Latest / Second Nature / E190 Cain Blythe: Stop Trying To Save Nature! This Is How We Actually Fund It

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E190 Cain Blythe: Stop Trying To Save Nature! This Is How We Actually Fund It · Second Nature

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: How's life?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's alright.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think um looking forward to my summer holiday is being busy, kind of trying to run two companies and advise stability and kind of doing a raise and all sorts of things going on all at once.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: How does the time split between the two businesses now?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to I tend I tend to have like a priorities list in my head, just a live priorities list.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I will literally just say what is the absolute top priority today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have set days, you just blend the two things.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Blends.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I typically Yeah, no, not at all.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, blends.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I know a lot of people find that quite hard, but actually it keeps me absolutely switched on as well with it and and kind of motivated.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is the ownership structure the same off both?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not I mean in the sense that I'm currently the majority shareholder, yes, but um not in the sense that we've got a lot of shareholders for credit nature and not so many for ecoSoulis.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the is everyone who's in EcoSulis also in credit nature?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I suppose with you being the major shareholder, it's fine still.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you weren't, there'd be the oh, which are you focused on the most?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: When you put it like that, I think if we take a step back as to why does credit nature exist, it's because we in EcoSoulis agreed that what we wanted to do was have a bigger impact, and what we needed to do was design a system, and the system that emerged from that was credit nature, and we spun credit nature out to deliver the purpose of IcaSoulis and co co-deliver that.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you make the so when did you start Credit Nature?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: 2022.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And was the did it start as spun out originally?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like and why not just part of the wider business?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because we recognized that the way in which ISoulis operated and what we were doing at that time and the sort of type of business we were, it we needed a start a startup mentality, so we needed to have a way to and also a tech enabled business.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a fintech, literally.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: The two just weren't operating in the same way.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to be tech driven, we're trying to work with blue chip companies.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Ecosulus didn't really have any of that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the the sort of separation there meant that was useful, and then also the separation in credit nature never meant was never meant to just work with Icasulus, it was always we will work with any project developers in any context, and therefore EcoSoulus is one partner, but we need dozens, if not thousands, of partners to be able to rewild half the planet.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we get the system working?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I think it was always it was it seemed really obvious at the time, and it seems to have played out that um Credit Nature is a separate entity, a separate machine, really.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: What parts of your role did you leave behind to create the space to build credit nature?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the the main first part was um just making sure we had a leadership team in place who kind of had all the different functions of the business covered.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the finance side, marketing, sales, uh project delivery sort of side of things.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously Susie is the the MD.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we invested as we were investing in credit nature, we were investing in that senior leadership team, which we didn't have really before, because I recognized that we would need to have that in place to be able to keep keep growing EcoSoulus as a business.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that you know that paid out well.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the one thing that was hard and still is a bit hard is culture.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely, as my attention has focused on credit nature over the last sort of few years, the I've been able to embody my cult, you know, my sort of view on what a culture should be for credit nature, and then um Icasulus has has evolved in its own way, but I think because I'd embedded so much kind of thought around rewilding and kind of the you know the book came out of all of that and credit nature itself.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I left probably that a little bit behind, so I'm having to kind of try and help re um re-engage on that level a little bit now.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the culture you would want now is the same one that you would have wanted in 22 anyway?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's it's definitely different because I think almost now, then it was you know, when I when I put the idea of uh rewilding into the minds of people in Icasulus back in 2013, people didn't even know what rewilding meant, let alone what I meant by it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, it was such an uphill struggle for people to kind of really relate to it at that time.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then as a company, Icasulus kind of evolved alongside me and others in the company, like Sarah King, who um was is now with Rewilding Britain and Paul Jepsen, who we brought on, who's sort of an expert in rewilding, we kind of all moved on for different different reasons.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So but even now, rewilding means different things to different people in the UK.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my own sense of what rewilding is and how that um translates through the different sort of businesses.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that is evolving, but it's it's largely the same, you know.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: We we kind of support the old views of um the sort of European rewilding kind of approach to rewilding as opposed to say the the the course corridors and carnivores kind of approach in the US.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think the cultures are evolving, but it's very much driven by that that principle, really.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: We can we can get a much better world for people through rewilding.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose there's almost an argument that if your focus is has lent more towards credit nature the last few years, you almost a divide between the cultures is almost a sign of success because it's meant you've built the new culture with the knowledge you've acquired in the last two or three years and left enough of the um Harry Potter reference, you've made the old business the hawkrux of your previous uh like what you wanted culture-wise, there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also like Susie'll put her own imprint on that as well and things.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's really interesting.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: We we're not that old yet in terms of a business level of maturity, like we haven't had that period where people have moved on and changed chapters and things because we're only five years old so far.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one thing I I'd still find it very hard because there are um there are a lot of historical projects, a lot of historical customers that Icasulus have worked with.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's still that backdrop of compliance markets, you know, BNG coming through.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's all very compliance oriented.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's all fine and that's all good work, you know.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, EcoSoulis is what um five million turnover, 40 odd people now.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's and it's been delivering.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think I worked out we've been we're operating on over 20 odd thousand hectares, and so it's been compounding millions of pounds worth of investment into nature for quite a long time, you know, over 30 years.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it it's it is a very standalone kind of business in that in that sense.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always trying to kind of steer and encourage it towards more what I would I would term more progressive, more kind of non-compliance driven avenues, because I think that's think that's better for people, I think it's better for nature, um, which is something we very much embody kind of across the board in what we're doing in Credit Nature, partly because we've got the luxury of being able to, you know, the support we've had from ECASULUS has meant we can do everything that we're doing.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't be here even close to it without the the kind of backing we've had.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And how many people is credit nature now?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 15.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um so growing, growing slowly, but uh a good team now, and and international people as well, which is a a difference between the two companies because we've got people in South Africa as well as um as well as in Scotland, England.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a beautiful segue into the fact that you were one of our first ever guests on the podcast.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there you are.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 2024, when we had you last on.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, give us the the headlines, Kane.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed for you and the business since you were last with us?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, Credit Nature is now um operating in six or seven countries, I think.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of the work that we did here in the UK and particularly in Scotland kind of set the foundation for that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we've got a team of 15, and that's a team of that's a lovely size for a team because you can get stuff done.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always remember being taught 12 to 15 is that ideal.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is in the context of a lifestyle business, but that ideal thing you you can know everyone, you can get enough people done.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's there before you get the complications, the headaches of politics and it being too big.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I I kind of experienced a little bit of that with Ecosulus because that's over 40 people now.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, with each of them, you hit a ceiling depending on the sort of turnover and number of people and various other bits and pieces.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and uh, you know, within that 15, we've got people who have got a background in finance, people who've got background in technology, we've got ecosystem analysts, we've got scientists, so it's quite a diverse bunch of of people for a small team as well, which is is good fun because you get lots of different perspectives on how things could or should should work.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Does the infrastructure of how you run the businesses echo?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So are the meeting structures and the communications and the cadence, are they the same across both, or you got a very different approach to them?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of really positive cross-pollination.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there are opportunities to think about, you know, the best of ways of working.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So in Credit Nature, for example, we started doing sprints, you know, the tech kind of sprints to get through um our platform build.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of translated some of that back over to EcoSoulis.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we kind of have these priorities and goals that we set on a quarterly basis.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's something we've inherited into Credit Nature from EcoSoulis.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in the age of AI, we're sharing a lot of um developments now across both businesses in terms of best practices on how to work, how to speed things up, make things more productive, more transparent.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that the the the bit I really like is that cross-pollination because it's quite fun.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the teams work together on different projects as well.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um that they're always sharing ideas and and kind of new learnings and and ways forward.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so outside the business, biggest things that have changed sort of commercially and sector-wide since 24?