you have I've heard the factory stuff.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_04: So the smell like being able to AI smell the soil to get organic content in it.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is interesting.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think the the other thing that project developers can do, and you're already doing that, is to just bring down the costs of development and monitoring, but also project design.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: AI can can potentially help there.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have a project with um conservation organization called RAIR.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in Colombia, they've designed a they call it Argentiera.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's then they've designed an AI agent that works through WhatsApp with thousands of farmers, gives them updated information about what of about behavior change nudges, and it's like a source of information for all the smallholder farmers that are in a certain area, how to collectively restore and manage their land.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about smallholder farming areas where it's not one large land holding, but it's hundreds of thousands of farmers, a lot of the transaction costs for a project would go into those discussions, keeping everybody informed all the time, getting feedback from everybody, processing it in real time.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: AI is great at that.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can do that at a fraction of the cost.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_04: I think that that's one of the most exciting things that it just speeds up the force multiplier.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_04: You allow you to engage much faster at a lower price point.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_04: AI's been a theme that's kind of run through lots of our conversation today.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_04: On the day-to-day parts of what you do, how has that changed as a result of AI being in the business?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I use AI a lot more than I did a few years ago.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: We run a lot of our internal processes now.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um Slack is our tool of choice, and we have SlackBot is now basically my employee um number one.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, was chief of staff or what you want to call it, but Slackbot.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_04: What um so so with that, I have a sort of mechanism of measuring that.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_04: If you had to pay employee number one, so you could have a person or you but you would lose your Slack employee number one, what's the value person you would need to hire to lose that AI employee right now?
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would I would need to hire a lot of people because it it has very different skill sets.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: I ask Slackbot before I have a meeting, what are our last interactions with this customer or this stakeholder or this NGO?
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what are their what are their pain points that we know of?
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: How can we help them?
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um then I sometimes ask it to do talking points for me, or I ask it to look into event organization.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are all different skill sets.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Slackbot does does all of that.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_04: Have you had a um you had one of those moments where you're like, oh my god, and you can see the sheer scale and the future of what AI could bring?
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm I've had a few of those, and I'm having them uh repeatedly again.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was recently when, and now there's a music feature on Gemini, but um that you could actually generate songs um is a relatively new thing.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: We go on Spotify now, and all a lot of songs from 2026, 25 are AI generated or with support of AI, which I don't think is great, by the way.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's you know a role for human human um music.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: It should be labeled.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should, as a consumer, you should be able to know is this AI or is this sort of mostly human generated?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, but I had this aha moment when this was just a few months ago, when um at the time I did not know Sono.com is the DJ sound generating app.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: But my brother is a part-time DJ, and he in five minutes he just said, Well, you're going to the Salesforce team meeting of your sustainability team.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's write a song about that.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we uploaded our stakeholder impact report, and um he said, you know, what do world beat?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and in in a few minutes, I had a song about our sustainability team and how we measured our targets.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was super funny, and we played it at the retreat.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: But now that's you can do that on Gemini.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now every but I was like, wow, this is this is amazing.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm having these wow, this is amazing kind of moments, uh, quite often with AI.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_04: I um I we've been so my PhD's big data systems and environmental stuff.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, um, so we're going across to San Francisco Climate Week at uh the end of April.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_04: Nice.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_04: Twenty years ago, I was in the middle of my PhD and I was captain in the Great Britain American football team in the US.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_04: And within that same year period, uh Google IPO'd, YouTube launched, Facebook launched, Amazon started for the first time.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_04: Like literally, that's uh OC wouldn't exist without that trip because I knew nothing about business when I went across there.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_04: First person in my family to finish school, never mind, go to college.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_04: And all of a sudden I went to the US and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_04: These small teams of people, exactly at the same point in their life as I was, coming out of uni, were ready to start these businesses.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_04: And that sort of tech startup data-based approach has been our DNA throughout everything we're doing.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm going back to do that now, but as a result of that, AI's been a feature of what we were doing from like the earliest models of um we literally, the model we've built internally to evaluate acquisition opportunities is called Claudia because it's a supermodel and we can show Claudia existed 18 months before Claude did.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_04: We literally had a Claudia before Claude.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_04: Um so it's it's super, super exciting.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_04: But I I like your point about regular moments of oh my word.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_04: I remember one probably early January, it was my first encounter with like the latest iteration of Claude just before co-work dropped.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I traveled somewhere early, woke up at 6 a.m.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sat in a coffee shop, and just had a moment of oh my god, I can see where this is going.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_04: It is a level of speed and specialism that it just changes everything.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I pulled the entire team in and went, no, no, no, whatever we thought we had before, we've got to go again now, because fundamentally the speed and the way we can do everything has changed dramatically.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I'm super, super excited.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think what this what at the same time this shows though is that the quality of the human interaction becomes much more important.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the because when everything is possible, what or whom do you still trust becomes the becomes one of the most important questions.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that question of what is responsible trusted AI mean is really important.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it will still mean that you have companies, groups of people, peers that you you trust, you work with.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that you know we're all gonna be vibe coded out of existence uh as AI or companies or software companies.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's that element of trust, especially when it comes to corporate data, will become more important, not less important.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_04: I think it'll create more jobs than it loses.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think every time we've seen we're sat on a podcast right now that employs people.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_04: Ten years ago, that of 15, that wouldn't have been a concept.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_04: Now, has that had knock-on effects on the television industry and radio?
