ReFi Community Hangout Dec 17 | Natural Capital Assets, Carbon Removals, Crypto Communities

Transcript

Tito made it up here

also. Yeah, actually say something really fast if you'd like or I can wait.

Okay, let's break down like the nature based versus industrial based on like what is actually possible and what is still needed in order to make the large numbers possible. So, globally, soil carbon could sequester maybe at most like these numbers I'm going to give or like the total addressable market size, so we're not going to actually reach that it's just maximum potential soil carbon is maybe 5 billion tonnes a year. Forestry estimates vary widely, anywhere from like 2 billion tonnes up to 20 million tonnes, I think it's more likely on the lower end, just because the land for reforestation is often in competition with the land that is used to grow food. And as the population of the planet continues to grow, we will need to grow more food. Kelp is maybe two to four or 5 billion times, absolute most, and we are nowhere near anything approaching that type of scale yet. And then you can other things like blue, carbon, mangrove restoration, that sort of thing. So at most, let's assume that we could eke out like 20 billion tonnes annually from nature based solutions, that still dramatically short of that 50 to 100 billion number that I shared earlier. So this is going absolutely going to depend on scaling up industrial solutions, most of which is likely going to be direct air capture. But here's the other problem. There's nowhere near enough energy to actually power that much direct air capture. And of course, it has to be carbon free energy, right. So I can't remember where I saw this. So don't hold me to this number. But I believe I saw an estimate that the, the amount of energy required to run that much direct air capture is something like between five to 10 times the total amount of energy that the world currently produces. So we're talking about a massive, massive scaling problem. And I think, of course, the only way that we could ever possibly meet that sort of energy requirement is with massive deployment of nuclear energy. It is the only technology that we know of that could ever meet that sort of scale. So that's the those are the sort of numbers that I think about I think it's very possible to do but it requires like exponential growth in technology innovation,

cool in gym and Titova in kneel before everyone talks if you guys could just give like a quick intro so people know who you are kind of the angle you're coming from. But, but camera Tito Go ahead.

Show I'll jump in. And so I'm Jim Mann and founder of the future forest company. So we are nature based startup in nature based solutions but recognising the problem, particularly reforestation was where we were focused, recognising the problem that lack of land availability, and ladies to look at other things in particular, enhanced rock weathering, and biochar, his potential solutions or partial solutions. And just following on to the theme of sort of addressable market, land based enhanced rock weathering, you're probably looking at about two two Giga tonne potential per year, if it could be fully, fully maximised, and biochar is harder to actually put a number on and biochar you're really fixing existing biomass. But looking at Waste feedstock, this could be two to five, potentially gigaton solution, all of these markets. So again, problems with scale scale ups, the real problem, and we look at it from a perspective of even if you can, completely decarbonize, you're still looking for at least 10 gigatons per annum of removals that we'll need to do. And we tend to focus on the longer permanence. Because unrepeatable, longer permanence. So that's why by training has dropped by doing particularly interesting to us. If you look at carbon removals, alone, so ignoring nature based solutions, we're at a few 1000 tonnes at the moment, I think charm industrial probably leaders and it's something like five or 8000 tonnes of removal on storage last year. And climeworks is new quantities, sort of 4000 tonnes per year with direct air capture. The problem we've got is to get that to 10 Giga tonnes I think I was trying to just quickly work this out but I think that's six orders of magnitude and to increase solutions, six orders of magnitude is a huge challenge. So I completely agree with with with Paul when he says look, we're gonna for Everything out this. And it's not going to be one, one solution. But we really, we really need to start doing that straightaway. And this is what interests me, particularly in the refi space, and we're not active in the refi space at the moment, we're sort of looking at what's there, we're trying to understand it better. And we're looking at how we can fit into that ecosystem and hopefully accelerate things. But it's that that broad reach and that ability to act beyond the scale of nation states that that's going to be so important from, from my perspective, and and why refi is so exciting, and so important that we can find these connections between effectively projects and technology developers like ourselves, and we find that works, where the there is access to just this this huge scale. And hopefully, you can find those connections. So yeah, quick, happy to have hand over at this point. But we're looking for, for people to help us in those areas.

Jim, thanks for that, but really appreciate those numbers. You know, the 10 gigaton number is one that I hear a lot. There's there's the road to 10 Giga tonnes game that John Sanchez and a few others started. But batido, your motto with their miners is we need 1000 shots on goal to do this. So I just want to get your thoughts on those numbers that people have mentioned and kind of how you're looking at it. In terms of where it needs to come from.

Sure thing Hey, everybody knew to navigating Twitter spaces, but feel free to do do 100 of your head is spinning from all the numbers so far in this talk. It's all great stuff. I even as somebody who thinks about this and works on this every day, there's there's Yeah, just one observation. The conversation so far is like, there's so many freaking members that can keep track, generally so so I'm here representing air miners. We are working on how to accelerate carbon removal solutions. I think the the number that I would throw into the into the soup is that there are on the order of 3000 people worldwide that are working on carbon removal. Presently, that number was calculated by our very own Jason Grillo, who's the best director for airliners. Hey, Jason, I also see Anjali is here I was trying to wave at her through the Twitter thing, but there's I can only I can only report her or blocker. What's up oddly, anyway, so So yeah, we're you know, we're focused on on how to create more more solutions. There's only 3000 people working on this gym spoke to that, that need for a million fold. improvement in our in our ability to pull carbon dioxide from the sky. And, and, you know, when I think about the reminders as a community as a system, I just think about Yeah, how do we how do we get to that million fold, you know, order magnitude, and it comes down to the fact that there's what if the maybe 100 People here in this room, that means you know, each of you is contributing to that because, you know, we need on the order of you go out and tell you to work on solutions, but also to be a part of

where That's where this comes in, in terms of if you've got an idea, or people thinking about that always just just solve for the rule, the end of it, where it's like, hey, like how to remove 10,000 tonnes of carbon last year, like, that's not it's not zero. But, you know, in terms of exponential growth, like we're on the very left hand side of the curve in terms of working with very small numbers that are growing very quickly, voluntary carbon markets grew up leaves 60% year over year, this past year. But yeah, again, like just thought of like so many freaking numbers like Who are all these people that are listening and like what do they think of all this? Where do they see their rule as like getting involved in this or, or participating in it? Because that's, that's what we do a lot of time thinking about as far as how do we build a system that enables 1000s of new solutions, and then people working on on themselves? That's me. Back to you, Timo.

