Climate Levers: Recent Episodes
Blue Dot Project
Every week we present you with the stories of companies, start-ups, NGOs, and investors who play a critical role in supporting the Earth's natural capital systems.
Instead of throwing resources at environmental problems that may be merely symptomatic, we aim to identify the fundamental elements that need to change to reach true sustainability. We will explore new investment opportunities that can benefit the planet and humanity.
Blue Dot Capital is a catalyst fund accelerating the reversal of climate change through intelligence, funding, and diffusion of innovations in natural capital.
About Episode
Is your food safe to eat? Maybe less so than you think. Guest Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, shares disturbing findings from her organization’s privately funded food testing in the United States.
For impact investors, the episode highlights the potential to support and benefit from the small but accelerating movement towards regenerative agriculture.
Testing sponsored by Moms Across America found that foods produced through both industrial and organic farming processes are often contaminated with high levels of glyphosate and residue from other herbicides. These chemicals believed to cause cancer and other diseases.
The chemicals also include high levels of heavy metals and other neurotoxins, even in school lunches and baby formulas. Organic foods sometimes contain surprising amounts of heavy metals because organic farmers use manure as fertilizer, and the manure is often contaminated by the food livestock eat.
The solution, Zen says, has three elements: (1) Conduct more privately funded testing of foods. (2) Educate the public about the health dangers and social costs of the food they eat. (3) Urge the public to pressure food brands to insist their growers use both regenerative and organic production methods.
About the Guest
Zen Honeycutt is the founder of Moms Across America and the author of the book Unstoppable. As a well-informed and tenacious mom committed to food safety, Zen has led efforts to test and publicize the contamination in the U.S. and global food supply. Her grassroots organization works with counterparts around the world to raise awareness and promote more healthful, safer food.
Mentioned in this Episode
- Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
- Glyphosate
- Pesticides and Herbicides
- Heavy Metals
- Regenerative Farming
- Organic Food Standards
- Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)
- Microplastics and Nanoplastics
- PFAS ("Forever Chemicals")
- Big Food and Big Agriculture Lobbying
- Merchants of Doubt
- Moms Across America
- Zen Honeycutt
About Episode:
This second episode in a two-part series where guest Neal Collins highlights two novel regenerative real estate projects in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
The projects show how regenerative development processes can transform neglected land into thriving, eco-friendly communities that improve local economies. For impact investors, these detailed examples show the potential to generate solid risk-adjusted returns by thinking differently about real estate development.
The Salish Sea Farm project starts with abandoned farmland that was thought to have little potential for commercial development. Regenerative thinking turned undervalued land into a project with a strong pro-forma financial plan. The plan includes a regenerative farm, more than 200 residences, a hotel with three farm-to-table restaurants, and a commercial center.
The Marrowstone Inn project shows how regenerative development can blend hospitality with environmental restoration and also strengthen the local economy through unusual financing.
About Guest:
Neal Collins is co-founder of Latitude Regenerative Real Estate Development with agents and partners across North America. He also hosts The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, where he has interviewed dozens of people with diverse knowledge and experience in creating sustainable, thriving communities.
In the past few years, Latitude has joined a small but growing number of regenerative real estate development companies at the forefront of this fast-changing field. Their work exemplifies how regenerative principles can transform real estate and support local economies.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Neal Collins
- Latitude Regenerative Real Estate
- Regenerative Real Estate
- Impact Investment
- Puget Sound
- Salish Sea Farms
- Wendell Berry
About Episode:
What is regenerative real estate development, and how is it different from conventional development? Investors who seek to fund regenerative projects should understand this emerging field because it’s so important to reducing financial risk and achieving expected returns.
In this episode of the Blue Dot Project Podcast, guest Neal Collins talks about regenerative real estate development with host David Vranicar.
For impact investors, we explore how regenerative real estate development differs from conventional processes in five key areas: community involvement in the planning process, the focus on long-term success, the goal of regenerating nature rather than just protecting it, and the challenges and opportunities of working with a variety of funding sources.
About Guest:
Neal is co-founder of Latitude Regenerative Real Estate, a company based in the U.S. state of Washington. He also hosts the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, where twice a month for four years he has interviewed dozens of people with diverse knowledge and experience in creating sustainable, thriving communities.
In the past two years, Latitude has transitioned beyond offering transactional real estate brokerage and services. Today they are among a small number of regenerative real estate development companies at the forefront of this fast-changing field. Latitude has agents and partners across North America.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Neal Collins
- Latitude Regenerative Real Estate
- Regenerative Real Estate
- Conventional Real Estate Development
- Impact Investors
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Puget Sound
About Episode:
In this episode of Climate Levers, host David Vranicar explores the concept of regenerative communities with Alex Corren, co-founder of ReCommon.
