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E163 Vian Sharif: Finance, AI and the Future of Nature · Second Nature

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I I went and did um was were you in Manchester yesterday?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Was that yesterday?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so I went and did a keynote for Safri, the accountancy firm.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Big gig, right?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Doing an accountancy talk.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, well, the accountants are an important part of it.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You almost did that with a straight face, didn't you?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very close.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Very close.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally built a speech around that.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, you're the adults in the room.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can do the crazy, I can do the aspirational and the storytelling.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: However, once I write all these checks and commit to it, someone has to balance the books and make all the systems work.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I even got two laughs out of an accounting audience.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um but even that, it it just feels different.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone in that room was like, it feels different this year already.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's more momentum coming, more optimism and hope behind stuff, which doesn't really make sense.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: The back end of last year was dreadful, right?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone was like, the world's ending.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: Who knows what?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what it is, but I think maybe there are maybe there are enough of us who gained enough traction.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because certainly our narrative is actually actually went actually life went really well for us last year.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: So even though the overarching narrative is this one of whatever it is, you know, World War III.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm sure it, you know, as as for yourself and the European opening and for us, and we doubled again in size, same year on year for the previous year, we've got more clients than ever.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: They're the amazing clients.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: And we're not seeing the other side.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if that's a I don't know why that is.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so perhaps there are enough of us now who've at this at that have sit seen that sort of traction that this year for us is certainly our narrative is this is nature's year of momentum.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I can see a thread between now and November, and I'm talking about that thread, and it's not about you know what happens next month or in the summer or whatever.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's about it's about what I've realized is this is an arc, you know, this is an arc that we're bending, and that is a multi-year arc.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: And we've spent all of us spent a lot of time in our little community building the foundations and talking about that for the last probably, probably five years properly.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: And prior to that, we all spent another 10, 15 years kind of falling in love with nature, working out that we wanted to be advocates for nature, and then sticking that together with a thing we already did.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: And now, you know, a lot of us are all in, we're seeing the traction, and it's this kind of thread that's pulling us forward.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how I think about um I do I I've always worked and been very inspired by indigenous communities.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me, I feel I certainly feel like there's this there is this thread.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's just nature is this thread, and it's just helping us understand that there's a future there which we can all see, and that's a more beautiful, more a world where nature can exist and thrive and support us, and we're just on the end of that future thread.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: So the future is there, we're just being pulled towards it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how I see it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful like them.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've got a podcast episode, the year, the year for nature there.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with the red ocean, blue ocean concepts of businesses?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: I am not.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this idea that if you're in a red ocean, it's like when a shark feeding frenzy happens, there's blood in the water everywhere, everyone's competing for the same thing.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: The theory goes, and there's a whole book on this that says that's not a good place to start a business.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The analogy would be you wouldn't want to start an AI startup today.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because you'd be like, everyone's doing that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's too much happening.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whereas if you started an AI startup five years ago, ooh, things are now, or if you started building AI processes 20 years ago and you finally came into your own now, you're in a blue ocean in that scenario, you're on your own, swimming around and nothing else is around you.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've had four or five examples this year where actually the reality is just completely different.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you were describing about a critical mass of us now working in the sector, bringing our own different interpretations and takes on it, which is the cumulative impact of 20-year commitments for lots of us, not two minutes.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, I think you do need, maybe not a red ocean, but a pink one at least, because in the absence of enough critical mass of people, you don't have the things you need for a market or a system to develop.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, do you know Natalia Dorfman at Kita, the insurance company?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, she's fantastic.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, she's amazing, right?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she was explaining to me that the insurers inherently need almost a red ocean for consistency and calibration of policies.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, because until you get enough people to have a consistency of policy, you can't actually sell based on differentiation.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like a car insurance, they can then sell on brand and customer service and quality.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if all the policies are different, people just have to read 500 page policies, exaggeration.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: On maybe not, I've never read my car insurance policy.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you would read your carbon insurance policy because you don't know what you're signing up for.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think actually maybe we are having enough critical mass in the sector to be making a difference now.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's becoming uh, whereas five years ago nature was nature was a thought on certainly in mainstream investment management.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that was where we always played.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it was all about well, how do you how do you mainstream nature into any investment decision?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: And and that was very vanilla at that time, as in how do you make an ES, like how do you make an ESG data point that someone could just add nature as one of those points and it just flow into their systems?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the conversations that were had yesterday in Manchester at IPars, the uh the policy response, the frameworks, the integration of TNFD into ISSB, and now the expansion of nature into multiple different financial areas.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, I'm a finance person, so I come from the finance space, but yes, it's a discussion in insurance, it's a discussion in mortgages, it's a discussion in investment decision making, whether that's publicly listed or privately listed, it's a fixed income consideration, is it's it's there.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that uh uh it's not going away.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's only the beginning.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, speaking of beginnings, let's talk about yours.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um how did you get here?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So take us back to um where you grew up and take us through like the main chapters that make you who you are now.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: I will um give you the hopefully the edited highlights, Rich.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I was a city, completely city girl.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: So grew up in London uh from a Middle Eastern family.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: So our idea of a nice walk at the weekend was to go to Whiteleys in Bayswater and walk around that in a sort of mole environment.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: So nature was not really on my radar.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: And then as I uh grew up and met my university friends, they would started taking me to the countryside.