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, it has, but YouTube as a whole production base and everything that's associated with that.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh I can't remember the book that it was in.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't think it was yours.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_04: The um the first ever uh picketed um protest in New York.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_04: Are you familiar with this?
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_04: What it was about?
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_04: It was when humans were being replaced by horses for pulling fire engines.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so every and then there was the next process when horses were replaced by actual engines and progress.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_04: We will always see those.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that um that observation that technology always creates more jobs and risk disruptions.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think that's held true in the past.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: With AI, of course, what is new, and we have to recognize that is that uh a lot of knowledge-based jobs are under pressure at the same time.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it used to be one industry at a time, it used to be one sector.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right basic media.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's uh it's it's lawyers, teachers, it's you know, it's the whole all the range of all knowledge-based professions are being transformed.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it's I I agree with you that over time this will be this will be positive if we all lean in.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: My main pet sort of topic on AI is that we all have to lean in.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because AI is like a giant mirror of humankind.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: AI is more about AI is the discovery of how humanity thinks, not what we think, of how we think.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: If only a few people look into that mirror, it's gonna show that image.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_00: We all have to look in and we all have to look in with good intention and looking for the good parts in it, and then we will see a positive reflection.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's there's 80 million people in the UK, roughly.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I looked at the stats yesterday morning.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_04: How many people do you think regularly use AI of that 80 million?
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea, honestly.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_00: 10 million.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's actually and do they know that they use AI regularly?
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it based on service?
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's because I think a lot more actually use AI every day without knowing it.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I I think I thought it was more than it was a checkpoint of oh no no, I live in this bubble of high-performing, like super, super talented young people.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very widespread and mainstream, but at the moment it's also it's it's used a lot for gimmicky stuff, you know, and and and and I think that's that's that's a bit of a problem because there's a lot of energy that goes into these.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_04: How how much do you think from a concerning perspective about the energy and the water footprint?
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this three-pillared strategy on AI sustainability.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the the first one is smart demand, that obviously AI is like the invention, let's let's say it's it's like the invention of the airplane, and suddenly everybody thinks, you know, oh, I need an airplane to go down to the post office now, and I'm gonna build an airplane, and so it saves me three minutes going down to the post office.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't need an airplane.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't need to a huge LLM for most tasks that corporations have, even people have.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the second pillar is efficiencies.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, efficiency gains can be eaten up by Jevin's paradox, you know, that things become more efficient, they become cheaper, people use more.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, it has to be coupled with smart demand.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have to sort of limit what we actually use AI for and which models we use.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the third pillar is clean supply.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is to your question: what do we do about the energy and the water footprint?