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um we've seen a lot of progress, I would say, in Europe around the kind of EU nature credits um recognition, you know, the terminology nature credit is well embedded now in in Europe.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: It used to always be biodiversity credits and things like that.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I like the fact that they've adopted what we came up with a very long time ago.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: They even talk about nature investment certificates, which is something we came up with quite a while ago.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not saying they got it from us, but it's good convergence.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the high-level principles through the Biodiversity Credit Alliance and the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits, that's all settling down now.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, recognitions that um standards like the Accounting for Nature standard are kind of global standards that demonstrate high integrity.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's becoming more and more apparent.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, people like Edward Pollard have been appointed sort of head of science for accounting for nature for Europe.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think uh Nature Metrics, they got one of their metrics accredited through that standard as well recently.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some convergence around approaches, which I think is very cool.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're that's what we want.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: But without um without sort of monopolies forming and things like that, there are plenty of different methodologies for different um outcomes, different types of claims.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think, I mean, one of the things that we've seen, because we, as you know, we were very involved in Scotland back in 2024, supported by the Scottish government to develop a nature credit market.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and we helped facilitate the development of uh a new ecosystem restoration code, which was all great.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But what we've one thing I really noticed is in different countries around the world, things kind of accelerate and slow down.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's a definitely an ebb and flow to the whole thing.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So part of our strategy was always not to be UK, solely UK focused.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: We were always international, and I kind of drew a bit of a raised eyebrow, a bit of criticism around that.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit how can you operate internationally?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, what we've seen is you know, Scotland slowed down, England sped up, and Broughton Sanctuary was our first um invested project over the line.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But while that's happening, Tanzania was moving well with the the Kilimanjaro project, uh Zambia was progressing really quickly, New Zealand came online with their kind of pilots for nature credits.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Europe starts talking about the EU nature credit roadmap.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um where do you feel the the most positive movement is in Europe?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of countries, um I th I th I don't know if it's never necessarily um positive movement, but what we're one of the other things we've really become cognizant about is when we started, and I think a lot of people started like this, we were responding to the the projects that and the enthusiastic kind of projects kind of wherever they were.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that was good.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there there are some amazing projects like that.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Broughton is is one of those, but what we didn't have firmly enough was where's the demand?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the demand coming from?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you you know this as well, if not better than I do.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the big learning for us now is not so much about who's saying what, why, and where, it's like who who cares?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares about the units that are being generated?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares about the credits that are being sold?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when I start to look at across Europe, we are we we have sort of uh tens, tens sort of questions that we go through now.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: As and one of the main ones is yeah, where's where's demand?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: What's the actual demand that's being generated here?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how does that relate to other kind of um finance mechanisms that are also in in existence?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is there a big um philanthropy kind of um establishment already present in those countries?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I I look to places like Spain, for example, that are quite interesting because they don't have the same kind of um family office kind of background, but they also are aligned with the EU rules that are coming forward now with the nature restoration bill, the um corporate social responsibility directive, TNFD, all of this sort of stuff.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as you know, we've got partnership with stability on green margin, and I think, oh, that's quite interesting because there's a clear private finance route there that could be emerging in Spain that would support the development of projects, and then you say, Well, where are those projects?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Where does that how does that relate to the operational footprint?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: We went to look at land in Spain on Thursday and Friday last week.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: There you are, yeah.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's um I'm really excited about the European expansion because um I use the football manager analogy, so like the the Guadiolas, the Mourinhos, the Anchelottes have won championships in multiple different leagues, and I want to test the oxygen approach and the platform and the ideas in different contexts, not just in the UK, because the learning there, I I think when you go outside your normal sphere or your comfort zone, you can learn so much, so much faster.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like we went to this pure capital conference, the Finance uh the Future Investment Institute conference, and it was a pure capital conference, it wasn't nature environment at all.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I learned tons about language and investment structures, and and actually they spoke more about impact than the conferences we should be going to, like the environmental ones that just talk about capital and about why there isn't any without actually listening to the people who've got it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um the same was true of Spain.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think I thought I learned more from three site visits in Spain and Portugal than I have in my last far or four or five trips to Scotland.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I find um the kind of rewilding scientist and science in Spain and Portugal for that matter, the scientists are all very um advanced, but they're also very progressive.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a there's a a mirrored kind of appetite.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know what I know about oxygen conservation and and the type of work we're doing, I would say, yeah, they're two um top candidate kind of countries to engage with, and not necessarily just from the policy perspective.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is about how can we get the capital flowing and how can we create the outcomes that we all actually want, which is obviously building resilient ecosystems for the benefit of people.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two great candidate countries.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we'd have been using the R word in 2024, would we?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we'd have to do that.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we were we we definitely were, but um it was an interesting process because Oh, I meant the resilient one, not the Ruwilding.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, there you are.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can't remember.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can't remember.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I I think the adaptation resilience has become more prominent um in vernacular now, but because we are feeling the realities of climate change.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's 20 something plus degrees again in London today, but down from the 30s we've had in the last few weeks.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've had two generational heat waves in three weeks.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we're starting to see it now.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're starting to see the reality of what people talked about.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's it seems undeniable, doesn't it, in that context.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you have to always think about these things on geological time frames and um and and that's uh you know, that's the approach I tend to take.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I try not to get too caught up in headlines of any kind, really, but um it seems definitely odd and not quite right in any shape or form.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it just reinforces what we're doing.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, well, what's the solution if there is one to this?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: The best that we have available to us is to take a rewilding approach and restore as much land as we possibly can, build resilience and restore wetlands, restore forest, restore mosaics and bring back animals as quickly as possible, because that is our activated carbon cycle in action.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you mentioned Broughton there, which is an amazing case study.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to take people there a little bit and describe what's happened in the background, etc.?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, so Broughton was our one of our first test cases for the Narrier framework, the ecosystem condition index um and the ecosystem management ratings.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where did the name come from?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Broughton.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, Naria.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Naria.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it was just the team sitting there trying to make up a series of words that all stuck together.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so it's the natural asset recovery investment analytics um framework, shortened for Naria, not Narnia, as our um FD at the time uh mistook it for.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was an obvious product placement there you could have gone with.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, exactly.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you know, Roger Tempest, he's what, the 32nd custodian of the the Broughton state.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, they've had a really hard run of it over the last sort of decades, and then they've they've already demonstrated such a an exciting, positive, kind of regenerative story for the buildings and the community there.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was very natural for him to then and and you know, they were very much in into rewilding the spirit, and the idea of rewilding the land alongside that and working with the sort of new systems of capital kind of um investment into that just seemed like a really natural fit.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they're a great bunch, they're a great team.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've been working with them for years.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um how how big an estate are we talking about, and what are the sort of landscape changes you've you've helped with?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the the whole estate's around a thousand hectares, the nature credit area is about six hundred and seven hectares, something like that.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there's a a small kind of BNG area as well.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: There, most of it was classic Yorkshire Dales, intensive sheep grazing, you know, tight matted grass and all that kind of stuff.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they've done they had done some previous work with tree planting, woodland carbon code kind of um restoration before.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think at the time it was one of the biggest tree planting schemes in the UK.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so really, I mean, you know, again, testament to Roger's vision there.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um we don't we didn't have to do a lot other than say, well, what's your what's your vision for the future?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And have you thought about doing this, this, this, and this?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, introducing rewilding principles, mixed grazers, um bringing, you know, taking down barriers, allowing animals to move freely, some some habitat creation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To kickstart things.