Bionic Planet: Reversing Climate Change by Restoring Nature

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In this episode of Bionic Planet, we finally catch up with Michael Greene — the carbon developer branded a “land grabber of epic proportions” in The Washington Post, and now at the center of an unfolding saga that feels more like a political thriller than a conservation story.

When Greene began building carbon projects in the Brazilian Amazon, he didn’t expect to end up battling organized crime, corrupt officials, and a $220 million land grab. But that’s exactly where the trail has led.

You’ll hear how a businessman who thought he was protecting forests found himself targeted by powerful interests — his properties invaded using forged documents, his bank accounts frozen, and his reputation attacked by the very institutions meant to enforce the law.

Along the way, Greene describes the human cost of the fight — from schools he built that became flashpoints for local politics to community programs twisted by rumor and manipulation.

This is a story about how conservation collides with corruption — and how one man’s attempt to save forests spiraled into a struggle for survival in one of the most dangerous frontiers on earth.

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In this episode of Bionic Planet, we delve into the pressing issue of climate change and its profound impact on coastal ecosystems, particularly focusing on blue carbon. We kick off the discussion by highlighting Indonesia's monumental decision to relocate its capital from Jakarta to Borneo due to the city sinking under the dual pressures of climate change and land subsidence. This serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need to address climate change, which is reshaping our world in ways that often go unnoticed.

Our guest today is Dr. Steve Crooks, a leading expert in coastal ecosystems and blue carbon. He shares insights into the critical role that mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses play in mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon and acting as natural buffers against rising sea levels. We explore the unique characteristics of mangrove forests, which can sequester up to four times more carbon per hectare than traditional forests, and discuss the importance of preserving these ecosystems to combat climate change.

Dr. Crooks also provides an overview of the blue carbon system, a term that has gained traction over the past decade. He explains how coastal ecosystems have historically been overlooked in climate discussions, with a predominant focus on terrestrial forests. However, recent developments, including the recognition of blue carbon in international climate agreements like the Paris Agreement, have opened new avenues for conservation and management.

Throughout our conversation, we touch on various projects aimed at restoring and managing coastal ecosystems, including the Indus Delta Red Plus mangrove project in Pakistan, which aims to restore 350,000 hectares of degraded mangrove forest. Dr. Crooks emphasizes the importance of using verified methodologies to ensure the success of such initiatives, contrasting them with less rigorous tree-planting efforts that may not yield lasting benefits.

As we navigate through the complexities of blue carbon, we also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by marine protected areas and the potential for mariculture to contribute to carbon sequestration. Dr. Crooks highlights the need for integrated management strategies that consider both adaptation and mitigation in the face of climate change.

In the second half of the episode, we take a virtual flyover of the Indus Delta project, where Dr. Crooks shares insights from his experiences and observations. We discuss the delicate balance between local livelihoods and environmental conservation, as well as the importance of community involvement in these initiatives.

This episode serves as a call to action, urging listeners to recognize the significance of coastal ecosystems in the fight against climate change and to support efforts aimed at their preservation and restoration. Join us as we explore the interconnectedness of our planet's ecosystems and the vital role they play in creating a sustainable future.

Timestamps 00:00:00 - Indonesia's Capital Relocation and Climate Change 00:01:17 - Vulnerability of Coastal Cities 00:02:55 - Importance of Coastal Ecosystems 00:04:10 - The Anthropocene and Climate Change 00:05:38 - Introduction to Dr. Steve Crooks 00:06:52 - The Indus Delta Red Plus Project 00:08:27 - Overview of Blue Carbon 00:09:49 - Support for the Podcast 00:10:02 - Revisiting the Meeting with Steve Crooks 00:12:20 - The Katoomba Meeting and Blue Carbon 00:14:13 - Challenges in the Red River Delta 00:16:09 - Comparing Red River and Indus Delta Projects 00:17:40 - Focus on Oceans at COP25 00:20:28 - Emerging Concepts in Blue Carbon 00:22:08 - Mangrove Carbon Storage Dynamics 00:24:38 - Differentiating Coastal Ecosystems 00:30:10 - Impact of Thawing Peatlands 00:32:08 - Carbon Storage in Coastal Ecosystems 00:35:17 - Lateral Movement of Carbon 00:40:23 - Interventions in Coastal Ecosystems 00:43:56 - NDCs and Blue Carbon Integration 00:50:45 - Virtual Flyover of the Indus Red Plus Project

Quotes 1. "Indonesia is literally moving its capital out of Jakarta." - 00:00:11 2. "Mangroves are coastal woods, like those in Florida's Everglades, Kenya's Ghazi Bay, and all along the coasts of Indonesia." - 00:02:02 3. "Saving mangroves is key to reversing climate change." - 00:03:37 4. "Earth. We broke it, we own it. And nothing is as it was." - 00:04:47 5. "The emissions part of the curve is much steeper than what it is the gradual sequestration under a natural system." - 00:28:10 6. "Mangroves account for something like 0.7% of all forests, but at 1.10% of all emissions associated with deforestation came from mangroves." - 00:29:45 7. "Coastal ecosystems are a continuum, and it's a mosaic of habitat that goes down from the terrestrial." - 00:30:10 8. "If we don't deal with keeping things, temperatures under control, we're just going to have this massive outflow of both methane as the soils warm." - 00:33:05 9. "The first thing we can do is manage them more holistically." - 00:41:58 10. "The important thing is to continue to make progress." - 00:50:35

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Today's guest, Blue Carbon Pioneer James Kairo, brings us into the fascinating world of mangroves and their immense economic and ecological value. Our journey begins with a brief overview of mangroves, which, despite covering only 0.01% of the sea surface and just 1% of Kenya's land area, play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and coastal protection.

I had the privilege of recording this episode on location at the world's first blue carbon project, Makoko Pomoja in Gazi Bay, Kenya. This project not only aims to restore degraded coastal areas but also emphasizes the importance of education and community engagement in conservation efforts.

Throughout our conversation, Dr. Kairo highlights the multifaceted benefits of mangroves, including their role in shoreline protection, habitat provision for marine life, and their capacity to capture and store carbon dioxide. He explains how mangroves can sequester carbon at rates significantly higher than terrestrial forests due to their unique growing conditions in anoxic environments.

We also discuss the challenges faced by mangrove ecosystems, particularly the pressures of climate change, over-exploitation for wood, and the impacts of shrimp aquaculture. Dr. Kairo emphasizes the need for innovative solutions that allow communities to benefit from mangroves without degrading them. This includes alternative livelihoods such as ecotourism and sustainable fishing practices.

As we explore the concept of blue carbon, we touch on the importance of scientific research and data collection in demonstrating the value of mangroves. Dr. Kairo shares insights into the methodologies used to measure carbon sequestration and the significance of community involvement in carbon trading initiatives.

In addition to Dr. Kairo, we are joined by Basco Juma, a Kenyan social entrepreneur and founder of the NGO Big Ship, who shares his experiences in promoting sustainable practices and community engagement in mangrove conservation. Together, they illustrate the collaborative efforts required to protect these vital ecosystems and the potential for scaling similar projects in other regions.

As we wrap up the episode, we reflect on the broader implications of blue carbon initiatives for climate change mitigation and the importance of integrating local knowledge and community needs into conservation strategies. This episode serves as a powerful reminder of the critical role that mangroves play in our environment and the urgent need to protect them for future generations.

Join us as we embark on this enlightening exploration of mangroves, blue carbon, and the innovative solutions being implemented to safeguard our planet's coastal ecosystems.

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In this episode of Bionic Planet, we continue our dive into the complex and often contentious world of community conservancies in northern Kenya, focusing on the Biliqo Bulesa and Cherub Community Conservancies. The episode opens with a powerful statement from community members, emphasizing that the ongoing legal battles surrounding these conservancies are not about the interests of the community but rather the agendas of a few individuals.

We introduce Mustafa Mohamed Libin, a community member from Biliqo Bulesa, who shares the story of how his community took bold steps in 2007 to form a conservancy that is truly community-run, contrasting it with the historical context of land ownership in the region. The episode highlights the positive impacts of the conservancy, including the revival of traditional grazing practices and the introduction of carbon finance to support community initiatives.

However, the narrative takes a darker turn as we discuss the backlash faced by the conservancies, particularly following a report from the Oakland Institute that accused the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) of various human rights abuses. We explore the subsequent media frenzy that ensued, often lacking proper fact-checking and failing to consult actual community leaders. The episode serves as a follow-up to episode 117, providing deeper insights into the crisis faced by the community and the urgent need for their voices to be heard.

Throughout the episode, we hear directly from community members, including youth representatives and conservancy leaders, who express their concerns about the recent court ruling that deemed the conservancies illegal due to alleged lack of consent. They recount their shock at the judgment, which they claim was made without their knowledge or participation, and discuss the significant benefits the conservancies have brought to their lives, including access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

The community members passionately defend the conservancies, asserting that the allegations made against them are unfounded and that the real beneficiaries of the conservancy are the local people. They highlight the transformative impact of the conservancy on women's empowerment, youth engagement, and community development, emphasizing that the conservancy is a lifeline for their livelihoods.

As the episode progresses, we address the misconceptions propagated by external organizations and the media, which often portray the conservancies in a negative light. The community members clarify the differences between community-run conservancies and private conservancies, asserting their ownership and the positive changes that have occurred since the establishment of their conservancy.

In closing, the episode underscores the importance of community voices in the narrative surrounding conservation efforts. The community members call for transparency and engagement from external organizations, urging them to visit and understand the realities on the ground rather than relying on hearsay. This episode is a powerful testament to the resilience of the Biliko Bulesa and Cherub communities and their unwavering commitment to protecting their rights and livelihoods amidst external challenges.

If you find this kind of truth-telling important, consider supporting our work at patreon.com/bionicplanet. Your support helps us continue to share these vital stories.

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In this gripping two-hour episode, we pull back the curtain on misinformation campaigns targeting carbon projects in Kenya’s Northern Rangelands. Through interviews with local leaders—including Mohamed Shibia, director of the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) carbon program, and elders Peter Lekurtut of the Samboru people and Peter Kilesi of the Maasai—we hear firsthand how traditional grazing systems are being revived and enhanced, not imposed or destroyed.

🎧 Episode highlights:

False claims by Survival International and Deutsche Welle (DW) debunked
The real story behind grazing plans, fencing, and carbon revenue sharing
The complexity of land management among Samburu, Maasai, and other communities
Firsthand accounts from the family wrongly featured in the DW documentary
How communities are using carbon finance to fund peace, health, and education

💡 What you’ll learn:

How community-led soil carbon projects work in practice
What “planned grazing” really means—and how it strengthens, not replaces, traditional practices
Why claims of land grabs, fences, and armed rangers are largely fictional or misunderstood
The importance of verifying information and speaking directly with affected communities

🌍 This is the first of a two-part deep dive into one of Africa’s most scrutinized carbon projects—and it might change how you think about conservation, climate finance, and indigenous rights.

🔗 Support Bionic Planet: patreon.com/bionicplanet 🎙️ Listen now on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher.

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In this episode of our podcast, we dive deep into the transformative potential of Africa in the global shift towards a sustainable future, featuring an insightful conversation with James Mwangi, co-founder of Dahlberg and a leading advocate for innovative climate solutions in Kenya.

We begin by discussing Africa's booming population and rich natural resources, which James argues position the continent as a powerhouse for innovation and leadership in the climate fight. Contrary to the narrative that views Africa as a victim of climate change, James emphasizes the continent's potential to lead, particularly through initiatives like the Great Carbon Valley, which aims to make Kenya a hub for carbon removals, including advanced technologies like direct air capture.

Throughout our conversation, we explore several paradoxes that complicate the implementation of carbon markets. James introduces his own concepts, such as the "power illusion," which challenges the belief that blocking carbon removals will compel fossil fuel companies to reduce emissions. He also discusses the "mastery illusion," which suggests that expertise in climate solutions lies solely in the Global North, ignoring the talent and knowledge present in Africa.

We delve into the work of the Climate Action Platform Africa (CAPE) and Africa Climate Ventures (ACV), two organizations James has founded to drive climate-positive growth in the region. CAPE focuses on identifying and realizing opportunities for sustainable development, while ACV invests in companies that address the climate crisis, showcasing innovative projects like biochar production and the Great Carbon Valley initiative.

James shares the story of Safi Organics, a company utilizing rice husks to create biochar, which not only serves as a sustainable fertilizer but also contributes to carbon removal. We discuss the importance of transitional finance and the concept of additionality, emphasizing that carbon finance can catalyze projects that are already delivering value to communities.

As we shift our focus to the Great Carbon Valley, James outlines Kenya's unique advantages, including its abundant renewable energy resources and geothermal potential. He argues that direct air capture can thrive in Kenya, leveraging the country's surplus energy to support industries that require significant power, ultimately benefiting local economies.

We also touch on the recent developments in Kenya's carbon market regulations, which aim to create a competitive environment for carbon finance while prioritizing local benefits. James highlights the importance of building a market that is not only designed for Africa but also driven by local talent and innovation.

In closing, we reflect on the need to reverse the brain drain and create opportunities for Africa's best and brightest to thrive at home. This episode is a powerful reminder of the potential for African leadership in the climate space and the importance of fostering local solutions to global challenges. Join us as we explore these critical issues and envision a sustainable future where Africa plays a central role.

Timestamps 00:00:00 - Introduction to Africa's Potential in Climate Solutions 00:01:00 - James Mwangi's Background and Career 00:07:00 - Climate Action Platform Africa (CAPE) 00:09:30 - Africa Climate Ventures (ACV) 00:11:30 - The Role of Biochar in Carbon Removal 00:20:00 - The Importance of Additionality in Carbon Finance 00:27:00 - Safi Organics and Biochar Production 00:30:00 - Great Carbon Valley: Kenya's Direct Air Capture Initiative 00:36:00 - Kenya's Geothermal Energy Potential 00:40:00 - Kenya's New Carbon Market Regulations 00:45:00 - The Future of African Talent and Climate Solutions

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In this episode of Bionic Planet, Season 10, Episode 115, we dive into the significant environmental implications of the executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office. Originally, we had planned to focus this season on Africa, but the rapid changes in U.S. environmental policy prompted us to shift gears.

I connected with Tim Male last week.

Tim, who founded the Environmental Policy Innovation Center in 2017, has a wealth of experience in environmental policy, having worked in various capacities, including at the White House and with organizations like Defenders of Wildlife. Both Tim and I share a commitment to addressing climate challenges, despite our differing perspectives on party policies.

In our discussion, we unpack Tim's recent LinkedIn post, where he meticulously breaks down the ten executive actions that target environmental regulations. We explore the unprecedented number of executive orders issued in such a short time frame and the potential consequences of these actions. Tim emphasizes that while executive orders can set priorities for federal agencies, they must still align with existing laws, which can lead to legal challenges.

We delve into specific orders, starting with the requirement for the "God squad" under the Endangered Species Act to meet more frequently and expedite reviews of projects that could impact endangered species. Tim explains the historical context of this committee and its potential to prioritize development over environmental protections.

Next, we discuss directives to the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite permitting processes under the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, raising concerns about the implications for environmental safeguards. Tim provides insights into the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its role in ensuring that federal actions minimize environmental harm.

We also examine the revocation of President Carter's executive order aimed at making environmental impact statements more accessible to the public, which Tim argues could lead to confusion and inconsistency across federal agencies. The episode continues with a discussion on the rescinding of protections for ancient forests and the withdrawal from international efforts to combat deforestation.

Tim highlights the significance of ecosystem service valuation and the potential loss of guidance that could have helped quantify the benefits of environmental services. We touch on the broader implications of these actions, including the potential for increased energy production at the expense of environmental protections.

As we wrap up, we reflect on the long-term consequences of these executive orders and the potential for legal challenges. Tim expresses concern about the sweeping nature of these actions and the message they send to communities affected by energy projects.

This episode serves as a critical examination of the intersection between politics and environmental policy, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of the current landscape and the challenges ahead in the fight against climate change.

Timestamps 00:00:00 - Introduction to Season 10 and Episode Overview 00:02:09 - Trump's Executive Orders on Environmental Policies 00:03:29 - The Role of Executive Orders in U.S. Government 00:04:01 - Critique of Trump's Environmental Actions 00:05:01 - Legal Challenges to Executive Orders 00:06:19 - Endangered Species Act and the God Squad 00:10:11 - Clean Water Act and Emergency Procedures 00:13:42 - Understanding NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) 00:16:03 - Revocation of Carter's NEPA Executive Order 00:19:12 - Rescinding Protections for Ancient Forests 00:21:49 - International Cooperation on Deforestation 00:23:09 - Ecosystem Service Valuation Guidance Rescinded 00:28:05 - Nature-Based Solutions and Their Importance 00:29:59 - Action Plans for Energy Production Regulations 00:32:19 - Suspension of Policies Related to Energy in Alaska 00:34:27 - Impact of Schedule F on Federal Employment 00:38:11 - DOJ Teams and Federal Workforce Changes 00:41:00 - The Role of Professionals in Government 00:44:25 - Conclusion and Future Implications

Quotes 1. "On his very first day in office, President Donald Trump signed 78 executive actions, and 10 of them targeted environmental policies." - 00:02:09 2. "It's pretty hard to find the wheat among the chaff in this set of actions from the environment." - 00:04:01 3. "What this order is foreshadowing is a bunch of people who are much more likely to prioritize a development project are going to get the final say on conflicts involving endangered species." - 00:09:33 4. "This is really just we're not going to do it." - 00:04:33 5. "The law is pretty limited in terms of who can, you know, ask for an appeal of the decision." - 00:10:21 6. "This is a part of that same executive order from President Biden that is being rescinded." - 00:20:25 7. "It's a broad and messy brush that they're painting across the forest landscape in a way that is pretty harmful." - 00:21:18 8. "This is a White House that's showing great interest in expanding the power of the White House." - 00:18:00 9. "There's people across the federal government who are very creative at saying, well, you've told me to do it this way, and that's not legal." - 00:42:19 10. "At the end of the day, I don't know what your philosophy is on how democracy is supposed to work, but, you know, at some level, the winner is supposed to get to decide what happens next." - 00:36:38

Keywords * Bionic Planet * Season 10 * Episode 115 * Donald Trump * Tim Mayle * Environmental Policy Innovation Center * White House * Defenders of Wildlife * Nairobi * LinkedIn * Endangered Species Act * Alaska * Clean Water Act * National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) * Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) * Obama administration * Biden administration * Anthropocene * Steve Zwick * snail darter * whooping cranes * Trans-Alaskan pipeline * liquefied natural gas (LNG) * Tongass National Forest * U.S. Digital Service * Virginia * Youngkin * ecosystem services * climate emergency * energy dominance * fossil fuels * Native Alaskans * Paris Accord * Washington, D.C. * environmental impact statements * mitigation banking * biodiversity * carbon sequestration * emergency procedures * federal workforce * Schedule F * Department of Justice (DOJ)

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In this episode of Bionic Planet, I delve into the complex and often controversial world of conservation in the Amazon, featuring Michael Greene, a figure recently spotlighted in a Washington Post article that painted him as a land grabber. However, my intention is to provide a more nuanced perspective on his story, which I believe reflects broader challenges in the fight against deforestation.

Michael Greene's journey began in 2009 when he entered the tangled legal landscape of land ownership in the Amazon. His work is set against a backdrop of illegal logging, land grabbing, and the struggles of local settlers. The episode explores the threats to the Amazon, particularly in the Portel region, where illegal loggers and wealthy individuals exploit the land, often using deceptive tactics to claim vast areas.

Throughout our conversation, we discuss the various actors involved in this crisis, including the legal landowners, illegal loggers, and settlers who are often caught in the middle. Michael shares insights into the "hair comb" pattern of deforestation, where roads are cut into the forest, leading to a gradual encroachment of settlers and illegal loggers alike.