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So on the clean supply, we have a large opportunity and responsibility as a major customer of AWS and Google and others to ensure the way they run their data centers is in line with what we want to see.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Only renewable energy, very low water footprint, move to move away from water-based cooling as as much as possible if it's energy equivalent.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, it's it's a lot on our minds, but I I honestly I it's messy and it's so fast evolving, and nobody's got it all figured out.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's not a clear case where we can say, yes, this will we'll have that under control.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_04: I it's so interesting.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_04: I think you're far more optimistic about governments than I am, and I'm far more optimistic about AI and hyperscalers.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_04: I um I think it's because they haven't disappointed me yet.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um yet.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I I honestly believe the speed of change, the speed of growth, the potential, the imagination, although electronic, and the capital that will be developed will have a net positive gain on the environment and on the planet.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_04: I think they will need to.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_04: But the social license to you look at the sort of sentiment surveys around AI in the US already now.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so many people are like, whoa, we're not happy about it.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_04: They will need that.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_04: That goes into, and I haven't had this conversation with Microsoft in this way, but you know, they've bought in excess of 80 million tons solo in terms of carbon credits now.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_04: Their hypothesis must be that is the requirement of a social license to operate in the future.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_04: Ergo, if they get ahead of time, they will be the people who are allowed to and able to operate in that regard.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I think it will come.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I think the more digital the world becomes, the more reliant and the more special, the more unique our relationship with nature will be.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you're totally right.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would just add to what you say that this will happen and will have a net positive benefit if we all now lean in and structure it in that way.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's many decisions now that need to be taken.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And also from I mentioned our 100 million tree program.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are now at 65 million trees that we planted.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's a staggering number.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_00: 35 million to go.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, it's it's it's a lot of trees.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um we learned a lot along the way, by the way.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: I also talk about that a little bit in the book and one project that didn't go so well, but most of them did.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I um and we've now restructured where we plant those trees or restore forest ecosystems as we prefer to talk about it, more holistic approach.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: We focus all of that on the main water basins and watersheds where we have water dependencies, either because of data center locations, main office buildings, office towers.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we also clearly see we have to invest where we also benefit from nature and from those ecosystem services.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we we you're right that it will, it can have net positive benefits, but we all need to lean in.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the focus areas we have at the moment is also that many NGOs don't have the kind of capacity and skills and no chief technology officer, no budget for large IT investments.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_00: All those NGOs also should use the positive benefits AI to make their work more efficient, to make them more powerful, more effective.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been one of our focus areas in the past few years to ensure that there's NGO capacity that also can use this for nature, for humanitarian aid, for climate action, for education.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's that's the very popular program we run called the AI Accelerator for agents for impact for NGOs.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Gives them a cash grant and then some pro bono support, some free technology to build up this Argentiera with Rare, for example.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another example is Forest Stewardship Council now runs a lot of their very complicated forest certification processes on an AI agent.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we work with um with the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_00: They have something called the Octopus Desk that links ocean investment projects with investors, and that's a that's an AI agent that will run that.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lot of things that NGOs can use this for, but normally they can't afford the technology.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know how to have the people to and the knowledge because they're all working in the tech industry.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um getting paid large numbers.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Getting paid more.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think we need to balance that and and make sure that that's that AI is more democratized in that way.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if that happens, I think you're right.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll we'll get there.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_04: I I I love the um the breadth of interventions you guys are working across because there's some direct projects, there is some more of the philanthropic side of stuff, there's this social, there's the cultural aspects of it, there's the and geographically you're working across the globe as well.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_04: You you mentioned about the sort of um almost you maybe don't use this language, but like the venture-style investments you're making, the sort of more commercial ones.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um we're literally just about to launch our own program of that.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I was always of a view that we wanted to get to a scale where we could attract institutional capital because if we're a unicorn company and we're managing billions of assets under management, the stimulus effect we would have on local supply change.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_04: We couldn't do it without.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's a necessity.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_04: It has to come.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, a bit like your point about carbon markets, they just have to be a thing.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but we need it to come faster.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_04: So at the moment, we've got four of the biggest restoration projects occurring in the entire of Scotland.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_04: We are using the entire supply chain of Peatland restoration experts to the point whereby the contractors we're working with are having to train people live time on the jobs.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_04: So we're launching our auction accelerator program.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_04: So around each of the estates, we are saying we have capital, we have literal living laboratories, we have space, we have an amazing array of technical experts that can help mentor and support you.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_04: Come along, present your ideas, help us support and incubate those.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_04: And I didn't think we were going to do that, but actually, we need the supply chain to scale at such a pace.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_04: We're starting to do that this year.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_04: So we've made our first investment into a herbivore management company, some experts in terms of deer management and goat, which are presenting significant threats to natural regeneration habitats up there.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_04: We're also talking to a specialist now who's pitched his idea that um small-scale local improvements in individual properties from an environmental and a sustainability perspective.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_04: So, not renewable energy per se, but what can you do at the fabric of an individual property?
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_04: And these are in very uh rugged rural environments where you know a one size fits all doesn't work anywhere.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_04: These properties are historic.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_04: So by the time your podcast release, we'll probably have released that program calling for people to apply for it.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think there's there's an asymmetry there of there's so much talent and potential in these rural communities.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_04: But actually, most of the focus still remains in cities.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_04: So if we can help unlock some of that, it would be amazing.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, fully agree.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wonderful that you're doing all that.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I actually didn't know that.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um we haven't talked about it publicly yet.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's really, it's really new, so that'll come out in May, I think.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Salesforce actually has um because we we have a large ecosystem of people who use Salesforce as a platform, also as independent software vendors, and and there's a lot of solutions on our app exchange where people just build these solutions and then they add to the overall ecosystem.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's been part of Salesforce's DNA also from the beginning.