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very open to that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're, you know, with the system we've got, we're able to model that and predict the level of uplift.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then we were speaking to I mean, we've been speaking to Waleed for a long time, at Rebalance, even before they sort of took their pivot towards this kind of investment model.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then I was chatting to Rob, um, Gardner, and then I was chatting to Yoan as well, and just gave them the investment case for Broughton, and uh that obviously got them a bit excited.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and then we had to go through this very long due diligence process to demonstrate things like the integrity of the system, to um introduce them to the land and look at the kind of legals around all of that sort of stuff.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then not not least looking at the the sort of returns profile for Broughton under different scenarios.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, and just seemed like a match made in heaven on all levels from an investor landowner methodology sort of perspective.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So is that uh and appreciating you won't be able to share every aspect of the deal, but talk to us about the commercial structure of what's actually being invested in what, because this isn't rebalanced buying part of the estate, right?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is them investing in the the nature project.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I mean, just as a point of clarification, our method doesn't involve buying land at all.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we always work with landowners, communities, indigenous groups um to help them either self-finance or attract finance into the landscape.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so the deal really there, and one, you know, one of the learnings for us you were asking about 2024, I think back then we were being fairly purist about nature credits, thinking, well, this is the only way we want to do things.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've learned over that time that actually context matters.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in the context of somewhere like Broughton, there's an opportunity.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the opportunities was to really focus in on uh wetland or floodplain BNG units.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not necessarily over a big area, but um enough that you could generate units.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they're some of the most high-valued units it's possible to generate.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the sort of mentality we come at these things with now is the demand lens if effectively is okay.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's an opportunity here.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something we can design into the overall system?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Taking in mind we use a systems approach, not a habitat approach, you know, ecosystem restoration, restore the processes and functioning functions.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we're saying, well, okay, well, that's fine for BNG here, but Roger Parris and the team want to do this across the entire estate.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like when you sort of put them together?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh because we've got an ecosystem management rating tool that allows you to forecast the different scenarios, we can just sort of identify the number of units of uplift, how many credits that translates into.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's fully built-in-house tool that you've done to do that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's part of the Naria framework, not Narnia, but yeah, part of the Naria framework that um enables us to measure not only what's happening on the ground today, but also using the ecosystem management rating tool to forecast what I think we've got a database of thousands or uh at least a thousand um different land management activities and freshwater management activities that will change the trajectory of the ecosystem's function.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Going very techy here.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So is that GIS built on first?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So is that like an Arc GIS platform or is it numerical first and then it it's it's actually activity built first?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's literally going through each and every activity and saying um what is the um impact of this particular activity on ecosystem condition?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it causing the condition of the ecosystem to degrade?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a stabilizing activity or is it actually restorative?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've done that for every single one of those approximately a thousand um activities.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: We score those and we do that against the ecosystem condition index that's part of the the NARIA framework.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's based on data, which we now I mean, the exciting thing for us is now we have a tool um within our platform where you can literally draw through GIS, say what those activities are across a landscape, and it will build your ecosystem management rating tool based on those scenarios.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you could say we're doing this today, we want to do this in 30 years' time, what will the effect beyond the rating and the ecosystem condition score?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can allocate budgets against those activities as well.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And can you now remotely identify what those activities are by like satellite or drone coverage of the land use?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhat, yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is one of the, I suppose one of the promises, but not yet realized, of remote sensing is definitely through drone data, um, always triangulated on the ground at the moment.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't yet found data that's consistently good enough just from a remote um perspective to be able to give outcome outcomes-based evidence.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting better, but um I think it's probably a few years off still.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, machine learning kind of helps with some of that barrier identification and things like that.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think generally the standards still want to see some kind of ground-based validation as well, um, some human in the loop kind of a approach.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that that all helps, and obviously it's just more and more data, so you just kind of build up the the evidence for a particular for a particular landscape.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the the rebalance investment into the project?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they're funding the restoration work.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously West Yorkshire Pension Fund is supporting rebalance earth, and then as part of that, there's there are multiple different assets.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we're currently looking at carbon as well, on top of the the nature credits um within that brought in landscape, which is great because it also means what then what what then not just funding the restoration, they're funding the capacity building within the team, not only to train them up and deliver the outcomes themselves, but they're also training up the team to do the monitoring, collect the data.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um because the funding enables transitioning to a more rewilded-based landscape, they can attract more people in to um have eco-tours and things like that.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: They've got beavers there that are always doing beaver tours.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is creating opportunities to create new forms of revenue that allows those that estate to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining well beyond the tenure of the city.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Does the mechanism of the deal allow rebalance to benefit from the increased eco-tourism numbers as well?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, not in that context.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it'd be limited to the sale of credits in future to provide that return.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's really interesting.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: But and you've had the first sale of credits there already, right?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've got letters of intent, yes.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's not quite the same as the first sale because it's still a super exciting step.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's huge.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um one of them's a national bank, so uh, you know, we are quite excited about that prospect.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the thing we found with Broughton, because we had to evidence the the pipeline for Broughton in order to be able to secure the investment, you know, we can't just say, Yeah, we've got mates, they'll buy some credit, so we have to be quite quite a structured due diligence process there.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we've been speaking to a lot of um demand interest that's really revealed to us that it it's so diverse, the the market out there into and nascent, we know that, but it's diverse in terms of the interests, the drivers, the the kind of whys and wherefores.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: How many conversations do you think you've had about?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: I literally couldn't tell you, Rich.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh every week many of our teams hundreds, hundreds, yeah.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the surprising signals that have come back?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think probably the s the surprises are people want it really simple, but they also want really high integrity and they want a bargain.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, how do you um give everyone everything all at once?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so not one to be defeated, you know.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is these are the the real challenges we face all the time.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, but you might be a bit complicated.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, yeah, because it's really involved, but you do get you know a unit of account here too, that's like you could even put it on the balance sheet if you can, you know, sort out your account matching and things like that.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the you know, it's just you just go through this whole rigmarole, it's a bit of a dance, and uh you just gotta persevere.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got you know, the other thing is you've got to have in any one organization who might be an off-taker, you've got to have a conversation.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know, you all know this, you've got to have a conversation that with the the marketing team, you've got to have a conversation with the sustainability team, then you've got to persuade the CFO and probably the CEO, maybe the chair.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's there's always multiple different types of conversation had.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when I say hundreds, it's like sometimes it's many conversations in the same organization because of that exact issue of like how many conversations can we have here and and actually reasonably build the demand to create liquidity in the market, which means we can scale super fast, because that's the that's the aim.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we just talked about climate change and weather and all these sorts of things.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to make a real go at um turning the tide, we've got to deploy massive amounts of money as quickly as possible.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, when was it?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Probably November last year.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, it's gonna be a lot of conversations.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I can, you know, do the lift ourselves.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd have to employ a really a huge sales team um to be able to do that.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the last time I heard a number on it, Environment Bank had 12 people working in sales for BNG units alone.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: In a regulated market where people have to buy them, yeah, and there's way more documentation out there about what they are and how they work.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, exactly.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, and as I mentioned earlier, there are so many different drivers as to why someone might buy a nature credit that suggests that you might need salespeople with different skill sets and different sector experience and things like that.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: So back in November, I was thinking, oh, there's gotta, you know, I was probably watching a TED talk or something like that, always always um always hunting for new intel.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um I thought someone said, I think it might have been a former um leader in Google, he said the big unlock is distribution.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you can find, if you can solve for distribution, then that will be it, that will be the way you scale rapidly.