As we unpack Michael's project, we examine the strategies he implemented to combat deforestation and support local communities. He highlights the importance of the Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR), a mandatory environmental registry that helps families claim their land and protect it from illegal encroachment. Michael's initiative aimed to empower local families by helping them navigate this bureaucratic process, ultimately securing their land rights.

However, the episode also addresses the backlash Michael faced from local NGOs and other organizations that accused him of being a land grabber himself. We discuss the complexities of these accusations and the challenges of working in a region where the status quo is heavily influenced by illegal logging and land grabbing.

Throughout our two-hour conversation, I aim to provide a balanced view of Michael's work, acknowledging his quirks and the difficulties he has encountered while also emphasizing the positive impact he has had on local communities. This episode serves as a raw and unfiltered look at the challenges of conservation in the Amazon, offering listeners a glimpse into the intricate dynamics at play in the fight against deforestation.

Join me as we explore the unfolding saga of Michael Green, a figure who embodies the complexities of conservation efforts in one of the world's most vital ecosystems.

Timestamps 00:00:00 - Introduction to Michael Green and the Controversy 00:05:30 - The Project in Portel: Initial Threats and Land Ownership 00:10:00 - Illegal Logging and Settler Dynamics 00:15:00 - The Hair Comb Pattern of Deforestation 00:20:00 - Countering Land Grabbing: The CAR Initiative 00:25:00 - Building Schools and Community Engagement 00:30:00 - Legal Challenges and Land Ownership Issues 00:35:00 - Pushback from NGOs and the Status Quo 00:40:00 - Historical Context: Jonas Morioka's Land Purchase 00:45:00 - Michael's Entry into Conservation and REDD+ 00:50:00 - The Role of COIAB and Initial Meetings 00:55:00 - Investment Groups and Project Development 01:00:00 - Controversies Surrounding Other Carbon Projects

Quotes 1. "I believe, based on the evidence to date, that he's been unjustly pilloried." - 00:00:43 2. "It's an unvarnished and unstructured look at the challenges of ending deforestation." - 00:03:13 3. "The threats to the area primarily in this period of time before the project started was illegal logging." - 00:04:44 4. "What happened as this hair comb deforestation that takes place in the Amazon, it was starting to reach the borders of the property." - 00:06:16 5. "We realized that the threat was really more of an organized crime threat, where they're organized land grabbing taking place." - 00:07:09 6. "Their cycles, typically, each family might do seven hectares and they plant one hectare one year and then they abandon it." - 00:15:54 7. "My big fear was that the settlers or the traditional people were going to be approached by illegal loggers as well as land invaders." - 00:17:22 8. "We wanted to track that and put eyes on it basically." - 00:23:02 9. "If it's not my carbon credit project, it's nobody's carbon credit project." - 00:43:12 10. "I think a lot of those news stories were pushed by his partners who wanted Jonas out of the area." - 00:41:37

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This episode of Bionic Planet is a rebroadcast of David Hill's podcast, "How to Avoid Moving to Mars."

In it, Professor David Hill, CBE, speaks with George Kelly, the Chief Executive of Earth Recovery Partners in the U.S. George has been a pivotal figure in the realm of mitigation banking and ecological restoration. Their conversation delves into his extensive career, starting from his early days as an environmental law practitioner to his current role supporting emerging enterprises in the environmental market.

George shared insights into his journey, beginning with his master's degree in environmental law and his work at a law firm focused on environmental issues, including the Superfund law. He highlighted the importance of viewing the environment as an asset rather than a cost center.

They discussed the evolution of mitigation banking in the U.S., including the challenges posed by in-lieu fees and the need for a level playing field in mitigation practices. George explained the significance of the 2008 Federal Mitigation Rule, which established rigorous standards for mitigation banking and emphasized the importance of long-term stewardship and accountability in ecological restoration projects.

Throughout their conversation, George emphasized the role of private finance in ecological restoration, discussing various funding models such as green bonds and public-private partnerships. He highlighted the potential for these models to drive effective environmental solutions while ensuring that public funds are used efficiently.

As they explored the future of environmental markets, George expressed optimism about the growth of offset markets and the increasing recognition of the inherent value of nature. He pointed to the importance of corporate responsibility and the need for businesses to embrace sustainable practices as a means of driving positive change.

In closing, George shared his admiration for historical figures in the conservation movement, such as Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, while also acknowledging the contributions of contemporary thinkers like E.O. Wilson. He underscored the necessity of valuing nature and recognizing its role in our economy, urging listeners to consider the long-term implications of environmental degradation.

This episode was not only enlightening but also a call to action for all of us to engage in the vital work of protecting our planet. I hope you find David's questions and George's insights as inspiring as I did, and I encourage you to reflect on how we can all contribute to a more sustainable future.

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In Episode 112 of Bionic Planet, titled "Fantasy Football and Dynamic Baselines: New Tools for Impact Assessment," we unpack the often misunderstood concept of dynamic baselines and its origin in synthetic controls, using fantasy football as an analogy.

The episode begins with a clear and relatively simple explanation of dynamic baselines, which have emerged as a valuable tool in climate finance. Unlike traditional static baselines, which rely on fixed reference points, dynamic baselines adapt to changing conditions and provide a more accurate measure of impact. We discuss the importance of data and the need for robust methodologies to ensure that we can effectively attribute changes in deforestation and other environmental metrics to specific interventions.

Our guests for this episode are Lynn Riley from the American Forest Foundation and David Schoch from TerraCarbon, both of whom have played pivotal roles in advancing the application of synthetic controls in carbon markets. They share insights from their work on the Family Forest Carbon Program, which aims to engage small family landowners in sustainable forest management practices. Through their collaboration, they have developed methodologies that not only improve the accuracy of carbon accounting but also empower landowners to adapt their practices based on real-time feedback.

Throughout the episode, we examine the challenges of establishing effective baselines in diverse contexts, particularly in the United States. We highlight the significance of the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data, which provides a rich source of information for modeling deforestation risk and assessing the impact of various interventions. The conversation also touches on the importance of addressing confounding variables and ensuring that methodologies are applicable across different forest types and ownership structures.

As we wrap up, we reflect on the broader implications of dynamic baselines for climate finance and the potential for these innovative approaches to drive meaningful change in forest management. By fostering a more responsive and data-driven framework, we can better understand the impacts of our actions and work towards a more sustainable future.

Join us for this engaging episode as we bridge the worlds of sports and environmental science, uncovering the lessons that can be learned from both fields in our quest to navigate the Anthropocene.

Timestamps 00:00:00 - Introduction to Bionic Planet and Episode Overview 00:01:03 - Justin Fields and the NFL Draft Dynamics 00:02:14 - Caleb Williams vs. Justin Fields: A Season Comparison 00:04:27 - Troy Aikman on Rookie Quarterback Struggles 00:05:53 - Sam Darnold's Journey Through the NFL 00:06:58 - Kurt Warner's Unlikely Rise to Success 00:07:48 - Connecting Sports Performance to Climate Impact Assessment 00:08:31 - Challenges in Measuring Success in Climate Finance 00:09:12 - Dynamic Baselines vs. Traditional Baselines 00:10:32 - Introduction of Guests: Lynn Riley and David Schoch 00:11:18 - Overview of the Family Forest Carbon Program 00:11:59 - The Green Municipalities Program in Brazil 00:12:53 - Evaluating the Impact of the Green Municipalities Program 00:13:58 - Synthetic Control Method Explained 00:15:30 - Causal Inference and Its Importance 00:16:52 - Fantasy Football as an Analogy for Synthetic Controls 00:19:00 - Comparison of Real and Synthetic Outcomes 00:20:58 - The Role of Data in Impact Assessment 00:21:31 - Discussion on the Synthetic Control Method Paper 00:22:30 - David Schoch's Contributions to the Research 00:25:05 - Weighting in Synthetic Control Methodology 00:26:32 - Eliminating Uncertainty in Climate Finance 00:28:13 - Linking Methodologies to Improved Forest Management 00:30:59 - Data Sufficiency and Methodology Applicability 00:31:39 - Engaging Small Landowners in Carbon Markets 00:33:43 - The Role of the U.S. Forest Service Data 00:35:41 - Public Consultation and Methodology Development 00:36:09 - Interventions for Improved Forest Management 00:38:36 - Risk Sharing in Carbon Credit Projects 00:40:56 - The Importance of Monitoring and Feedback 00:42:05 - Evolution of the Family Forest Carbon Program 00:50:07 - Challenges in Data Collection and Stakeholder Engagement

Quotes 1. "Bionic Planet is the longest-running program in any medium devoted to navigating the Anthropocene, the new epoch defined by man's impact on Earth." - 00:00:10 2. "Football fans, like all sports fans, love arguing about who is better and who's just lucky." - 00:01:25 3. "Different people, different circumstances. And how do you tell who's better?" - 00:06:04 4. "We can restore it. Make it better, greener, more resilient, more sustainable. But how?" - 00:08:09 5. "Dynamic baselines adapt to shifting conditions and update more frequently." - 00:09:34 6. "The fundamental concept of synthetic controls is something we all use every day." - 00:16:52 7. "To see if an intervention works, you can synthetically model a control unit or an imaginary city where the variables are similar." - 00:16:09 8. "The ultimate goal in both cases is comparison." - 00:19:00 9. "It's not that the introduction of these methods eliminates uncertainty, but it did eliminate an important source of uncertainty and confounding." - 00:26:42 10. "There's always going to be a gap between a scenario that you model and what happens in real life, because no models are perfect." - 00:46:45

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Recent updates from the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) have pushed an old debate into public awareness, highlighting a perceived divide between emissions reductions and carbon removals. While SBTi's new guidelines focus on cutting emissions directly within company operations, some argue this creates a false dichotomy, downplaying the essential role of carbon removals in achieving net-zero goals. In reality, both strategies—reductions and removals—are not opposing forces but complementary tools needed to combat climate change effectively.

In Episode 69 of Bionic Planet, I spoke with Eli Mitchell-Larsen, a self-described "carbon removal evangelist," who provides valuable insights into the various types of carbon removal methods, including nature-based, hybrid, and engineered solutions. I'm rerunning this episode here today as episode 111.

The discussion begins with a focus on the importance of both reducing emissions now and removing existing gases from the atmosphere to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The host and guest emphasize the need for a comprehensive approach that includes a mix of nature-based solutions, such as afforestation and soil carbon sequestration, as well as engineered technologies like direct air capture.

Throughout the episode, the host and guest explore the different categories of carbon removal, including biomass carbon removal and storage, geological storage, and unconventional methods like kelp farming. They highlight the importance of understanding the capture, utilization, and storage of carbon in evaluating the effectiveness and durability of each method.

The conversation also touches on the evolving landscape of carbon removal technologies, with a focus on the need for continued research and development, government support, and deployment incentives to scale up promising solutions. The host and guest stress the urgency of accelerating the deployment of carbon removal strategies to address the escalating climate crisis.

Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive overview of the complexities and challenges of carbon removal and reduction efforts, emphasizing the need for a multifaceted approach to combatting climate change effectively. Through engaging dialogue and expert insights, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the critical role of nature-based and engineered solutions in achieving a sustainable future.

Timestamps * Introduction to Nature-Based Climate Solutions * Discussion on the Importance of Carbon Removal * Different Types of Carbon Removal * Nature-Based Solutions and Soil Carbon Sequestration * Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies * Accelerating Deployment of Carbon Removal Technologies * Cost Considerations and Government Support for Research and Development

Quotes * "The great tragedy of climate and biodiversity finance is that those who understand it most have their noses to the grindstone, while those who understand it least have their mouths to the megaphone." - 00:00:53-00:01:03 * "The only thing we can all really agree on at this point is that to meet the climate challenge, we must eliminate those emissions that we can eliminate and then find ways to suck the rest out of the atmosphere, getting to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest." - 00:02:52-00:03:03 * "The fact that these tiny oscillations in the obliquity or the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit can kick into motion and then be magnified by the biological system and swing the climate into different states. It's just so fascinating. It's so powerful." - 00:10:48-00:10:58 * "Earth. We broke it. We own it. And nothing is as it was. Not the trees. Not the seas. Not the forests, farms, or fields. And not the global economy that depends on all of these." - 00:06:07-00:06:18 * "We know that the enemy is carbon and we know its ugly face. We should put a big fat price on it. And of course, add to that, drop the subsidies." - 00:05:56-00:06:07 * "There's a group of us now who are proposing that the Earth has actually entered a new epoch, and that is the Anthropocene." - 00:05:56-00:06:07 * "We can restore it. Make it better. Greener. More resilient. More sustainable. But how? Technology? Geoengineering? Are we doomed to live on a bionic planet? Or is nature herself the answer?" - 00:06:18-00:06:29 * "The enemy is climate change and the we is the climate community. Those of us who've been in the trenches fighting this beast for decades in some cases." - 00:01:47-00:01:57 * "I think carbon removal and storage, removing carbon and then storing it safely somewhere, it serves a couple purposes." - 00:12:51-00:13:01 * "The more you do something, the more you build, the more the costs go down. And we've seen this happen with solar and wind." - 00:44:34-00:44:44

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Support Bionic Planet:

https://www.patreon.com/bionicplanet

Guests:

Jim Pittman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespittman/)

Matt Orsagh (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-orsagh-a1b8417/)

Steve Rocco (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steverocco/)

Books Referenced:

Ecological Economics (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77985.Ecological_Economics?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZDNVmbxl5B&rank=1)

The Limits to Growth (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/705418.Limits_to_Growth?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=1uh5jgBt1O&rank=1)

The Web of Life (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26155239-web-of-life)

Thinking in Systems (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Q81KDn3a1D&rank=1) Energy and Civilization (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31850765-energy-and-civilization?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=pCNkYwiE3S&rank=1)

Sustainability is for Everyone (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19107270-sustainability-is-for-everyone?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=sX3sH8kdj5&rank=1)

Less is More (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53328332-less-is-more?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_12)

Donut Economics (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57410899-donut-economics?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_15)

Technical Revolutions in Financial Capital (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60509.Technological_Revolutions_and_Financial_Capital?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=TcwHjED9BR&rank=1)

The End of Nature (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199359.The_End_of_Nature?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17)

In Season 9, Episode 110 of Bionic Planet, titled "Ecological Economics, Systems Thinking, and the Limits to Growth," we delve into a thought-provoking discussion with ecological economists Jim Pittman, Matt Orsagh, and Steve Rocco. The episode explores the fundamental concepts of ecological economics, systems thinking, and the difference between overshoot and tipping points.

The conversation begins with a reflection on the limitations of using GDP as a measure of a nation's health, as highlighted by economist Simon Kuznets, the inventor of GDP. The guests emphasize the importance of rethinking economic health and well-being, shifting from a focus on GDP growth to a more holistic approach that includes human and planetary health.

The discussion then delves into the historical context of the environmental movement, referencing influential books like "The End of Nature" by Bill McKibben and "The Limits to Growth" published in 1972. The guests highlight the interconnectedness of human activities, climate change, biodiversity loss, and the urgent need to address these issues before reaching irreversible tipping points.

The conversation also touches on the concept of degrowth, which proposes an equitable downscaling of production and consumption to enhance human well-being and ecological conditions. The guests emphasize the importance of transitioning from individual self-interest to collective optimization, drawing parallels with the behavior of slime molds in response to scarcity.

The episode concludes with a call to action for reevaluating our current economic paradigm, shifting towards a more sustainable and equitable model that prioritizes health and well-being over GDP growth. The guests stress the urgency of addressing planetary boundaries, overshoot, and the impending tipping points that threaten the stability of our ecosystems.

Overall, the episode provides a thought-provoking exploration of ecological economics, systems thinking, and the imperative need for transformative change to ensure a sustainable future for humanity and the planet.

Timestamps * Introduction to Ecological Economics and Systems Thinking * Discussion on the Influence of Popular Books on Climate Change Awareness * Evolution of Climate Change Discourse and Scientific Consensus * Introduction to the Limits to Growth and Systems Modeling * Discussion on the Flaws of GDP as an Indicator of Success * Importance of Systems Thinking and Tipping Points * Degrowth as a Response to Overshoot and Tipping Points * Challenges and Opportunities in Transitioning to a Degrowth Paradigm * The Role of Slime Molds in Understanding Resource Allocation * The Urgency of Addressing Planetary Boundaries and Resource Scarcity * The Need for Collective Action and Policy Changes in the Face of Environmental Challenges * Reflections on the Evolution of Economic Thinking and the Path to Sustainable Development

Quotes * "Goals for more growth should specify of what and for what." - 00:00:23-00:00:34 * "It's the difference between knowing that your two packs a day could very well give you cancer and hearing the doctor clear his throat and say, 'I've got something to tell you.'" - 00:01:06-00:01:17 * "Degrowth is just the end result there. It's not like we want that. It's just like you need it because you've got to go on a diet." - 00:06:24-00:06:34 * "We know that the enemy is carbon and we know it's ugly face. We should put a big fat price on it. And of course, add to that, drop the subsidies." - 00:07:16-00:07:26 * "Earth Overshoot Day from the Global Footprint Network using the ecological footprint methodology." - 00:44:29-00:44:40 * "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. And of course, it will stop. It's unsustainable." - 00:45:01-00:45:11 * "We're using Earth as though we had 1.6 Earths to use. That's the consumption and the rate of resource use we're using." - 00:44:51-00:45:01 * "Most of all, when proposing GDP as an indicator, Kuznets did not intend for it to be used in the way that we're using it now." - 00:46:21-00:46:32

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Support Bionic Planet: https://www.patreon.com/bionicplanet

In episode 109 of Bionic Planet, we learn how the Quilombola people of Brazil are blending the IPCC Livelihood Vulnerability Index Assessment with soil carbon methodologies developed under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) to save themselves and their soil from urban expansion and agricultural encroachment.

We begin with Sandra Pereira Braga, a descendant of enslaved peoples who has been farming on her family's land for almost 300 years. Sandra's story highlights the importance of recognizing and valuing the traditional practices and accumulated carbon stocks of these communities.

Our main guest is Vasco van Roosmalen, CEO of ReSeed, a startup focused on helping smallholder farmers access climate financing. Vasco discusses the innovative approach taken by ReSeed to support vulnerable farmers who are already practicing regenerative agriculture. By adapting methodologies like VM42 for soil carbon and utilizing the IPCC vulnerability assessments, ReSeed is helping farmers access the funding they need to maintain their existing carbon stocks and continue their sustainable practices.

We also delve back into the challenges of land tenure in Brazil, discussing the complexities of land titles and the implications for carbon projects. The recent Operation Greenwashing by Brazilian authorities targeting projects with fake land titles underscores the importance of ensuring legal ownership and sustainable management practices.

Overall, the episode sheds light on the critical role of smallholder farmers in climate action and the need for innovative approaches to support these communities in preserving their lands and traditional practices. Through initiatives like ReSeed, there is hope for empowering farmers to mitigate climate change and protect their livelihoods for future generations.