Drawing from extensive experience and passion for environmental stewardship, Alex shares insights into key factors that lead to successful regenerative communities. He emphasizes the importance of considering the landscape, engaging with all stakeholders, and aligning with regenerative principles.
Alex’s early years in New Jersey helped him develop a deep connection to nature. He shares how his firsthand view of suburban real estate development sparked his passion for building communities that harmonize with the natural world.
Here Alex provides his perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of establishing regenerative communities that can thrive for generations.
About Guest:
Alex Corren, co-founder of ReCommon, is a dedicated advocate for regenerative practices. With a background in environmental science and a deep-rooted passion for nature, he spearheads initiatives to create communities that prioritize ecological regeneration and sustainable living.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Regenerative Communities
- Regenerative Agriculture
- Land Stewardship
- Sustainable Living
- ReCommon
- Bioregionalism
- Permaculture
- Environmental Science
- Impact Investing
About Episode:
In this episode of Climate Levers, Alex Corren shares his insights into the pressing need for regenerative communities and helps visualize likely elements of their realization. Alex is co-founder of ReCommon, a company that pioneers in this new and fast-developing field.
Host David Vranicar sets the stage for a deep dive into the structural and operational facets of regenerative communities, with Alex serving as guide.
About Guest:
Alex Corren is leader in the fast-evolving field of planning, building, and enabling regenerative communities. His company ReCommon develops suitable approaches to land access and governance. It provides frameworks, governance models, enabling technologies, and capital structures.
Corren’s efforts to establish and promote resilient bioregional communities are helping set the stage for a shift toward sustainable living on a large scale. ReCommon’s efforts in Colorado serve as a proving ground and example for similar initiatives worldwide.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Planetary Boundaries
- Regenerative Communities
- Impact Investing
- Good Urbanism
- ReCommon
About Episode:
This is an early chapter in the fast-developing story of a serial entrepreneur who radically changed his work and his life in his forties.
In 2022, Eduardo Esparza downsized his successful business to help repair Earth’s badly damaged natural environment.
About Guest:
Eduardo, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen, ran a successful marketing agency for a decade. But he had grown concerned about the world he would leave to his family and to future generations.
So Eduardo downsized his company to focus on reducing climate change.
After a year of intense research, he decided his best contribution would to help heal the damage human activity has done to our planet.
Now Eduardo works with impact investors and multidisciplinary teams. Their immediate goal is to finance projects and communities that regenerate nature. The ultimate goal is to provide resilient food supplies and a sustainable path forward by establishing a new relationship with the natural world.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Climate Change Mitigation
- Earth Regeneration
- Planetary Boundaries
- Regenerative Agriculture
- Regenerative Communities
- Eduardo Esparza
- Indigenous Elders from the Kogi tribe in Colombia
About the episode:
Some kind of collapse of our natural systems is imminent. Every empire and civilization in history has collapsed, and the current civilization is showing signs that it's well into collapse, states Joe Brewer. The planetary Boundaries framework identified nine self-stabilizing processes of the planet that maintain the Holocene period. However, we have crossed several of these interrelated boundaries.
Sustainable human cultures are organized into entire landscapes, and they treat nature as sacred, personifying and having a kinship relationship with it. They honor relationships with non-human people and act pro-future towards the ecosystems they depend on for survival. The approach to sustainability is identifying bioregions and landscapes to integrate humans and form deep relationships with the ecological functions for survival. Being pro-future requires intimacy and familiarity with the landscape to know the health of the river, soil, and forest.
In this second episode of a two-part series, we discover a million-acre living laboratory, in Barichara Columbia, for watershed restoration, building of soils, protecting native species, building a local economy with indigenous traditional practices, preserving cultural knowledge, and building sacred relationships with the land and nature.
Joe Brewer
Earth System Science
Earth Regenerators
Planetary Boundaries Framework
Joe Brewer is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and social entrepreneur who has earned three bachelor's degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a master's in atmospheric sciences. He has extensive experience in promoting sustainable solutions at a cultural level.
Joe has achieved many notable accomplishments in his career, including creating an undergraduate degree program in Earth Systems, Environment and Society, and being the founder of Earth Regenerators and co-founder of the Design School for Regenerating Earth.
He was also an active member of the Center for Complex Systems Research, where he studied pattern formation in self-organizing systems.