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't know at the time, but probably early this year, um Alistair Scott of the Global Rewilding Alliance connected me with Will at stability, and he said, I think you guys need to talk because you keep you keep saying similar sort of things.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so he introduced us, and it happens that we lived down the road from each other as well, so that was even more serendipity.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, yeah, I I saw what stability were doing.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, but they weren't thinking about it at the time um in the context of an offtake, they were just looking at it in terms of a green margin contribution into projects, and they were already doing some of that with the Wildlife Trust.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Will and I kind of met a few times and I was like, I'm pretty sure you could structure that so the green margin is an off-take to nature credits, and that could solve this distribution problem because as Will has told you on the podcast previously, they can embed a green margin across pretty much any product and service, particularly high transaction products, um, which means that we can channel funding then into projects that the uh the corporates that are funding that are are interested in.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that for me, that was like, ah yeah, I could I could do with some of that.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then this idea of fractional payments is yeah, I I think is one way, it's not the only way.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're still gonna have to have quite a few conversations, but um it might be that that's just a new string to the bow, really, of how we can generate demand into these landscapes, really, that scale.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think um we'll come on to AI at length, I'm sure, because you and I love talking about this.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: But um one thing I think it's taught people is to uh pay for tokens and small amounts of things by low de minimis values, so you might pay um ten dollars per million tokens or or something to use one of the frontier models.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: I actually did a keynote at the Love Trails Running Festival a few weeks ago for the Rebel Book Club, which I I love those guys.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And after we did a QA at the end, there's like 100 people in this tent.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was super cool.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was really cool doing a talk on what we do to a completely non-technical audience, because you have to describe everything in really generalistic terms.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hand goes up and goes, I love everything you're doing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to offset my journey here.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Can I do that?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, not yet.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Soon.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the one that gave me the final push because I'm like, do we want to do this?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the right thing to do?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Someone will.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think we'll get to that point where um because there's always the question, you know, whose responsibility is improving the environment?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is it government, is it business, is it a person?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's yeah.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'll uh working my way back.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the original idea behind Credit Nature was something that I invented back in 2016, I think, maybe 2017.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually how Paul Jepson and I met.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I designed something called Wildcoin, which comes off the back of uh crypto.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wouldn't it be great if we could incentivize every individual to do something?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if they planted a tree, they'd get some wild coin.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: If they took a photo of their tree the next year, they'd get some wild coin because they were showing they'd maintained it.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the the technology is actually there.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even now you could do all of that, notwithstanding all of the regulations and things like that.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Someone was trying to pitch a startup doing the same thing in San Francisco when we were there called proof of plant.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So rather than proof of work or um, what's the other one?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Proof of um I can't remember.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of proof of work, it was they would literally show you the growth of a tree and you would mint it on the proof of the plant being there.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, very cool.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so yeah, the tech is definitely there.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and actually, if you look back at some of the history, we used to refer to nature impact tokens instead of nature investment certificates.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was based on NFTs at the time.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I I had this idea, in fact, it was during COVID because I was coming up with this idea where you could you could design the NFT so it has different outcomes and attributes that people would want to invest in, whether it's like populations of birds alongside certain wetlands or something like that, or um even features like bird hides or whatever it might be.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we went really far with this whole thing, and then the FCA released the financial promotions regs, and we were like, okay, well, let's stop referring to anything related to uh blockchain here, because we're potentially exposing ourselves to a risk that we don't need at this point.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you're operating in an American context, you might have got further.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Quite possibly, yeah.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or even, I mean, we were looking seriously at establishing in Germany at the time because of the um, I can't remember what it stands for, but the Mika regulations meant that you could operate still legally in a crypto market in that way.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then we sort of realized, well, actually, the system we've built is designed to be kind of um a distributed technology.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's designed to be um something that anyone can benefit from.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't really care what we call it as long as the money's flowing.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe one day um we'll revert back to that distributed ledger kind of heritage.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um if there isn't already, there will be a nature-based crypto option.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I 70% chance if we look now, we'll find one.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, have a chat with Will and I because we are talking about a uh stable coin that um potentially could be something that will complement a fund that we're looking at and things like that.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, it it's gonna happen.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think um for us it's hard enough as it is at the moment.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nature markets are nascent, there's policy emerging, and there's obviously the heritage of the carbon markets to throw in blockchain on top of that just felt like a an unnecessary step too far at that point.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I heard something on one of the many American tech podcasts I listened to a week or so ago, and these numbers are not the exact right ones, so give me a bit of leeway on them.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it was something like there's been a hundred million dollars worth of transactions facilitated by agents so far, with them paying each other for things.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which it what's the um Coinbase, maybe?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the platform I'm thinking of?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it was on there the managed agents, yeah.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Agents can now transact with each other without human intervention.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're so we're so far down the rabbit hole with that now.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's and and it's only literally only just started.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, with the launch of OpenClaw and uh new kind of agent systems like that.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um that triggered some of this discussion because they set up their own chat room and all sorts of things and their their own language and currencies.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And did you see the release of the Chinese Kimmy model over the weekend?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: K3, yeah.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um have you had a play yet?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've got my open claw set up on it at the moment.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, excellent.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I um can either confirm or deny whether I played over the weekend, but I think it's great.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um it must can you imagine the conversations uh OpenAI or Anthropic this morning when they're like, oh crap.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, particularly because they're throttling um tools like Fable 5, which are super powerful, and you can understand why the the US government's kind of reining them in a bit, but at the same time, they're then profiteering from that clearly because they're putting in all of these payment gates and usage rights and things like that.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: They keep changing Anthropic have not had a good month because they keep changing their mind on how they're doing it, and it just looks inconsistent and badly managed.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other thing I think's interesting is when you've got K3 is gonna drop a model that pertains to be better than Fable 5 with its weights going free in the next few days, yeah, that has the chance to half the value of an IPO for those those companies, and it would be staggering.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that and several other things.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact that the US government's intervening is gonna probably have half the IPO plus you've got these new models.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Also, the unintended consequences of so if you follow the logic through, US governments say cannot export the like the last two generations of NVIDIA chips to China.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: So can we build their model on the older chips, which means they have to be cheaper, they have to run on uh lower energy demand and everything else.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, the innovation has forced them to produce a product that's as good in a cheaper, more efficient way.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that wouldn't have happened if the government had A let Anthropic and OpenAI sell to China and B, let Nvidia sell chips to China.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're getting really geeky now because that that's also driven the recursive learning so that Kimmy's now designing its own chips that it can use efficiently in the future.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh yeah, it's it's I mean it's it's a classic kind of um evolutionary kind of mechanism, isn't it?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh absolutely it is.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely it is.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um is your uh and Penny can edit as much of this out as she likes.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is um your are you as bullish as I am on the fact that we are going to see these big tech companies become massive investors in nature and real assets?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I mean the the amount of wealth that's being generated by these huge tech companies means that there will just be more philanthropy generally, I think.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: So certainly from a philanthropic perspective, already we're seeing that.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the open AI OpenAI Foundation is the biggest foundation that was ever formed and fifty billion in a couple of years.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, that money is going into different causes, but um, there's no reason why the some of that, a decent chunk, hopefully can be channelled into to nature.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if you multiply that by many different foundations that are gonna form because of these huge um growth organizations, I see that that could be an opportunity.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly we should be um aligning with I think they're gonna need to do it to have the social and environmental license to operate their data centres in the in the absence of improving the environment, they're just not gonna be allowed to do it.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: One one of the big social sort of checkpoints is where is the data centre?