Timestamps * 00:00:00 - Introduction to Regenerative Agriculture in Brazil * 00:05:30 - Importance of Carbon Finance for Smallholder Farmers * 00:10:00 - Challenges Faced by Quilombola Communities * 00:15:00 - Role of Carbon Markets in Agriculture * 00:20:00 - Methodologies for Assessing Vulnerability and Carbon Stocks * 00:25:30 - Discussion on VM42 Soil Carbon Methodology * 00:30:00 - Land Tenure Issues in Brazil * 00:35:00 - Operation Greenwashing and Land Title Fraud * 00:40:00 - Challenges of Land Titling and Timber Management * 00:45:00 - Overlap of Illegal Land Titles and Carbon Projects

Quotes * "My people have been on this land for 276 years." - 00:00:38-00:00:50 * "Today's guest, Vasco van Roosmalen, is the CEO of a startup called ReSeed." - 00:02:58-00:03:08 * "We know that the enemy is carbon, and we know its ugly face, we should put a big fat price on it, and of course, add to that, drop the subsidies." - 00:05:52-00:06:04 * "Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization." - 00:05:52-00:06:04 * "We need to recognize what they have been doing for 300 years, the accumulating of that biomass in that soil and the protection of the agroforest that they have on their land." - 00:28:39-00:28:50 * "It's a way to quantify actions that need to be taken to help that economic sector move from those high emissions to low emissions." - 00:14:56-00:15:06 * "Smallholder farmers are among the most vulnerable to climate change. They're the front lines of climate change." - 00:16:10-00:16:21 * "We need to really look at their ability to adapt." - 00:33:14-00:33:25 * "It's a step process. First illegal land titles, then sustainable management, timber plans that weren't followed." - 00:45:10-00:45:21 * "But it was all built on the very beginning of those illegal land titles." - 00:46:14-00:46:24

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Photo by Karol Stefański on Unsplash

Support me at patreon.com/bionicplanet

Related Links:

https://vcm-gd.org/

https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/shades-of-redd-corresponding-adjustments-for-voluntary-markets-seriously/

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A conversation with WRI Senior Fellow Frances Seymour, who says there's plenty of reason to believe the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use could deliver on its high ambition of ending and reversing deforestation -- not so much because of the declaration itself, but because of the constellation of world events that birthed it.

Frances is also co-author of the book "Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change."

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From year-end climate talks in Glasgow:

Want to put your money where your mouth is by investing in companies that move us closer to a net-zero economy?

Matthias Krey of pureclimatestocks.com can help.

He's identified hundreds of companies that he call "pure climate stocks", meaning stocks of companies that make 100% of their revenue from products and services that will help get us to net-zero emissions.

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On the ground at year-end climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, Maria Carvalho and Frédéric Gagnon-Lebrun of South Pole Climate Solutions dissect the intricacies of Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement.

They explain not only how it works, but how it fits into the net-zero movement and the larger effort to meet the climate challenge.

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The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which is the United Nations specialized agency charged with promoting sustainable tourism, today unveiled the “Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action in Tourism” at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) here.

The Declaration commits companies to cutting their emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, with all residual emissions being absorbed through ecological restoration by 2050 at the latest.

More than 300 stakeholders have signed the declaration, including the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), which represents more than 300 companies responsible for more than 70 percent of global tourism.

“The commitment is to not only reduce the footprint by changing business as usual operations, but also offsetting…through blue carbon, for example,” said UNWTO Executive Director Zoritsa Urosevic in an interview with Ecosystem Marketplace.

“This is going to become, maybe, the new tourism attraction, because it's going to have a value that is more than just the beach.”

She said that the UNWTO is in the process of launching a net- zero tourism fund, with contributions from tourists being matched by tour operators.

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili conceded the gains that individual companies have made but stressed the need for a sector-wide effort involving government and international organizations as well.

“The Glasgow Declaration is a tool to help bridge the gap between good intentions and meaningful climate action,” he said.

Urosevic described an ambitious strategy for using tourism to promote regeneration, especially of coral reefs, but stressed the need to hold the sector accountable.

That's the ambition, but we're not there yet and we need your help,” she said.

“We need everyone’s help,” she added.

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“This is going to become, maybe, the new tourism attraction, because it's going to have a value that is more than just the beach.”

She said that the UNWTO is in the process of launching a net- zero tourism fund, with contributions from tourists being matched by tour operators.

“The Glasgow Declaration is a tool to help bridge the gap between good intentions and meaningful climate action,” he said.

Urosevic described an ambitious strategy for using tourism to promote regeneration, especially of coral reefs, but stressed the need to hold the sector accountable.

That's the ambition, but we're not there yet and we need your help,” she said.

“We need everyone’s help,” she added.

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We need to slash greenhouse-gas emissions while supporting activities that remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, and carbon markets can both accelerate reductions and ramp up removals. Why, then, is the debate so contentious? For answers, I turned to Eli-Mitchell Larson, a self-proclaimed “Carbon Removal Evangelist” who's helping to build up Carbon Removal Advocacy Europe (CRAE). We had a long and fruitful discussion that I think serves as a sort of reductions and removals 101.

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Biologists, economists, and environmental activists often seem like members of warring tribes, but Gabriel Eickhoff, CEO of Lestari Capital, says they're more like estranged family members who just haven't started talking to each other yet.

In a wide-ranging discussion, we look at the legacy of the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, the structure of supply chains, and the interconnectedness of all things.

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In a wide-ranging discussion, we look at the legacy of the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, the structure of supply chains, and the interconnectedness of all things.

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In a wide-ranging discussion, we look at the legacy of the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, the structure of supply chains, and the interconnectedness of all things.

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Guest: Eron Bloomgarden, Emergent Capital

Launched on Earth Day, the LEAF (Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance) Coalition aims to double the price of forest-carbon offsets and multiply the amount of money going into forest protection. Heres's how it works.

Featuring: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg; US Climate Envoy John Kerry; UK's Environment Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith; US State Dept Climate Change and Land Sector Expert Chris Dragisic; Amazon Chief Scientist Jamey Mulligan.

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We cannot adapt our way out of the climate mess, as Allie Goldstein of Conservation International and Mark Trexler of the Climate Web make clear.

We discuss the realities of systemic climate risk.

Research cited in today’s show:

"The private sector’s climate change risk and adaptation blind spots"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0340-5

"Persistent Business Blind Spots on Climate Risk and Adaptation,"

http://gca.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Persistent_Business_Blind_Spots_on_Climate_Risk_and_Adaptation.pdf

The Climate Web: www.theclimateweb.com

Climate Web Roadmaps:

https://roadmapslite.climatesites.net

https://roadmapunderestimatedrisk.climatesites.net

https://systemicriskroadmaplite.climatesites.net

Videos: Playing Climate Chess using the Climate Web https://youtu.be/cnf7FM2zfNg

Actionable Climate Knowledge through the Climate Web https://youtu.be/L37v2-DXWk0

Solving Climate Change with the Climate Web https://youtu.be/Py9eJM2DRT0

Link to wildfire risk map: https://bra.in/6pygXQ

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We cannot adapt our way out of the climate mess, as Alliee Goldstein of Conservation International and Mark Trexler of the Climate Web make clear.

We discuss the realities of systemic climate risk.

Research cited in today’s show:

"The private sector’s climate change risk and adaptation blind spots"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0340-5

"Persistent Business Blind Spots on Climate Risk and Adaptation,"

http://gca.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Persistent_Business_Blind_Spots_on_Climate_Risk_and_Adaptation.pdf

The Climate Web: www.theclimateweb.com

Climate Web Roadmaps:

https://roadmapslite.climatesites.net

https://roadmapunderestimatedrisk.climatesites.net

https://systemicriskroadmaplite.climatesites.net

Videos: Playing Climate Chess using the Climate Web https://youtu.be/cnf7FM2zfNg

Actionable Climate Knowledge through the Climate Web https://youtu.be/L37v2-DXWk0

Solving Climate Change with the Climate Web https://youtu.be/Py9eJM2DRT0

Link to wildfire risk map: https://bra.in/6pygXQ

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Carpetmaker Interface has won accolades for its carbon-negative carpet, the manufacture of which pulls more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it emits. He're a look back on the company's 20-year journey from plundered of nature to climate leader.

Guest: Buddy Hay, Interface VP for Sustainability

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What do Bill Gates, Mark Carney, Annette Nazareth, and Agustin Silvani have in common? They all believe that well-designed voluntary carbon markets can help the world achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions in time to avert disaster. Today, they explain the new Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVDM)

Most music provided by Blue Dot Sessions

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The UN's Emissions Gap Report showed that the current Paris Agreement Climate Plans (NDCs )will leave us nowhere near where we need to be to avert a climate catastrophe.

Will Burns of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University joins me in a year-end retrospective.

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Today I speak with environmental scientist Jason Funk, who runs the Land Use and Climate Knowledge Initiative (LUCKI) about the important findings of a paper called "Long-term thermal sensitivity of earth's tropical forests," which looks at whether forests can continue to pull carbon from the atmosphere as temperatures rise. What they found is: it's complicated.

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In this episode, we speak with oceanographer and sedimentologist Steve Crooks, one of the world's leading authorities on coastal ecosystems and climate change.

Related Link: https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/em-audio-and-video-em-vietnamese-deputy-prime-minister-opens-katoomba-xvii-vows-to-integrate-economy-and-environment/

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In this episode, which originally aired in October, 2018, we speak with the Reverend Dr. Gerald Durley, who says climate change and civil rights are inexorably intertwined, and not just because the destruction of our living ecosystems is robbing us of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Born in Kansas and raised in California, Rev Durley finished high-school in Oregon and then marched with Martin Luther King Jr while earning his first of may academic degrees -- this one in psychology at Tennessee State. While there, Bobby Kennedy noticed him and persuaded Durley to join the Peace Corp, which he did. That brought him to Nigeria, then to Switzerland before coming home to the United States and becoming a central figure in Atlanta's Civil Rights scene.

He says we can tap the same forces that galvanized the Civil Rights movement to fix the climate mess, but only if we recognize its inherently moral nature.

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If there's one thing COVID-19 reminds us, it's that global institutions matter. For that reason, I'm replaying this 2016 episode looking at the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Global greenhouse-gas emissions will drop 5.5 percent this year because of COVID-19, but they must drop 7.6 percent every year to meet the Paris Agreement's 1.5C target. Forest carbon offsets provide one way of getting there fast, but can we trust these offsets? Do they do what they say they do? This week, we hear how the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) handles carbon accounting at different scales. And my guest, Naomi Swickard, actually makes it interesting.

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When US President Donald Trump disbanded his country's pandemic response team, he did so because "I don't like having thousands of people around when we don't need them."

That cost-cutting measure could cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and it's a classic example of what happens when we value efficiency over resilience.

What are efficiency and resilience?

Today we draw on the work of Cardiff University Lecturer Paul Nieuwenhuis to find out.

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Costa Rica says it will have zero net greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, and its electrical grid already runs on 99 percent renewable energy.

Today's guest is a key part of its success.

As Minister of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez has overseen programs that tripled the country's forest coverage while slashing its use of fossil fuels -- all while growing its economy.

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Today's guest, Daniel Palken, volunteers with a group called the Citizens Climate Lobby, or "CCL", which aims to slash US greenhouse-gas emissions by imposing a fee on fossil fuels.

The fee will be based on the amount of greenhouse gas that the coal, gasoline, and jet fuels will generate when we burn them, and it will probably make fossil-fuel energy more expensive.

But there's a catch -- or, the opposite of a catch... a bonus -- a dividend, if you will, because that's what CCL calls it.

Under the proposed "Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act," all money raised by the carbon fee will go back to US citizens in the form of a dividend.

We each pay into the system based on how much energy we use -- whether in the form of an extra few cents at the pump or slightly higher groceries -- but every single citizen gets the same dividend back.

A fee-and-dividend system is different from the cap-and-trade programs that I usually focus on, for lots of reasons we get into.

Daniel says that a fee-and-dividend scenario has bilateral support, especially among younger Republicans, and he has the data to back that up.

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Developing countries are the most vulnerable to – and least responsible for – climate change, but new research shows that some of them can dramatically boost their economies by managing their forests, farms, and fields in ways that pull greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

At a carbon price of $50 for every metric ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, for example, Costa Rica can go beyond net-zero and end up pulling four times as much greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere as its entire economy emits right now. At that same carbon price, the Central African Republic can use NCS strategies to boost its GDP a staggering 90 percent.

Different Countries; Different Scenarios Authored by scientists from 17 organizations, the new paper looks at 12 natural climate solutions across 79 tropical countries and identifies activities that can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6.6 billion metric tons per year – ore more than all of the emissions generated by the United States – at a price of $50 per ton or lower.

“We found a wide variance among countries in the types of interventions that can deliver results,” said lead author Bronson Griscom, Senior Director of Natural Climate Solutions for Conservation International. “The Solomon Islands, for example, can make tremendous gains by managing their production forests more effectively, while Kenya can make tremendous gains by doing the same with agriculture.”

The paper comes at a critical moment in human development, with humankind now actively managing more than half of Earth’s ice-free land.

“The human footprint is expanding, and the population is still growing, but the rate of population growth is declining,” says Griscom on an episode of the Bionic Planet podcast scheduled to drop on January 28. “Meanwhile, our technology – our practices for agriculture – are continuing to improve so that we can produce more food per hectare from one decade to the next.”

We have, he says, the know-how to feed the world and reduce our footprint at the same time, but it comes as climate change threatens to decimate the world’s living ecosystems.

“This is hundreds of years in the making, and we’re at this inflection point now,” he says. “Ecotopia is out there, but so is climate change with all its potential tipping points in ecosystems and looming mass migration due to societal collapse.”

It’s an all-or-nothing proposition.

“We have all of these solutions in front of us, and we have this ticking clock,” he says. “We know what to do, and we have the means of doing it, but we have just a decade to do it.”

The Decades Ahead With so many different countries and so many different economies, he sees a phased approach where some countries move now and others follow in their wake.

“Some countries have the resources and governance to move right now,” he says. “The idea is, ‘Let’s help those countries move quickly now, and let’s invest this decade in helping those other countries to prepare for major actions.'”

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There's a lot of money sloshing around forests, and most of it goes into agricultural subsidies and investments that destroy forests, while only a trickle goes into programs that save them.

That's why today's guest, Charlotte Streck, wants to implement a Marshall Plan for Forests.

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On the eve of year-end climate talks in Madrid, I revisit my 2017 conversation with Bronson Griscom, Director of Forest Carbon Science for the Nature Conservancy. He headed up a team of three dozen researchers from almost two dozen institutions tasked with identifying once and for all the realistic potential of using nature as a bulwark against climate change. The result is a report called "Natural Climate Solutions", which identifies 20 low-cost, natural "pathways" that can get us 37 percent of the way to meeting the Paris Climate Agreement targets -- sometimes at no cost, sometimes at just $10 per ton, and often while increasing food yields and reducing the cost of farming.

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The third episode of our three-part look at the birth of REDD+, we speak with Annie Petsonk of the Environmental Defense Fund.

“Shades of REDD+: A Marshall Plan for Tropical Forests?”

Link: https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/shades-of-redd-a-marshall-plan-for-tropical-forests/

“Forests, Farms, and the Global Carbon Sink: The Genesis”

Link: https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/forests-farms-global-carbon-sink-genesis/

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In this second part of our three-part series on the history of forests in the Paris Climate Agreement, we hear how REDD+ got its name and made its way into the climate negotiations. Special Guest: Kevin Conrad of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations

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2019 is shaping up to be a pivotal summer in a pivotal year in the critical race to meet the climate challenge, with major media finally discovering the role that healthy forests can play in fixing the mess.

In this episode, we examine the 40-year effort to slow climate change by saving forests. It's the first of three parts developed in accompaniment with the Ecosystem Marketplace series "Forests, Farms, and the Global Carbon Sink: It’s Happening"

Guest: Kevin Conrad, Coalition for Rainforest Nations

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We eat to live, but the food we’re eating is killing us – not just because of what it does to our bodies, but because of what it does to our climate.

Beef, for example, comes from cows that burp out methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps up to 80-times more heat than carbon dioxide does, and we often chop carbon-absorbing forests to graze those methane-emitting cows, only to throw away one-third of all the food we produce.

If there are two things scientists who study this stuff agree on, it’s that we can slow climate change by eating less meat and wasting less food, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) new Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), which was published this morning in Geneva.

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Environmental NGOs have long pressured companies to reduce their impact on forests, and companies have long complained that every NGO seems to come with different demands.

Now a coalition of more than a dozen NGOs have called the corporate bluff by creating a framework that provides a universal way of accounting for deforestation.

They call it the Accountability Framework, and today's guest, Jeff Milder, is one of the people helping to pull it together.

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It's an article of faith among some on the left that markets and capitalism are the roots of all evil, while some on the right see pure, free markets as the invisible hand of God, and regulation as the work of the Devil.

Most economists will tell you they're both wrong, because there's no such thing as either a pure free market or a marketless society. We need markets to get things done, and we need governance to keep markets honest.

That's especially true in environmental markets, which almost always exist because of laws that require people to clean up their messes or reduce their pollution.

To slow climate change, for example, we have to put a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions, but how do we meet that cap?

There are basically two ways.

In command-and-control, a regulator writes up detailed, step-by-step prescriptions that have to be followed to the letter.

In cap-and-trade, which is a market-based mechanism, emitters find their own way of meeting the cap, and they're allowed to sell emission-reductions to others if they reduce more than the law requires. On the other hand, they also have to buy emission-reductions if they fail to meet their obligations.

If you're a regular listener, you know that carbon is just one of many environmental markets that are helping to fuel a $25 billion per year restoration economy, and that's just in the United States, as companies and municipalities rush to restore degraded rivers, forests, and other ecosystems on which our entire economy depends.

Environmental markets, however, don't replace regulation. What they do is provide flexibility in meeting regulatory requirements.

They work, and they work well, but only if properly regulated.

Unfortunately, regulators have seen their budgets frozen or even cut -- ostensibly to reduce costs. The result, ironically, isn't just less protection, but higher costs of compliance.

Today's Guests:

Todd BenDor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Jason Brenner, RiverBank

Murray Starkel, Ecological Service Partners

Jud Hill, Ecological Service Partners

Dave Groves, Earth Partners

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Environmental scientist Tim Male has worked the conservation puzzle from both the NGO and governmental sector -- first with NGOs like Environmental Defense Fund, then as an elected councilman, and finally as an adviser to the Obama Administration's Council on Environmental Quality. In 2017, he distilled his views in a paper called "Nature, Paid on Delivery", which examines the ways the US states of Louisiana, Maryland, California and Nevada are restoring large swathes of degraded land with only small amounts of taxpayer money being paid up-front.

Can Pay for Success work in ecological restoration?

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We've been fairly US-centric lately, but only because so much is finally happening there. In today's episode, we speak with Rhiana Gunn-Wright of New Consensus. That's the Think Tank that's helping freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and veteran Senator Ed Markey develop policy to support the Green New Deal they proposed last month.

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We're losing pollinators at an alarming rate, which scientists attribute at least in part to the loss of native plants, which evolved alongside hundreds of native pollinators -- including bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.

Dave Neu and Joe Krischon of the Conservation Land Stewardship have been helping to resurrect a degraded ravine north of Chicago, and today they explain how this backbreaking work helps revive colonies of bees and butterflies, and how you, too, can join the restoration economy.

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Wetlands cover 274 million acres of the United States, and they ultimately provide more than half the country's drinking water, which is one reason the federal government protects them -- or has, until now.

Back in December, the US EPA and Army corps of engineers unveiled new rules for regulating water, and you'd be surprised what it leaves out. More half of the country's wetlands will no longer have federal protection, and neither will so-called "ephemeral streams", that only flow in certain conditions.

As of February 15, the public has 60 days to comment on the rule, so I'm running this piece I posted way back in August. If you're a paying patron, you will not be charged for this, and if you're not a patron, I invite you to become one at bionic-planet.com or at patreon.com/bionic planet.

I planned this piece as a two-parter, but haven't delivered the second half yet because I couldn't afford to, and that's a fact. These packages, with multiple voices and tons of research take a lot of work, and I've got a full-time job that's really time and a half as Editor of Ecosystem Marketplace. I did write a five-part series that achieves what the second half of this podcast was supposed to do, and if enough people give me enough support, I'll also be able to finish that second half, which would be great!

I hope you like the show, and I especially hope it moves you to action. You have nothing to lose but your clean water.

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We hear a lot about the Sustainable Development Goals, or "SDGs" these days, with major pension funds like Calvert aligning their portfolios with them, and up to $12 trillion in finance, by one estimate, ready to do the same the same. But what are they?

That's a question I tried answering almost three years ago -- way back in 2016. It was right after world leaders had reached the Paris Climate Agreement, and right before my fellow countrymen shot the world in the butt by electing Donald Trump as President of the United States.