Yeah, cool. No, Tito. So appreciate that. And just a quick kind of background synthesis, because everybody's coming from a different space like, depending on who you are, where you've come from, we're talking about carbon removals because of the problem of climate change, which is unequivocally linked to increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, one of which is carbon dioxide. And so just want to make sure we're anchoring it to that, that kind of central piece. And I also just want to kind of put out there that I think we can talk about carbon dioxide removals, and the technology and the science all we want. But underpinning all of these challenges and crises is systemic social injustice and inequality. And I think we can look at these at the same time. I don't want to segue the conversation in that direction today. But every time I'm on these refi Hangouts, I just really want to harbour this notion that we have an opportunity to redesign how society works for the people who've been marginalised through this process of transition of creating new forms of economies, new currencies and new ways of interacting with natural systems. So I'll segue back to you, Timo. I know we've got some other people want to introduce on the panel, but just trying to touch on that point, cuz I think it's important thing to keep repeating.

Yeah, no, great. I mean, I totally agree, John. And I mean, that's why we're doing these in terms of the refi context, like Harben is just a component of this. And there's these whole all these other things that come along with it right with with monetary incentives, value exchanges, equality, organisational structures, you name it, basically that the the society we have, right I don't think our grandparents parents, great grandparents, like did it on purpose they the opportunity at hand for them might have been potato farming, it might have been the gold rush, it might have been oil, it might have been ecommerce, it might have been automotive industry, you know, what might have been the semiconductor industry, like, you name it, their intentions weren't to basically degrade the earth and, you know, create this inequality that exists today. But I think we need to be more like intentional, right, John about like, how we do it is kind of kind of what what I see the refi community doing of like, okay, how do we do this intentionally? How do we design this from like, a systemic and like systems perspective? And, you know, and actually reinvent the way we do things? So it's regenerative and sustainable

for people on the planet. Yeah, totally. Love it. Keep going. I'd love to see who else is on the panel. Seems like we've got some really interesting people up here.

Oh, yeah. We have Tom Neil and Anjali, why don't you guys introduce whoever wants to go. Just introduce yourself. And we'll kind of move into the next questions here.

I'll help. I'll end Hi. My name is Anjali Underwood. Hi, Tito. By the way, I'm new to this too. But yeah, I am working on a myriad of things. But my longest standing passion project is the Appalachian carbon exchange. And I'm going to echo some of what Timo said earlier, which is really the focus on conservation, which is what it was born out of. In carbon, I've always viewed it as the carbon markets as a mechanism for finance and conservation. So I'm not going to necessarily be able to play as much into the gigaton numbers that we need to even though there's huge value there and appreciate the work that everyone on this Hangout or call or whatever this is, is doing for sure. But we, you know, and modelled model, a model my thinking after this organisation called fibre shed started by Rebecca Burgess out of Northern California. And she takes a lot of fibre shed a watershed based approach to looking at local textile economies. And she's done it really, really, really well. And sort of doing that same thing. But looking at ecosystem restoration and conservation practices around where I live, which is in the southern Appalachians, really taking the idea that smaller scale projects are just as important even though the scalability doesn't necessarily always reach project development feasibility. And so by taking that regional focus, we are looking at what we have looking at what works with us and what what we can develop in our space. For example, coal mine methane, mature forest carbon, and our very specific heat island urban needs as well. We're looking at these are all future future looking right now. But that's sort of the goal. And we are really excited to move forward and have some action, as well as engage our regional businesses and climate action, which is something that that is desperately needs to happen in this part of the world.

Usually, that kind of goes back to the initial question on the call right? In terms of what do we need in terms of scale and size, and I think what I'm hearing is from for everyone is like, we need all of it, right? We don't actually know the exact scale, like you can do numbers all day long or do math. And some people, like think they're big numbers are better whatnot. But like, at the end of the day, we need to remove massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. But I go back to this nature approach of like, if our financial system doesn't work, or if we killed nature, and the rate of species extinction right now is 1000 times higher than historical extinction events. And, you know, basically, a million species, basically, per year, are being wiped out. And we don't know what kind of cascading effects that's going to have in terms of our environment. So either back to this point of like, no matter how much carbon we remove, if we've already destroyed our, you know, the species and our own livelihoods in the process. And then it's like a three legged stool. So like money on one side, carbon on the other side, nature on the other side, and people are kind of, you know, in that you know, that triangle or that three legged stool. So I feel like we have to do all three, and we have to do it at scale. And so I really like your point about like, small projects matter, as well.

Totally, and great to meet you. Anjali, thanks so much Timo for introducing such amazing people. I'm continually blown away how you keep up with this space. Just to touch on that, like, yes, we need to remove massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. But we also have to decarbonize the entire global supply chain across transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, right. So it's like, you know, just want to make sure we're emphasising these key points for anybody new coming in that we got to remove carbon. But we also got to decarbonize and we got to do them both now, oh, we're all screwed. So if you haven't jumped on the climate crisis, climate action bandwagon yet, this is a great opportunity to see some of the ways you can get involved. I just want to make sure that that's like a super clear narrative, like we got to do both.