As a social entrepreneur and cross-disciplinary scholar, he brings together his expertise in open collaboration, interactive design, and empowered civic action to drive change toward greater resilience in our turbulent world. Joe's diverse skill set is an asset to any team focused on sustainability and social innovation.
About the episode:
The current rate of extinction of nonhuman species is at least 10,000 times faster than the natural background rate, caused mainly by humans destroying habitats and natural ecosystems. This leads to the breakdown and destruction of the Earth's biosphere, and planetary health, increases inequality, and difficulties with the ability to manage complexity.
Unfortunately, fragmentation of knowledge and the suppression of knowledge synthesis across fields have resulted in few places for holistic and integrative education, which can reveal how the planet and the globalized economy are functioning as whole systems.
This episode 13 is a first of a two-part series wherein complexity researcher and innovation strategist Joe Brewer shares with host Dave Vranicar about his upbringing and his unique background in physics, math, philosophy, dance, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. He is the founder of Earth Regenerators, which is a group committed to regenerating Earth systems to mitigate climate change.
In this episode, Joe is offering valuable insights into the challenging politics of climate change. Global warming skeptics are denying that carbon dioxide is causing climate change, but their claims lack credibility and they're often heavily funded and supported by corporate media infrastructure. Joe states that grasping the dynamics of climate change requires building out conceptual understandings to even see with the right eyes to understand how the planet works.
Mentioned in the episode:
Joe Brewer
Earth System Science
John Dewey
Stephen Jenkinson
Earth Regenerators
Hans Rosling
Steven Pinker
Center for Complex Systems Research
About the guest:
Joe Brewer is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and social entrepreneur who has earned three bachelor's degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a master's in atmospheric sciences. He has extensive experience in promoting sustainable solutions at a cultural level.
Joe has achieved many notable accomplishments in his career, including creating an undergraduate degree program in Earth Systems, Environment and Society, and being the founder of Earth Regenerators and co-founder of the Design School for Regenerating Earth. He was also an active member of the Center for Complex Systems Research, where he studied pattern formation in self-organizing systems.
As a social entrepreneur and cross-disciplinary scholar, he brings together his expertise in open collaboration, interactive design, and empowered civic action to drive change toward greater resilience in our turbulent world. Joe's diverse skill set is an asset to any team focused on sustainability and social innovation.
What did you do once you knew about the state of the world?
How do you make space for the grief that comes from understanding our current situation?
How to combat the fear of scarcity as a society?
How do organizations and businesses transition into creating thriving life on Earth?
How do we actually build regenerative businesses?
In this episode guest Ra James, a regenerative business revolutionary and co-founder of (re)Biz, FutureElders, and Pueo, ponders on these questions and argues that implementing a model of transition for businesses, that is future-ready and supports a sustainable future, will lead to business success.
Episode 12 is the second part of a two-part series and highlights the importance of new leadership and community. It discusses the topics of our flawed educational system, our current economic model that values nature more dead than alive, and the importance of ancestral wisdom, among others.
Ra also eloquently accentuates the concept of decomposition, kincentrism, and of biomimicry and how the latter involves observing and replicating patterns and processes found in nature to design sustainable and regenerative systems.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Ra James
- (re)Biz
- Future Elders
- Biomimicry
- Kincentrism
- Restoring the Kinship Worldview
- Tongva Chumash nation
- Vandana Shiva
- Jason Hickel
- Tyson Yunkaporta
- Lakota
About the Episode:
The dominant Western worldview sees humans as separate from the Earth, and as a result, humans are growing exponentially without realizing they are cannibalizing their own home.
To understand how ancient civilizations functioned, we can rely on ancestral knowledge. The wisdom of elders is crucial for healing and reclaiming wholeness. No civilization can thrive or even remain to exist without clean water, clean air, and proper food, so we must shift from the individual to the communal and embrace the larger Self that includes the Earth and all other beings.
In this first episode of a two-part series, host Eduardo Esparza invites regenerative business revolutionary Ra James to touch upon topics such as biomimicry and kincentrism. This is the first of a two-part series on his work of helping to build a regenerative post-growth world.
Eduardo and Ra discuss the dilemma of infinite growth, which could lead to the collapse of our Earth. It also examines our collective psyche and how we can recognize illness's symptomatic expression and understand that being well-adjusted to a sick society does not indicate good health.