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right that we have to build this, we have to, we have to reach that scale much faster.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you have this open open source idea of sort of helping the whole ecosystem that we need in place.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's it's all about the people.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Restoration is um it's a it's a human interaction challenge.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have the technology and the tools, and but it's it's it's about it's about ecosystem management more than ecosystem management, right?
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to we have to make sure that that that human capital, that social capital is there.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love, by the way, the four returns framework.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are you are you familiar with the four returns framework of Commonland?
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, remind me.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_00: So a good friend of mine, Willem Ferveder, is um started more than 15 years ago now, this c this company is a Dutch foundation called Commonland with the idea to build a business blueprint for large-scale 60,000 hectare plus landscape restoration projects and make them economically viable.
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was at the time when nobody was really talking about this.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he got a lot of philanthropists and family offices to fund him and team of experts who and they've built the four returns framework of the returns you should aim for are, of course, financial return, but there's also return of social capital, of natural capital, and of inspirational capital.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have this model of 20 years at least of investing.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: They have zones in these 60,000 plus hectare areas, and they run a number of them now across the world.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's one of the best thought-through models for scaling this in areas where there's many stakeholders, many villages, towns that are part of these massive landscapes.
• 1:27:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's really a it's a it's a great framework for I I love it.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_04: And we ascribe to it fully.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we don't use the same language in terms of the inspirational side of it, but it's why we it's why we publish, it's why we share vlogs and the podcast and all those things to try and have that similar effect.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you mentioned we we hadn't met and and you hadn't come across oxygen before writing that book.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_04: And as I was working through it and um I study books, so I'm highlighting bits in pink and scribbling in the margin.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_04: And it just felt as if oxygen was the conclusion that should have sat at the back end of the book.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_04: Because I love that you write that there isn't enough bankable projects that can absorb the hundreds of millions necessary to engage.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what we've tried to build.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, for the first time this year, we will be raising externally.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_04: So we're gonna try and do a half billion raise later this year to sit alongside what is essentially already our first half billion portfolio.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_04: If we can bring those two things together, we think getting to Unicorn status is.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_04: As a nature-based conservation asset manager will have that catalytic effect on the sector as a whole.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_04: And hopefully, I love when companies are able to move a decade in a day, things leap forward like the Tesla Model S.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_04: You went from a Prius that was a compromise to a luxury vehicle that all of a sudden transcended everything.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_04: We've seen it multiple times with OpenAI doing that, Anthropic doing it later.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_04: Now, we want to do that for the sector as well.
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_04: All of a sudden, if we have a billion under management, then I think that'll be a stimulus for the next hundred startups and companies that will come.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I love that you're you're expanding into Europe now because I think there's a lot of potential in all of the EU countries to do this at scale.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things you will run into and one of the difficulties is that the ownership structure is just different.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have vast estates that have like one owner.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you can say, I buy this estate of 3,000 hectares or 10,000 acres, how much doesn't exist in a lot of places.
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly you have small, smaller scale farms where you will have to use a different, I don't know, you, where we, we have to, as the collective nature restoration movement, will have to use different models where we then, it's more like an outgrow scheme or it's more like a collaborative where you have hundreds of farmers collaborating on a large-scale ecosystem restoration project.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is where where common lands um methodology is really useful.
• 1:29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's being applied by both commercial and and uh nonprofit restoration uh developers around the world.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that getting large, getting consensus amongst a lot of people for doing restoration in a certain way and learning as we go along is the next frontier of scaling this up.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_00: If we can solve that, and again, AI can maybe help us solve that, we will be able to raise again.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_00: We now putting on my hat as the advisory board member of the UN decade on Exist Mastration, we as the collective movement, for-profit, these companies, the you as the first unicorn and other unicorns, will be able to scale this up to other jurisdictions and to larger landscapes and attract significant finance.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we need the governments on board.
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Coming back to that point.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think you're gonna sort that for us.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'll just rely on you to sort the government out.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Tim, you've been incredibly kind with your time.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_04: I've I've loved every minute.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um I end every podcast with the same question.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_02: What's the one question I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've been um very thorough and also shared a lot of your deep insights.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been massively useful.
• 1:30:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would just love to end on this note that this is also a crisis of relationship and it's an opportunity of relationship with nature more even than it is of finance and technology.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_00: So just like to encourage everybody to spend more time with nature, spend more time observing, listening, reconnecting.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's I think one of the best things we can we can do, and it's free.