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: And uh there were extraordinary landscapes in this country that I absolutely loved, whether that way there were co coastal or national parks or you know, that was probably my first um foray into what nature was outside um traveling to different places, but we always went on city breaks because that's what my family did.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: So this was nature as a start.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: And then the real transformative part was after a series of not particularly um inspiring jobs, but very informative jobs, I ended up working for an asset management company called Investtech.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: And Investtech had uh been founded in an emerging market in South Africa at the time when apartheid was breaking down and a new regime was coming into place.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so the footprint of that business, which had grown exponentially from uh its footprint in South Africa across the world.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: So they had a base then sort of dual HQ in London, and then they served the US, they served uh Europe, they served many, many markets in Africa too.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's where I started to understand a little bit more about what nature was and what it could be, because all of their philanthropic programs at that time were dedicated to conservation and communities in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as their investment portfolio being diversified across Africa, which was a really different lens on life compared to, let's say, a US investment bank experience would have been.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so this is sort of 2008-ish.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So uh because of our incredible CEO who's still there, Hendrik Dutoy, he would say things like, um, go and talk to this person.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: They sound interesting.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: They sound like they're doing good conservation work.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: So you'd be flung into these situations where you'd either you'd either be you'd end up in Botswana in in a project that was educating kids about how to interact with their environment through this coaching for conservation program where they had to pretend to be a leopard.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: Or you'd end up, and you know, that would be a kind of branding moment, but the branding moment would be you would have to take the branding and sometime somehow make sure there were the pictures of the branding in the picture in this project.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was completely mad.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: But um, that's where we started working with Tusk, uh patron Prince William now.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that project exposed me to all of these incredible individuals doing unbelievable conservation work, catalytic conservation work on the ground.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: So really different from the WWFs, and very much, you know, I'm I'm a an individual, I've fallen in love with vultures.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Vultures are my life, and I've been put on this planet to protect them, like these kinds of people.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: Or people like Emmanuel de Miraude in Varunga National Park, who basically defended that park from oil drilling for several decades.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, these these individuals who were so incredibly inspiring, but also these landscapes.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and the transformational moment for me was being in Kenya, which I'd never visited before.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Unbelievable landscape.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And being in this Land Rover, bulk standard game drive experience.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the this drive was at sunset, and it was on this plane, Laywood Downs, and uh the sun was setting, and we were driving, and it was the most incredible savanna, absolutely stunning.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: I just thought this is stunning.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then we stopped the car because about a hundred meters away, someone had spotted this tiny, perfect baby cheetah.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: So this cheetah is looking at us, and we're looking at it, and it starts to come closer.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, it starts to come closer and closer until it's literally sniffing the tires of our car.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this thing is so perfect and so beautiful that at that moment, really, the kind of scales drop from my eyes, and everything that I had been told about okay, well, if you wear these clothes, or if you buy this face cream, or if you earn this, this, this, you will be somehow better.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: That all just fell away in that moment.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized that actually this was what was priceless, didn't get more beautiful than that, and that that was going to be uh sort of that was going to be the thread that pulled my life forward, nature and conservation and those wild places.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: And from that time, I ended up living really a double life where I had a life in finance and then I had a life in research, where I did my PhD and did uh environmental behavior change with the most incredible professor, Professor E.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: J.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: Milner Gulland at Oxford.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: She taught that we can't we can't hope to address conservation challenges and nature challenges without a transdisciplinary approach.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: So she was completely open to any sort of thesis, any sort of research that would bring together different disciplines to help understand the dynamics that were going on in conservation and preservation, let's say, of the natural world.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I did that alongside work and uh did some work for DEFRA at that time.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: They were doing big projects on demand reduction and illegal wildlife trade, which was incredible.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then the rise of sustainability data started to come into finance.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: So this is sort of 2015, sort of had launched in 2010, but it meant that there was now this mainstream availability of data about what companies were doing from an environmental and societal perspective.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that kept on going.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of 2016 to 2018 was a bit of a golden age for sustainable portfolios, the rise of ESG and that whole thing.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I was part of that and realized that that was the direction I needed to go in.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Except that my colleagues at the time were saying things to me like, um, you're just spending too much time on this nature thing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think you need to focus on on you know fixed income bonds and uh how we sell those.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: The best, you know, the best one in the world.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so I thought, you know what?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um maybe that's right.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna close the whole thing down.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just gonna shut the door on it all, spending too much time on this thing, just forget it.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then in my inbox popped this little note about becoming part of a task force that the government was putting together around innovative approaches to conservation finance.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought, oh, you know, just gonna do this for my country, which is a ridiculous thing to think.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_03: But I did, and I went to that round table and I met then uh the next chapter of my life, which was in financial technology, I met a group of individuals there who introduced me to a different stage in my career path where I joined a wealth technology company to lead their product development, which meant working with about$1.7 trillion worth of retail money and figuring out how we, if we're looking at our pension portfolio or our ISA, how we can not only understand the performance of those portfolios, but also have the appropriate metrics or information to help us make decisions that align those allocations with our values.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: So if you rich care about climate or you care about pollution, how do you make sure that the portfolio that your portfolio that your pension is invested in, which is a huge weight of money collectively, is going to the place, is supporting what you want as an outcome in your broader world.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that was transformational because it introduced me not only to technology and finance in that nexus, but also I wanted to know how my portfolio was impacting nature.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: But there was nothing.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: There was nothing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: There was really nothing.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: So that's when uh Nature Alpha really came into being, uh, where we decided, or I decided, I think I would let's just see what's out there.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Can we bring together some of the science that we already know?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: Can we try and build this into a workflow that actually makes sense?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: Data provision is the way.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where uh that's where nature alpha was founded.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What year was that?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_03: 2021.