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: What impact is that data centre having?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: What are they doing about that?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: How are they going to prevent that from adding to the problems of climate and biodiversity loss?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I think some of them think they're just going to go into space, which you know that is suddenly ay will eventually.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not two years, it's twenty.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in the time frames we're looking at all of this.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think and then you think about all of the multi-multi-millionaires that have been, if not billionaires made within those organizations who will want to make philanthropic contributions.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then think about the regulations that are going to be tightening around those those businesses in terms of evidencing their footprint, what the targets they're setting to mitigate their or contribute to nature or whatever it might be.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I do see it's you know it's it's a difficult one because you look at it and you're like, oh, that that's massive growth, rapid acceleration of capitalism, which is going to have a massive impact.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Equally, it suddenly unlocks the level of funding needed to potentially do something about it as well.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's talk of the first kind of hundred trillion businesses in the next 10 years.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: We as a as a sector, we don't need a huge amount of that to do some pretty good stuff.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the current figure I heard from the Nature Conservancy is it's about a million, uh sorry, a trillion per annum gap now, funding gap for nature.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: If if we can unlock some of that, then um that's gotta be a that's gotta be a good outcome, I think.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um do you listen to the acquired podcast?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't that's exceptional.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um real deep dives on the history, the evolution, the style of businesses, then the analysis of why certain decisions were made.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: These are like long-form audio documentaries, they're they're wonderful.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um so they take you back to the Google ones three parts.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: First, so and they're like five hours each, so it's a it's an anthology.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the first part on Google talks about when their first raise, it was like a hundred million, either.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was either it was one of their raises or their IPO.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: The IPO was only in a couple of hundred million, I think.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: But everyone's like, oh my god, there's a hundred million pounds software company.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is astonishing.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: What on earth are these valuations?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're never gonna see anything like this again.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, SpaceX just did that.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we we're really bad at remembering how quickly things have changed, I think, because that would have been 2005, I think.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So in the space of 20 years, we've completely changed what it means, the scale of a business and how look at the speed at which anthropic scaled up to where it is and things.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we only have to look at oxygen to um see the scale of growth that's possible, which was never previously imagined.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so bringing this back around to kind of nature and what we need to do for nature, we need to professionalize the sector and realize that it's a business opportunity as well as an opportunity to kind of do good, to do the right thing.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I mean, I know because I'm involved with uh a couple of businesses that are looking to do raises over the coming sort of months, these are serious numbers being talked about, and we've seen some precedence with um, you know, the likes of Nature Metrics and others as well.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do think our sector's going to start attracting some big investment.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um then it comes down to who's who are the investors, what are their intentions, how do you kind of manage purpose alongside um profit?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as a I've been running two businesses in the sector for a few decades now.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know how we can manage profit alongside purpose, so I'm not too concerned about that.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: What has professionalizing the sector meant to you?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: How have you seen that play out?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: Me personally, or as a within the as a market commentator, but you can talk about how you've professionalised things if you like.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I uh what I was when I was saying personally, I was thinking, what has it done to me?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I've sit behind a computer most of my time sounding like a finance guy, which is uh different language, isn't it?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to try and find the route that I might be able to kind of uh get out on site a bit more.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, I think as a market, as a sector, um one of the big differences is people are willing to have a conversation now which they wouldn't have had a long time ago.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you say the R word in terms of resilience, but there was definitely the R word in terms of rewilding.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you wouldn't have that conversation because it created all of these emotive responses with landowners.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: We thought about it being oxygen rewilding as as a name, but it was like, do we want to have that debate with whereas now it's not a thing.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like five years ago, it was like you you'd go to visit and say, Oh, you're not rewilders, are you?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, we think about conservation in this way, etc.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas it's just not a problem now, I think.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a tool.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the the sector's matured in the willingness to have a difficult conversation and say, Well, I don't agree with that, or I do agree with this, or maybe it's different over here.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, yeah, it might be.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: So should we talk about it rather than get wound up about it?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: The other R word is returns, isn't it?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't talk about that five years ago.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: No one would have a conversation about money.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Several R words that we didn't talk about before, rewilding returns, and also resilience.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, returns is an interesting one because ultimately that's still top of the agenda.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we want to attract um investment from the asset owners, then we have to demonstrate the returns at the moment because it's a high-risk sector seen to be, then those returns have to be double-digit.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, how do you get double-digit returns in the context of a nascent market?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that five years ago?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: Even that's nor did I.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, we wouldn't, we were naively going, well, if we if we invent like and to be fair, we went one thing we did think about was when we designed the Naria framework, the ecosystem condition index, the ecological management rating tool.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: The idea there was that we wanted to channel the the um the forces of nature, finance, and technology.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought there's this convergence here, we can make this work.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, but we naively thought, well, if we create a unit, then the finance market's gonna love that and they'll just and everyone will adopt it.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's that maybe not quite that naive, but feels like it in hindsight.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, discussions around returns.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what an IRR was five years ago, really.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's become routine sort of uh terminology now, but uh yeah, so that's part of the evolutionary, that's part of the maturing of the sector.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think most people you talk to have some semblance of understanding of what we're we're talking about and why we're talking about it.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the guest we had on before you, a lady called Nadia, who runs Responsibility, which is a several billion pound impact investment fund, she talks about how you need to meet the investor where they are on their terminology and the way they want to work.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Five years ago, the environment sector didn't do that.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: It just yelled at everyone about how immoral they were and they should just give money to the planet and refuse to listen.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Never mind, meet them where they are.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the things that Oxygen and you've certainly done, and I think Rob, Rob and his team have a huge uh owed a huge thanks for doing this because they've helped bring the environment sector to the financial world in terms of language and the ability to have a conversation and listen.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I think what both of our businesses have tried to do is listen and learn and adapt and recognize if we want investment, we have to give a compelling proposition and a return from that.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, whereas lots of people in the sector are still grappling with that and want to have a moral debate and discussion rather than actually develop a product.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the other one which we experience a lot, and this again was by design, is um, and I suppose again facilitated by an understanding of rewilding and thinking about how people are part of an ecosystem and how that ecosystem functions with people acting as good or bad actors within that.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we've always seen the landowner as a really central part of this whole um equation.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have to get it right on both sides of the equation.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not only does the methodology have to work, but you have to meet the investors um where they are, but you also have to meet the landowners where they are and the communities and the indigenous peoples.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're balancing here traditional knowledge alongside science, alongside realities of land management and farming practice and all these sorts of things.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a huge unlock for us, is where we go into a landscape, we don't tell anyone what to do, we just say, what have you got there and what do you want to do about it in the future?