Yeah, yeah, I go back, John, to the holistic approach. And you and I have talked about the everyone's heard the IPC C report, you know, the news from that. But there's, there's actually a report from Jim that if you can DM me, or you just look online for the is the IP B EAS, joint workshop report with the IPCC. And they talk a lot about biodiversity and what's called adaptive capacity in more holistic solutions, which they call it the climate, social Nexus. Basically, climate, biodiversity, social Nexus is what they call it. And it's basically a holistic way to look at systems and why we need to do both and how they're interdependent. That's it's a great, fantastic summary report that came out in June of this year. So just real quick, before Neil and Tom introduce themselves. I have a couple of requests for questions. But if we could just save those, I know we're kind of already going through time here. But we're gonna do some q&a here at the end. But but let's introduce Tom, why don't you go first, because you're here, I guess. Neal Neal's got his mic off. So Neil, why don't you go first and then Tom, why don't we hear from you next?

Sounds good. Hey, everybody. My name is Neil Spackman. I am the founder and CEO of the company called regenerative resources. And I'm Tara former by profession, I turned deserts in the forest. We are focused on coastal communities and coastal regions, at this time in our company's development. Next week, we will be publicly launching projects in Mexico, Ghana, Spain, and Namibia. We have Mozambique and Oman are probably going to be announced with some real meat behind them in six to eight months. And what we do is we address the conflict between human development and environmental protection. The pithy line I like to use is that it doesn't make any sense to grow trees, unless we address why people are cutting them down in the first place. So what we do is, we partner with local coastal communities fishing villages, primarily, and develop regenerative economies in partnership with these communities, which unlocks the space to restore degraded, coastal ecosystems. These projects are about to announce their total pipeline costs about 250

million.

In those in this first set of projects we're estimating 20 million tonnes of carbon sequestered primarily through sea grasses and mangroves. in agro ecological settings so we do mangrove agroforestry we do seagrass multi trophic aquaculture is, in addition to just ecosystem restoration, the I'm really happy to hear the focus on how carbon is a stand in for nature, my personal sentiment is that carbon is a somewhat crude stand in for the greater ecosystem services we need. And in some cases can be quite myopic. Because it doesn't matter how much carbon we draw down, if we keep destroying ecosystems and deforesting, if we don't have functioning ecosystems, we're all gonna die anyway. But it is a very important piece of the of the overall puzzle. And something that I'm really happy has developed as a market over the last 25 years or so. Because it does allow for us to do work that that is nature positive, and is an interesting standard. The work we're doing in the web three world, I don't want to go into too much detail about but chainlink will be doing a press release and an announcement on Tuesday. A really cool project we're doing with chain link. And we intend to have our first NFT based biodiversity credits 12 months from now, and I'll leave those as teasers.

Cool, cool. That's so exciting to you like, like I love the word TerraForm. Or like basically creating something out of nothing in a way, right? Like the idea that desert being turned into forest or agroforestry. Or, you know, the work you're doing with aqua culture. It's just amazing. Like, in Neil, just for reference, like the average size project, you guys are looking at, what like hectares or acres what size in terms of land use.

So our our phase one in Ghana's 7000 hectares, our phase one in Mexico is it's actually two projects spanning 20,000 hectares, one of them is strictly agroforestry, and the others directly ecosystem restoration. Maybe it's very small. Starting out, we've got a 3000 hectare farm in the Kalahari with a brackish water source, and a 40 hectare site on the tin coast, that will be a prototype for the rest of that coastline. So we were looking at, you know, decent scale landscapes to start off with our goal, I kind of art the mission of our company is to grow millions of hectares of mangrove forests back.

Cool. Well, I think one of the most interesting things to me, John, and Neil about the refi space here, and in the community of people on the call are the people we're interacting with this like, like, Jim, I, you know, if you haven't talked to Neil, for example, like, I'd love for you guys to get together or for Paul and Kido, or, you know, or, you know, like, just the people on this call, like, reach out to the other people on this call, like, follow, follow the other people DMM, text them, whatever like that. That's where ideas form, right? Like, you know, these, these conversations we have is how we move this, this whole thing forward. So just make sure to collaborate, right? It's a community. And with that, I do want to get Tom up here on the stage, if everyone can say hi to Tom Duncan, who can provide like some financial background on kind of what they're working on and how we finance this.

Yeah, and just briefly just piggybacking on that, and just one of the core values and reifies to collaborate and not compete, Let's support each other, connect with each other and find ways to focus on our strengths, and really overcome this kind of old world extractivist you know, self preservation mindset. We all need each other in this. So I love that spirit. And thanks, Tom for coming on board. Can't wait to hear about you and your background.

awesome to be here. Love this space and all the speakers. Thanks, Tim, for speaking about your projects. super inspiring, thanks to hosts. Yeah, so Tom, the founder and CEO of the earth bank. A bit about my background. I grew up on farms in Australia, one on the edge of a desert. We were growing all sorts of horticultural crops and the other farm was high up in the mountains inside of a state forest. Growing kiwi fruit. And what I found through that experience growing up was just how freaking hard it is to be a farmer. I guess at home some of my views about you know some of the things that are really difficult. Transitioning to regenerative agriculture, look our family was and the troubles and challenge As you face at one point, interest rates got to about 20%. And that was in the 1980s. And, yeah, that created a deep recession. So what with wildfires, floods and interest rates by up to 20%? Yeah, it was pretty formative to me about how I tended to view some of the challenges and then also, what could some of the solutions be? So, yeah, in 2004, I was working with Ozzy on a very large crosslands restoration project in Central Asia, was about 18 million hectares was covering the Inner Mongolia, grasslands plateau, and then right down to the central China plains, to basically the breadbasket of China at that time in 2004. And just seeing the massive scale of challenges that we're facing, and, you know, the emergence of carbon markets and CDM. I saw the rise of that and started working on red projects and red pass projects in 2011, doing feasibility studies, and then saw kind of how broken the carbon markets were, and I got more and more into the financing of regenerative agriculture. Also renewable energy, efficient cookstoves, some biochar projects are Biodigester projects. And over time, you know, got a lot into the sort of how do we improve the verification of these projects that would have financing? And yeah, so over time? Yeah. Can you guys still hear me? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, over time, you know, developed bank motion in 2018. And, you know, we got some venture backing from the European Space Agency to develop remote sensing and more data driven carbon monitoring, pouring, verification, and auditing as part of what we're doing for financing of regenerative projects. And yeah, it's just been on a journey since then, helping carbon projects, get the carbon to where to buy hands, and also helping project developers with the MRV side of things and bringing the costs down for that from where they've traditionally been, and increasing the periodicity. So that the permanence and the additionality and leakage is being monitored more closely, so that the claims are more accurate. And so yes, started tokenizing trees and carbon in 2017, Ontario, and, you know, played around with that. Talk to a bunch of stable coin projects. And yeah, you know, I've been in the sort of this space for a while now. And, you know, we, we'd love what regional edge is doing. And you know, we want to be able to take those carbon, put it on there, you know, and we're just really excited about launching more about green digital bonds to finance, regenerative agriculture and watershed restoration projects. One One highlights my career probably was being part of developing the nitrogen offsets market in Australia, where we paid farmers to essentially filter the runoff coming from their fields. And yeah, that raised about $300 billion in the catchment that surrounds the City of Melbourne. 5 million people 1.3 million hectare catchment. And this is a really cool example that was bad in 2007. And so what I saw was possible with nitrogen offsets, and farmers bidding to supply those ecosystem services. To me, that's kind of where we need to need to be going. And but, and that's the promise of refi. But I see the opportunity, and we want to support as many projects and platforms as we possibly can and protocols and be part of the glue that helps helps it work and being a piece of enabling infrastructure as well.