• 16:28
  unknown: Okay.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: So that was an interesting moment uh because we were talking to people about this nature data, which we sort of stuck together with celotate and rubber bands.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, no, you have to have a data set that's gonna be comparable across these 11,000 equities.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's what's in my portfolio.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: I can I've got 12,000 companies in my Aviva portfolio.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_03: I need to know what's going on there.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, so we managed to stick this thing together and most yeah, people did take the calls at that time.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And people, I never I've always felt that we've had a lot of incoming for whatever reason.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: And at that time we were talking to the early adopters.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Label it why.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: What is the why that you the the first part was that I know that the the early institutions um were influenced by some of the regulation that was coming out in France.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: So first generation of these nature biodiversity metrics were often designed by French players in the market.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so we had some of those institutions talking to us, but then there was also some, there were bits and pieces of nature coming into the EU disclosures, which which people thought the UK was going to mirror.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: So things like these crazy things which still exist.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: I remember looking at it and asking my PhD supervisor.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: So what EU SFDR is asking you as a portfolio manager is of all of your portfolio companies, which are located in or adjacent to a protected area or a key biodiversity, key biodiversity area, and which have are having an impact.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you are a portfolio manager and you hold, let's say, a Scottish widows pension portfolio, and you've got upwards of 12,000 companies in that portfolio, and you need to know of those companies, of the locations in those companies, the answer to that question, uh, how do you do that?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I think these, you know, people were starting to understand that this was coming.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then I was part of the task force for nature-related financial disclosures, a thing called the technical expert scoping group.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought, okay, well, it'd be good to have a TNFD, like you have a TCFD.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that was all starting to get underway.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, as we've talked about, this sort of community of individuals who, off the back of 20 years of work, all were starting to build this understanding that nature degradation was a systemic loss, even systemic risk, a systemic risk.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: And that meant economic risk and stability risk.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so all of that started to come to the fore.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: So that in 2022, 2023, there was much more dialogue, much more adoption, and our data was becoming more sophisticated.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a convergence of so many themes there.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you've got people who are kind of our generation that were coming into a point where they were starting businesses, or if they're in financial services, they're in decision-making positions then to influence a lot of what was going on.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us started to have children, which made us think about our impact on the planet even further.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The media had started picking up on the crumbling climate and the biodiversity loss.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it was becoming more prevalent in the front of mind.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got locked away from nature itself.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly think COVID was terrible for lots of reasons and incredibly difficult for people.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: But for the environment sector and for remote working and for collaboration, I think we probably gained a decade in a year that otherwise we wouldn't have done.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So so many of these convergent things just falling into place.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most amazing lessons I've learned from the podcast.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we've done 160-something episodes now.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you hear people play back their story, and I don't think anyone's done it as beautifully as you did then, by the way.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was just, I was happy to just sit there and listen.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was gorgeous.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can see when little bits fell into place and you were picking up skills and the the attributes you needed to do what you're doing now, and those timelines play out so wonderfully, you were collecting skills and experiences that you needed to have the business that you have now.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's also a parallel path, which we haven't talked about, which is in about 2014, um, I started traveling to live with indigenous people.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh the first community I lived with was the Yamanawa and the Amazon.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: And those experiences at that time were just, they sort of brought me face to face with nature in a way I hadn't experienced before.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: How did the first one come about?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: Through a dear, dear friend who herself, which is also part of the story, in the 70s, had uh been on a trek in Colombia.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: And on this trek, she'd been climbing.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: She she always tells this beautiful story where she was with this girlfriend, and the girlfriend had a boyfriend.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: So she felt like this third wheel in this trek climbing up in Colombia.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you've ever climbed in Colombia in the rainy season, but when you get wet, you get so wet, and you've already been bitten by about a million mosquitoes, and so you're kind.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: of drenched and really hot and sweaty and then you're like the third wheel of this couple and I can't even imagine what it was like anyway.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: So they're trekking and then out of the sort of out of the greenery come these people dressed in perfect white and they lead her into this long room like this I don't know if you've seen these pictures of these beautiful um buildings I suppose they're they're usually long and oval with a very high roof where people assemble and in a community might assemble.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that is where she met the Kogi and the Kogi are uh a group uh a group who live in the Sierra Nevada they are part of four indigenous groups who when the Spanish came into Colombia they didn't want to lose their traditions they wanted to preserve them so they basically moved up the mountain into the Sierra Nevada and they have the most extraordinary relationship with nature.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: They they there's a beautiful documentary uh they never spoke to anyone they didn't want to speak to anyone from that position they call us younger brother they are elder brother they look at us and they're like what are you doing?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you live like rats?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: I don't understand.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they haven't spoken to anyone since they moved up the mountains for hundreds of years, preserved their own relationship with nature, their traditions and so on.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: But in the 90s or late 80s they decided that we were screwing things up so much because they could see it from where they were that they had to start talking to us.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: So they allowed this BBC journalist to come and do a documentary.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's called At the Heart of the World and uh she met them and got this download of their knowledge extraordinary.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And she inspired me to not only meet with indigenous communities but also from that moment 2014 to start a quest to meet the Kogi themselves which did actually end up resolving itself.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: So so the double life rich is that alongside the sort of super corporate financial stuff has always been this a very um powerful let's say an inspiring path where from meeting the Yawana and experiencing their life living with a Samburu in Kenya but then also constantly a quest to find the Kogi where I mean it was really a quest.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I would try and visit them.