This encore presentation looks at the Sustainable Development Goals -- the SDGs -- which are more important now than ever -- and I think today's show, even though it's almost three years old, is more relevant than ever, too.

That's because it looks at the SDGs in the context of the global institutions that emerged from the ashes of World War II, and that Donald Trump, Vladmir Putin, and the Koch Brothers, among a whole bunch of other miscreants, are trying to destroy. We're a big, diverse planet, and we've pushed our living ecosystems to the brink. We need to work globally, together, if we're to fix this mess, and today we look at how we've done that in the past, and how still can in the future.

If you like what you hear, then I encourage you to become a patron at bionic-planet.com or patreon.com/bionicplanet. I am listener supported, and you can support me for as little as $1 per month.

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Yvo de Boer served as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from August, 2006 to July, 2010; and in November of last year, he became president of the Gold Standard, which is an NGO-led global partnership that sets standards for everything from carbon projects to the way we recognize contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In this wide-ranging discussion, we discuss everything from the outcome of the most recent talks in Katowice to the odd phenomenon of explosive chickens -- as well as how we can quantify the impact that countries and companies have on achieving the SDGs.

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Agriculture emits roughly 20 percent of all greenhouse gasses, but sustainable management of forests, farms, and fields can turn the world's farms into massive carbon sinks that absorb greenhouse gasses by the gigaton, yet farmers -- as opposed to agriculture ministers -- have been nearly invisible at year-end climate talks. That changed this past year, thanks to a global farmer-led effort to promote climate-safe agriculture and the emergence of the Koronivia joint Working Group on Agriculture, which creates a fast track for integrating agriculture into the Paris Climate Agreement. Today's guest, Fred Yoder, is an Ohio family farmer who has become a leading proponent of climate-safe agriculture within the Americas. He tells us how farmers moved from the fringes to the center of climate negotiations in just two short years.

Also appearing: Ceris Jones, Theo de Jager, Tonya Rawe, and Jason Funk

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The first week of year-end climate talks have wrapped up in Katowice, Poland, where natural climate solutions are finally getting the attention they deserve -- both in negotiations and on the sides. Everyone, it seems, agrees that we need to improve the way we manage our forests, farms, and fields -- which can get us more than a third of the way to meeting the Paris Agreement targets -- but how do you make that happen?

We speak with Chris Meyer of the Environmental Defense Fund, Josefina Brana of WWF, Jason Funk of Carbon 180, Peter Graham of Climate Advisors, and David Burns of the National Wildlife Federation.

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Samuel Avaala shakes his head as he dips his fork into a bowl of red-red, a traditional Ghanaian stew that gets its color – and name – in part from red palm oil.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he says. “Oil palm evolved here. It’s in our food; it’s in our medicine; but we built an economy on cocoa with little attention to oil palm.”

Oil palm is the tree that gives us palm oil, and the people of Western and Central Africa have been cultivating it for millennia – harvesting and processing the fruit for vitamin-rich oil, used in food and soap, tapping the trunks for palm wine that is distilled into medicinal alcohol, and using the biomass for green power generation. Over the past half-century, the rest of the world has discovered palm oil, too, and today it’s a $60 billion-per-year market that provides material for everything from fuels to food to face paint.

But that money isn’t flowing into Western and Central Africa.

The Great Crop Swap Instead, thanks to a fluke of history, it’s flowing into Indonesia and Malaysia, which produce more than 80 percent of the world’s palm oil, while the dominant cash crop in palm oil’s birthplace, is cacao – a tree that evolved thousands of miles away, in the Amazon forest, where the Incas used it to make cocoa.

It’s all part of an inadvertent crop swap that began when a Ghanaian agronomist named Tetteh Quarshie brought cacao beans home with him in the 19th Century, just as Dutch and British traders were bringing African palm trees to South East Asia and migrants from Spain, Portugal, and Japan were bringing Ethiopian coffee and Asian soy to the Amazon. Today, 66 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, while Southeast Asia dominates in palm oil, and the Amazon region produces massive amounts of soy and beef.

The Deforestation Boom These lucrative crops have been a double-edged sword, bringing economic wealth to some, economic devastation to others, and environmental degradation to all. Indonesia, for example, lost more than 10 million hectares of forest in just the past 30 years as oil palm plantations spread, becoming the world’s fifth-largest (and sometimes third-largest) emitter of greenhouse gasses, and Côte d’Ivoire has lost 80 percent of its forest in roughly the same period to cacao.

Now Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil companies are expanding into Africa, and many environmentalists are worried that could accelerate deforestation if natural vegetation is cleared to plant oil palm.

Avaala, however, says it doesn’t have to be that way.

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Ilson López is the President of Belgium.

Not the European country, but the indigenous village in the district of Tahuamanu, in the Peruvian state of Madre de Dios, at the western edge of the Amazon forest. He’s part of the Yine people, who are scattered from here all the way to Cusco, the capital of the old Incan empire, about 500 kilometers to the southwest. The village gets its name from the alleged homeland of a rubber trader named Justo Bezada, who began working with the people of Belgium – or “Bélgica” in Spanish – in the early 1900s.

Rubber tapping suited them, says López, because it provided a way to earn cash income for schools, food, and health care without destroying the forest.

“Back in the day, we'd roll it into a big ball, which traders would take on a plane to Lima,” he says. “But that business started slowing down in the 1970s, and we've been struggling ever since.”

As the rubber trade dried up, the people of Bélgica grudgingly turned to logging – sparingly at first, but more and more as roads came, bringing logging trucks and loggers seeking lucrative cedar and mahogany.

Balancing Economy and Ecology In 2002, the people of Bélgica won demarcation of their territory, and with it the legal right to earn income from its products. They divided the territory into zones for commercial activities like rubber tapping and ecotourism, as well as pure conservation areas for traditional hunting and fishing. But logging was something they struggled with – morally and logistically.

“We didn't have any capacity to do the extraction right,” says Lopez. “So at first we operated in the black market – basically just letting loggers into the territory and getting paid for it – but the local authorities came to us and said, ‘You're not doing this right.’ And that's when we learned about certification.”

Specifically, certification under the Forest Stewardship Council, or FSC. You know those little labels you see on cabinets and tables and on boxes of paper?

The Forest Stewardship Council Environmental NGOs like WWF created the Forest Stewardship Council in 1993, together with some forward-thinking timber companies, after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro failed to deliver a real global compact. The idea was to create some sort of standard for sustainably-harvested timber to at least give the good guys a boost.

It’s based on ten principles that stakeholders agreed would make it possible to extract valuable trees without destroying the forest, as well as auditing procedures to make sure the practices were being followed, and then labeling, so consumers would know the difference – and, hopefully pay extra for the good stuff.

Indigenous Constitutions At this was happening, indigenous people all across the Amazon were creating so-called Life Plans, or Planes de Vida, which are something like indigenous constitutions.

“The Life Plan is a document, or an exercise, that sets out our vision of where we want to go and helps us understand how to get there,” says Lopez. “FSC certification became one of the pillars of our Life Plan, because it was a way that we could improve productivity while saving the forest. We also included rubber tapping and conservation.”

The Sustainable District It helps that Bélgica is located in the district of Tahuamanu, which is something of a sustainability success story, thanks in part to the Cardozo family. Three brothers and a sister, their parents settled here in the 1950s and become major landowners and political leaders, as well as proponents of sustainable development.

Alfonso Cardozo is the mayor of Iñapari, the district capital, and he lobbied to prioritize granting of concessions for groups that embrace FSC certification.

It was he and his brother, Abraham, who persuaded the people of Bélgica to join FSC, and it was one of their companies that helped the Bélgicans create and execute the sustainable logging plan needed to earn FSC certification. That meant meeting the FSC’s ten principles – ranging from hiring comuneros, or members of the community, to meeting ever-evolving standards for good land management and equitable community relations.

Lopez, however, says the Cardozos charged too much for their services, so the Bélgica ruling council switched to a second company, and then a third. Today, says Lopez, the people of Bélgica get 80 percent of the income on timber sold from the territory, and the current partner, a company called MADERYJA, has never missed a payment or been late.

FSC Impacts Seventy percent of Peru’s certified concessions are located in Tahuamanu, and the neighboring concession of Maderacre, in which the Cardozos also held an interest, is also FSC-certified – and more accessible by jeep than Bélgica’s.

It spreads out over 220,000 hectares, divided into 20 plots of 11,000 hectares each, and the company works just one plot per year, so there are 20 years between harvests. The concession was cobbled together by a businessman named Erasmo Wong, who made a fortune building up Peru's largest chain of supermarkets before selling the company and devoting his life to philanthropy and sustainable agriculture.

Environmental NGO WWF has been working with Maderacre to monitor the impact of its operations on wildlife, and Josefina Braña, who runs WWF’s Forest and Climate Program, says the early indications are promising.

“The jaguar population is thriving, and we’ve seen monkeys, tapirs, birds, agouti, ant-eaters, and sloths,” she says. “Biodiversity is thriving because of the reduced-impact logging they use.”

Reduced Impact Logging The company uses drones to first identify valuable trees, then it sends out teams to survey the area from the ground.

“We use drones to identify the trees that are tall and thick enough to chop,” says Fermin Zapana Pilco, who oversees all extractive activities in the concession. “Then we map out routes to them, and finally we send out teams to see if the tree we want to chop will hurt other trees when it falls.”

The trees and patches of forest are separated into different categories: some are classified as high-conservation value (HCV), which is an official designation developed by the Forest Stewardship Council in 1999, meaning they're not to be destroyed.

“Some will also just be immature,” says Pilco. “That means they’re too small to harvest, so we leave these for when we return to this plot in 20 years.”

If there are seedlings or high-conservation trees near a tree they’re targeting, they map out a way to cut the tree so it falls where no seedlings or high-conservation trees are, but if that's not possible, they make a note of that and move on to the next tree.

“It costs us about 35 percent more to do FSC certification, as opposed to just doing what the law requires,” says Kroll. “But the market doesn't really pay a premium – or, if it does, it's 5 percent at most.

Reduced Waste We come to a massive mahogany that's passed all the criteria: it's about 70 years old, two meters in diameter – six and a half meters around, but wider at the base, and 30 meters, or about 10 stories, high. It branches out about 18 meters up, so only the first six stories can be used for wood.

Put another way, it's 40 tons of biomass, which means 20 tons of carbon, which will become 73 tons of carbon dioxide if the tree burns or decays and mixes with oxygen in the air. That's 14-times as much greenhouse gas as the average passenger car emits in a whole year of driving.

About 40 percent of the tree will end up in flooring and furniture, which locks up 30 tons of that carbon dioxide, but what about the other 44 tons? That's almost nine cars' worth.

“Some of it will be used as biofuel for our ovens,” says Nelson Kroll, Madeacre's forestry manager. “We use those to dry out the trees, but we're also working on a deal with a local farm, which wants to use it for mulch and compost.”

A Natural Climate Solution That's good for the climate, because healthy soils absorb carbon, as well as nitrogen and hydrogen, and they reduce levels of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, three powerful greenhouse gasses. A landmark study published in 2016 showed that we can get 37 percent of the way to meeting the Paris Agreement's 2-degree target just by improving the way we manage forests, farms, and fields.

That study, called "Natural Climate Solutions" identified 20 specific pathways do doing that – one of which is sustainable forest management, which is what FSC is all about, and another of which is improving soils. These natural climate solutions deliver more than one-third of the mitigation needed to meet the climate challenge, but they get just 3 percent of dedicated climate finance and 1 percent of climate-related media coverage.

The tree spreads out at the base, like a duck's foot, and the worker injects his saw into the base vertically, straight up and down, building kind of a wall of wood on three sides of the foot, so these 40 tons will fall where he wants them to.

After it lands, workers begin chopping in and marking it with alphanumeric codes to identify the tree according to the forest inventory, the section of the tree, the date it was chopped, and of course the concession.

Traceability and Legality The concession began marking the trees to meet FSC traceability requirements, but traceability has become a legal requirement, too, because the European Union and the United States have both banned the import of illegally-harvested timber. As a result, exporters are supposed to trace their timber to legally-sanctioned concessions. That doesn’t, however, always happen.

A 2014 analysis by Ecosystem Marketplace publisher Forest Trends, for example, dissected tropical deforestation from 2001 through 2012 and found that roughly 49 percent of all agriculture-related tropical deforestation in that period took place illegally, and roughly half of that illegally-harvested timber was exported.

That same year, a global coalition of governments, corporations, NGOs, and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), which is a pledge to end forest loss by 2030. The NYDF is broken into ten goals, with #10 being improved forest governance.

Today, a coalition of environmental think tanks called NYDF Assessment Partners, of which Forest Trends is a member, published updated findings on progress towards Goal #10 and found that not much has changed.

Specifically, the report, called “Improving Governance to Protect Forests”, finds that law enforcement has improved slightly since 2014, especially on the demand side, and that traceability has also improved, but that average deforestation rates increased 42 percent since the NYDF was signed.

Countries like Peru, which has a sketchy history on this front, are trying to protect exports by improving enforcement – although the effectiveness of that is limited, too, because countries like China don't put much effort into verifying legality of imports.

“There can be no effective global approach without the support and participation of China, the world’s largest importer of timber and exporter of forest products,” says Kerstin Canby, Director of the Forest Trends Forest Policy, Trade, and Finance Initiative.

“We are, however, seeing some improvement in enforcement of the European Union Timber Regulation,” she added. “By mid-2018, for example, EU Member States have implemented 17,735 checks on domestic timber, and they implemented 2,704 checks on imported timber in 2017, while more than 992 penalties have been assessed, and 21 cases went to court.”

If every forestry concession on the planet worked the way these two do, we'd have a fighting chance of meeting the climate challenge, but the district of Tahuamanu is an outlier, with a government willing to promote sustainable forestry and a citizenry willing to embrace it.

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In this episode, we speak with the Reverend Dr. Gerald Durley, who says climate change and civil rights are inexorably intertwined, and not just because the destruction of our living ecosystems is robbing us of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He says we can tap the same forces that galvanized the Civil Rights movement to fix the climate mess, but only if we recognize its inherently moral nature.

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He says we can tap the same forces that galvanized the Civil Rights movement to fix the climate mess, but only if we recognize its inherently moral nature.

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When countries around the world ratified the Paris Climate Agreement in 2016, they pledged to prevent average global temperatures from rising to a level more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels.

They picked that number because 2 degrees Celsius is the point at which climate models start going haywire, but they also asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, to review all of the available research and tell us what we'd have to do to keep that rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the point at which feedback loops like melting tundras and increased water vapor make the 2-degree increase all but inevitable.

Scientists from around the world spent the last two years reviewing over 6,000 scientific papers and mapping out different pathways to the 1.5-degree target -- from paths that focus primarily on reducing energy demand to those that focus primarily on expanding carbon sinks that pull greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere.

One of those carbon sinks is the one that I cover on Bionic Planet -- namely, natural climate solutions that work by improving the way we manage our forests, farms and fields.

The other is next-generation carbon capture and storage, involving new technologies that either don't yet exist or exist but cost a fortune to deploy.

On Monday, the IPCC released its report, and the upshot is that we can meet the 1.5-degree target by deploying a blend of these strategies, but it basically requires us to overhaul the industrial and agricultural economies.

Simple, right?

Actually, a lot of it is simple, but it's not easy to implement, because our economy puts more value on fast cars and cheap beef than on clean air or a stable climate. But the report does identify a mechanism for getting beyond that, and it's a mechanism we've covered before: namely, making companies pay for the damages their greenhouse gasses cause -- or, as we say colloquially, "putting a price on carbon".

But how much damage does a ton of carbon dioxide cause, and can we put a number on it?

These are the questions an economist named William Nordhaus spent his life addressing, through economic modeling, first on a desktop computer, and then with more and more sophistication.

n Monday, within hours of the IPCC issuing its report, the Royal Bank of Sweden announced that it was awarding the Nobel Prize for Economics to Nordhaus and another economist, Paul Romer, who focused on the economics of investing in education and in our collective future.

To honor Nordhaus, I'm re-posting parts of two early episodes featuring environmental economist Gernot Wagner, who documented Nordhaus's quest to quantify the social cost of carbon in his 2015 book "Climate Shock".

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Hindou Ibrahim grew up in rural Chad, a member of the nomadic Mbororo people. Today, she co-chairs the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, and she advises -- some would say cajoles -- everyone from major corporations like Asia Pulp and Paper to small indigenous communities from Ecuador to Indonesia to take action on climate change.

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This is the fifth in a five-part series. You can find the first installment here.

US Environmental Protection Agency boss Scott Pruitt is gone – not because of his environmental malfeasance, but because his $43,000 phone booth, his $100,000 trip to Disneyland, and his attempts to get his wife a lucrative job were too tacky even for an administration built on bling.

His replacement, Andrew Wheeler, is less embarrassing but more dangerous. A coal lobbyist until last year, Wheeler is also a long-time adviser to climate-science denier James Inhofe and a sure bet to continue Pruitt’s policies – albeit with more stealth and fewer attention-grabbing abuses of power.

Pruitt’s departure comes just one week after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his own retirement from the US Supreme Court, and those two departures have overshadowed the publication of a document that Pruitt and Army Public Works boss Ricky James dropped on us last Friday – a document that mentions Kennedy 64 times and illustrates as well as anything the underhanded way Pruitt subverts environmental protections: not through argumentation, but through sabotage in the name of regulatory certainty (and just in time for summer break).

It’s a document that will show up on the Federal Register any day now, and that you and any member of the public will then have 30 days to comment on, but which you’ll only understand if you know a bit of history, and that’s by design. It’s part of an effort to torpedo a Supreme Court opinion that Kennedy penned in 2006 – an opinion that builds on decades of precedent and practice, and that provides the foundation for the 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Rule (also known as the “Clean Water Rule”), which sets the ground rules for determining which of the waters of the United States are protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA).

If Wheeler and James can rescind that rule, they’ll manage to undermine the popular Clean Water Act without the voting public knowing until it’s too late, and last week’s document is part of their effort to do just that.

Specifically, it’s a supplemental notice to the Trump Administration’s year-old proposal to repeal the WOTUS rule and instead “recodify” the mess that predated it in accordance with an opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia – an opinion mostly ignored by courts and practitioners, for reasons we covered in earlier installments of this series.

Scalia, as we saw in part three, believed the CWA should only protect “relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water” – basically, lakes rivers, and streams, but not the wetlands or creeks that feed them, and not waterbodies that only flow intermittently.

The repeal would leave 80 percent of US waterways unprotected by federal authorities, and it’s one part of a multi-pronged attack on WOTUS that includes a two-year delay on its implementation and a more insidious order to ignore the local scientists and specialists who review dredging permits and instead “involve the Administrator’s Office early on in the process of developing geographic determinations” – a move that Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) described as “a crude Clean Water Act coup d’état.”

“This latest move by Pruitt is his Plan B as it is becoming increasingly clear that his Clean Water rewrite plan is illegal and will be tossed out in court,” she said.

In this, the fifth, final, and long-overdue installment in a five-part series on the Clean Water Rule, we try to offer a clear and simple explanation of the state of WOTUS in the current administration. You can see the first installment here.