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll help you translate that into a language that does match what those investors and the off-takers want.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can create that kind of federated um line of communication and marketplace, then you can start to get that liquidity flow working.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me personally, we had to spend a lot of time there on the investor side, but we also, I suppose, are and this comes back from the Icasulus heritage, we're also very conversant with what you have to do and don't say to landowners, communities, and indigenous groups to be able to get the best out of them because they're the custodians of the return effectively and the units that are generated on on the land.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you still think we've got a way to go on the professionalisation?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: What else do we need to improve as a sector?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think there's a bit of a challenge around and it is a maturing again, because again, you mentioned Rob Gardner and the and the work he's been doing with the rebalance team and many others.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've you've spoken in the context of um nature as infrastructure, you know, nature as an asset.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think people don't quite understand.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to be honest, that some of that terminology's been around for quite a while.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you look at green infrastructure, for example, that was something that was within the planning system.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the way in which it's talked about now is recognizing the asset as something that's investable.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Will and I will uh stability and I talk about it as you know, nature is the true store of value.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: So really we should be valuing nature in the same way we do gold or bitcoin or whatever it might be.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, when people look at ecosystems, they're often thinking habitat, or they're thinking populations, or they're thinking different attributes of the ecosystem.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: To truly be kind of an asset, you need to understand all of the functions and processes that are going on there.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: So habitats form part of that.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: So do individual species, so do populations.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's the interaction of those.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so having clarity over what it is you're measuring and why and what you're saying about it, that it's quite difficult on some levels, but there's a clear hierarchy.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the ecosystem condition is what we measure.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you kind of create a stable asset upon which you can then measure habitats, upon which you can view populations, the movement of populations.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a bit, it's a bit of a kind of deep dive into the science of it.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't do that, then you get people conflating the same thing, and that's that's where problems will happen because claims will be made, they won't be defensible, and that will become a problem.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: So finding or have having acceptance in the market that nature is a bit more complicated, but only as far as we haven't defined what it is we want it to measure at the moment.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's all relative, isn't it?
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I I hear so Nadia articulated three different investment theses, multiple different products per thesis by 70 different countries that they operate in.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's pretty complicated.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: So's nature.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it's got a taxonomy that aligns with each one of those different language is so important, right?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: I and I come back to the sporting world on this.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you you look at um the language that's available to describe football and that that's able to describe cricket are completely different.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um a couple of books I read articulated this is because of how it was um communicated to people because cricket held the radio for so much longer.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: Things like the type of cricket shot you'd play, whether it was a square cut or a leg glance, people know what that is.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's not the same language for a pass in football, not the same degree of terminology.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, I think we're still developing that language to allow nature and finance to communicate together.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I th I think that's the case.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's very definable.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the sooner we can do that and get agreement on it, the better.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is there's always obviously there's always the counter claims and counter kind of manoeuvres.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my my thing about the professionalization that I think we need to do, I think we suck at selling things.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think um we you look at the every tech company, they have a go-to-market team and structure and pattern and way of working.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're thinking about this at the moment in terms of recruiting a head of growth or a head of sales.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you said to me, I have a fast pass to take any person I've met in the sector and just have them, for virtually every other job I've got, I can say that person's brilliant.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want that person, I'd love to have them.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have them.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're lucky that we literally have just um recruited Irena, who um is yeah, suit clearly a superstar, and she's been involved in a lot of big companies and small companies.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she's someone who I think we we could put in front of any any business.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she's worked with businesses from uh from shipping to oil and gas on the environment sector.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not not by origins, but she's worked in carbon markets and various things.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what exact so you've done the exact right thing there.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what we all need to do.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: We need to bring it from out of sector.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean Ed Ed Um Pragnell, who was our first kind of nature sales lead, he came from a um banking and bond origination background.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um Irena's got a lot of experience in asset management.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Alex Godfrey at Great Yellow is excellent, but again, from a pure trading background.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: So these, I mean, I'm happy to take a step back because I like you say, I'm not I'm not experienced in the marketing sales side of things on a kind of corporate side of, you know, I just go into the weeds all the time.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: I get excited about the science, and then um people people glaze over and like business to well, two, three businesses to run as well as doing the sales side of stuff.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I'm also desperate to make it work.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like whatever it takes.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: You've been on a hell of an emotional journey with this.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: I always remember we were at a conference together a couple of years ago, and I and I arrived and I could hear your voice upstairs, and you were having a a call, and I came up to say hi, and you just seemed so frustrated.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like it was just decades of banging your head against the wall trying to move stuff forward.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably 24, probably similar timeline.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Could have been, yeah, yeah.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like we've made a lot of progress in that time, though.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: It really does feel like and and London Climate Week felt that way.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't expecting it to feel as optimistic and as impactful as it did, but it was really positive.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: Things do seem to have moved in 26 in a way that is very distinct from certainly distinct from 24, but I think distinct from 25, there's more action now.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: So 25, there was promise of what might come.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's things are closing and things are um, you know, people are exiting and foresight exiting on their yeah, that was super important, wasn't it?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and and I think more of those will be important.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've closed our deal, you're building a huge portfolio.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we've got launches in New Zealand and in Africa and some very exciting conversations that are well advanced in those kind of jurisdictions.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, just just so many very good stories.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, rebalance have been investing in um different part partnership landscapes in different parts of the country.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations, Benedict and and team.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes, it's it's happening.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you mentioned the race um in terms of the ones you've been involved with.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do you feel about that process and how have the conversations changed raising now around nature to how they might have been historically?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think well, going back to what we were talking about before, we really know you've got to have the demand conversation right up front.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're increasingly even having the question thrown at us uh along the lines of if we could demonstrate the letters of intent in advance, do you think that would help us think about where we might invest in landscapes?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so effectively, I mean, we're we're doing some of that in in Africa, for example, it's saying, well, okay, where are the landscapes that will unlock the demand?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what that doesn't do is diminish the kind of integrity or anything like that, it just sort of shapes the way in which you think about those landscapes and where um a viable model can be presented.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that that's a that's a complete 360 kind of pivot from what used to happen, which is we've got this landscape here, we're really excited about it.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um can you find us some off takers?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I think what what people often forget is that a restriction or a parameter isn't a burden, it's a gift.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you know demand leads you to one jurisdiction or geography, you can focus on one geography and build out something brilliant there.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you could work in any geography in the world, the energy you have to focus on projects is so widespread, you you can't do what you need to do there.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think actually giving people some restrictions and some parameters to working can be the most stimulating things for progress and for innovation.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think it's the absolute logical way to do it.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you know, we closed Broughton this year, and the follow-on conversation is can we now use Broughton as a flagship to bring other landscapes on board across Yorkshire?
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were already talking to two or three other um uh landowners who we've worked with.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: I heard it described as a lighthouse.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because it gives people that thing to look at and go, yep, that's what we want to be.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a key, uh I know I keep harping back to rewilding, but it's a key rewilding principle is that you uh demonstrate.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can demonstrate, which is exactly what you guys are doing as well, is you know, people pay attention because then no longer is it, oh, but what about this, what about that, what about the other?