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: I went to Columbia with a filmmaker who whose cousin knew them, weren't having any of it they didn't want to meet me.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: I met one of the other tribes which was wonderful the Arawaka incredible but they didn't want to meet me the Kogi.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: So then a couple of years later I was like how can we meet them?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: How can we talk to them?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Wrote letters wrote emails nothing like nothing.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so then I just I just what I did was start donating money to the Tirona Heritage Trust, which was the charity set up by the filmmaker who went to Colombia just to see if at some point someone would write back to me and I could get involved.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway after 10 years no joke 10 years they wrote back because I I'd be like if there's anywhere I can help just let me know.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know I'd send those emails after you know every every few years anything I can do you just write back.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway one day they write back all right maybe I'm getting closer to the path of being useful to them in this life because they don't talk to people that are not really you know there's limited time to do what they need to do.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: I get it.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I get that decision making process.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah exactly and it's you know they don't do anything unless Mother Earth tells them to do it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's no it's very beautiful and just this is this is the decision.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: There's no there's no kind of levers apart from is it the right thing to do in this context.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so they write back I'm like okay and next thing I know I'm on this call with the chair and one of the trustees and they're saying we've had a couple of trustees leave can you tell us a bit about yourself so I do and they go yeah you sound you know having built Nature Alpha a bit an amazing team now and so on.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah you could sound like a good background do you do you want to become a trustee?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: So this is sort of now 12 years on from the initial contact and like yes I'd love to and long story short last year we took one of the Kogi leaders uh to not only to highgrove to meet another group of indigenous leaders from around the world but also to participate um at this incredible conference of knowledge at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Totemet the Pope, to talk about how you look at how AI and generative world models show you what the earth looks like today and all the different connections between the waterways and the watershed and uh forests and how earth is changing and you compare that with a visual representation of what the Kogi see they are they're the same.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what we presented to you know the Pontifical Academy is 80 Nobel laureates and just to have the opportunity to bring their indigenous voice and their knowledge into those sorts of conversations that's the other thing that gives me hope direction it makes me feel connected to to that thread.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the double life and then there's the flying in conservation which is the other perspective but that's a that's a joyful wonderful thing too wow um I'd intended to ask you which of the two parts of your life feel almost the the most authentic but I think are you the same person when you're in both parts of that life or do you consciously split and separate the two and are the tools and skills you need in those things the same or different?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's all the same now although I think I did struggle a bit now's the word right yeah I think um I never really under I didn't always know how to bring the two parts together even though the joy and the blessing for me is that I've never once questioned the direction apart from that day when I thought I'm gonna shut it all down and then thank God I got pulled back in I've never once questioned my connection or the thread which has enabled me to bring these parts of myself together and that means that I can inhabit my body and spirit probably in a more complete way but that journey's never really over so I was just telling you that um I learned how to fly a couple of years ago because I wanted to be more useful in large conservation landscapes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: So this I don't I mean again I don't know what it was that drove me to do this but I've just come back from a month in Namibia uh flying for an organization called EcoWings which provides surveillance anti-poaching tracking you know you have to do right someone has to do a rhino survey someone has to do and someone has to rescue escape leopards when they leave the reserve because they'll cause havoc if we don't but just that that feeling of um seeing things from a different perspective sometimes does take me out of myself but slowly integrating all these bits and pieces to hopefully be more useful in the world.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: What does um nature over look and feel like now in terms of the scale of the business, the people what does it look like today?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_03: So your p your point about what does a business what does a business, an AI business look like today?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think we necessarily could have conceived this if we were sitting in 2020 thinking about what a business what could a what could a genuinely revenue generative business look like in 2026.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And those a business where you've got a tiny number of people generating an immense amount of product because it can be scalable when you're producing data and you just you pro you sell you give that data to whoever wants it.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: And and that is because of the AI core which is generating insight and doing uh tasks which previously you might have had many, many people having to have eyes on but now only one or two people need to have eyes on it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: But also predictability verifiability verification so we sit today with a business which has very few people 11 people generating data that now powers$25 trillion worth of um or institutions representing$25 trillion dollars if you count some of the big um consultants let's say so that's those sort of facts and then the the sort of feel of it is I'm continually astonished at how these how the developments that we're seeing generative world models and so on are going to just in help us increase the sort of usability predictability functionality of this data which means that maybe that's contributed to why it's more useful and being more used.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's not so much just about our concept of nature but it it's useful to for people in investment decisions now.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: We we've also I I hadn't put these two connections together until hearing you just speak now but we've had a society that in lots of different ways has spent the last at least 10 years being trained to understand the value of database decision making in every context.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you you pull a thread that is um it's the Tesco's club card, right?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: So our chairman Benny was uh head of strategy for Tesco's globally in one of his previous chapters he uh chapters of his career and he talked about how the the sort of club card gave them the most incredible data set of all their customers for the first time and they were one of the first to do that.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So by virtue of giving that away you knew what people bought when they bought it how they moved around the supermarket because the order that it came out there trolley and all this type of intel amazing and then you go from there to something like Moneyball that really outed how data was being used in a sporting context.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: So however it's not just academics that were learning to use data anymore it's everyone was being informed by it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you've got social media and analytics coming through even people chasing likes on social media are effectively training themselves to have KPIs and be data led.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Actually I love I love that you're contextualizing this in you know ever, ever coincident larger themes and trends.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't thought of it that way but you're I literally see that happening in natural capital right now in terms of those those spreading circles.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you start with the idea of people wanting to protect or improve the environment okay how do we pay for that we need to monetize it so we get carbon markets we get nature markets hopefully okay well if we're gonna have markets around that we need someone who's prepared to lend money on it.