More on the Bionic Planet Podcast

The story continues below, but I’ll also be editing audio from the interviews I conducted with Shrader and others for this series into episode 32 of the Bionic Planet podcast, which which I hope to have ready over the weekend. You can access Bionic Planet via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, and pretty much anywhere you access podcasts, as well as on this device here:

Timeline

The story continues below, but here is a timeline to help you keep key dates in order:

June 19, 2006: The Supreme Court’s Rapanos v United States split decision introduces massive uncertainty over what are and are not protected waters, sparking hundreds of court cases and demands for clarity. Over time, Justice Kennedy’s “significant nexus” guidance becomes the rule of the land.
August 27, 2015: As the Obama Administration prepares to implement the WOTUS Rule, a district court in North Dakota issues a preliminary injunction against the rule until arguments can be heard, essentially freezing the rule in 13 states.
October 9, 2015: The Sixth Circuit Court issues a nationwide stay, which the Obama Administration begins to fight before the 2016 elections sweep Donald Trump into office.
February 28, 2017: Donald Trump signs an executive order instructing the EPA to scrap the WOTUS rule and “consider interpreting the term ‘navigable waters’…in a manner consistent with the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia.”
July 27, 2017: Pruitt and acting Army Civil Works boss Douglas Lamont publish their proposal to rescind the 2015 WOTUS Rule – a move that cannot be challenged in court until the rule becomes official.
January 22, 2018: The Supreme Court rules that challenges to the WOTUS rule must be filed in district courts, forcing the Sixth Circuit Court to vacate its nationwide stay but leaving the North Dakota injunction intact.
February 6, 2018: With the Sixth Circuit Court’s stay vacated, Pruitt and Lamont implement an “applicability date” two years in the future – namely, in February, 2020 – sparking an immediate court challenge.
March 30, 2018: EPA boss Scott Pruitt directs the agency to ignore local experts and defer instead to his own office when issuing permits.
June 29, 2018: Pruitt and James issue a supplemental notice to the earlier proposal. The new notice summarizes existing court challenges and argues that their existence introduces more uncertainty than existed before the rule was created.
July 5, 2018: Scott Pruitt resigns, and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler is named his replacement.

New Notice, Old Arguments

Last week’s supplemental notice will soon be listed in the Federal Register, after which the public has 30 days to comment on it. Some organizations, like the American Farm Bureau, a longstanding WOTUS opponent, have welcomed the notice.

“The issuance of this additional notice shows that EPA listened to public comments that showed confusion over what was being proposed and why,” they said in a statement. “This supplemental notice will provide a more meaningful opportunity for public comment by clarifying that EPA’s proposal is to permanently repeal the 2015 WOTUS rule because that rule was illegal in multiple respects.”

Beyond clarifying the position, however, the notice does little to bolster the Administration’s claim that the existing rule should be repealed before the agency can “recodify” the mess that the rule was created to fix. After finding that the previous regime was riddled with uncertainty, the agency has a duty to explain why it must repeal the whole rule rather than leaving the rule in place while working to correct whatever problems the agency claims to have found in the rule.

“It’s ironic that they claim they’re doing this to provide certainty, considering the fact that before 2015 there was a world of very little certainty,” says Bethany Davis-Noll, Litigation Director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “Getting rid of the 2015 rule doesn’t reduce regulatory uncertainty; it creates regulatory uncertainty.”

In addition, the administration has yet to explain how returning to the confusing regime in place before the 2015 rule complies with the Clean Water Act or how the agency is justified in imposing forgone wetlands benefits on the public.

“Without that explanation, this could be a pretty good lawsuit for anybody who wants to challenge the agency,” says Davis-Noll

That is, in fact, a pillar of the suit currently underway to block the delayed implementation of the rule.

The Lack of Analysis or Reason

This series began back in February, when 11 states sued to block the delay in implementing the WOTUS rule, based in part on their contention that the new applicability date was pulled out of thin air while going through the motions of scientific review and public consultation as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.

A key argument is that the Trump Administration ignored the existing cost/benefit analysis and failed to conduct one of its own. Columbia University Assistant Professor Jeffrey Shrader says the Trump Administration not only overstates the costs of implementing the rule, but ignores the benefits of scenic beauty, resilient agricultural systems, and income from mitigation banking.

“They left out any benefit from mitigation or protection of wetlands,” says Shrader, who co-wrote an analysis called “Muddying the Waters: How the Trump administration is obscuring the value of wetlands protection from the Clean Water Rule”.

Specifically, he points out, the administration simply ignored all wetland benefit studies published between 1986 and 2000 on the premise that their age makes them untrustworthy, but the administration also took its own cost analysis from the same period – despite the fact that more recent studies focused on coastal wetlands show that valuation benefits have increased since then. At the same time, the rise of mitigation banking has both reduced the cost of compliance and created income for people who restore degraded landscapes.

The End of the Restoration Economy?

Proponents of the repeal argue that states will pick up the slack, but current laws evolved because upstream cities and states had little inclination to do that.

“About half of the states have laws on the books that say they cannot implement stricter protection for wetlands than the federal government, and those are the states where the largest at-risk wetlands are located,” says David Groves, a former policy advisor to the Obama Administration who now works as Director of Business Development at The Earth Partners, an environmental consultancy.

“The vast majority of economic activity in the mitigation banking industry is in the southeast, which is made up of states with no state-level protections,” he adds. “Significantly reducing the scope of the Clean Water Act would present an existential threat to the mitigation banking industry and would destroy a huge amount of value.”

The result, he says, would be more taxpayer spending overall, but the costs would flow to downstream states.

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Today I speak with Bronson Griscom, Director of Forest Carbon Science for the Nature Conservancy. Last year, he headed up a team of three dozen researchers from almost two dozen institutions tasked with identifying once and for all the realistic potential of using nature as a bulwark against climate change. The result is a report called "Natural Climate Solutions", which identifies 20 low-cost, natural "pathways" that can get us 37 percent of the way to meeting the Paris Climate Agreement targets -- sometimes at no cost, sometimes at just $10 per ton, and often while increasing food yields and reducing the cost of farming.

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Jos Cozijnsen shakes his tangled black mane and adjusts his leathery blue suit – fashioned, it turns out, from overalls discarded by German railroad workers and available through his sustainable clothing company, Goodfibrations.

“[If you have] an office park, the Building Act says how much energy efficiency you need,” he explains. “But if you go to zero energy use, you do much more.”

When it comes to fixing the climate mess, he wants everyone to do much more than the law requires, especially his fellow Dutchmen. Indeed, it seems to bother him immensely that here in the Netherlands – the birthplace of wind energy and the headquarters of Greenpeace – the average Dutchman contributes far more to climate change than does the average Swede, Swiss, or Frenchman.

But the Dutch are also notorious penny-pinchers with fervent pride in their local communities and a deep love of games and puzzles – three traits that he thinks will help them drive emissions down dramatically under a nationwide voluntary carbon program called the Green Deal, which he’s spearheading along with the Ministry of Environment and several environmental NGOs.

The program has been in the works since mid-2016, and it’s slated to go live later this year as a compliment to the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

EU ETS is a “compliance” program that legally caps greenhouse-gas emissions on some of Europe’s biggest industries – including electricity, paper, and steelmaking. It requires companies in those sectors to either reduce their emissions or buy offsets from projects that do, but it also leaves more than half of all emissions outside the regulatory apparatus.

The Green Deal is a “voluntary” program, he says, and its goal is to dramatically drive down emissions in un-capped sectors like agriculture and automotive, and to do so by encouraging people to develop carbon projects under existing standards like the Verified Carbon Standard, CarbonFix, and the Gold Standard. The project will encourage un-capped companies and individuals to first reduce emissions by reducing energy use and becoming more efficient, but it will couple that by promoting home-grown projects that generate offsets by planting trees or helping farmers reduce their emissions from methane and other greenhouse gasses. It will include a hub so people can see which type of projects are located where, and it will encourage groups to aim for zero net emissions.

“That’s the fun,” he says. “I can go to zero!”

Like coupon-collectors? I ask.

“Exactly!” he says.

Transitioning to a Post-Paris World While Cozijnsen publicly emphasizes the “fun” aspect of getting to zero (and becoming, he says, a “carbon hero”), the Green Deal could drive millions into sustainable development projects, and it comes two years after a Dutch court ruled that the government is legally obligated to slash emissions 25 percent before the Paris Climate Agreement comes into effect in 2020.

Cozijnsen, who long represented the Netherlands in global climate talks, sees the Green Deal as a way for the government to meet its pre-2020 obligation, and for companies to prepare for a post-2020 regime, when all sectors will presumably be capped.

Domestic Buying Power Dutch companies and NGOs are already active in both the voluntary and compliance markets. They transact millions of carbon offsets per year, but that money usually goes abroad – to save and restore forests around the world, according to an analysis of European voluntary carbon markets that Ecosystem Marketplace and EcoStar Natual Talents published last year.

Specifically, the report found, companies and NGOs based in the Netherlands transacted 4.4 million carbon offsets in 2015 alone, helping to build wind farms and save or restore forests across nine countries – from Indonesia and Brazil to Turkey and Uganda.

One country missing from the list: the Netherlands itself, and it’s not alone. The report also found no active land-based projects in France, Spain, or Switzerland, and only a few in Germany, the UK, and Italy.

The German Ministry of Environment has been supporting efforts to develop voluntary carbon programs domestically, and Cozijnsen says similar efforts are underway across the European Union.

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Hundreds of consumer-facing companies have pledged to purge deforestation from their supply chains -- often by only buying products that are certified as being sustainably grown. But what happens when a certified company gets caught cheating? In this case, quite a lot.

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I've produced 19 episodes of Bionic Planet since the election of Donald Trump, mostly focused on the work of people trying to fix the climate mess -- and in today's episode I look back on some of the ones that seemed to resonate most with listeners.

Today's guests include:
Mike Korchinsky, who runs the private conservation group Wildlife Works
Former UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer
Anthony Hobley of the Carbon Tracker Initiative
Christian Christian de Valle of Althelia Ecosphere
Toby Gardner of the Stockholm Environment Institute
Michael Mathres of Zaluvida
Bertrand Piccard of Solar Impulse
Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme
Noelle-Claire LeCann and Richard Fronapfel of AlphaSource Advisors
Genevieve Bennett and Brian Schaap of Forest Trends
Marco Albani of Tropical Forest Alliance 2020
Charlotte Streck of Climate Focus
Mark Buckley of Staples
Danna Smith of the Dogwood Alliance
Ally Bahroudi of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility

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More and more countries across the developing world are launching large-scale, climate-smart initiatives to transform the way local communities derive their livelihoods from forests and broader land use. A key component to the success of these programs is engaging the private sector to shift behavior toward sustainable business models.

The World Bank Group’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) have spent years working with private sector companies that produce, trade or buy commodities that play a role in driving deforestation or forest degradation. These funds have gained valuable insights into what has worked, and what more is required to bring about land use change in partnership with the private sector. Early lessons are captured in a new report entitled, Engaging the Private Sector in Results-Based Landscape Programs.

On the eve of the report's launch, I caught up to Elly Baroudy, who coordinates both the FCPF and the ISFL, and Karin Kaechele, who acts as the point person for both funds Whain Mozambique and Ethiopia.

In this episode, we discuss the origin of these two critical funds and explore the role they can play in supporting sustainable agriculture in the years ahead.

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Under the Paris Agreement, countries were asked to present their own climate action plans, and 90 percent of these action plans -- technically called NDCs, for "nationally-determined contributions" -- incorporated farming fixes -- or shiftint to sustainable agriculture.
That led to a major breakthrough this week at year-end climate talks here in Bonn, Germany, where our guest is Tonya Rawe, who runs the Food and Nutrition Security program at CARE International.

CARE is a humanitarian aid organization formed in the wake of World War II, but it's become a key player in the environmental space as well, especially when subsistence farmers are involved.

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Towards the end of summer, climate negotiators learned of three trademark applications that were filed in May of this year. One was for the logo “REDDPLUSX”, which is described as a carbon credit brokerage. Another was for the logo “RRU”, which are proposed carbon credits generated by saving or supporting forests under the Paris Agreement.

But it was the third, for the logo REDD+, that raised eyebrows across the climate community.

It raised those eyebrows because scores of organizations already use the acronym “REDD+” to describe activities that reduce greenhouse gasses by saving or reviving endangered forests. The acronym is generally spelled out as “‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks”, and it describes as set of mechanisms that generate “reduction units”, which might one day be worth billions of dollars as the world implements the Paris Climate Agreement.

The trademark applications were filed by the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), which is a New-York-based entity that promotes forest-carbon initiatives in roughly two dozen countries, and the applications came to light just as one of those countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), proposed a new “Gateway” for handling REDD+ Reduction Units – which, not coincidentally, is what “RRU” stands for.

CfRN executive director Kevin Conrad says he’s just trying to provide clarity in a process that often seems chaotic, but critics say the proposals replicate mechanisms that are already on the table, and some see an effort to control a process that’s designed to be open and inclusive.

Whatever the motives for their creation, the proposals offer insight into the issues being negotiated here in Bonn, so let’s take a quick look.

Who Uses the REDD+ Acronym? REDD+ began as an experiment in 1988, when US electric company Applied Energy Services (AES) wanted to see if it could reduce its carbon footprint by helping poor farmers in Guatemala manage their land more sustainably (for the full story, see “REDD Dawn: The Birth Of Forest Carbon”). The acronym then was “AD”, for “avoided deforestation”, and the concept evolved over the decades as NGOs continued to experiment with the science. Eventually, the phrase shifted to “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation”, then to “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”, and finally to one that includes a broader range of land-use activities. At the same time, standard-setting bodies like the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the American Carbon Registry emerged to provide ways of generating carbon offsets by determining which forests were endangered and which procedures can be used to save them.

Within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), however, REDD remained on ice until 2005, when Conrad, as lead negotiator for Papua New Guinea, wrangled it back onto the agenda at Climate Talks in Montreal (COP 11). At the 2013 climate talks in Warsaw, the UNFCCC agreed on the Warsaw Framework for REDD+, which is a cluster of agreements on how to develop REDD+ programs at a national or sub-national level and pay for results. That rulebook was enshrined in the Paris Agreement – which, by the way, rarely uses the acronym but instead spells it out in most cases.

The acronym is, however, used by carbon standards like VCS and Plan Vivo, as well as by sub-national governments like those of the US state of California and the Mexican state of Chiapas – and that, says Conrad, is a problem.

Shades of REDD In an interview for the Bionic Planet Podcast, scheduled to be posted today, Conrad said that REDD+ should only be used to describe programs that are embedded into national carbon accounting initiatives under the Paris Agreement.

“The REDD+ description under the UNFCC is that you have to have a national plan, you have to have a national monitoring system, you have to have a reference level, you have to write a report of your safeguards, and then you submit your results, and those results have to be independently reviewed by the UNFCCC itself, and then once it goes through that process, emission reductions are issued and put on the REDD+ Hub,” he said. “None of these project have gone through that process, which means they shouldn’t be calling themselves REDD+ projects.”

Currently, REDD+ offsets – meaning emission-reduction units that can be purchased by non-state actors to offset emissions – only exist in the voluntary and regional markets, although voluntary standards are increasingly being embedded in national accounting programs.

Outside of the climate arena, people do often confuse voluntary markets, regional compliance markets, and the overarching UNCCC. It’s common to see voluntary REDD programs described in the media as having been developed under the UN process, when in fact they were developed in parallel, but with an eye on eventually converging. The Mexican state of Chiapas added to the confusion a few years back when it used the acronym to describe a program that funneled auto usage fees into conservation.

All forest-carbon programs are built on scientific guidelines established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and voluntary programs are increasingly being used to fund conservation in Latin America, the Caribbean region, and Africa, according to a regional analysis of voluntary carbon markets that Ecosystem Marketplace published last month. A separate report focused on buyers of voluntary offsets. It found that companies purchase forest-carbon offsets as much for their knock-on social benefits as for their conservation values. As projects and national accounting systems evolve, most of these disparate programs hope to become “nested” within the national framework, and Conrad says buyers will need more clarity to know which are and are not nested. He bristles at accusations by some that the CfRN was trying to corner the term to earn licensing fees.

“So, the idea is to have an official REDD+ logo or mark, that all REDD+ governments can use for free,” he wrote in an open e-mail to members of the REDD+ Working Group on October 24. “This is to help the market-place determine what is real REDD+ and to distinguish it from the ‘pretenders.’”

Other negotiators cried “foul”, and pointed out that existing standards are working with governments to embed their offsets in national accounting systems, and that the UNFCCC, by design, only sets accounting guidelines, and is not meant to act as a standard.

“REDD+ was developed through the UN’s negotiations, which included all the parties to the Convention, and it’s being used around the world by governments, by UN organizations, by civil society, by indigenous peoples,” said Peter Graham, a longtime negotiator for Canada who is now with a consultancy called Climate Advisors.

“You have to ask yourself why a private entity based in Manhattan would try to create a trademark of what I would see as a global public good,” he said, adding: “That same group is proposing a mechanism through another process going on in other rooms, talking about creating a body or entity that would, in effect, control finance for REDD+.”

That entity, officially called the “Gateway to Encourage, Measure, Report, Verify and Account for Non-Party Contributions” was submitted by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Dominican Republic, Kenya, Mozambique, Panama, Papua New Guinea, and Uganda. Most negotiators say it will probably not become an agenda item in formal talks, but could become a topic in ongoing informal talks happening on the fringes.

What Does the Gateway do? The Paris agreement doesn’t explicitly mention carbon markets at all, but instead assumes that countries will develop them domestically. The Agreement’s contribution is to recognize this and to say that countries can trade “Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes” (ITMOs) among themselves to deepen the targets they’ve set in their Nationally-Determined Contributions (NDCs). (For a deep dive, see “Building On Paris, Countries Assemble The Carbon Markets Of Tomorrow”)

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement lays out two paths that countries can use to trade their emission-reductions internationally, and the two paths are not mutually exclusive. The first is the “cooperative” approach, which lets countries coordinate trading among themselves, provided they follow accounting principles that pass muster with the UNFCCC.

The second path, championed by Brazil, will be forged within the UNFCCC itself and offer a centralized mechanism for transferring emissions reductions.

The Gateway seems to suggest a third way, which Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, DRC’s chief climate negotiator and chair of the CfRN, says will be a UN-sanctioned platform designed to ensure the integrity of emission-reduction units generated by “non-parties”, which are entities that don’t have a seat at the UNFCCC table. They can be cities or states within countries that do have a seat, or they can be companies looking to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’ve realized that in our countries, we often have different private actors that come and implement projects whose quality isn’t clear, whose outcomes are sometimes unfairly distributed,” he said, in an interview that will appear on the Bionic Planet podcast.

“For us, is important that we have a platform, a gateway where different nonparties actors can come and report what they do,” he said. “For us, if what they do comes with high level of environmental integrity, high level of rigor, there will be keen of showing what they are doing.”

Few delegates believe the Gateway will become an official agenda item, but it can become a “political movement” kicking around “voluntary meetings” that were sanctioned in 2013 to make sure that outside voices were being heard.

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The DOGWOOD ALLIANCE is an environmental NGO based in the Southeastern United States -- a region that produces 12 percent of the world's wood, pulp, and paper.

STAPLES is a massive stationary and office-supply chain based up in the northern part of the country, in Massachusetts, and it buys reams and reams of paper from suppliers like Georgia Pacific and International Paper, who in turn buy paper made from trees taken from forests across the very region that Dogwood is trying to protect.

The two organizations haven't always gotten along, and they even fought each other for years before today's guests sat down over beers at a pub in Asheville, North Carolina called Jack of the Wood.

Mark Buckley is the Vice President in charge of environmental affairs for Staples, and Danna Smith runs the Dogwood Alliance.

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Today's episode is different from most: For the most part, it's just raw audio from the Climate Week that we built episode 22 on -- namely, the event where Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 unveiled its 10 keys to slashing deforestation by 2020.

I didn't edit the audio except to adjust volume levels here and there, and I don't pontificate, proselytize, or prognosticate, except towards the end, where they cut away a video that you obviously can't see with your ears.