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Oh, you did this, how did you manage to do that?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why, why did that work?
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or why, well, what what were the things that you learned that weren't so good?
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so demonstration is just absolutely key from our perspective.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the sooner we can kind of make it work, we're not trying to exclude anyone in this process.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, quite often in Scotland we're asked, what about the small landholdings?
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: And like, yeah, we want to unlock money for everybody, but we've got to make it viable from day one.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've designed a sort of clustering model so you can all come together, and you know, that adds a bit of complexity, but it's doable.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in the long run, the idea is that we will attract more and more money into these landscapes and we'll democratize that effectively, maybe all the way back to my wildcoin original vision, which is plant a tree, you get rewarded, maintain the tree, you you continue to be rewarded, or release a species, or put up a bird box, a bat box, whatever it might be.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, we we we just have to go where the the opportunity we can unlock.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, someone might find a better model that's um helps more people all at once, and uh we'll help them we'll we'll support that as well.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh keep just keep trying.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's um it was it was it was lonelier five years ago, right?
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: The the sector's way more exciting and interesting now with such an array of talented people in that just wasn't the same, like loads of the names we've mentioned now, but also the young people coming into the sector.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you seeing that playthrough in terms of your recruitment that you're seeing more talented young people wanting to be involved?
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we um I suppose the stage we were at when we were recruiting the young talent was back in kind of 2021, 22.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, as we were just starting.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we launched our rewilding internship program there.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was the first paid internship in rewilding at the time in the UK.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've still got many of the the talent that we onboarded there.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we had sort of almost 200 applicants for for one of the roles.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so yes, um, more recently we have been recruiting um very targeted, so I mentioned Irena, um, very targeted, experienced people who've just proven beyond reasonable doubt that they can sell into these corporate markets, you know, the professional markets.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's both, it's still it's still both.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I'm very excited about our next phase of recruitment though, where we can just sort of roll out these internships again because it's just been such an amazing experience with people like Dan Bass and Sophie Jones and others that we have in credit nature, but also he be kent and others in ICASULIS they're just um we've brought eight summer interns in.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: The the calibre of people.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is um each time it's been a notable step change up.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um this this is why is that because of your change of your recruitment strategy, or is that um because you think that the talent is changing?
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think I think the sectors come to us, like all of us are responsible for growing the sector, making it more exciting, giving a wider array of roles.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think our brand marketing problem.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, five years ago, I was a crazy guy rocking around saying we were gonna build a multi-hundred million pound portfolio of land with no land and no team and no now.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot more proof points and evidence of that.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: We've got an amazing podcast as Penny looks at me smiling.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think the brand side of it, I think the way we talk and storytellers has helped with that.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: We hear that played back to us.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've now started to get people who explicitly say, I want to come and work for oxygen capital, or I want to come and work for oxygen intelligence.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um so they are now they're calling their shot and saying, I want to work in this part of the business.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's helped, I think.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: It it's all those things.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't separate them.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think AI's helped with that as well.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to work at the intersection of all the things you talked about before, climate, capital, and technology, there's very few places to work.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: Always been two of them.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's the thing I the the calibre of people coming in and working with them and seeing them grow is the bit I enjoy the most about this job.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, exactly that.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know uh Willet's stability we've mentioned a few times.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're they've been recruiting a lot recently, and uh yeah, they're they're attracting huge talent as well.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think it's exciting, you know.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a this is gonna be a growth sector for some time to come, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're halfway through John Elkington's uh roaring twenties of um green businesses, green swans that are gonna go.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: It literally feels like that.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're five years in, lots of lots of businesses are on that 21 to 26 sort of time frame.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think in the next five years, everything's in place now.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: None of the foundations were there five years ago.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got rating curves now, we've got insurance, we've got proof of transaction, we've got foresight coming through a whole cycle of an asset, we've got digital platforms, we've got incredible MRV setup, all of that stuff's there that didn't exist five years ago.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's super exciting.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only going to get faster and faster as well.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um literally, uh as far as I can tell, it's just uh unlocking large amounts of liquidity now into the market.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and then that opens up opportunities for new products, new services, um, greater transparency as well, because as liquidity comes in, people can kind of harden all of the stuff that they've been doing in the background.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh it's an exciting uh be an exciting four years.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even four now, is it?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like three and a half.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: How's that crept up on us?
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: We should we should totally dive into this.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned Scotland, and so we're partnering together at at scale.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Can you articulate that a little for us?
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you uh working with Oxygen, we've been partners with you for probably three or four years, sec secretly, not really secret.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stealth mode, yeah, stealth mode.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know what's been a sort of pleasure from our perspective of genuinely rich is that your team are very progressive, curious, which I find uh you know is quite liberating in this in this sector, um, willing to do the hard things to kind of make things work, um, you know, recognise that this is a nascent market, but there's huge potential upside for people and nature.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I mean, from our perspective, to be able to partner with you across a portfolio of can't remember the exact total area now, but is it 40 odd thousand acres?
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: 48 of our 50,000 acres in Scotland.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know that's that's such a great proof point going all the way back to what we were saying before is how do we demonstrate that these are serious markets with serious players with great intentions.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um for us to be able to kind of go into this next phase, and I think we'll be issuing nature credits um next year, um, and quite a serious volume of them as well.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think the opportunity here is to really attract some some big players in and because demand always says it needs scale, right?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: It needs scale to make these things worth engaging with and interacting with.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to be talking about hundreds of thousands of credits here, which is just a different level of scale.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's almost half a million across the portfolio, yeah, which is um yeah, unprecedented.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't think there is that same level of um credit offering, particularly with all of the ingredients of um it's it's a rewilding approach, it's a systems-based approach, it's thinking about sensitivity sensitively about the land, um, understanding that people are a key part of the system.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So where you can come and stay and visit and see and interact with all these things as well.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the there won't be a single issuance of that number of credits um anywhere else, I don't think, across a sort of combined system.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: The I think the the thing for us, though, collectively is um this will be a huge signal to the world that not only is there a credit, you know, credible kind of partnership approach and system, but actually, you know, Scotland and England are on the map fully now as a sort of nature, you know, natural capital kind of centre, um, showcasing how it can work, translatable into Europe immediately.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the accreditation across Europe, um, and and beyond, you know, we we could we're worlds our oyster, really.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, in terms of how this unlocks, I think it's gonna be um a a bit of a splash when we're when we're there.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you're genuinely excited about the export potential of the IP and the logic behind this?
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or always from day one.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, um not not because I wanted world domination or anything like this, it's much more around the fact that we recognized we needed a a systems-based approach that um allowed for comparability of units, and therefore when we're selling a unit of ecosystem condition and recovery, that is comparable where you are across the world.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it was so important to us that we weren't just UK-centric, we had to have something that was um globally relevant.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was we we designed the system from first principles per uh specifically for that purpose.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's playing out, you know, where we're where we're running in um East Africa, the same characteristics of the Nario Framework, the ecosystem condition index are still applicable.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: New Zealand, it's applicable.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that's different is what you're measuring and why and how they relate to those characteristics.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So landscape connectivity, the ability of species to disperse, it's pretty much relevant wherever you are in the world, whether it's in the sea or on the land.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, clearly the animals that you're you're measuring in Africa are different to the ones that you're measuring in Europe, different to ones in the UK.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to account for those differences.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, um for for me, I think it's important, you know, when we were designing for with finance in mind, they don't they they don't really want to say, well, can we invest in Scotland and then we want to invest over here, but we're gonna have to use a completely different system for this, are we?