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay well if there's debt associated with it we need to measure something and make sure it's gonna come back well how do we know if these credits are any good oh wait sorry we need to make the credits first so we need a supply chain that's gonna plant trees and is it the right trees the wrong trees who's gonna verify it where are the codes that are there okay there's some money moving to this now right we need an insurance sector so we're literally getting bang bang bang bang bang and this entire industry is growing and I feel so fortunate I've got to watch that over the last yeah four and a half years.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: When we started doing and and um my lens is very UK centric um which is one of the really exciting bits about Europe because I want to change that.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll come on to that in a moment um but from being UK centric when we started Jeremy Leggett at Highland Rewilding had bought one estate.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: So NEP existed and Jeremy had a thousand acres or something no one else was doing this and you know we're at 5000 acres and 12 estates now about 400 million under management but you've got Natagal who have got three or four estates as well you've got different companies that are popping up all the time now and been able to see that entire thing develop has just been such a privilege and none of it would have happened without I mean my PhD's data I'm a geek from this from the start if we hadn't built a model to determine which landscapes to buy we'd have never done it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um aren't we lucky to be doing this now?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think we are so lucky to be doing it now and and also to I wish I could say it was judgment but it wasn't it was just it was just kind of this is what one needs to do now.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: When I came out of PhD which was half environment half data everyone's like that's mad.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: What a waste of time.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: Now people are what a great idea I was like nope I just did the thing I was passionate enthusiastic about people weren't brave enough to tell me that um that it was a mad thing to do so just got on with it.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: How um how much richer do you think your business and work related decisions are because of the other hats you wear because of the ability to contextualize it globally and through different community experiences and um literally from different vantage points with your new flying yeah I I just have well and most days I am so so fulfilled I mean it sounds mad but it's just just the it is a dream it this is a dream come true in so many ways especially when I was a f flying across Namibia um just to be able to give give in this way.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I just can't imagine I can't imagine a richer experience.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's so multidimensional and it's so it just seems completely as as you've said it's just so aligned I don't have to I'd I I'd feel very blessed with an incredibly rich experience that feels exactly like I'm what what I'm meant to be doing now.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: So that's I think a joy.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I um if if the developments in tech and AI had have come any earlier I wouldn't have been in a position in my career or financially to make the most of them anyway.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: So almost like part of me goes wow I spent a lot of year processing data that I wouldn't have had to have done with AI now.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: However it I wouldn't have been able to use it in the same way or for it to inform the business in that way.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: And how exciting to think that I'm sure that or I hope that the next chapters are going to be equally rewarding and interesting because of what the past has enabled us to give and offer and how we serve.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's very exciting.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do you um do you ever get asked the question like what you want next or what next is going to be because I really struggle to answer that because I'm like I just get to do this.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really this is great.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought I was going to be here so the fact I get to do this, I'm delighted, does make the what next a little bit harder to answer in a because you can always say more bigger scale better, etc.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: But those things come at cost and there's other things you lose as a result of it.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Other than visions for the business and we want to put more land under management and we're talking about Europe and and I want to do the US but on a personal level I struggle to answer that because I'm like I'm just really happy to be here.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: I can relate to that so the mission of Nature Alpha was always mainstream well the mission was and the vehicle is nature alpha um mainstream nature into every investment decision.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that will continue and I think we've even though we've made great strides I feel like as you've said this is this is sort of a year where people have grasped that and there will be trajectory forwards.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_03: Personally I think what my experience has just taught me is it's important for me to be with nature and being close to it and being in it and actually understanding the issues on the ground is important to maybe not the operationalizing of the business but certainly the the sort of value set you hold and the perspective you might have when you're going into a room and you're meant to give a view.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: 100% if I if I haven't been to one of our estates for a month or so I feel my integrity and quality of message and connection to what we're doing loses something.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I go back I pick up another story, an anecdote a connection what's actually really nice is because we've got 12 now I don't go to them for like two or three months at a time so they're notably different the change that's happened and it my brain can cope with it because that doesn't feel like I've had to wait a long time but the estate's had plenty of time to do what it needs to do without anyone meddling.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: Do any of them have airstrips?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because maybe I can find one I'm look I always look for little trips I can do you know yes one can um maybe depends if you just arrived now hello and hi just popping by for a moment um yeah that's exactly so what was interesting about this trip was yeah we I visited lots of different places one of them was in the south of the country this is an area which is difficult to farm but there are ancestral lands there's a water source there's a plan to build this into a conservation area and you know we can sit here and look at that and have an opinion but unless you're there and you're actually seeing it and experiencing it and understanding the political political context which is so huge oh my goodness every country will have its own political way of doing things and its own dynamic it's it you know I think that's very important for the perspective that we have in this sector because it's so multi multidimensional and it's people and it's wildlife and it's land and it's resources it's it's everything all in one you read uh generation restoration by Tim Christofferson no should I Elements yes um the reason I say elements yes is because um beautiful book he's a vice president of nature at Salesforce he's incredible he spends 80 beautifully poetic pages articulating in lots of different ways to appeal to different audiences how we are nature they're not separate that so the reason I say elements of it is because it won't teach you anything you don't know but I think you'll enjoy elements of the writing of how he describes and articulates it we are I mean I remember being in this I think it was ahead of in Glasgow and being in this room and someone said God you remember we are nature and I sort of thought God have we have we come this far and we have to say this I mean really is this what we're talking about now but it is so true um I just came off a course at Wharton it was all about negotiation.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: In fact it was Cade Massey was a is a sort of money ball practitioner.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: So he is the person who crunches the data and does all these analyses to dig out interesting statistics which you might not see.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a money ball thing anyway he played this beautiful film of uh how inherent certain reactions are in us.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: And you should look it up it's a TED talk.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'll get you the the exact one but it's two monkeys if you do two monkeys in in the cage being fed uh cucumber you will you'll find it anyway so there are two monkeys in a cage and uh the experiment is that uh it's how how how we react when we feel we're being treated unfairly have you seen this no but I've heard about it yeah two monkeys then the task is they're sitting they're in adjacent cages and the the handler gives one of them a piece of cucumber in return for doing a task.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: So the monkey goes and does the task gets to go and get a rock and give it to the handler gets a piece of a cucumber as a reward.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Then the handler turns to the next monkey same thing monkey goes gives rock gives the rock to the handler and uh the handler gives the monkey a grape which is the equivalent of yeah like we like grapes not cucumber so much.