Here is a list of speakers:

Marco Albani, Director – TFA2020
Michael Jenkins, President & CEO – Forest Trends
Charlotte Streck, Co-Founder and Director – Climate Focus
Dewi Bramono, Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement, APP
Jillian Gladstone, Senior Manager, Forests, CDP
Ignacio Gavilan, Director of Sustainability, Consumer Goods Forum
Stephen Donofrio, Senior Advisor, Forest TrendsDharsono Hartono, CEO, Katingan ProjectAshley Allen, Climate & Land Senior Manager, Mars Inc.Simon Hall, Manager, National Wildlife FederationStina Reksten, Senior Advisor,NICFI Katie McCoy, Ext. Relations & Knowledge Manager,Partnerships for ForestsAndrew Zollie, VP Global Impact Initiatives, Planet Nicole Pasricha, Manager, Markets Transformation, Rainforest AllianceRichard Scobey, President, World Cocoa FoundationKavita Prakash-Mani, Practice Leader, Food and Markets, WWF International

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Teaser

NARRATOR

Donuts, deodorant, buns and burgers. They're killing us -- and not just because of what they do to our bodies.

No, it's because of what the soy, beef, and palm-oil that they're made of -- and they paper they're packaged in -- do to the environment.

More specifically, it's because of the way way we get these commodities -- by chopping or degrading forests -- which is one reason that tropical forests now emit more greenhouse gasses than they absorb, according to a study published last month in the journal Science.

But what if I told you we could end this by 2020 -- just two years from now?

I'm not saying we can end all deforestation by 2020, but what if I told you we can purge deforestation from these four commodities -- the ones that drive most of the world's deforestation -- by ramping up ten activities that we're already engaged in -- and have been for decades: that these activities are time-tested, and they're lined up like dominoes, ready to be activated? It's like a giant, simmering pot ready to boil.

Would you believe me?

I hope so, because that's exactly what I'm saying, and it's not just me saying this. It's more than 250 economists, ecologists, and agronomists from around the world, and they're drawing on the experience of environmental NGOand small farming communities from Africa to Asia to Latin America -- as well as the big agribusinesses -- who are, quite frankly, the critical actors in all of this.

Today we're looking at these ten activities, how they fit into 100 more that are getting a lot of attention these days -- as well as where they came from, why they work, and how you can learn more about them.

NARRATOR

Earth. We broke it. We own it -- and nothing is as it was. Not the trees, not the seas - not the forests, farms, or fields -- and not the global economy that depends on all of these.

But we can restore it. Make it better: greener, more resilient, more sustainable.

But how? Technology? Geoengineering? Are we doomed to live on a... Bionic Planet? Or is Nature itself the answer?

That's the question we address in every episode of Bionic Planet, a podcast of the Anthropocene -- the new epoch defined by man's impact on earth -- and nowhere is that impact more deeply felt than in the forests, farms, and fields that recycle our air and provide our food.

Today we're looking at lists: two of them, to be specific. One involves 100 solutions that can not only slow climate change, but end it and even reverse it. The other involves ten activities that can accelerate a cluster of the big 100. In between our examination of these two lists, you're going to have to sit through a little history class -- because you won't understand where we're at or where we're going if you don't understand where we came from and how we got here.

Act I

NARRATOR

I'm opening today's show with a book review of sorts -- a very short one like the ones that Sister Mary Ann used to ask us to deliver in her English class at Christ the King school in Chicago. It compares and contrasts two best-sellers related to Climate Change. One is called "Drawdown", and it's a recipe book of sorts... for saving the planet. I love this book. The other is called "This Changes Everything", and it's a mess. I hate it -- even though it's more entertaining than the first.

What I love about Drawdown, which is edited by environmentalist and entrepreneur Paul Hawken, is that it focuses on concrete, doable ways of fixing the mess.

Specifically, it summarizes 100 solutions that can not only slow climate change, but -- cumulatively -- end it and even reverse it. Of these 100, 80 already exist and are even being implemented, while 20 are listed as "coming attractions".

He categorizes about a quarter of the solutions under either "food" or "land use", and they include things like green agriculture, forest protection, and indigenous peoples' land management -- all of which I cover in this podcast

What I hate about "This Changes Everything" is that it's shrill, sloppy, and dismissive of workable solutions. Its basic story arc is this: "Gee, I just realized this climate stuff is serious, and so I spent a year or so investigating it, and I found that all of the so-called solutions out there only fix part of the problem... none of the fix the whole thing. We need something radical! A total reset of human nature! And I'm just the person to tell you how to do it, and it involves the post office."

On the one hand, in writing the book, Naomi Klein sounded the alarm, which is great, and she even pointed out that we need to radically alter the way we run our economy... which is true... but then she dismisses anything that isn't a magic bullet like the ones that kills vampires... or is it warewolves? Anyway... and either way, she ends up floating a solution that's just as imaginary as those two creatures, while not just ignoring but actively dissing and dismissing solutions like the ones that Hawken highlights in his book

Now, I get the Daniel Burnham aspect of this -- he's the Chicago architect who said, and I quote, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized."

So, I can see why Klein -- and, in fact, most mainstream writers -- steer clear of wonky, tedious solutions. They're boring.

But our job as reporters isn't just to entertain. It's to act as a kind of scout... going out into the wilderness, seeing what's happening there -- what the threats are, how to avoid them... and then reporting back in a way that clear and concise.

I'm excited about Drawdown for two reasons: first, because it achieves this, and second, because it's become a best-seller -- and it should, because these wonky, tedious solutions aren't little. Each is massive in its own right, and Drawdown looks at 100 of them. What's more, the book's goal isn't just to slow climate change, but to actually end it and reverse it. If that doesn't stir your heart, I don't know what will -- and on that note, I'd to share with you the second half of that quote, which we almost never hear.

"Make big plans," he says. "Aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty."

Nothing there about being simple and pithy, and the emerging solutions to the climate challenge are not always simple, but they are noble, logical, orderly, and beautiful. The Paris Agreement, for example, is a masterwork of diplomacy -- a massive mosaic of thousands of smaller agreements that respect every country and culture on the planet. Likewise, the solutions I'll be examining today emerge from diverse sectors and societies, yet they all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and they're also integral to the success of the Paris Agreement.

I'm focusing mostly on the corporate sector, because that's where we need to focus our attention if we're going to fix this mess.

The ten solutions we'll be examining in the final segment come from Tropical Forest Alliance 2020.

But what is Tropical Forest Alliance 2020, and how does it influence corporate activities?

Act 2

Marco Albani

We're basically a platform for private-public collaboration

NARRATOR

That's Marco Albani who runs Tropical Forest Alliance 2020.

MARCO ALBANI

Created by US government and CGF

MUSIC: Zydeco

NARRATOR

We're going to be focusing on two organizations today, and the Consumer Goods Forum is one of them. It's a coalition of CEOs and top managers from more than 400 retailers, manufacturers, and service providers in 70 countries. It coalesced in 2009, but traces its origin to the aftermath of World War I, when French food merchants were beginning to engage in international commerce again, and needed to know that they were getting good stuff.

But they soon learned that the "war to end all wars" achieved nothing of the kind, and it wasn't until 1953 that the International Committee of Food Chains was born.

This was a commercial enterprise focused on making sure farmers in far-away places were delivering good food to merchants and shopkeepers closer to home, but the parameters of quality control gradually expanded to include labor conditions and environmental impact.

By the 1990s, environmental pressure groups had forced the creation of certification standards for the sustainable production of palm oil and timber & pulp, while other industry groups emerged to promote general food safety.

Then, in 2009, just as climate negotiators were gathering for year-end talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, three of these industry groups -- the Global Commerce Initiative, the Global CEO Forum, and the International Committee of Food Chains -- merged into the Consumer Goods Forum, which is dedicated to promoting fair labor and environmental practices among companies whose sales add up to $3.5 trillion per year.

Now, I'm not so naive as to believe that these companies are all selfless and beneficent. In fact, I even think many of them are selfish and sociopathic, as legal scholar Joel Bakan maintains.

But there are ways of changing that, and these multilateral organizations are one. In fact, research from the Forest Trends Supply Change initiative shows companies that belong to organizations like the Consumer Goods Forum not only make more environmental commitments than companies that don't, but they're also much better at reporting progress towards delivering on those commitments, which is why this matters:

MARCO ALBANI

2010 GCF Resolution

NARRATOR

Beef, soy, palm oil, and pulp & paper. There they are again -- the big four commodities responsible for most of the world's deforestation, because farmers around the world are chopping forests to grow them. So it's a pretty big deal when 400 companies line up behind a specific pledge to end that.

But, of course, it doesn't end there. Just as the Kyoto Protocol showed us that government can't do this on its own, common sense tells us that the global, profit-driven corporate sector isn't going to fix our problems on its own, either, despite what free-market fundamentalists like to believe. We need government, we need NGOs, we need indigenous groups... we need them all working together.

So, in 2012, the Consumer Goods Forum and the US government launched the group we're primarily focusing on today: Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 -- or TFA 2020 -- to get all these sectors working towards the goal of changing the way we produce the big four deforestation commodities, so that by the year 2020 we no longer chop forests to do so.

MARCO ALBANI

And since then grown... more than 400 partners... business, producers to consumers.

MUSIC: zydeco?

NARRATOR

So, you've got the Consumer Goods Forum representing business, and you've got Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 -- or TFA 2020 -- representing all of these diverse interests.

Then, in 2014, as climate negotiators were gearing up for the Lima talks, things get serious.

UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon holds a massive rally in New York designed to turbocharge TFA 2020's mission. The result is the New York Declaration on Forests, which is a pledge to cut the global rate of deforestation in half by 2020, and to end deforestation by 2030 while restoring hundreds of millions of acres of degraded land.

The pledge is endorsed by 36 national governments, 20 sub-national governments -- meaning states and cities -- 15 indigenous organizations, 53 environmental NGOs, and 52 multinational corporations.

The list of companies is interesting: it includes traditional good actors like Danone, Unilever, and Kellogg's -- but also companies with a reputation for doing the wrong thing, like Asia Pulp and Paper -- a longtime environmental pariah once known for grinding pristine forest into pulp.

Dewi Bramono

turn story around

NARRATOR

That's Dewi Bramono, Asia Pulp and Paper's Director of Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement, who we'll hear from later in the show.

Most of the audio in today's show comes from an event that Forest Trends hosted in September during New York Climate Week, and Dewi Bramono's presence in that room is proof that companies can change.

The New York Declaration on Forests is a big deal, because you got all of these companies publicly committing to tackle deforestation, and the declaration isn't just a simple statement, but is actually 10 specific goals that -- like all of those 100 solutions in Drawdown -- feed on and reinforce each other. The challenge is holding these companies to their word.

MUSIC: ends

Now we come to 2015: you've got these two global networks and this very public commitment -- how do you turn this into action?

In part by getting everyone on the same page, so the governments of the UK and Norway ramped up funding for TFA 2020, and the World Economic Forum essentially adopted it -- giving it a place to live in Switzerland. That same year, the organization I work for -- Forest Trends -- launched the Supply Change initiative -- that's Supply-Change.org -- to track not just corporate commitments, but the progress that companies report, and you may have noticed I use them as a resource quite a lot.

Now we come to last year -- 2016. You've got all of these commitments and all of this transparency, and TFA 2020 needed to pull it all together so we could see how far we were from the goal. They asked a dozen leading NGOs to help out, and they put a research-oriented group called Climate Focus in charge.

Then, at last year's climate talks in Marrakesh, they published two reports: one focused on progress towards all ten of the goals outlined in the New York Declaration on Forests, and one focused exclusively on Goal Number Two, which says that, by 2020, we will no longer be chopping forests to produce the big four deforestation commodities.

MUSIC: End zydeco

MARCO ALBANI

Goal Two Assessment - 1

NARRATOR

Specifically, it's a mixed bag. Using Supply Change data on almost 700 companies, they found less than half of the companies that had made commitments were actually disclosing progress -- although those that did report progress were usually on track to meet their goals. They also found huge variance from company to company -- meaning some great success stories, some shining examples, and a lot of lessons-learned.

MARCO ALBANI

Goal Two Assessment - 2

NARRATOR

It's crunch-time, and we need to very quickly harvest the lessons of the last eight years to see what works and what doesn't. Then we need to scale up what works, and do it fast.

So Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 called in "Climate Focus". They're the research-oriented NGO that led the creation of the two earlier assessments.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

We started with the New York Declaration

NARRATOR

That's Charlotte Streck, who runs Climate Focus.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Then we had a series of workshops... FADE OUT

NARRATOR

You get the picture. They didn't just pull this out of thin air, but instead they talked to more than 250 organizations, put their findings out for review, adjusted them, and finally presented them in New York.

SOUND: fade charlotte back in

MUSIC: pensive

NARRATOR

So, let's pause again to get our bearings.

We started with 100 activities that can reverse climate change, and we dove into one of them: ending deforestation, which we realized is part of a cluster of activities related to land-use and agriculture.

We in turn found that this cluster was broken into ten specific goals of its own, enshrined in the New York Declaration on Forests. Then we dove into one of those ten goals -- Goal Number Two, the most immediate one: purging deforestation from the big four commodities by the year 2020 -- and we found it's doable.

And now, after diving down to this one goal... we're going to open things up again... to look at the ten priority areas that can help us achieve the goal of purging deforestation from these four key commodities in just two years, which will in turn help us achieve the other 9 goals in the New York Declaration on Forests, which will in turn help us achieve a few dozen of the 100 activities that will help us reverse climate change.

MUSIC: END

NARRATOR

Before we move on, some key points. First:

Charlotte Streck

This is not a step-wise approach

NARRATOR

And also, if we do achieve the 2020 goal, the game isn't over. ,

MARCO ALBANI

Need to keep long-term

MUSIC: ??

NARRATOR

I'm about to unveil the ten priority areas, but first I have a question for you: do you like this show?

If so, would you like more episodes -- maybe better produced to boot? With a second set of ears and more time for editing?

You can make that possible by giving me a good rating on iTunes or wherever you access the show; you can tell friends about me. Or, best of all, you can become a patron at bionic-planet.com

I've set the patronage page up so you can support me per episode, but with a monthly cap. So, if you think $5 per month is good for a five-episode month, you can pledge $1 per episode, but with a $5 monthly cap. That way, if I don't manage to generate five episodes in a month, you're not paying for something you didn't get, and if I go nuts and deliver 20 episodes one month, you won't get whacked, either. By the same token, you can offer $5 per episode... or 10 or 50 or whatever.

I'm sitting on a ton of material -- Interviews and audio I gathered as far back as June -- and I'm itching to share it with you in ways that make sense. But I've got a day job, and I've got to pay the bills, too, and I'm not even close to breaking even on the podcast. I like the idea of being listener supported, but am also open to big sponsors, advertisers, or investors to cover my costs, hire some help, and scale this up. The web site, again, is bionic-planet.com, or you can e-mail me at steve@bionic-planet.com

MUSIC: end music

Act 3

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. The ten priority areas for purging deforestation from the supply chains of the big four deforestation commodities by the year 2020. Beginning with

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

point 1

NARRATOR

So, what does this mean? I'll let Michael Jenkins explain it. He runs Forest Trends, which means he signs my checks... but I think the group does good work, too, which is why I work for them.

Michael Jenkins

Forest Trends Illegality Report 1

NARRATOR

He means illegal conversion of forests to farms or fields.

MICHAEL JENKINS

Forest Trends Illegality Report 2

NARRATOR

Let that sink in for a moment. In fact, let's hear it again.

MICHAEL JENKINS

Forest Trends Illegality Report echo

NARRATOR

So, while we do need better legal frameworks, we also need to enforce the laws already on the books -- as Brazil showed when it slashed deforestation 70 percent between 2004 and 2014. If you listened to Episode 20, you heard how good-acting companies can also support enforcement -- something Charlotte also alluded to.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

companies can help

NARRATOR

Companies that are good with the law can also boost their bottom line by building up trust with importers abroad -- as Asia Pulp and Paper is doing in Indonesia.

DEWI BRAMONO

legality

NARRATOR

It's the right thing to do -- and it certainly can't hurt their status with global buyers.

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

And that brings us to...

SOUND: Gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

2- palm certificatin

NARRATOR

Palm oil is in everything from donuts to soap to after-shave. You probably use it but don't even know it.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Palm Oil is one of the main drivers

NARRATOR

Remember we talked about certification on the start? Supply Change data shows that of the big four commodities, companies are making the most progress in reducing deforestation around two of them: palm oil and timber and pulp -- mostly because we started seeing certification of these back in the 1980s. Today, about 21 percent of palm oil is certified by the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO. The challenge is twofold: getting consumers to pay a premium for this, and extending certification to more forests.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

We don't have sufficient demand

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

Then comes the next priority

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

3 beef intensification

NARRATOR

"Sustainable intensification of cattle grazing"... that basically means raising more cows on the same piece of land, so that you don't have to keep chopping forests to graze them.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Beef is responsible for more...

NARRATOR

In episode 7 of Bionic Planet, we saw how Kenyan farmers are using agroforestry to increase milk production -- they plant trees in among their crops to pull nitrogen from the air and infuse it into the soil, and they turn the leaves into silage for their cows. That's just one solution, and there are dozens of them. Ideally, we should all eat less beef, but for now we can reduce the amount of land used to raise the ones we do have.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

we know that we can

SOUND: drumroll

SOUND: gong

NARRATOR

Which brings us to...

CHARLOTTE STRECK

4 palm and cocoa intensification

NARRATOR

Cocoa is not one of the big four, but it's a huge contributor -- and it's mostly produced by small farmers working in cooperatives.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

More than 30 percent of palm oil and 90 percent of cocoa

NARRATOR

The report shows that small palm-oil producers can increase their productivity 85 percent without chopping more trees.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

These smallholders

NARRATOR

So, that gets us through three of the big four, plus cocoa -- or cacao, as the threes themselves are called.

Ignacio Gavilan

what about soy - 1

NARRATOR

Yes -- what about soy? That, by the way, is Ignacio Gavilan, Director of Sustainability, for the Consumer Goods Forum.

IGNACIO GAVILAN

what about soy - 2

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

And that brings us to...

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

5 sustainable soy

NARRATOR

Up until 2006, farmers across the Brazilian Amazon were chopping forest like mad to grow soy, but then something changed: Companies like McDonalds -- responding to pressure from groups like Greenpeace -- voluntarily stopped buying soy from Amazon farmers who chop trees to grow the stuff. The soy moratorium is just one example of a successful multilateral effort to fix the climate mess.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

it is important

NARRATOR

Certification programs are ridiculously expensive and notoriously difficult to manage -- I mean, this is really complex stuff. A company like McDonalds buys beef from slaughterhouses like Marfrig or JBM, and those slaughterhouses buy from thousands of small farmers. To really do this right, we have to scale up

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

And that's where the next priority area comes in

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

6 - accelerating implementation of jurisdictional

NARRATOR

"jurisdictional" means governmental -- it can be federal, it can be state, it can be county, or even city. If you get an entire state like Sabah in Malaysia or California in the United States to make sure it's farmers are producing fruits and veggies in a sustainable way, companies can buy there without spending a fortune to certify each producer individually.

CHARLOTTE STRECK

we have screened 34

NARRATOR

The state of Sabah, in Malaysia, for example, is working with several NGOs that have coalesced into an alliance called "Forever Sabah"

Cynthia Ong

jurisdictional 1

NARRATOR

That's Cynthia Ong, who runs a group called "Land, Empowerment Animals, People" or LEAP. She's also one of Forever Sabah's co-executive directors.

CYNTHIA ONG

jurisdictional 2

NARRATOR

Even big companies like Asia Pulp and Paper have realized they can't access certified material on a large scale one plantation at a time.

DEWI BRAMONO

landscape jurisdiction

NARRATOR

There are scores of efforts underway -- the Rainforest Alliance is also doing great work, which you can learn about if you listen to episode 23 -- that episode will have the raw audio from this event without me interjecting every few minutes. It's kind of long, but if this episode sparked your interest, I think you'll find the full event worth listen to.

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

But for now, we move on to...