Cool. Well, thanks, Thomas. I want to I may direct a question at Tito for Tom to answer here in a minute. But we're kind of coming up on time. Like I said earlier, I'm fine. It's it's almost two o'clock my time. I'm here till 230. So whoever wants to stay? Great. Start sending your your audience questions. Raise your hand. We'll just bring in audience members here in a minute. But I'm just going to keep going. Whoever wants to stay and if you have to jump if you're a speaker panellists listener, if you have to jump no worries. A lot of people have Christmas shopping holiday shopping to do you know, kind of last business day before the holiday start. But But Tom, I had a question kind of your overlap in the traditional financial markets versus you're kind of working with refi or defy in the new, you know, Blockchain crypto spaces. In some I'm setting the stage to ask Tito like, Tito, how do you see like, direct air capture kind of fitting in to what a lot of us are working towards in terms of the nature based solutions with the Ethereum and Cosmos and the other chains like, like, where do you see like direct air capture and technological fitting into into the financial system? And maybe Tom could could maybe answer that, or, you know, kind of went once you say what your thoughts are?

Okay, so the question is, how do you how do I see a specific technology recovery, we'll call director capture fitting into the the carbon market

will, will kind of like it in terms of like decentralised finance, right. Like we you know, Jason and I have talked about tokenization. And in just using these new financing mechanisms, and maybe you could just talk about how your, you know, like your LaunchPad, like the, from a technological standpoint, like how are you financing projects? Right, and how do you see those projects, getting traction, getting market share in scaling those? And then in context of like, do you use private equity? Do you use banks? Do you use any kind of Trad fi? Or is there an opportunity for technological carbon removal? In these new defined markets?

Okay, yeah, I mean, just off the top of my mind is, I don't really use the terms nature and technology too much, I think they're just there, they seem increasingly less useful. But there is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we take it out, whether that solution is named one thing or the other, I don't think it is a big differentiator for, for the demand side or for that I really liked what Paul said in terms of permanence is a way to start kind of making anything important measurements are important comparisons between different types of solutions. But ultimately, we're able to put a, you know, put $1 cost on these things, or maybe not $1 cost, specifically, but a some sort of value cost on, on taking molecules of co2 out of the air, you know, I don't think we're gonna be able to get very far seems doubtful that we'll do that that kind of world governance level, like maybe, but I think a lot of people on this call are here, because there's a different way of, of looking at this. And I think that's, it seems pretty interesting and promising. Just one plug, as we get to the top of the hour, for people here that are kind of looking for different resources, or, you know, again, we need a million sold, engagement. And so like everybody listening here, like our goal for today should be that you're working in this field, you know, 12 months out, and that's a high bar, but like, how do we pull that off? If you're interested in working on climate solutions more broadly, there's great resources. One is work on climate, you can go and meet a community of other people that want to work, broad Leon climate solutions, there's also tear.do. For kind of more formal, formal learning about broad climate tech needs solutions where you can fit in air miners has a specific programme called boot up, which is if you want to get rabid about carbon removal, if you want to get up to speed on all the different types of solutions for pulling carbon from the sky. bootup is a free five week, like online book club kind of format. And generally, I only hang out with people that are an exclusive thing. Like, generally I meet people at the point where they are rabid about carbon removal. And so if you are rabid about carbon religion, certainly check out aeromonas Launchpad, which is our programme to work with people who have ideas and teams, early stage solutions, and we work with you for for six weeks and help your company point in the right direction. Specifically, you know, a shout out for any women founders, or founding teams that are from more diverse backgrounds. I think specifically, you're even looking through the audience of this discussion today. Like we are not on track for we need to be in terms of creating the you know, the this future. And so, you know, even when everyone the numbers are small, I think it matters, it matters even more. We will get the time given times if we're not forgotten to do things in the best possible way from from today forward. So you all listening, you know, I hope this little listener speaker dichotomy as it does, it doesn't work for needing to scale a million fold in on the order of decades. So I want to help you figure out how to engage in that. So work on climate terra.do boot up, and your Myers as well. So that's my that's my take. And I'm gonna hop now. It's been wonderful night. See you all next

time. So, Justin, you had a question Tito's point about bringing people up on stage. Go ahead, Justin, tell us what you're up to what your question