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, no, it's not.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is a a single um system that's accredited under the Accounting for Nature standard, and it's translatable at the moment, accredited across the whole of Europe or 38 ecoregions, and we're gonna be expanding it into Africa, New Zealand, and and so on and so on, looking at Canada and US, but uh much earlier stage.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think that will help create that um trust in the in the the approach.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not saying it's the only one, it's not saying it's perfect on all levels, but it does have a very specific use case, which I think's um designed for finance in mind.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and against that as a incredibly chaotic backdrop, you've also written another book?
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have, yep, The Fear Paradox.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very excited about that.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_00: When are we seeing that one released?
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you say I've been uh I've written it, I mean, this is someone was asking me earlier, uh speak to Chris Chris Winter earlier, and he said, Oh, well, you know, when did when did you find time for this?
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I've actually been writing it pretty much since the day we finished the first book on rewilding, and and I actually wrote it with the title of um Um The Ecology of Fear, which was much more around the landscape of fear.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I submitted that to a publisher at the time and they're like, Love this, but it's a bit, you know, it's kind of just rewilding, and you've already written a book on rewilding, and others have written books on rewilding.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so this one's now looking at the um the paradox really of how we as people have kind of evolved primal fears for good reason because we didn't want to get trampled or eaten.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we've kind of ended up trying to tame the world and fence away the world to the point where those primal fears are for most people, in most cases, not really that real.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what we've done is actually replace that with existential fears, catastrophic catastrophe-driven existential fears, that we spend our entire times kind of looking over our shoulder at things that are out there that we imagine might get us at some point in the distant future.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the book sort of subheading is How to Thrive in the Wild World.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the point is we need nature, as we talked about earlier.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it is all nature is carbon, so we can create an activated carbon cycle and we can have flourishing ecosystems that restore soils and food security and improve water, you know, clean water.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: But to do that, we've got to have more nature.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have to put the the claws and the fangs back into the wild and learn to live alongside wild nature again.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the and so really the book's about the psychology of rewilding.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, you have you have some there are some really good examples of um landscapes where carnivores were removed from those landscapes, let's say bears, and now they're returning across Europe.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Bears and wolves are returning.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, some of the the traditional knowledge about that um is has gone.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those stories are no were no longer told, and people don't actually know how to live alongside bears or wolves.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and there have been problems, there have been things, you know, situations where people are running through the forests in Italy with their headphones in right during cub season for bears and they're being attacked, and they're and then and it's creating uproar, or or they, you know, the dogs aren't out protecting the flock of sheep, or in Nepal, people are going back out into the forest and collecting wood at the times that you really shouldn't be going out looking like a deer, uh lent over picking up wood and things like that.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so though these are lost skills that we need to also bring back in.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it and sort of the last part is because we're now entering into this age of technology, there's a real opportunity with technology to kind of help us manage some of that fear as well in the landscape, so we can have greater visibility through VR and augmented reality.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, already we use technologies like no fence collars, so there's all sorts of things that we can imagine about a world of future that actually means it's both exhilarating and safe.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um how do you make sure you keep connected to the world?
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I spend a lot of time in the garden.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably, and I know that does that sounds uh low level, but actually we've got a really lovely rewelded garden now, and and just stand it.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Always I'm always gobsmacked at how much life we've got in our small patch of garden from just letting it go for six or seven years.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that that is a what can I do kind of, yeah, everyone can do that if you've got a patch of garden, and you know, not everyone has that luxury.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, that's gives me a nice boost.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're also very fortunate that where we are in Bratford Naven, the beavers came back about three years ago.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just like constant excitement about what the beavers have wrecked now, which trees have gone over, new channels and all this sort of stuff.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's very exciting.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Walk along the river quite often.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm always quite careful not to go to the landscapes that we're working on at Credit Nature in particular, um, unless I've had a direct involvement in, say, securing finance for them or something like that.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I always let others in our team who are doing the actual work, uh, you know, in terms of the planning or whatever it might be, visit those landscapes when it's needed.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I do say that when I unlock those things, I will go and visit, which I I do.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then occasionally, maybe every couple of years, I'll go and visit some of the kind of well-known landscapes, rewilded landscapes, just to see what it looks like in action.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been to the Ibera wetlands, I've been to um places in Sweden, the Danube Delta in Romania, uh the Apennines in Italy, um, Carpathians up in in Romania, places like that.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just to sort of immerse myself not only in the landscapes, but with the communities that are living alongside, you know, bison and and bears and those sorts of things.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you are one of the hardest working people in the sector, and you've been, um, despite your youthful looks, uh, which I always like to mention, uh, you've been doing it a long time.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_01: How how do you stay happy and healthy in the face of the incredibly heavy, burdensome load you're carrying?
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's never that easy, but um I think since I discovered rewilding back in 2013, I I would say I was suffering from serious anxiety, you know, eco anxiety then.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And finding rewilding was just like absolutely aha moment.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_00: We can do this.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that we can turn around.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that, you know, that's why we set the rewild at rewild half the planet by 2050 ambition, because it's like, okay, there is the moonshot, that's the beacon of light.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: We are gonna, and so whenever I get lost, and you know, week in, week out, there can be very, very stressful, um, demoralizing kind of things that happen all the time.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know, you know, I know what the beacon of light is, I know where I'm heading, and I think a lot I've got so many great people around me who's who are sharing in that and supporting in that and um giving, you know, helping to find the solution.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's never on my own.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, a very tolerant um and loving wife who kind of literally sometimes gives me coffee, gives me breakfast, tells me to go and brush my teeth.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not even joking, so sometimes it's uh probably a bit embarrassing.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um, and two great kids as well who keep egging me on.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then I suppose the other bit is sports.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just uh always got to I've always got to do as much sport as I possibly can.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the it's the it's it's the antidote to the the heavy kind of feelings that can kind of get what's the main focus at the moment?
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I've been doing a lot of gym for a little while, um, but I am getting back into the martial arts in the next um well this weekend actually.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a few sessions, so I'm slowly kind of getting back into that after early retirement.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um Kane, what's the um one question I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it's something around um how how do we come together as a sector to kind of really amplify and accelerate those those stories that haven't yet been heard.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's I think there's something in that again.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um Willet Stability and I have been chatting about and it was his idea.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_00: He he's quite keen on this Y combinator kind of model.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've looked at some of this as well, Rich.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I think there's something in that.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is how can we be I'm not this isn't a question you're asking, is it?
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, how can we be kind of facilitating the next phase of the growth of this sector?
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: How can we enable the the new ideas, the younger people to get excited about um jobs for the future, you know?
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think with the age of AI, there's a lot of pessimism, and uh I think there's a lot to be optimistic about.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I love it, Kane.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have you back on the show.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um I the the sector wouldn't have progressed as much as it has in the last few years if it wasn't for you.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So just on behalf of all of us, thank you for everything you're doing.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I too am super excited about what the next four or five years look like.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's been amazing.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really appreciate you, Rich.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Great to chat to you as always.