In episode 11.1 of Climate Levers, you'll learn about the four main concepts related to growth and the environment: green growth, post-growth, degrowth, and steady-state economics. The conversation delves into the deeper meaning behind these concepts and emphasizes the importance of recognizing the interconnectedness of all issues rather than compartmentalizing them. Ra addresses the need for a sustainable economy that balances ecological and human needs.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Ra James: https://rajames.co/
- (re)Biz: https://www.rebiz.io/
- Future Elders: https://futureelders.co/
- Martin Prechtel: https://floweringmountain.com/testimo...
- Ayurveda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda
- Nietzsche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedri...
- Carl Jung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
- Krishnamurti: https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about_l...
- Hopi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi
- Biomimicry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomime...
- Kincentrism: https://kindredmedia.org/glossary/kin...
About the Guest:
Ra James is a visionary leader in regenerative business, drawing on ancestral wisdom to help individuals and organizations thrive in the modern world. Focusing on revitalizing communities and promoting reciprocal relationships, he aims to restore a kincentric worldview and culture of right-relationship.
Drawing on insights from indigenous elders worldwide, he offers talks, consulting services, and online group workshops to guide leaders in non-linear thinking, purposeful action, and reconnecting with their humanity.
Ra is the co-founder of several initiatives, including FutureElders, which provides an eight-week online un-school for aspiring elders, (re)Biz, a 31-day workshop on sustainable business practices, and Pueo, a regenerative business consulting firm.
Through his work, Ra James is helping to build a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
About the episode
Industrial agriculture practices have degraded soil in many areas of the world. Farmers depend on costly inputs, like irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers, to eke out crops. Even with subsidies, their business is risky and their profits low. The cycle is bound to repeat and get worse, as soils deteriorate further from short-term fixes.
Regenerative farming seeks to restore soil health and bring farmland back to a state of natural harmony. In Episode 10 of Climate Levers, host Eduardo Esparza talks with Bob Knight, the President of Carbon Cascade Corp. The company offers natural water and soil-based treatments that restore the health of farmlands. Farmers can incorporate the treatments with the industrial equipment and practices they already use. Within a short period, farmers get results: higher yields, higher nutrient density of crops, greater profits per acre, and cost savings from using less water and cutting out fertilizers and pesticides.
Mentioned in the episode:
• Bob Knight (bob.knight@carboncascade.ca): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-knight-142839a/
• Carbon Cascade: https://carboncascade.ca/
• Central Arizona Project: https://www.cap-az.com/
Dirty Thirties: https://www.legendsofamerica.com/20th-dustbowl/
• Dr. David Johnson: https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/bioreactor/
• David Weber's Safehold series: https://bookshop.org/p/books/off-armageddon-reef-a-novel-in-the-safehold-series-1-david-weber/7103047?ean=9780765353979
About the guest
Bob Knight is the President of Carbon Cascade Corp. He got his start in the 1980s at his family’s real estate construction and development company. As the firm diversified, he became involved in a wide range of industries, including mining, capital markets, oil and gas, green energy, and technology development.
For his newest project with Carbon Cascade, Bob is developing the model for an innovative agricultural land trust that will enable people and institutions to invest in the restoration of healthy soil on farmland.
About the episode Several organizations are exploring profitable ways for global investors to preserve nature rather than harvest it. Using blockchain technology, the startup Rebalance Earth enables investors to pay local populations to protect apex animals such as forest elephants. The elephants are approaching extinction under threats by poachers and disappearing habitats.
The loss of such elephants would be catastrophic because they provide essential “environmental services” that help protect the health of the Congo rainforest.
The rainforest—the second biggest on Earth—generates atmospheric moisture that brings rain to huge areas of north central Africa. Without the elephants, the forest is likely to shrink. And if the forest shrinks, millions of people are likely to go thirsty and hungry.
In this episode 9 of Climate Levers, guest Walid Al Saqqaf tells host Eduardo Esparza how Rebalance Earth works to protect forest elephants and other species that provide key environmental services.
After establishing the financial value of the services elephants provide, Rebalance Earth sets a value on the elephants themselves. The company then creates tokens that investors can trade on international markets by using blockchain technology.
Mentioned in the episode:
• Walid Al Saqqaf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/walid-al-saqqaf/
• Rebalance Earth: https://www.rebalance.earth/
• Ralph Chami: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralph-chami-63785313/
• How African Elephants Fight Climate Change: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2020/09/how-african-elephants-fight-climate-change-ralph-chami
• Fabio Berzaghi: https://www.berzaghi.com/
• Ian Redmond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-redmond-b849283
• R3 Corda: https://www.r3.com/products/corda/
• One from Many: Visa and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Ward Hock: https://bookshop.org/books/one-from-many-visa-and-the-rise-of-chaordic-organization/9781576753323
About the guest Walid Al Saqqaf is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Rebalance Earth, a purpose-driven startup that focuses on mitigating climate change and protecting nature.