is, and thanks, you know, Hey, everyone. One. So you had Justin elonis. Co founding right now with a bunch of other people adapt a new Dow that's focused on ocean innovation and conservation. And what Neil was talking about is very much in the vein of I think how we're going to be approaching this and tackling this, just want to say a few things. First, I appreciate all the transparency and open innovation that's happening in this space, I think it's going to have to continue to happen. Ultimately, what we believe with this new data is called New Atlantis is that when you can create decoupled economies from the US Petro back dollar, the new can, as a community ultimately point value at the things that the community finds valuable. And so we're working with Paul Nicklin. And Christina Mehta, Meyer, who I think probably some people from this, all who are listening here probably know them, the most famous wildlife photographers in the world. And we're going to be launching an NF T series with them and other artists. And then we're creating we're trying to create ultimately a decentralised community, and really push the limits of what Dows can enable, in as launching a token that has a protect earn function, in the same way that xe infinity really had a play to earn function within their economy that draw the incentive structure within their economy. And so we have people like Dr. Marine Ramo, that had client climate scientists coming in and leading our science research, people like Paul Nicklin, coming in and helping us lead the regeneration efforts and all of our research there, and our Paul Hawken sorry. And so we now have about 30 members who are in our Dow doing actual work and pushing us towards an NFT launch and a token launch sometime in q1 q2 of next year. I just wanted to come up here and announce what we're doing a little bit to this community. And ultimately, you know, we are looking for more innovation and more people to come in and help us with the various aspects of what we need from a dowel perspective, whether it be governance or token omics, or actual projects on the ground where we have already we're talking to some of the Caribbean nations about tokenizing some of their natural resources, particularly around mangroves and other elements like that. And so, yeah, I'm really bullish on the power of what crypto and web three economies can enable, in in this space. And ultimately, our belief is that, you know, exponential decay curves need exponential solutions, and things like existing financial structures and NGOs are just not going to cut it. So, yeah, nice to meet everybody and really excited to be a part of this community.

Yeah, thanks, Justin. That's super exciting. Something that the refi we've discussed in the past year, is building currencies, right to do what you hinted that building a monetary system that's instead of backed on gold, or oil, or coal, or God forbid, even slavery, you know, back in the day, or trade or whatever. It's built on something that's regenerative or you know, what, the term we keep using is positive outcome backed currencies. And so something we talked about is like, at least he's my opinion, is we're not just gonna have one currency, right? Like, it's not just going to be the dollar that's backed by these new things, or, you know, whatever the new token is, or, you know, I'm not gonna use any examples. But this world domination of one currency to me isn't going to happen, I think it's going to be baskets of currencies, bundles of currencies, that are all backed by positive outcomes, regenerative type systems, and people will put their, their money, where their, where their mouth is, or what, you know, where their beliefs are, basically. So in terms of building the world, we want to see,

yeah, I agree with you. And I think that, you know, financial products are essential, and I think they're gonna be the way that we really fuel this new economy. But ultimately, you know, one of the things that I can't I think we can't lose value or perspective of, and I think it was mentioned earlier in the session, is that we have to create an army of people who are incentivized and inspired to go and create that change. And the incentive structures are a part of it. But ultimately, you know, things like NF Ts and art and artistic expression can help create new cultures and new cultures around the formation of communities that I think are really have a huge amount of potential to inspire and motivate people to enter into this ecosystem. And then, you know, one last thing I'll say, is that the power of decentralisation today, I don't think it's, you know, we're still in the early innings. But ultimately, if we can have truly a doubt, structure and ecosystem that becomes exponentially scalable, then you can develop these these ecosystems almost like a neural network of people who are working on this all simultaneously that all connect together in very interesting and dynamic ways. And you know, when I sold my last As my last tech business, I had enough money to think about anything I could do in the world. And I looked at climate change. And I studied it, I studied, I studied, I said, I don't know where my entry point is, I don't know what to do. And I think a lot of people face that same like, element of resistance, just like not knowing how they can contribute, and I think opened up a new path for contribution that's never been possible before.

Yeah, 100%, that the joke is that people don't work for one employer anymore, right? They work for Who do you work for? Oh, I work for $50, basically, and there's services like opolis, who are basically providing the services, you know, the the W two, the retirement accounts, all the backend stuff that normally an employer would provide, you can actually just sign up for Apalis. And they run it on the blockchain. And you never know the difference. But it does all that stuff for you. So you can actually work for multiple Dows. To your point in your Dow, you have an our Dow you can happen, you know, claim a Dow whoever and do work Eden Dow. But Justin, thanks for asking, coming up and tell us what you're working on. And then I want, Jesse, we've had some really good conversations on Twitter, and you raised your hand and I want to welcome you to the stage and what

just, just quickly before we say, hey, Jessie love to hear that. I just want to emphasise one point of what you said, Justin, I was really blown away by you. But just this idea that yes, we have this potential for scalable exponential growth in decentralised communities like Dows, but we need to really recognise that Dows are largely being represented by a single group of humanity, which is white, middle class, or upper class tech people. And I think it's so important to recognise that when 50 or 60 or 70 or 80% of the world's population, that means that we're missing 80% of the questions 80% of the opportunities 80% of the unmet needs, that we can use to drive really genuine systemic change that works for everybody, not just for the people who already have. And so I just want to encourage everybody in this space to look outward and recognise all the people who are not here and make sure that we're looking outward towards the fringes of society saying how can we remove the barriers to entry because not everybody can be on Discord all day not everybody can, you know have the time to learn how to set up a wallet and engage in these networks and just want to like, really have that as a core concept in this in this community here and but yeah, love love to pass off Jesse and hear hear about you. Go further. So

hey, guys, I really appreciate everything that's been said, it's been an excellent first patience for me and, and real rookie, I just got into the crypto and the kind of defy rabbit hole here this fall. And, and I would say the refi rabbit hole is is just as deep as as any other it's, it's been quite an interesting journey so far. And, and I don't come from tech or a, you know, have a ranch and, and work in the oil field. In Canada. And it's it's been very interesting seeing what's going on. And there's I think it's it's really amazing. And, and I think there's a lot of room for learning owners and people on the ground to get their incentives aligned with with this. And it's just communicating that and getting everyone up to speed. And I just had a quick question. And hopefully it's not too redundant or whatever. But I was curious is today the topic was carbon and natural capital. And is there a is there any kind of marketplaces for natural capital or biodiversity right now kind of like the voluntary carbon market? Or is, is that what everyone's trying to, to build right now? Yeah.