SOUND: Gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

7 - land security and land rights

NARRATOR

This is another one we've addressed here before: indigenous and traditional communities tend to have a strong connection to their land. Studies have shown they usually -- not always, of course, but usually -- maintain their forest and want to keep it, but their legal rights to the forests are often in limbo. That leaves them vulnerable to speculators, and also less willing to invest too much in the forest

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Uncertainty of land.

NARRATOR

Another thing to remember: people in developing countries buy stuff, too

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

Which brings us to:

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Goal: Mobilizing demand in emerging markets

NARRATOR

Remember earlier, when we talked about certification? We learned that 21 percent of all palm oil is certified by the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, or the RSPO. One reason it's not higher is that people still, for the most part, buy whatever is cheapest, so it's not worthwhile for producers to spend all that money getting certified -- and that's even more so in developing countries.

Kavita Prakash-Mani of WWF is working to change that.

Kavita Prakash-Mani

21 percent

CHARLOTTE STRECK

In addition to this: domestic demand

NARRATOR

We're getting near the end here, folks -- so far, we've talked a lot about producers and consumers, but what about investors?

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

That brings up our next priority area:

SOUND: Gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

Redirecting Finance

NARRATOR

This is something we cover a lot on bionic planet, and it's the core of what we cover at Ecosystem Marketplace.

Investors are still backing the bad actors, and they'll continue to do so until they realize that environmental bad actors are also financial bad risks -- but they'll only realize that if we all hold the bad actors accountable and support the good ones.

We've seen some progress on this front over the past year, with HSBC manning up to some investments that led to deforestation and pulling the plug. You can learn more about that in an article I wrote for Ecosystem Marketplace called "Why HSBC's Recent Response To Greenpeace Really Is A Very Big Deal", and I link to that in show notes for this episode, which is episode 22 at bionic-planet.com.

We're also seeing governments like Norway's stepping up with finance for sustainable forest management.

Stina Reksten

private-sector-capital 1

NARRATOR

That's Stina Reksten of Norway's International Climate and Forest Initiative. She's helping to launch a new fund, together with the Global Environment Facility, Unilever, and IDH -- which is a Dutch sustainable trade initiative.

STINA REKSTEN

private-sector-capital 2

NARRATOR

But that's just a sneeze in a hurricane compared to the $55 trillion global economy

CHARLOTTE STRECK

we have the finance

NARRATOR

But finance doesn't flow with guidance

SOUND: drumroll

NARRATOR

And that brings us to...

SOUND: gong

CHARLOTTE STRECK

data

NARRATOR

This is where we come in. I already mentioned Supply Change -- that's supply-change.org -- and we did another episode -- episode 11 -- focused on a platform called TRASE, which lets you trace soybeans from specific municipalities in Brazil to ports around the world. There are plenty of other efforts, and Nicole Pasricha of Rainforest Alliance outlined one that they're participating in.

Nicole Pasricha

point 10

NARRATOR

That might sound boring and wonky, but the whole issue of comparability is critical -- because if you can't compare what different countries, companies, and counties are doing, you can't reject -- or reform -- the bad guys and reward the good

Remember Ignacio Gavilan of the Consumer Goods Forum? He pointed out that member firms didn't know how much soy they used. So his group created a solution

IGNACIO GAVILAN

soy ladder

NARRATOR

Ignacio Gavilan wrapping up this edition of Bionic Planet -- which is a bit different than most episodes. I usually like to dive deep into an issue, but this time, we kept it pretty high-level. I hope to revisit all of these activities in more detail, and if you think that would be of value, be sure to help me out by sharing Bionic Planet with friends and giving me a good rating on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you access podcasts. You can also help by becoming a patron at bionic-planet.com -- where you can show your appreciation for as little as $1 per month.

If today's show sparked your curiosity, be sure to download episode 23 as well. That one will contain the full audio from the Climate Week session that I harvested for this. If you're a paid patron, I will not be charging for episode 23, but rather just uploading that as a public service.

Until next time, I'm Steve Zwick in Rotterdam. Thanks for listening!

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If you know anything about IKEA Group, the giant Scandinavian furniture company, you know that most of their products are made of wood, and you may even know that they're one of the "good" companies that tries to buy only products that are sustainably harvested.

They've pledged that, by 2020, 100 percent of their wood, pulp, and paper will either be recycled or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as sustainably produced. So far, they're on track to achieve that, according to the Forest Trends Supply Change initiative -- which tracks the progress companies report towards achieving environmental commitments. The Supply Change entry for IKEA shows the company was 61 percent of the way towards achieving its 2020 goal as of March of this year.

Two months earlier, my colleague Kelley Hamrick at Ecosystem Marketplace published a report called "State of Private Investment in Conservation 2016", which I was flipping through this morning while researching today's show. In so doing, learned that IKEA has also started investing in forests all across Europe -- explicitly to make sure those forests are managed in ways that serve a larger public good, and in so doing help the company meet its sustainability commitments.

As of January, when the report came out, IKEA had purchased about 100,000 hectares of forest in Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltics, and it had earmarked more than 1 billion more dollars for investing in sustainable forestry.

Make no mistake: they're doing this to make money, but do do so in a sustainable way, and that means this qualifies as "impact investing", which is any investment that's designed to generate both a profit and a larger public good.

The Global Impact Investing Network has identified more than $30 billion of impact investments in the last three years, and Kelley's report, which I alluded to above, identified about $8 billion earmarked for impact investments specifically involving forests, farms, and fields -- all of which need to be better managed if our civilization is to survive the climate challenge.

Now, $8 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but it really is just a sneeze in a hurricane compared to the $55 trillion global economy. What's more, on top of that $8 billion, another $5 billion was allocated, but went uninvested.

Today we speak with Noelle-Claire LeCann and Richard Fronapfel, who run impact investment group AlphaSource Advisors and see big opportunities for people who want to make money by helping the world better manage its forests, farms, and fields in the Anthropocene

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Have you ever heard of a company called Marfrig Global Foods? How about JBS?

Hint: JBS is named after "Jose Batista Sobrinho", a Brazilian rancher who's something like the Oscar Meyer of Brazil, only much bigger.Yes, JBS and Marfrig are two of the world’s largest meatpackers, and you’ll find their products in Walmart and McDonald’s in the United States, Marks & Spencer in the United Kingdom, Albert Hein in the Netherlands… but usually with someone else's name on it.

Both companies grew at the expense of the Amazon Biome, which which farmers have been chopping to grow soy and graze cattle. That started in the 1950s, and it accelerated for decades -- until about ten years ago, when consumer-facing companies like the ones I just mentioned started getting pressure from their customers, thanks to environmental groups like Greenpeace and others - and that led to something called the “Cattle Agreements”, which are a set of voluntary commitments to stop buying from any farms that either chop forest to graze cattle, use slave labor, or graze on indigenous or protected lands.

The Cattle Agreements came three years after grain companies like Cargill and Louis Dreyfuss agreed to a similar moratorium on soy products from the Amazon. More recently, something like that started happening in Indonesia as well. There companies like Wilmar and Asia Pulp & Paper started changing the way they buy their pulp, paper, and palm - often in cooperation with competitors.

All of these initiatives have two things in common: they involve the big four commodities that drive most of the world's deforestation – namely, cattle and soy in Brazil and palm and pulp & paper in Indonesia – and they’re largely led by the private sector, usually in response to NGO pressure, and only rarely in coordination with government agencies. Indeed, about 500 companies have pledged to reduce their impact on forests, according to the Forest Trends Supply Change initiative, which tracks corporate deforestation commitments relevant to the big four commodities.

But what about the governments? After all, both Indonesia and Brazil have created detailed climate action plans, and both of those efforts involve saving forests. That matters, because deforestation generates between 15 and 20 percent of the greenhouse gasses that man is responsible for emitting, and these two countries account for about 40 percent of the world's deforestation, according to a new report called “Collaboration Toward Zero Deforestation: Aligning Corporate and National Commitments in Brazil and Indonesia”, which looks at the ways government and the private sector are – and are not – cooperating to reduce greenhouse gasses from deforestation.

Created jointly by Forest Trends and the Environmental Defense Fund, the report identifies more than a dozen initiatives, some led by NGOs or the private sector, others led by governmental agencies, and most existing in their own silos instead of working together in unison. Today’s guests: the authors of that report: Brian Schaap of Forest Trends and Breanna Lujan of Environmental Defense Fund.

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Our show today starts with two French communes -- namely, Contrexéville and Vittel -- because these two have some of the cleanest, purest water in all of Europe, but they also almost didn't.

Up until 1992, the farms here -- like those across Europe and around the world -- had been dribbling pesticide and cow poop into the water, while home-owners and businessmen had been doing the same for crude oil and other pollutants.

But then the communes undertook a massive environmental overhaul.

Farmers started getting rid of their cows and weaning themselves off of pesticides by rotating their crops in ways that didn't give bugs a chance. Home-owners and businesses started digging up their oil tanks and replacing them with natural gas installations. Today, more than 90 percent of the land in both communes is under some sort of environmental protection.

But this overhaul wasn't led by environmental regulators. It was led by a private company with a very clear incentive.

The company was Swiss food giant -- and perpetual water bad boy -- Nestlé, and its incentive was the fact that its lucrative Vittel, Contrex and épar mineral waters were only lucrative because they're certified as "natural". To keep that certification, they had to clean up the rivers that feed the aquifer that in turn feeds the springs that the waters gurgle up from.

The stakes were high enough – and the incentive strong enough – that Nestlé created a separate consultancy called Agrivair and spent more than €24.5 million throughout the 1990s “to design a system to either compensate farmers for their change in practice, or acquire the land and lease it for free under conditions targeting groundwater protection,” according to a new report called “State of European Markets 2017: Watershed Investments”.

The report is one of three market outlooks that the Forest Trends initiative Ecosystem Marketplace created to support a cluster of new online university courses launched by green businesses accelerator ECOSTAR to help organic farmers, watershed managers and other “green entrepreneurs” better understand the business elements of their respective missions. The ecosystem services e-learning course will run from October to December, and the application deadline is September, 30th. You can learn more at ecostarhub.com/e-learning-course.

The Agrivair project still pays farmers an average of €200 per hectare to keep things green, and it’s one of more than a dozen “payments for ecosystem services” (PES) programs highlighted in the three reports. Lead author Genevieve Bennett, a Senior Associate at Ecosystem Marketplace, says the project illustrates the ability of companies to provide resources when properly incentivized. She adds, however, that private and public interests rarely line up so neatly, and that such projects work best within a well-structured regulatory environment.

“You don’t really want a private company taking a lead on decisions about water resources management in your basin,” she says in an extensive, 45-minute interview that will run on episode 19 of the Bionic Planet podcast, which is set to be posted on Monday, 17 July. “That’s a public issue…but where there is a seat for the private sector at the table is contributing resources: if you’re a beverage company and you’re concerned about clean water and you want to kick in some funding to help pay for that…that’s a positive thing.”

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Today we speak with Andrew Mitchell, founder and director of the Global Canopy Programme (GCP).
A zoologist by training, Andrew realized that to save the forest, he had to leave the forest and enter the economic system that was impacting it. So he founded and runs GCP in Oxford and recently became a Senior Adviser to Ecosphere Plus, which is an impact investment group that funnels money into sustainable land-use. I caught up to him in May at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona.
I first met Andrew at the 2007 climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, when I was just starting to learn about the impact that forestry and farming had on climate change and how our consumption patterns fit into that. I'd done some research on my own and then plunged into the deep end -- jumping from technical panel to technical panel, and sleeping just four hours per night for two weeks.Andrew stood out from most of the other science guys because of his ability to communicate complex issues in simple ways -- which is a rare skill. More importantly, his ideas have stood the test of time, while a lot of the simple communicators are oversimplifying or speaking from a position of ideology instead of science.As I mentioned, we spoke at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona.

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When UK retailer Marks & Spencer launched its ambitious sustainability strategy in early 2007, it dubbed the strategy “Plan A” to remind us that we have just one planet, so there is no Plan B.

Plan A amounted to nothing less than a complete restructuring of the company’s supply chain – from the thousands of small farmers who produce its raw materials to the millions of people who buy its products – and it launched with an ambitious list of 100 commitments covering everything from the way it treats its partners to the health and well-being of its employees.

Despite the name, Plan A was designed to change over time, with an initial five-year phase ending in 2012 and leading to a more ambitious second phase, and then another after that. By late 2009, however, it was clear that the project had succeeded in galvanizing the workforce and winning over suppliers, but it wasn’t resonating with customers.

“Internally, Plan A has been a powerful change brand, helping 75,000 M&S employees and 2000 suppliers to see the links between activities as disparate as taking trans fats out of food, reducing energy use and promoting Fairtrade,” wrote Mike Barry, the company’s director of sustainability, in a 2009 piece for the UK marketing magazine “Campaign”.

“Consumers buy more deeply into sustainability when they are engaged in change, and not just told about it,” he continued, explaining the company’s 2009 decision to add a consumer-facing tagline: “Doing the right thing”, coupled with an education campaign.

Overhaul for the Long Haul The 2008 banking crisis hit the retail sector hard, but by late 2009 Plan A had achieved 45 of its 100 commitments; and in 2010, auditors attributed £50 million of extra profit to Plan A – mostly because of energy efficiency and streamlined procurement costs. But Rose decided to leave the company that year, and one of his final acts was to initiate an early end to the phase one so that the sustainability team could harness the lessons learned for a new five-year phase through 2015, with regular five-year intervals after that.

“It might take 20 or 25 years to build a truly sustainable Marks & Spencer, and you can’t have a 25-year plan in retail,” says Barry. “Things change by the day, the week, the month. So what we had to have is a recognition that every few years – and five’s a nice cycle – we’d update the plan, and think about where to go next with it.”

Rose’s successor, Marc Bolland, recommitted to Plan A, which added 80 more commitments for the 2010-2015 period. By 2012, Plan A was delivering a net benefit of £105 million, according to that year’s annual report.

“The substantive part of this benefit comes from improved resource efficiency, although we are now deriving extra benefits from initiatives that drive our existing business and from new revenue streams,” it said.

To engage customers, they decided to crystallize their strategy into distinct Plan A Attributes, “and we decided that every M&S product has to have a Plan A story to tell by 2020,” says Barry.

What is a Plan A Attribute? “In most cases, a Plan A attribute will be a well-recognized external environmental and social standard such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified wood or Fairtrade certified cotton,” the 2011 annual report said. “Where external standards don’t exist we work with others to develop our own approach which is credible and robust.”

The annual reports hint at rigorous internal debates over what is and is not a Plan A Attribute, and each attribute is clearly defined and documented. Even before settling on a list of Attributes, however, the company agreed make sure that half of all products sold had one by 2015. By 2012, they had identified 55 attributes – 40 for M&S food and household products and 15 for M&S clothing and home products. By 2013, that number had risen to 70, and by 2014 – one year ahead of schedule – 56 percent of all products sold had at least one attribute.

Peruse their shelves today, and you’ll find familiar standards like Fairtrade as well as in-house standards like Forever Fish, but Barry says the company has a long way to go.

“Metaphorically, we are but 25% sustainable,” he says. “At least 75% of the journey lies ahead.”

And that journey, he says, can’t progress in a meaningful way unless we fix the entire ecosystem within which M&S operates. After all, the company’s $23 billion in revenue amounts to a rounding error in the $100 trillion global economy.

“Tiny little M&S is not going to make the world’s palm oil production sustainable on its own,” says Barry. “It needs to work with Unilever, with Coke, with Pepsi, with Walmart and all the others to make sure we can move the industry together.”

All of those companies have joined multilateral sustainability groups like the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), where M&S plays a leadership role.

A “System Change” “We have to be part of a system change, and that system change is, in part, because all of the retailers that we work with at the Consumer Goods Forum and Sustainable Brands line up and specify the same high standard of expectation of their supply chains,” Barry says

Such cooperation does seem to be generating results, according to a report called “Tracking Corporate Commitments to Deforestation-Free Supply Chains, 2017”, which the Forest Trends Supply-Change published in March.

The initiative looked at 35 collective efforts and found that at least 95% of the companies participating in such groups had pledged to reduce their impact on forests.

Meanwhile, Plan A continues to evolve. Earlier this month, current CEO Steve Rowe unveiled the plan through 2025, and it includes a plan to support 1,000 communities and benefit 10 million people – making M&S one of more than 100 companies to explicitly

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It's been almost a year since a Swiss engineer/businessman named André Borschberg and a Swiss psychiatrist/balloonist named Bertrand Piccard completed the first-ever around the world flight in a solar-powered airplane -- the Solar Impulse 2, a machine that could, theoretically, fly forever without every pausing to refuel.

But this wasn't just an adventure. It was a mission to show that we can meet the climate challenge, and it's a mission that Bertrand Piccard is still continuing.

I ran into him in late May at the Innovate4Climate Summit in Barcelona, where he launched something called the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions, which aims to identify and fund 1000 profitable climate-change solutions by the end of 2018.

I'll be adding a complete article from Ecosystem Marketplace to the show notes for Episode 16 at Bionic-Planet.com, so be sure to check back next week. Also, if you want to visit the Alliance's site directly, go to alliance.solarimpulse.com.

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More than 1.5 billion cows are spread across the planet, each with four stomachs. That's six billion stomachs emitting methane -- a powerful greenhouse gas that captures about eighty times more heat -- or contributes about eighty times as much to climate change -- as carbon dioxide does, at least in the short term.

Now a new product called Mootral -- like "Neutral" but with a Mooo instead of a Nooo -- aims to slash those emissions by killing off the bad bacteria in the stomachs of cows and other "ruminants" -- which is what we call four-stomached beasts like cows, goats, and sheep.By killing off the bad bacteria, Mootral makes the animals healthier and slashes the methane in their burps by about 30 percent. Can this new tool help to slow climate change?

Here is the Mootral web site: www.mootral.com

Topics: climate change, mootral, cows, methane, carbon offsetting

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With the United Kingdom on the brink of leaving the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS), the United States locked in the inertia of a Donald Trump presidency, and populism stoking fears of slackening commitment to meeting the climate challenge, support for carbon markets is coming from two once-unlikely sources: namely, risk-adverse corporate boards and China, according to the International Emission Trading Association’s (IETA) annual Greenhouse-Gas Market Sentiment survey, which was released last week at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona one day after Ecosystem Marketplace’s latest survey of voluntary carbon market practitioners, Unlocking Potential: State of Voluntary Carbon Markets 2017.

The Ecosystem Marketplace report identified transactions for roughly 63 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) last year, including the 1 billionth metric ton transacted since the first State of Voluntary Carbon Markets Report in 2006. That represents a 24 percent drop from 2015, in part because two large participants failed to respond to the survey.

The total value was $191.3 million, and the report comes as governments around the world begin scaling up mandatory cap-and-trade programs to accelerate emission-reductions under the Paris Climate Agreement. In the past, governments have used voluntary carbon programs to incubate mandatory trading systems like the one currently underway in California. There are currently no plans for such incubation efforts, but the Dutch government recently became the latest government to formally endorse voluntary markets as a way to test new strategies and promote emission-reductions at home. At the same time, some voluntary offset types could be recognized under the aviation industry’s global cap-and-trade program, which kicks in after 2020.

The Need for a PR Offensive The IETA report, which is built on a survey of 135 IETA members from across the globe and conducted by PwC, led to calls for a major “PR offensive” to counter populist rhetoric and anti-science propaganda, which reporter Jane Meyer ties to Koch Brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, John M. Olin, and the DeVos and Coors families in her book “Dark Money“.

“The high of seeing the Paris Agreement enter into force last year was tempered by an increase in populist political movements that have pushed climate change down the agenda,” says IETA President and CEO Dirk Forrister. “While the changing political headwinds are cause for concern, we are encouraged by those that are stepping up to lead on climate action. Nationalism and isolationism won’t solve this global problem.”

Still, 77% of respondents said that climate change is a board-level priority, and 90% said board-level engagement has either increased or stayed the same in the past year.