“Rebalance Earth is here to do one thing,” he says. “It provides a mechanism for assigning an economic value to nature so we can fund its preservation. Once you’ve established a value for both living and dead nature, you can weigh the cost of killing things. When the cost is too high, you won’t kill them. Rebalance Earth protects nature by establishing the monetary value of keeping it alive.”
Walid, a serial entrepreneur with experience in information technology and blockchain, has also started seven other companies. For four years, he has hosted a weekly podcast about blockchain technology, called Insureblocks.
About the episode
Syntropic farming is a nature-friendly method of growing food. By restoring soils and increasing biodiversity, syntropic farming can be more profitable than industrial agriculture because it produces food in high yields with fewer costly inputs. Syntropic farms also tend to be more resilient in severe climates because of their genetic diversity. Syntropic farming methods borrow from the ways indigenous people have used to grow food for millennia.
In this Episode 8 of Climate Levers, two advocates of syntropic farming—Uzzy Arztmann and Christian Fu Müller—talk with host Eduardo Esparza about their experience promoting syntropic farming in Brazil and elsewhere.
This is the second of a two-part series on their work in syntropic farming and agroforestry. The guests talk about how they measure the effectiveness of syntropic farming by tracking how it increases biodiversity. They say biodiversity is a more important success metric than reductions of atmospheric carbon. The two also talk about their efforts to channel investment money to farmers who plan to adopt syntropic farming. One of their projects uses blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to enable farmers to be paid directly for increasing the biodiversity of their farms.
Mentioned in this episode:
• Recelio: https://recelio.org/
• Polygon blockchain: https://polygon.technology/
• Ursula "Uzzy" Arztmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursula-arztmann/
• Christian Fu Müller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianfumueller/
• Hopi prophecy: https://sacredland.org/hopi-prophecy/
• Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola: https://bookshop.org/books/brilliant-green-the-surprising-history-and-science-of-plant-intelligence/9781610917315
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://bookshop.org/books/braiding-sweetgrass-3e12996d-ea04-4dd2-b9a9-04cfd82f361f/9781571313560
• The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi: https://bookshop.org/books/the-systems-view-of-life-a-unifying-vision/9781316616437
• Elder Oren Lyons: https://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/oren-lyons/
• Thích Nhất Hạnh: https://plumvillage.org/
About the guests
Ursula “Uzzy” Arztmann is founder and president of Recilio, an organization that promotes regenerative agriculture around the world. Christian Fu Müller is vice president of Recilio. The two had been separately interested in how agriculture could produce food more naturally. They independently explored natural farming and permaculture but both were dissatisfied with those approaches because they don’t involve systems thinking.
Then Ernst Götsch, a Swiss researcher and farmer who worked in Brazil, described how he had restored degraded farmland in Brazil and made it highly productive. Götsch did so by applying ancient natural practices known to indigenous people but mostly lost to industrial farming.
Uzzy and Fu met each other at a workshop Götsch offered in Spain in 2016. Impressed by Götsch’s methods, both went to Brazil for two years to learn from experienced syntropic farmers. They co-founded a not-for-profit association called Soulfood Forest Farms in 2018. They also created a living laboratory that established a regenerative agroforestry system on about eight hectares of land near Milan, Italy. Soulfood Forest Farms later became Recilio.
About the episode Industrial farming feeds billions of people but depletes nature and contributes to climate change. It requires heavy use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
Syntropic farming, in contrast, is a nature-friendly method that restores soils and increases biodiversity. It can also be more profitable than industrial agriculture because it produces food with high yields with fewer costly inputs.
Syntropic farming reestablishes methods indigenous people used to grow food for millennia before industrial farming.
In this Episode 7 of Climate Levers, two advocates of syntropic farming—Uzzy Artzmann and Christian Fu Müller—talk with host Eduardo Esparza about their experience promoting syntropic farming in Brazil and elsewhere. This is the first of a two-part series on their work in syntropic farming and agroforestry.
What’s so different about syntropic farming? Here’s how Uzzy describes a syntropic farm field she knows well:
You have rows of trees bordering an area where you might have vegetables, grains, soybeans, cotton, or other crops.
It's a pleasure to work in these systems. When you walk in the field, you hear the buzz of insects. You hear birds singing. It's a place where life thrives. You sense animal movement everywhere. The soil is packed with organisms that break down the mulch.