When Tom or Neil when, I mean, I asked my ideas, or maybe Jim, one of my one of you guys answer,

I think Tom might be the best position to talk about the market. I'm not waiting for a market on biodiversity credits to emerge. I'm just gonna make biodiversity credits and throw them out on the market and see who values it. And then may, you know, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. But the way we're doing that is we are using E DNA data where we take soil and water samples and work with a group called Nature metrics, who can analyse all the strands of DNA within that vial of water and tell you every every species whose DNA is floating in that water. We're also using bio acoustics where you put up microphones on a site. These microphones record all the sounds made by nature and people on that site. It's pumped through an AI system that recognises this found a very unique species. So we're using these two main tools to track biodiversity change on the land that we manage. In a previous iteration in Eritrea, we had a 1,000% increase in bird biodiversity that was not done with Nutri metrics and bioacoustics. Those technologies weren't out yet. But that's, that's data that's verifiable that we don't control. And we're gonna attach that data to NF T's and put it on the market and say, Okay, here's a cool credit, who wants to buy?

Love, absolutely love it, I'd love to know if that's cool to hear from Claudia Herbert, who's a Berkeley PhD candidate that I happened to stumble on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, she had a really interesting thread, kind of under unpicking the claim and our theory of change narrative and had a really amazing conversation today. Claudia, I've seen you accept the request to speak you happy to just say, hey, introduce yourself and share some of the stuff that you've been thinking about?

Yeah, sure, of course. I mean, it's great to hear everyone is working on such different projects. And I think even just the discussion about like, how we're valuing permanence, or like, is it important to have distinctions between natural versus like, engineered solutions? I think all of this is, like really fruitful and amazing that so many people are working on it, like, and I think, like we were talking about, you know, like, making sure we can figure out how to make the space more representative of the people that we're trying to make solutions for. I think we'd also be like a great thing. And yeah, I don't know if there's anything more specific,

I think just, you know, trying to understand a little bit more about the kind of remote sensing and the spatial data science lens upon both, you know, forests, carbon sequestration, but also biodiversity and how you feel like this is playing into the web three movement.

Yeah, you know, I, I'm definitely not an expert. But I know there's projects like open forest protocol, and others that are thinking about how to integrate satellites to monitor like natural carbon offsets. So we can use Earth Observing satellite satellites to look at anything that is happening on Earth's surface. And so I use these to study things like forest carbon offsets in California's compliance market. And we can use them to understand questions about additionality. So whether or not the money that was paid for an offset actually caused any changes. And we can use these to look at things like permanence or durability. And so this is stuff that I initially got into the offset world from was because I wanted to get what happens when these like forests that are evolved to burn, catch on fire, right, but that's kind of can be incompatible with us, wanting them to sequester carbon, because natural systems flux, like they sometimes take in carbon, but they also emit carbon. So

totally, and I'm sorry, to put you on the spot. They're kind of conjoining, two very different worlds. But I think, you know, what you shared is a really interesting nuance that I didn't perceive when I first entered into looking at climate change, I just thought, like, yeah, you can just plant all the trees, and they'll suck down all the carbon, but the kind of notion of a rising temperature, changing the environment in which fires are potential to create and the impact that that has on these carbon markets, which have basically sold off a kind of trajectory of carbon sequestration over time. And it kind of reinforces this problem of counting, how much are we actually sequestering? And there's sort of that side of it. But also the fact that as far as I understand, naively, that as the planet continues to warm, there's also a kind of photosynthetic breaking point where the process of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen actually begins to degrade in these natural systems is that kind of a fair understanding, or if I miss something there?

I mean, man, it even gets more complex, where the amount of co2 concentration in the atmosphere even changes how some plants, like, can't do photosynthesis, or like the efficiency of their water use. So I mean, these systems are incredibly complex. And as different, like effects of climate change, manifest. That'll even make it harder, like we're managing for systems that are experiencing so much change. And we're trying to act like they are stable, so that we can fit them into a market. And so I think that's where, like adaptive management ideas are being able to monitor what's going on figuring out what we are selling to make sure that we're selling legitimate things or that we're able to monitor what's going around going on and course correct, right. Like if, if it's not making sense, then we have to figure out how to fix it.

Yeah, and and I'm just so keen to maintain that level of kind of intellectual clarity as we grow this regenerative finance movement to be in intellectually honest about the evidence that's being reported and making sure that our efforts are resulting in impact in stabilising our climate as the end result, but also not neglecting these really intricate complex natural systems. And I love the piece that you shared with me about kind of a push back towards the scientific reductionist view, and looking at what are these, you know, micro biological systems, these funghi networks that are underneath forests, and how to our lack of understanding about these systems, you know, impact the way that we approach? You know, addressing climate change, it's like, I don't know much about that layer of complexity. But I think it's really interesting what you open there for me, and just curious if you had any more thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, like, I think like people were talking about, you know, carbon is one thing that we can measure, but all of it matters. And, like, fortunately, or unfortunately, we are going to be the people that either figure it out, or we don't. So we have to figure out how we can keep these systems intact, as they are changing. And as we are expecting them to do even more. And yeah. I don't know if that's too specific. But yeah, it's a huge way that we all have to