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: And the monkey who's been given cucumber looks across and uh has clocked something is not right.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, same thing goes back to the first monkey who goes and uh grabs the rock gives it back to the handler gets given cucumber cute the handler goes to the second monkey gives it a grape in return for this Point the other monkey is like you can you can see the daggers, the daggers anyway.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: So the the first monkey tries again and gets the tuck gets the rock like a bit impatient now.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: Impatient and gets the rock, gives it the handler, gets given the cucumber, throws the cucumber at the handler.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not having this.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, we are we react like this, even though we try and sort of manage ourselves.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we are nature and it's you know gonna take some time.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you um uh I'm just on book recommendations now.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Have you read Never Split the Difference by Chris Wells?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I have.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's in my top five books.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and his voice is so good, it's worth listening to the audiobook separately because it gives you a completely different experience.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: You're so right.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're about to, I sense you're about to change something after that experience.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: So either you're gonna take a year out and go live completely separately, or you're gonna move.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think your brain's going to what the next chapter or adventure is.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's a there's a joy in understanding how far we can we can enable um nature in mainstream investment decision making.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a road to travel there.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, it will be how does one manage the um immediacy of being in nature and what that brings with the time and dedication it needs to make sure that the the mission is completed or at least accelerated.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: How how vital are you day-to-day in the business still?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um I am lucky to have the most wonderful CEO, Nick Hoff Robbins, who runs things operationally, is a great visionary as well.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm lucky that we we work hand in glove.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: And you can never tell in a business when there's so few people, what's what is it going to need?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: How is it going to need to be supported?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: But that's my main focus right now.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when you were away, were you away away and disconnected?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, not at all.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, luckily there are places where you can work actually perfectly well, and then you can fly at the weekend, for example.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you don't have to drive and then work out whether the rain is going to stop you from flying, which it might do in winter in this country.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: In with a calendar as hectic as yours, how do you think about where to put your time?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you can do three things at once.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's your mental model or decision-making process for like, I'm going to choose to do this instead of that or this instead of this?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm a big meditator.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm a yoga teacher.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: I've always found that going- You're like not a real person.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like the amount, you're one of those people who was given a time turner and you're like, oh, don't worry, I've got this, because I'm just do every day three times.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was I just had a slightly different path course in life.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um so for me, every morning, every morning, uh, and it's partly to do with the indigenous practices that I've learned over the over time, just taking a moment to go within, understand, okay, well, what really the question is, how do I serve?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, that's the question.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: How am how should I be of best service to nature and the world today?
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh from that comes uh comes the series of actions.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: And you usually at this point in time, it's about where's the biggest lever for change?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: Financial markets, still for me, in my experience, because that's what I know, for you it's going to be different from your from your experience.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: For me, my gift is that I grew up in financial markets.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: So my lever is okay, the biggest change I can make right now is to get that get get this insight implemented and serve those who will find it useful in service to nature.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: So really that's the priority.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: And the the other things are there for me, but that's really the best way I can serve right now.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: Although I'm always open to other ideas coming in.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not short of ideas, I bet.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so let's let's follow into that.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um financial market side of things.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've talked about nature risk being mispriced before.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um explain that concept and bring it to life resin what it means.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure, I'll try.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um so there there was always a conversation, or there has been a dialogue around how you value nature for quite a number of years now.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: And there have been several different approaches to how that could happen.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one is that you actually account for nature on the balance sheet and you say, well, um, Andre Hoffman writes beautifully about this.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how what is my the what is the real cost of my doing business?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then you need to take into account all the natural impact, nature impacts you're having on the world and what the environmental impacts are, what that costs you, the impact you're having on people and health and and so on.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: So there are these different things you would account for.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: Then there was a sort of triple bottom line method where you'd do accounting for all your environmental components as well.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: The challenge for both of those is that perhaps markets aren't quite ready, or they'd need to do it all at once to say, well, actually, I'm reporting profitability and costs today like this, but tomorrow I'm gonna have to declare a write down of several billion dollars because of, you know, it's it's just perhaps they weren't quite ready for then.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then you've got investing in nature, which is its own thing.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how do you make nature into an asset class?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: That is a whole question as well.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: Now, for me, my remember, my path was through data and ESG data.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: So my view was well, look, if you're already using a data point which tells you about governance or societal impact or human rights impact or controversies or carbon usage, then um, why don't we just start to think about the risks to natural world dimensions?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then what are those natural world dimensions?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_03: They could be about being cited next to areas which are key biodiversity areas or important areas of biodiversity, where if you violate that, it's going to be more of a problem than if you don't, therefore it might cost you something, or you might have to comply with certain um laws, regulations, practices, restoration practices, and so on, which which might be a factor for you as a business.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: And other dimensions, water, pollution, so on and so on.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: So what if we what if we sort of priced it like that so that ultimately it gets it gets priced into your risk model?