You're not just driving tractors to plant seeds and harvest. You become a vivid observer of what's happening in these systems. The fields are wonderful to work in—especially in hot climates—because the trees provide shade.
You need your intellect. You need your senses. It's not just a mind-driven agriculture. It's also a heart-driven agriculture where we humans can be fully engaged.
Mentioned in this episode:
● Life in Syntropy: https://youtu.be/gSPNRu4ZPvE
● Ernst Götsch: https://agendagotsch.com/en/
● Soulfood Forestfarms: https://soulfoodforestfarms.org/
● Recelio: https://recelio.org/
● Ursula "Uzzy" Arztmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursula-arztmann/
● Christian Fu Müller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianfumueller/
About the guests Ursula “Uzzy” Artzmann is founder and president of Recilio, an organization that promotes regenerative agriculture around the world. Christian Fu Müller is vice president of Recilio.
The two had been separately interested in how agriculture could produce food more naturally. They independently explored natural farming and permaculture but both were dissatisfied with those approaches because they don’t involve systems thinking.
Then Ernst Götsch, a Swiss researcher and farmer who worked in Brazil, published a document called Life in Syntropy. The document, published in 2015, described how the author had restored degraded farmland in Brazil and made it highly productive. Götsch did so by applying ancient natural practices known to indigenous people but mostly lost to industrial farming.
Uzzy and Fu met each other at a workshop Götsch offered in Spain in 2016. Impressed by Götsch’s methods, both went to Brazil for two years to learn from experienced syntropic farmers.
They co-founded a not-for-profit association called Soulfood Forest Farms in 2018. They also created a living laboratory that established a regenerative agroforestry system on about eight hectares of land near Milan, Italy.
Soulfood Forest Farms later became Recilio.
About the episode
Carbon markets offer a practical way to help mitigate climate change. They do so by financially rewarding parties who remove carbon from the atmosphere through a variety of means.
For all the benefits of carbon markets, they are far from being a perfect solution to climate change. They are but one category of many tools the world must adopt and refine.
In Climate Levers Episode 6, host Eduardo Esparza of Blue Dot Project talks with Kate Wharton about the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of today’s carbon markets.
Kate leads an investment advisory service at CrossBoundary, an organization that makes private capital available for nature-based climate solutions.
Kate talks to Eduardo about what kinds of investors are interested in carbon markets and what such investors look for in deals.
CrossBoundary funnels private money toward individuals and organizations that protect natural systems—what Kate calls natural capital. The organization focuses on emerging and frontier markets.
Resources:
*Kate Wharton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kowharton/
*CrossBoundary: https://www.crossboundary.com/
*Hala Systems: https://halasystems.com/
*Neal Stevenson's Termination Shock: https://bookshop.org/books/termination-shock-9780063028050/9780063028050
*Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For The Future: https://bookshop.org/books/the-ministry-for-the-future/9780316300131
*Frank Herbert’s Dune: https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=dune
About the guest
Before leading CrossBoundary’s Investment Advisory, Kate headed CrossBoundary’s Iraq Advisory team in Erbil, Iraq.
She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and International Affairs and a minor in Spanish.
Before CrossBoundary, Kate worked in Turkey as Chief Operating Officer of Hala Systems, a humanitarian technology company. She also co-led Refugee Open Ware, supporting entrepreneurs in conflict-affected regions.
Kate began her career in Deloitte’s public sector consulting practice in Washington, DC. There she supported clients on energy, water, and sanitation projects in emerging markets. She also co-founded Deloitte’s flagship social innovation fellowship, leading projects in Jordan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guatemala, and Uganda.
About the episode
Regenerative agriculture, a set of farming practices that build the fertility of soils, holds great promise for mitigating climate change, improving crop yields, and increasing profits for farmers.
But in Europe and other industrial areas, farmers practice industrial agriculture, which depletes soils, reduces production, and causes loss of biodiversity.
Philippe Birker, co-founder Climate Farmers, works with regenerative farmers to establish nature-based farming at scale in Europe.
In Episode 6 of Climate Levers, you’ll learn how Climate Farmers helps overcome the three biggest obstacles to wider adoption of regenerative farming:
*Young people in Europe have mostly lost interest in farming as a way of life, and many older farmers are unwilling to change their established habits.
*Farmers lack access to useful, convenient information about regenerative farming.
*It often takes three to five years to make regenerative farming profitable. To make the switch, farmers need financing to help them through the transition period.