On the voluntary carbon front, the majority of offsets sold came from programs that save endangered forests using mechanisms collectively known as REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus other land-use initiatives) and wind projects. Landfill methane projects followed as another top project type.

A disturbing 54.4 MtCO2e of offsets went unsold.

In addition to the above podcast, Hamrick will appear in two webinars we’re hosting on June 6th and 7th. For more resources and to download the free report, visit this page.

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One hundred and forty-four countries have ratified the Paris Climate Agreement, and 143 of them say they'll stay-in-it – even if Donald Trump pulls the United States out. But staying in and delivering what you stayed in to do are two different things. One way to track progress is to track laws, and a newly-updated database tracks over 1200 of them.

11 May 2017 | The United States may be backsliding on climate under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled House and Senate, but the country still has 8 federal laws related to climate change and 6 climate policies; and hundreds of lawsuits are going on, including 54 under the Clean Air Act alone.

Those numbers come from two databases: “Climate Change Laws of the World”, housed at the London School of Economics, and “US Climate Change Litigation”, housed at Colombia University.

Together, they track more than 1,200 climate change or climate change-relevant laws worldwide – up from a mere 60 in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol came into force. The LSE has spent the last few months combing through the data, and published their findings on May 9.

Laws as Proxy for Progress Countries won't officially take stock of their progress under the Paris Agreement until 2023, when they sit down and see who did what and how everyone can do more, but at this point we don't even know exactly what activities countries will be taking stock of.

That “stocktaking” is one of the things negotiators are negotiating this week and next in Bonn, Germany, but for now we just have proxies – like renewable-energy growth, rates of deforestation, and of course legal frameworks.

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Climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany, the next two weeks to move the Paris Climate Agreement forward – even as Republicans in the United States seem intent on moving it backward. Most countries say they want the US to stay in the agreement, but there’s reason to believe it will be better off without us.

8 May 2017 | The dark-haired man looked haggard and world-weary as he leaned towards the microphone.

“We ask for your leadership,” he told US Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, with cameras running and the world watching.

“We seek your leadership,” he continued. “But if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way!”

The year was 2007, and the young man was Kevin Conrad, who represents Papua New Guinea in UN climate talks. The place was Bali, Indonesia, where George W Bush’s US negotiating team had been gunking up talks with silly games and doublespeak. The words perfectly captured the exasperation in the room, and delegates roared in rare applause. Bush’s team backed down.

But ten years on, it’s déjà vu all over again, except this time the world isn’t haggling over how to fix the climate mess. Instead, negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany this week and next to begin implementing the bottom-up fix that the world has already agreed on – a fix the United States was instrumental in creating: namely, the Paris Climate Agreement, which is a flexible framework that gives every country the leeway to meet the climate challenge as it sees fit.

It does require the creation of science-based rules for measuring and monitoring emissions, and the world’s media should be focused on the substantive efforts to develop a detailed rulebook for handling international cooperation on emission-reductions. Instead, however, the Trump Show has stolen the spotlight, and media is preoccupied with the question of whether Trump will or will not pull out of the landmark accord.

Most reports focus on the tragedy of him leaving, but some insiders fear the opposite: namely, that he’ll stay in and sabotage progress.

Gus Silva-Chavez is one of those. A longtime NGO observer, Silva-Chavez now runs the Forest Trends REDDX initiative, which tracks carbon finance – finance that depends on accurate measurements of greenhouse-gas emissions and reductions, as well as rigorous tracking of international carbon transfers.

It’s complicated stuff, but 99 percent of the work has already been done. Silva-Chavez, however, fears the Trump team will either complicate it even more or try to “streamline” it, which would undermine the environmental integrity of the system.

“They could go in and say, ‘The UN is not going to tell the US what to do,’” he says in an interview to appear on today’s episode of the Bionic Planet podcast. “They could say, ‘We don’t need an extensive, detailed rulebook. All we need are the basics, and we’re not going to agree to anything more.’”

That, he says, could slow the talks without formally appearing to do so, just as Republican strategists undermined civil rights while formally protecting “freedom”. Also, he adds, while the US stands alone now, any opposition could provide cover for other countries to also bail or stall.

“Right now, on the record, every country is saying the right thing: that they’ll toe the line,” he says. “But that could change if the US breaks its word.”

If that sounds far-fetched, we need just look back to the bad old days of the second Bush administration, which handed negotiations over to a previously unknown and famously unqualified congressional staffer named Harlan Watson.

The Triumvirate of Obstruction Watson was a human wrench tossed into the gears of global diplomacy by ExxonMobil for the sole purpose of grinding those gears to a halt. For that task, we was actually well-suited, and his name elicits such visceral feelings of disgust among those who were there that it probably warrants a trigger warning. The parallels to today are frightening: ExxonMobil inserted Watson into the Bush administration via a fax “which Exxon Mobil spokesman Russ Roberts said was sent by the company but not written by any of its employees,” as Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin put it – foreshadowing the daily doublespeak that Sean Spicer now spews at every White House presser.

Watson, along with Dobriansky and energy industry lawyer James Connoughton, formed an unholy Triumvirate of Obstruction that neutered the US on the world stage, and as an example, you can look to Bali: after months of stalling and flip-flopping, Watson said the US would only sign an agreement without targets or numbers because “once numbers appear in the text, it prejudges the outcome and will tend to drive the negotiations in one direction.”

After another collective groan from delegates, it was former US Vice-President Al Gore’s turn to speak.

“My own country, the United States, is mainly responsible for obstructing progress at Bali,” he admitted, but “over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now….One year and 40 days from today, there will be a new (presidential) inauguration in the United States.”

He argued that even a watered-down agreement was better than nothing, so delegates passed an agreement that met all of Watson’s criteria, but Dobriansky still rejected it, prompting Conrad’s famous, exasperated retort and Dobriansky’s about-face.

As we all know now, Barack Obama won the next election, and his team incrementally helped shepherd the talks that resulted in the Paris Agreement – an incredibly flexible approach to fixing the climate mess that encourages a race to the top instead of binding targets.

Optimists like former Dutch negotiator Jos Cozijnsen point out that, from a rational perspective, the United States has no reason to either leave or torpedo the agreement.

“It’s not rational… and this is not Kyoto,” says Cozijnsen, who now advises environmental NGOs, referencing the Kyoto Protocol. “You can’t block anything anymore, and there is no reason for the US to do so.”

The Trump team, however, isn’t rational, either; and while they can’t formally block, they can gunk things up. Or they can get out of the way.

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Today we examine an amazing new tool called "Trase", which launched at year-end climate talks in Marrakesh, Morocco.

It shows you something we've always known was there, but could never see: namely, 320,000 supply threads, going from individual municipalities in Brazil, through local brokers, to importers in countries around the world.

With it, you can see which trading companies are buying soybeans form municipalities where farmers are chopping forests to grow them, and companies can see, too.

It's a tool that good companies can use to reduce their impact on forests, and that watchdogs can use to keep bad companies honest.

Read the companion story on Ecosystem Marketplace:

Can “Radical Transparency” Save Forests And Slow Climate Change?

Bionic Planet is also available on iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, and elsewhere.

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US president-elect Donald Trump claims to have an open mind on climate science, but he put an unabashed climate-science denier in charge of his environmental transition team, and he says he'll slash NASA's climate-monitoring capabilities.

Might a president who doesn't believe in climate science still find it worthwhile to stay in the Paris Agreement? And who will pick up the slack if he doesn't?

These are questions we addressed in three stories on Ecosystem Marketplace:

“Can Individual US States, The Private Sector, And The International Community Fix The Climate Despite Trump Election?” came the day after the election, and pretty much says it all

“Investors See Rockier Road To Low-Carbon Economy Under Trump, But No Dead End” came in one week later.

“Hundreds Of US Companies Urge Climate Action As John Kerry, Others Calls For More ‘Business Diplomacy’” came in a day after that.

We harvested all three to generate today's episode of Bionic Planet, which offers an audio mosaic of snippets culled from interviews we conducted in the two weeks after the US Presidential election, as well as audio we harvested from a media call that the World Resources Institute hosted.

Guests, in order of appearance, are:

Yvo de Boer, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the World Resources Institute

Anthony Hobley, CEO of the Carbon Tracker Initiative

Michael Bloomberg, in his capacity as head of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

Christian de Valle, Founder and Managing Partner of Althelia Ecosphere

Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists

Sam Adams, Director of WRI United StatesMike Korchinsky, Founder and CEO of Wildlife Works

Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank

Andrew Mitchell, Founder and Director of the Global Canopy Programme

Peter Grannis, First Deputy Comptroller for the New York State Office of the State Comptroller.

Nigel Topping, CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition

Jonathan Pershing, US Special Envoy for Climate Change

Brigadier General Stephen Cheney (ret), CEO of the American Security Project.

Peter Graham, former Canadian negotiator now working as a consultant in Washington, DC.

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Initial reactions from Marrakesn to Trump Victory in US

I came to year-end climate talks here in Marrakesh with a clear plan to cover the most complicated elements of these talks and break them down for a general audience. I'd intended to focus mostly on how global supply chains would change in response to this process – and I still will – but Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has changed everything.

The talks are continuing, and the Paris Agreement remains in place with or without the United States, but the backroom diplomacy that the Obama administration had proven so adept at – the unofficial talks inside the talks that lay the foundation for the next round – which was credited with getting the treaty ratified so early – that’s gone, and I’ll cover that in more detail in a later piece.

In first hours after Trump's victory, I spoke to some veterans of this process and found something resembling a consensus: namely, that individual US states and the corporate sector can step in to at least partially fill the void in climate competency.

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On Thursday, 65 countries representing 83% of international aviation agreed to cap their greenhouse-gas emissions from international flights at 2020 levels from 2021 onward – in part by forcing airlines to offset emissions above that threshold, and MAYBE by funding programs that save forests and support sustainable agriculture around the world. A final decision on offset types, however, isn’t expected until 2018

Backgrond: The Paris Climate Agreement created a framework for keeping the global rise in temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial levels, but it left emissions from international flights in limbo – partly because their "international" nature made it hard to reach agreement on which countries to charge the emissions to.

That changed on Thursday, when the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN agency charged with coordinating aviation regulation, including environmental impact, agreed to freeze net aviation emissions at 2020 levels beginning in 2021, and to force airlines to offset emissions above that threshold.

The program, called “CORSIA” (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation), will be phased in, with a voluntary pilot phase running from 2021 through 2023, then a second voluntary phase from 2024 through 2026, and a final phase, running from 2027 through 2035 that is mandatory for all countries except the very poor.

ICAO President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu said that 65 countries had already signed on for the voluntary phase, and these countries together represent nearly 83 percent of total aviation miles, measured in "revenue tonne kilometers" (RTKs), which translate into one metric ton of load (human passengers or cargo) per kilometer traveled.

Includes Interviews with Dutch environmental attorney Jos Cozijnsen and Arjun Patney, policy director of the American Carbon Registry.

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Part One of a multi-part series examining the ways small Kenyan farmers are teaming up with multinational agribusinesses to confront climate change by reshaping the countryside. In today's episode, we meet Prisca Mayende, who ratcheted up yields on her four-acre farm by planting trees. We also visit the Kaptama farmers' cooperative -- a key conduit in the link between subsistence farmers and local grocery stores.

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The United Nations Environment Program says that resources are a factor in 40% of all organized armed conflicts, but only 15% of peace agreements even mention them.

Today, we examine the role that carbon finance – especially REDD+ (reducing emissions from degradation of forests, plus other land uses) – can play in helping (or, if bungled, hindering) the peace process by stifling the use of blood diamonds and other conflict resources.

Guests include:

Canadian Environmental Consultant Art Blundell

Liberian Environmental Campaigner Silas Siakor

Saw Frankie Abreu, Director of Myanmar’s Tenasserim River and Indigenous People’s Network (TRIP NET)

Colombian Vice Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Pablo Viera Samper

Kerstin Canby, Director of the Forest Policy, Trade, and Finance program at Forest Trends

Accompanying panel discussion: https://www.norad.no/en/front/thematic-areas/climate-change-and-environment/oslo-redd-exchange/oslo-redd-exchange-2016/streaming-osloreddx/

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In 2015, more than 150 countries endorsed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are 17 goals to end poverty, improve health, and tackle climate change. They're broken into 169 specific targets, and billions of dollars in finance are tied to them.

In this episode of Bionic Planet, we hear why business leaders like Unilever CEO Paul Polman are building their corporate strategies on the SDGs, and why governmental leaders like UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon and the Prime Ministers of both Norway (Erna Solberg) and Cote d’Voi (Daniel Duncan) see them as key to future development.

We also examine the interplay between the SDGs and carbon finance.

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Companion article at ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/voluntary2016/

Hello, and greetings from Cologne, Germany, where we’re wrapping up two intense weeks that began a few dozen kilometers north of us, in the former German capitol of Bonn, where climate negotiators have begun the process of activating the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, that meant I got swamped, which led to an unplanned two-week hiatus on this podcast, and I do apologize for that – but if you’ve been following Ecosystem Marketplace, you know we haven’t been idle. Yesterday, we released our annual survey of the voluntary carbon markets, which takes stock of what individuals, corporations, and governments have been doing to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions until the Paris Agreement takes effect – which could happen as early as next year.

Earth. We broke it. We own it – and nothing is as it was: not the trees, not the seas, not the forests farms or fields, and not the global economy that depends on all of these. But we can restore it – make it better than it is – more resilient – more sustainable. But how? Technology? Geoengineering? Are we doomed to live on a bionic planet, or is nature itself the answer? That’s the question we explore each week on Bionic Planet, a podcast of the Anthropocene – the new epoch defined by man’s impact on Earth. Today, our focus is voluntary carbon markets.

Green-minded companies use them to reduce their carbon footprints by offsetting those greenhouse-gas emissions that they aren’t able to eliminate by, say, re-tooling their factories or switching to renewable energy. Individuals use them as well – often to offset their travel emissions – as do governments.

New research from Ecosystem Marketplace shows that these three groups used voluntary carbon markets to reduce emissions by about 84 million tons of carbon dioxide last year alone, but the real story isn’t the volume – which is still too small to change the world – but rather, how those offsets are used in ever-more complex and effective emission-reduction strategies.

CLIP: Hamrick

That’s my Ecosystem Marketplace colleague Kelley Hamrick, who spent a good chunk of the last six months on the phone with thousands of carbon market participants cobbling together the latest “State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets” report, which is entitled “Raising Ambition” to reflect the ever-increasing emission-reduction targets embedded in the Paris Agreement.

You can download the report at ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/voluntary2016/ (repeat)

Voluntary carbon markets provide a way for companies to reduce their overall emissions by, say, saving endangered forests, or planting trees, or financing the construction of wind farms. They’re not to be confused with “compliance markets”, which are imposed under a cap-and-trade regime like the one in California.

If you heard our two earlier episodes focused on the need to create a price on carbon, you know the goal of such a price is to force companies to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses they pump into the atmosphere. Voluntary markets are different – they’re not so much an “incentive” as they are an “enabling mechanism” – because companies and individuals that use them aren’t doing so to comply with the law, but to do the right thing.

In fact, our research shows that companies that buy offsets are usually also the ones that have already done the most to reduce their emissions internally – and they’re using offsets to get to zero net emissions – or at least try to. Offsetting, in other words, is almost never a stand-alone strategy, but rather one component in a larger, more involved emission-reduction approach.

I had a brief chat with Kelley right after she posted the report, and asked her how voluntary offsets usually fit into a company’s emission-reduction program.

CLIP: Hamrick

So, who are the buyers? Ultimately, they’re companies that want to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, but sometimes they’re brokers as well, and they can also be a new breed of consultancy that helps manage emission-reductions. Let’s meet some now.

CLIP: Intros

Did you hear what he said about price? If you heard our cost of episodes on the need for a price on carbon, you know that 3.3 dollars is nowhere near the “social cost of carbon” –or the damages that carbon dioxide causes once it’s in the atmosphere.

Now, I know what I said before – about voluntary carbon offsets being an enabling mechanism more than an incentive, and that’s true, but one way they enable companies to reduce is to create an “internal price” on carbon – a price companies can use to push greenhouse-gas emissions into the corporate consciousness. That just doesn’t happen at $3.3 per ton, so lots of companies buy low externally and then sell high internally – but that leaves another problem: most emission-reduction projects simply aren’t viable at $3.3 per ton.

Now, there are plenty of reasons the price is so low: it’s mostly because prices reflect political will, and political will has been pretty pathetic until last year, but it’s also because the offsets sold last year were created earlier, so there was an oversupply, and it’s because larger transactions can get away with a lower price. Ultimately, however, a price this low just isn’t sustainable – but there’s a sense that will be changing after Paris, in part because there are so many other initiatives underway outside of and tangential to the Paris Agreement.

CLIP: William Theisen EcoAct – 1

So – sustainable development goals, science-based targets, and carbon pricing – we’ve covered carbon pricing a bit in our previous editions of Bionic Planet, and we’re far from finished with that rabbit hole, while we’ll be covering the sustainable development goals in the coming week, so if you’re not familiar with them, be sure to subscribe to Bionic Planet or check back soon.

CLIP: William Theisen EcoAct – 2

The gist is that more and more companies are responding to demands for carbon neutrality, and while many start out by just offsetting, they soon weave offsetting into a broader emission-reduction strategy.

CLIP: William Theisen EcoAct – 3

CLIP: Zubair

Music

It’s a theme that emerged over and over again at Carbon Expo, but one often lost on most observers and the media: carbon offsetting isn’t a “distraction” as some like to say, and it isn’t a way for companies to “buy their way out” of their obligations. Instead, it’s a tool that helps get companies and customers and suppliers all pointing in the same direction, as Danielle Spiesmann of DHL makes clear.

CLIP: Daniele Start

DHL’s GoGreen initiative is worthy of an entire program, and if I have the bandwidth to deliver, I will, because it involves a complete restructuring of the company’s transport system, but one that uses carbon offsetting to drive awareness – and it’s hardly an exception. Companies like Unilever, Marks&Spencer, Microsoft, and General Motors have all used voluntary carbon markets to drive down emissions and raise awareness at the same time.

CLIP: Daniela 2

Promo

That about wraps up today’s show – but we’ll close with a segment we call:

Paris

We’ll always have Paris, as in the Paris Accord – which was woven throughout today’s program, so rather than do my usual breakdown of some obscure element, I’d like to introduce you to Laurence Tubiana, the French Climate Ambassador who may be the next head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here is her summary of the two weeks of talks that just wrapped up in Bonn. It’s fairly dense, and if you don’t understand all of it, don’t worry – just keep listening to us, and soon it will all be quite clear.

We covered the Bonn talks in a bit more detail at ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/bonn2016/

And, to download your copy of the State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets, visit ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/voluntary2016/

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The US government estimates that every ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere generates at least $40 in damages by contributing to climate change, but the Swedish government says the figure is closer to 100 euros, and it charges a tax to reflect that. Our guest, Gernot Wagner, says both figures are way too low. Today, he explains how economists blend climate science with financial accounting to come up with a price on carbon.

Plus: What's more effective -- cap-and-trade, or a carbon tax? We offer a primer on that debate.

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Tanzania's Hadza people have lived in tune with nature for 40,000 years, but now they face their greatest challenge. Here's how they're both adapting to and combating climate change -- and how we can all learn from them.

Includes interviews with tribal leader Richard Baalow, Tanzanian legal expert Edward Letaika, and environmentalists Marc Baker of Carbon Tanzania, Matt Brown of The Nature Conservancy, and Gus Silva-Chavez of Forest Trends.

We also examine the evolving nature of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in the voluntary carbon market.

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The Argument For a Price on Carbon: Part One.

Featuring Harvard Economist and "Climate Shock" co-author Gernot Wagner, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, as well as a special appearance by the ghost of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

Bionic Planet: Reversing Climate Change by Restoring Nature: Recent Episodes

Steve Zwick