work, Claudia. Connie, I just want to say hi, and encourage everyone to follow you. Your, your Yeah, they're not quite tweet storms. I mean, that's what we call them, they're theirs. They're very detailed threads, like I almost call that like mini blogging it but they're like, so informative, right. And like me, I mean, some of the other ones like Cody Sims does a great job with that, but But yours are like, great in terms of like claimer, like breaking stuff down, like kind of intellectual arguments. So I want to want to just say thanks for that. But to kind of to like what you were saying about, like, in what John was saying, too, about the complexity of the systems. It's like, we don't know what we don't know. And so So I come at it from this angle of like, we need to probably protect as much as we can, until we know or until we think we know. And so I I wrestle with this the whole, you know, like, whether the it'd be the 30 by 30 programme 30% land and water conserved by 2030? Like, I don't think that's enough, is my feeling like I fall into the EO Wilson camp of half Earth. And I encourage everyone here on this, this call to kind of do some research, in terms of like, what camp Do you fall into? Like, if we don't know fully, like to John's point, like, what's going on underground, or we don't fully understand how trees are communicating? We don't fully understand what that what a species decline or anything she thinks and curve might do to the overall system. Like, we probably need to just play it safe. It's kind of kind of my argument. So I just want to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it's interesting to watch how we do conservation efforts. And as someone who like comes partially from a land use background, there's definitely can be like competing needs for different lands. And I don't know, I just I want to put out there that I really believe that, like, humans are part of nature. And, you know, working lands are part of ecosystems like all of these things, we have to figure out how we can support all of them. And oftentimes, some of the early implications of carbon offsets were actually, like, coming into conflict with indigenous land tenure. And like, you know, we have to really be mindful and be watching what we're doing so that we can, like honour all of these systems, right? Like, it's not just the carbon accounting or just ecosystems. It's also like, how are the communities surrounding those places surviving, and are their needs be met? And is it being managed in a culturally appropriate way? Like, I think all of these things have to be, like, equally important, because, you know, we humans are part of these systems as well. Not just not to make it easy, it wasn't ever easy for us.

In John, you probably know what I'm going to say next, in terms of directing everyone to the core benefits label that we the climate sprint, we did this summer, Claudia, I'll send it to you, but basically looked at instead of doing a Carbon Project, where that's the primary benefit, and everything else was a co benefit. We looked at externalities and biodiversity and ecosystem services and said, Okay, how can we reframe the narrative on this? And so we came up and other people have worked on it also. But the idea is that everything is actually a core benefit. And it's like this holistic wins that we should not not to preach, but we should all be looking through in terms of like water quality, water quality, species, carbon, biodiversity, jobs, income, profit. I mean, like all these different nexuses energy usage, and like, any piece of land use to go through a wins like that, you know, it's almost like a shortened LCA type of assessment of like, okay, how can you make your project better and more holistic

Yeah, maybe I might jump in and talk a little bit about what I've seen in the space in the ecosystem services marketplace and a more holistic approach. And I guess, over time, it's become apparent that, you know, some of the most successful ecosystem services, markets and biodiversity markets have actually been government led, which is, which is really quite interesting. But what ultimately kind of then failed and shows kind of the real deep problem with government led ecosystem, service marketplaces that politics change. So quickly, political parties change so quickly, and preferences and certain biases kind of make make these markets untenable. And so what I've seen is this, in the past has been very high levels of coordination, to achieve ecosystem services market outcomes, I was involved in something called biodiversity broker, which was selling biodiversity credits. That was alongside nitrogen offsets, alongside carbon offsets. And so Australia's Got some of the most advanced examples, I would say, that have been, you know, fully data backed, as well as one data driven, but ultimately, so I see this big challenge, you know, in the refi, and defy space, and Dows is that, you know, previously, the most successful examples have been very kind of centralised, government policy and extension officer led and basically funded by grants and taxpayers. So I guess the challenge I want to throw down this community is say, Well, how can you get better levels of coordination? And how do you actually do that and achieve coordinate coordinate outcomes? And I think this is really the promise of refi. And that's why I'm so excited about it, because I know, so many people is called and out there as well, working on this exact thorny problem of how do you achieve seriously high level coordination, so that you can get markets agreeing on how to price positive externalities versus negative externalities. So we're working with a number of defi projects. And so please, if you're a Dow defi, project, carbon refund project, please get in touch. We were here to help, particularly on carbon permanence, and doing full ESG audits of projects as well and helping arrange some of the bridging finance so often projects really struggle in the early days to get money from to do the initial design documentation. And so I guess what we're trying to do is bridge c phi d phi into Rifai. And we're here to help in that regard. So yeah, just wanted to put that out there for everyone.

That's awesome. Tom. That's, I mean, that's kind of to what John said earlier in terms of like, offering a helping hand, or like collaboration rather than competition like that, that those kinds of offers right are like, what's going to make this movement happen faster, better, more efficient, and make it scalable? We have a few more questions before times epic Ignacio, say hello. Oh, yeah. Well,

she'll from chillin. Speaking. I have seen you and teachers through the other account and danger tokens. I think we have talked about it a little bit. We've just turned up on. I'm so humbled to be here. Feeling part of this movement, this refight movement. We've been working alongside my co founder from over like, a year now. And we're working on the protection of endangered species through tokenisation. So nowadays, we're working here in Chile, protecting this species Gomore Tiger gala is endangered tree only present here endemic species, that it's only 4000 specimens are live now in the world. So our approach to it is like there's no incentives for them to be being taken care of like landowners will cut them down before government discovers them because if not, they cannot do anything with the land. So the incentives there are is that you are you protect the trees by yourself by your own means, or you hide them from the government. So we wanted to change that we wanted to change the incentives towards protecting these trees. So we thought about NF Ts and I resonate so much with what what Well, Neil was doing biodiversity credits, and then this guy from Atlantis Tao, so it's similar but on from another perspective. So we're actually have tokenized, the first 26 killers. And we will be launching this NFT. Soon, we were a little bit late actually, we hoped to launch the launch last week, but we're probably gonna last a little bit longer. And at the same time, in order to support this ecosystem to keep the incentives running, we are doing collaboration with artists that will support the ecosystem. So the actual take holders of the tokens that we will be selling the GOD Power parents of these trees, when you buy these tokenized tree, you will become like the godparent you will be able to foster farther protection of the street, and you will be able to actually receive gains from these collaborations with with with artists, we're going to do tourism, regarding the protection of these ecosystems and refer stations around these endangered trees. So you can get some carbon credits, we would love to collaborate with open forest or you I think to come to can protocols such as doing something like that I will love to speak with the people doing these things. Because we are new at this part of the of this ecosystem. We we we have the killers. And we have the conservation programmes. So fresh, and we are tokenizing this, but all the collaborative collaboration with you would be awesome to just learn from your experience all these years working. So thank you for this pace. I would love to to keep participating with you on knowing to you better, and I hope we can collaborate in the future. If you want just follow us on Twitter is on station and danger tokens. And I thank you for the space.