Mentioned in the episode:
*Climate Farmers: https://www.climatefarmers.org/
*Philippe Birker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippe-birker-94960014/
*Climate Farmers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/climatefarmers/
*Kiss The Ground: https://kisstheground.com/
*Gabe Brown: http://brownsranch.us/
*John Kempf: https://www.advancingecoag.com/john
*Richard Perkins: https://www.richardperkins.co/
*EIT Foods: https://www.eitfood.eu/
*Cem Özdemir: https://europeangreens.eu/content/some-background-info-cem-%C3%B6zdemir
*Christian Holzleitner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-holzleitner-51b7155/?originalSubdomain=be
*European Regenerative Agriculture Manifesto: https://www.climatefarmers.org/european-regenerative-agriculture-manifesto/
*Rudolf Buehler: https://regenerativeskills.com/allan-savory-ana-digon-and-rudolf-buehler-on-building-community-in-agriculture/
*Book All about Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks: https://bookshop.org/books/all-about-love-new-visions/9780060959470
*The Overstory by Richard Powers: https://bookshop.org/books/the-overstory-0b6e2046-f62f-40aa-8589-97b751cbcfc8/9780393356687
*Christian Kroll: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53922786
About the guest
Philippe Birker grew up in the countryside in Germany. That’s where he learned about the challenges of industrial agriculture.
In early adulthood, Philippe moved to the city and worked for several startups. As he made friends in Amsterdam and elsewhere, he felt the urge to introduce them to the pleasures of country life.
He and some friends bought an abandoned village in Portugal in 2017 and started rebuilding the village as a “fun project.” As their work progressed, Philippe became interested in permaculture. That’s a set of methods that make agricultural ecosystems sustainable and self-sufficient.
Philippe’s interest in permaculture led to his discovery of regenerative agriculture. Impressed by the many benefits of regenerative farming, he began looking for ways to spread its adoption.
He connected with about 60 regenerative farmers in Portugal. They told him about three main obstacles they faced in scaling their operations. So Philippe co-founded Climate Farmers in 2019 to make it easier for industrial farmers to switch to regenerative practices.
About the episode Many climate initiatives seek to slash carbon emissions. But others pursue ways to mitigate climate change by restoring local vegetation and reinforcing natural water cycles.
Rob de Laet, an entrepreneur in Brazil, is working to cool the atmosphere, improve biodiversity, and reinforce natural water cycles. His company is building a software app that will enable local people around the world to earn money through forest protection, reforestation, and agroforestry.
Agroforestry applies land-use practices to grow trees or shrubs among crops or pastureland. The trees produce local income through a wide range of marketable products—including medicines, wood products, fruits and nuts, and more.
Reduction of carbon emissions is important, de Laet says. But so is protection of the “atmospheric rivers” of water vapor that moderate temperatures and generate rainfall around the world.
Mentioned in the episode:
*Rob de Laet: robdelaet@yahoo.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/robdelaet/
*Amazon Investor Coalition: https://amazoninvestor.org/
*The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows https://bookshop.org/books/the-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/9781931498586
*What Is Consciousness? by Ervin Laszlo Ph. D., Jean Houston, and Larry Dossey MD https://bookshop.org/books/what-is-consciousness-three-sages-look-behind-the-veil/9781590793473
*Antonio Nobre and the biotic pump https://believe.earth/en/antonio-nobre-a-scientist-advocates-for-the-amazon/
*Water vapor and atmospheric rivers simulation: https://youtu.be/n0mupl4FZsQ
*Daniel Pinchbeck http://www.pinchbeck.io/
*"Guboo" Ted Thomas https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA127621990&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=07294352&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ec37198df
*Desmond Tutu https://www.britannica.com/biography/Desmond-Tutu
*John D Liu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSZjfYQL8jk&ab_channel=JohnDLiu
*Jamaica Stevens https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamaica-stevens-9b727233/
*Jack Kelly https://jack-kelly.com/
About The Guest
Rob de Laet is a deep thinker about Earth’s natural systems. He believes our current decade is the most consequential one in the history of humanity. Rob believes humans can mitigate climate change by reinforcing natural water cycles. The most effective way to do so, he says, is by learning to work with nature through responsible management of vegetation and biodiversity. Rob is co-founder of the World Climate School and is an ambassador of the European Climate Pact.
About the episode
Why do we humans have what often seems to be an insatiable appetite for wealth and material goods? Why do we accumulate so much more than will satisfy our basic needs?
Are we driven by urges deeply embedded in our nature?
And if not, how might our fast-growing population stop depleting the resources we need to survive as a species?
These are among the questions Benjamin Casteillo ponders with Eduardo Esparza in this episode 3 of Climate Levers.
Mentioned in this episode:
*Benjamin Casteillo: Transdisciplinary Research & Education to Pioneer Global Sustainability with Human Solutions https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-casteillo-633a744b/
*New World Together: https://newworldtogether.com/
*The Myth Of Normal by Gabor Maté https://bookshop.org/books/the-myth-of-normal-trauma-illness-and-healing-in-a-toxic-culture/9780593083888
*Arthur Keller, keynote speaker, author, consultant, and lecturer. Specialist in societal vulnerabilities, sustainability, resilience, systems thinking, complexity, and storytelling as a lever for change. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellerarthur/
*Thomas Hübl is a spiritual teacher, author, and founder of The Academy of Inner Science. https://thomashuebl.com/
*Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche https://bookshop.org/books/thus-spoke-zarathustra-a-book-for-everyone-and-no-one/9780140441185
*Allegory of the cave by Plato https://bookshop.org/books/the-allegory-of-the-cave/9781365673221
About the guest
Benjamin Casteillo left a career in the corporate world to discover why humanity is on a path to self-destruction and to explore what we can do to change course.
He is the founder of New World Together, a research and education platform that focuses on ways to shift mindsets and change behaviors so we can achieve a sustainable existence.
Much of the world's economy is based on harvesting living things—including plants, animals, aquatic life, and even insects. But the world falls far short of investing enough money to protect, replace, or restore them. We're losing forests, animal populations, species, and ecosystems faster than we restore them. To stop the trend, we must find solutions that make strong economic sense. Michael Mathres of FUND NATURE talks with Eduardo Esparza about his organization's efforts to direct money from nascent carbon markets toward preserving living systems. The trading of carbon credits can enable governments, companies, and landowners to profit from protecting and restoring nature.
Mentioned in the episode:
*FUND NATURE – www.fund-nature.com
*Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela – https://bookshop.org/books/long-walk-to-freedom-the-autobiography-of-nelson-mandela/9780316548182
*Dr. James E. Hansen, Ex-NASA scientist – https://people.climate.columbia.edu/users/profile/james-e-hansen
*Kevin Conrad, Executive Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-conrad-b889701/
*UN-REDD Programme – https://www.un-redd.org/
*COP27 – https://cop27.eg/#/
*Reuters: Congo oil blocks auction draws warnings of environmental catastrophe – https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/congo-oil-blocks-auction-draws-warnings-environmental-catastrophe-2022-07-28/
About the Guest
Michael Mathres is the director and co-founder of FUND NATURE, an organization that values, protects, and restores nature globally. It does so by creating, structuring, and marketing new forms of financing mechanisms to unlock and allocate financial capital for nature. Michael is a former banker and holds a degree in economics. He has worked to establish business models to restore nature for more than 20 years.
Find Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathres/
With little to no direct link to the carbon market, farmers in the Amazon are not aware of how they could be profiting from preserving forests on their lands. Farmers can get a higher return by maintaining the forested land instead of converting it to farmland. Almir Augusto Andrade and Nima Darabi use AI technology and simulation to assess the carbon credit value of privately owned sections of the Amazon rainforest.
In our first episode of Climate Levers, Eduardo –CEO of Blue Dot Project– met with the founders of Skoog. Together, they went over the technology that identifies the types of trees in the forest and gives value to each. They also discussed the current situation in the Amazon and how best to communicate with the farmers to help them join the movement to preserve the planet's lungs.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Skoog
- Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
- Jean Paul Sartre, was a French philosopher and playwright.
- George Monbiot, is a British writer, environmentalist, and political activist.
- Jack Welch, was an American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer. Former CEO of GE.
- Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental movement using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.
- SustiPortal
Almir Augusto Andrade is the co-founder and CEO of Skoog. He is an industrial engineer who grew up in Brazil. Both his parents were agricultural engineers, and Augusto always had a close relationship with nature. After 15 years of traveling the world and working in his industry, he took a break and joined a program to learn about entrepreneurship and tech start-ups. After meeting Nima, he was inspired by his passion for nature and partnered with him to launch Skoog.
Find Augusto on LinkedIn.
Growing up in Tehran, Nima Darabi became passionate about nature after spending his childhood surrounded by concrete in the big city. Once he moved to Norway, he became a big advocate for plants and forest protection. This inspired him to develop a technology to help assess the positive financial impact urban trees have on properties and real estate. Augusto introduced Nima to carbon markets, and together they repurposed this technology into a much more impactful space. Skoog was born.
Find Nima on LinkedIn.