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we don't have to call it anything except risk, actually.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's just multiple dimensions of risk.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: We might call it nature because it's a collection of nature things.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that was our view of how one could sort of again, this is sort of double agents, just sort of start to mainstream that kind of thinking into a workflow that was already established.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and our idea was that if you could do that across listed equity markets, you could have quite an impact, even if it was just you know little slices, little slices of change happening across trillions of dollars.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and ultimately that's what's starting to happen.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: But the other parts that are starting to happen, which we hadn't envisaged it, are because you have these sort of geospatial tools or aids that help you see the companies that are invested in and where they are on the map and where they are in adjacent adjacency to key biodiversity errors or water stress or and so on.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: And that was going to get better and better.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: You can start to we found we have clients who see these operations of a company in which they're invested on a map and it's next to a mangrove and they're depleting the mangrove, and that's providing less flood risk protection.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the whole conversation then begins to be Company X, look at this.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: We've seen this.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: It seems to be getting worse over time.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: It seems to represent 10% of your operational um of your of your revenue generation in this in this company doing anything about it.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it sort of changed um and evolved.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And would in the early days or even now, would you connect those dots and then make that outreach to highlight that point?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that um information you're principally sharing for clients who are asking the questions rather than you asking the questions?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: As clients started to show us they were using it in that way, we were then able to show that use case to more clients, I suppose.
• 53:01
  unknown: I like that.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: The conceptually easiest one for me of those is the whiskey industry in Scotland.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Go on.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: So um, we've got a beautiful Scottish estate with a peat bog that was being hammered within an inch of its life, was being burnt, destroyed, overgrazed, beaten to pieces.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: The water from that estate was literally the water that made the award-winning whiskey at the estate next door.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Huh.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: So over time, the quality of the water was getting worse.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the peat that was flavoring the whiskey was depleting and dropping away.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not that's not a leap.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a direct line of sight you can see.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And these two things weren't being put together conceptually.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: And still aren't in any form of sort of market mechanism.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you applied that same thing to a vineyard and you had a champagne vineyard and someone put an incinerator next door, or that's a bad example for incinerators because they're very clean by proxy.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: If someone put a steelworks next door, you'd be like, that's probably gonna have a negative impact on the champagne, right?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't maybe do something about that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's exactly right.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly right.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Which of the industries or asset classes do you think that are already most exposed to biodiversity and nature risk?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I mean agriculture, um, but also mining and critical minerals, data centers.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's a big one.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: I hit a line.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I wrote a lot this weekend, and I hit a line that I'm I'm you can't write anything unique anymore, right?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else has already written it.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm whoever I've stolen it from, I'm very sorry.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where I thought it was mine.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the more digital the world our world becomes, the more fully dependent we are on nature.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: So every big data center needs more space, more water, produces more carbon.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things are so correlated, it's insane at the moment.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think it's the challenge of our times, I really do.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it's, you know, we're we we're not immune to the fact that we use AI, right?
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: And um, we did a piece of work with nature finance on data centers a year ago and we refreshed it just to understand what the impacts were.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously the water piece is huge, but then then we were talking about related effects.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: So if we also looked at how many data centers and their growth were going to be impacting key biodiversity areas and well-protected areas.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if you then draw from the water table, then you're indirectly impacting those.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna get harder for them to keep water in the water table.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: The whole thing is gonna exacerbate.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's you know, that that started me thinking on, you know, should we be building data centers in space?
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: What should we be doing?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think Elon literally did that at Davos, didn't he?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, the next ones will be in space.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, they will be.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: And and we have friends who are trying to do this.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think it is the next.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: It will, although it's quite hard to do, apparently.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just if only you built an entire data-based satellite network and built a collection of rocket ships and built an engineering facility able to build these things.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: So almost as if you're piecing together an industry to make that easier.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the deep earth minerals and the importance of those increasingly necessary in the production of data centers.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we actually factored in the externalities, we would stop mining for anything raw and we would purely be on a waste recovery mechanism.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: That is a hugely important point.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why the other sort of thread that I think is pulling us forward in that analogy is circularity and regeneration.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just complete that loop for those that um you're one of those people that the danger is we will fall into a trap of having half sentences because we will finish each other's sentence in our mind and just move on and not complete it.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I imagine a scenario whereby the um refuse sites and like waste dumps in the UK and other countries, we're mining those to recover metals and minerals because the small amounts of those that are in there, because we're not damaging fresh earth and habitats to mine those areas, actually the total cost benefit is going to move to a point whereby that's the cheapest way to recover it.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then you took us on to the circularity of materials and things like that.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really interesting thought.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: I was just uh I was just in a a lithium mine.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: I've never seen lithium mine before.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Cornwall.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_03: In uh, no, in uh in Namibia.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: But it was interesting.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're far better traveled than me.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been to Cornwall.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like to go to Cornwall and see Namibia's.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: But the um ultimately mining is, from what I can see, all about economics.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that's a very interesting idea.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'd never really engaged with the concept of circularity before, but it came up because of a great friend of mine, Mark Palahi, who's running a thing called the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: The king had this vision, Mark took it on, and he's now running that uh organization.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: And the idea is that a large corporate, so let's say large furniture manufacturer, I I won't I won't say which, but large large furniture manufacturer, I would imagine, could do this.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say they have 65 forests where they grow their timber.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_03: They, in this program that the CBA has designed, you dedicate one of those to become a living lab.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: And in this forest, which is your living lab, you you pilot regenerative techniques and you measure those.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: We've talked about data and you measure the change.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can prove that economically this living lab becomes more uh generative, more um your your the cost of production lowers perhaps, and profitability of the product that you can sell is higher, then there is a case for converting your other 64 forests.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's the sort of method.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the the huge vision could be to do this on five continents, five main key commodities with five huge companies on each continent.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um But I think that that for me is a very powerful thread for okay, we've talked about risk, and we've talked about nature risk, and we've talked about how we factor that into decision making, we've talked about stewardship, but actually, what is the next, what's the next part of this arc?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that could be the business model change that we need to see.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you know nature metrics?
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we had Dimple on the podcast this morning.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: She's um incredible.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: She was talking about a pilot program they have with a large dairy that's using that same the ethos of that model to do um before and after sampling um from regenerative agriculture changes to show to other farmers you can achieve this benefit on your land, roll it out, because they're in such an economic system with agriculture, they cannot afford one bad season, never mind a year, or the business would be done.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the spirit of what you articulated at forestry level, they're doing here already in dairy farming for regenerative practices.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's and it should apply to every industry if we can.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: She also told me that they can now do DNA from air sampling.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: I've heard about this too.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think the really exciting extension of that is within.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you know John Elkington?
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: I do, of course.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I I adore John.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: He slapped me around a bit when I said, Oh, this will in the next 10 years, he went, No, Richard, that's lazy thinking.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: With AI, it's the next two years now.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: It could be.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, John, thank you.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think in the next two years, shout out to John, we'll be at a point whereby the Apple watches or the wearables we have will be lifetime monitors of DNA and environmental sensors and things.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because if there's enough demand for it, we could totally do that now.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the sort of models we're both running could be informed by our experiences in the world, we could become the cogi in a digital sense.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: It is fascinating.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean that is fascinating.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: And if you paired that with the with the um large uh with the world models that are being produced by Alpha Earth or whoever, you know, that ultimately put is currently putting satellite data, but any input will work, right?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I one of my playful pieces that's coming out in March is uh us calling our approach a large landscape model rather than a large language model because it measures every square meter of land and considers its value relative to a hundred different environmental parameters.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how we choose which estates we buy and which we don't buy.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think that's another reason why I'm really excited about 26.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we've never talked about our approach to data before.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you and I have a little bit, but not in a public sense.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because uh our board are amazingly experienced people and they're very protective about IP.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we all had a conversation and went, look, there's not enough time anymore.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just go faster, be more open about the approach to data and information and and accept that we're better in that red ocean environment where there's more people doing it.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: So for the first time, we're able to talk about our approach to modeling and data and really invest in and like that team's doubled this year by itself.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we're often asked whether we'll manage land for other people, because at the moment we just look after our own land.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because the the impact's greater and the speed we can work with and the clarity is there.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Where I do think we can help is the the software systems, tools, and modeling approaches we've developed because we needed them to deliver the change we wanted on the ground.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: We think they could serve other people.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually, shout out to Greg Jackson at Octopus Energy, because it was their work on Kraken that he was like, you've got the natural capital version of Kraken.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be talking about this.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that's probably why I'm really excited about the data side of things in 26.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, the data side of things is just mind-blowingly exciting.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_03: I just can't wait to see where we're gonna be at the end of the year.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's gonna be twin worlds.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: And what's so interesting in our context is that let's say we can start to really understand the world and and how those natural systems interact, and we can look at past data to inform the future, then ultimately what we have is the ability to then see how a company intersects with that world today and in the future.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: But then you maybe we can start to solve these challenges around prediction, earthquake, prevention, prevention management, um, how we how we provide insurance markets with what they need to be able to provide insurance to people who need it in all different parts of the world.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're um we're gonna do a four-person round table with Natalia and two other leading insurers in the next few weeks to have that exact conversation.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's really important.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a signal, isn't it?
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: When the insurance market is developing to a scale that it is, it means there's enough investment to warrant the insurance and that they predict it's coming.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: The other signal I love is when um HMRC decide they're gonna tax something because they think it's big enough to warrant the effort.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um carbon credits, nature credits, natural capital products are now at a point whereby there's a tax treatment coming.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great signal.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I could talk to you for hours, um, but um I'm gonna end with my favourite question.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's the one thing I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_03: You were so kind and gracious.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_03: You've asked me everything that I would want to have talked about.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then that's a good result, right?
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_03: I always think you know the questions, not that we had them in advance or anything.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_03: I was super relaxed about whatever you're gonna say.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think I probably asked about three.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: You just told wonderful stories.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was beautiful.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um no, look, every I hope I always think, um, and this might sound funny, but I always try and think, like, what what is it that Kogi need need me to say?
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_03: And hopefully whatever needs to be out there will be out there.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, we'll take it from that.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do have one more I didn't ask.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_03: Go on.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: After spending more than a decade obsessing about something, how did you ensure that the experience didn't disappoint?
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it you gotta meet them.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's just no I don't know, they're just not like any anyone, any they just Because there's so many stories of the the athletes that win the gold medal and sit in their hotel room crying afterwards.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: No, because they're they're just uh They are custodians of our earth and when someone recognises that they're just a custodian holding this thing.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_03: For a generation from these tiny short amount of time around the planet, then they become not a person.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: They become a sort of they're bigger than that.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's what they are to me.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: Even if even when you're interfacing with individuals, actually what they represent is, I think, the mission that underpins everything that we're all doing.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you're amazing.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for finding the time.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.