Yeah, I mean, I think so there's a lot from us, you know, for us to learn from you as well. Like it's mutual in terms of like seeing your project and gitcoin. Right, and like adding that to my collection and cart and being able to share and, like talk about that. Like, it's a pleasure. And so I appreciate you showing up. Thank you

for pleasure pleasures mine.

Cool. Let's see, we had another question. matriarchs, I'm gonna I'm not saying it right. I don't think so. Well, welcome.

Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And thanks for the work that you and everyone else is doing here. I'm new to this. My name is Michael, by the way, and just really want to share a little bit about what we're doing in this space, and just getting started with the movement of patriots, and wanting to build this out to be a global movement. From the book of mastery of the future. There's a term that I came across a Patriots spelled like patriots, and matru to them of people who love the planet instead of just a single country. And my background is in heart health. I'm also known as the heart health guy. And as I've dug more into heart health, the thing that is healthiest for humans is the same thing. That's the healthiest for the planet and to heart health and Earth health are inextricably connected. That if we would eat fewer animals, and the as you all know, the animal industry is agriculture industries is the second largest contributor behind buildings to to producing carbon. This would be a huge impact for the health of the well being of assault, and to to this work that everyone's involved with, and and I'm really new to this space and just making the transition from working with people on their their heart health to the intersectionality of that and Earth health. And I really loved what was said about having a more diverse group in this community. And as a little bit more of my background, I was the technical director with Global Voices and America speaks we put on some of the largest townhall meetings in the world if you're familiar with Gavin Newsom, his book citizen Ville, about taking the town hall digital that heat the inspiration in that book. He credited attending the World Economic Forum in 2005 when he saw our process that which was used for the first global risk assessment that was done with 1500 participants at Davos, where he got the idea of using the same process which we then worked with him for participatory budgeting and and you know, I don't know how I haven't been tracking what's been happening in this space with dals and everything else but this is like my dream come true to have these decentralised autonomous organisations that are that are governed by the people using technology of voting and and I know that there's a lot that are struggling right now with process with technology and how to make it engaging and keep people in. And this is a my love. So I mean all this coming together the way that to have people talk to come to consensus and to have different processes engage people to educate them about what is an educate us all. And I'm not saying like I'm arrived anywhere, but about the issues and to create a heart centred world to which is the same as Earth centred world and I love the Earth and heart are the same word if you just slide the age one side to the other. And it's a beautiful thing. And that's what the matriarchs are. There's also the spilling also comes from the word Argonauts the bravest strongest force in Greek mythology, of all sailors on this planet Earth, we're 7.9 billion members strong. And most of us are unaware that we are on this ship sailing at an enormous speed, and just in our ride around the sun, and they are like 67,000 miles per hour is we're in our orbit around the sun and 500 something 1000 miles an hour as we're expanding out from the centre of the galaxy when we're full sail right now. But

we needed all hands on deck and we'll be hosting some all hands on deck meetings of what we can all do to to reduce our footprint and reduce the animal agricultural footprint and to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives as matriarch of our ship. And I by the way, I just made everyone you know, that's an opt out or isation. There's two ways to not be a Maitreya, wants to join Elon and go to Mars, and the other is in a pine box buried in the earth. We don't recommend either we once we have heard about matrix you're automatically a matrix Tino, which is a matrix and name only. We'll be rolling out more info about

circle, what was your name? Actually, I missed that.

It's Michael Smith. Hey, Michael, this is where you'll find me as one of the we cool. And also the heart health guy, heart health

guy. Hey, Michael, hope you don't mind Timo. If I kind of cap this off, I just wanted to touch base on what you shared. To me, there's something really profound and recognising this beautiful metaphor and truth and what's good for our hearts is good for the planet. And this further exemplifies I think, the real story of who we are as humans, which is utterly dependent upon the earth and each other. And that when we resonate from our heart space, and come from a place of love towards one another towards the planet, and we realise that that which we do unto other people and to the planet we do unto ourselves, beautiful things can happen. Because the suffering of my neighbour is not the suffering of my neighbour, it's the suffering of myself. And the pollution in the river is the pollution in my veins. And I think if we can take this consciousness forward, we can fight this crisis and build a better future for tomorrow. So thanks, everybody, for your time. It's been really special.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, it Michael just also goosebumps. If you saw my tweet about chapter 85, in ministry for the future. To me, and John, I don't know if you've seen that either. But if you read this, just pull out chapter 85 and ministry for the future. And it talks about all the different groups like reforestation and desert for debtors, desertification, and heart health. And I mean, just the names that can Kim Stanley Robinson rattles off on those four or five pages in that chapter. It basically gives me chills every time I read it, because I feel like the people on this call and the people working in this space, are those people I really feel like we are the Ministry for the future. So with that, I appreciate everyone's time, John, it's a pleasure as usual, we're gonna figure out the next week or we got some holidays coming up. But I'm gonna go over to clubhouse with kianga and anchor acre Dallas, so if anyone wants to join us over there

thanks, everyone. Awesome. Epic

chat. Cool. Cool. And just quick question. Anybody who was here today, tweet out what you'd like to talk about next week. If you're really passionate about a particular lens We want to crowdsource this and also create opportunity for other people to host share conversations and really expand the reach of who we're talking to and who we're connecting with. So yeah, thanks, everybody. It's been really special and we'll see you next week. Happy holidays everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai