162 Clara Rowe on mapping all restoration projects in the world and provide transparency to the restoration movement

Clara Rowe is the CEO of Restor, a science-based open data platform to support and connect the global restoration movement. A conversation about technology, transparency, and bioacoustics in our transition to regeneration. 
---------------------------------------------------

Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits on www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. 

Support our work:

• Share it
• Give a 5-star rating
• Buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture

----------------------------------------------------

What if every restoration project, which could be a farm, a forest, or a wetland, is registered on a science-based open data platform, and thus the progress or lack of it is made transparent for all of us to follow? Why is it important to talk about nature restoration now? What is bioacoustics and what is its potential concerning regeneration? Where else should we look apart from carbon?

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/clara-rowe.

Find our video course on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course.

----------------------------------------------------

For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. 

Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 

The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

What if every restoration project, which could be a farm, a forest or a wetland, is registered on a science-based open data platform and thus the progress, or lack of it, is made transparent for all of us to follow? We covered what satellite data can already tell us and what is coming in the future and why Clara is so interested in bioacoustics and biodiversity. Welcome to another episode of In March last year, we launched our membership community to make it easy for fans to support our work. And so many of you have joined as a member. We've launched different types of benefits, exclusive content, Q&A webinars with former guests, Ask Me Anything sessions, plus so much more to come in the future. For more information on the different tiers, benefits and how to become a member, check gumroad.com slash investingbridge Welcome to another episode today with Clara Rowe, the CEO of Restore. Restore is a science-based open data platform to support and connect the global restoration movement. Welcome, Clara.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41

And to start with the personal question I always like to ask, how did you end up in the restoration movement? And why are you focusing on restoration of soil and also obviously of other places? But how did you end up in the restoration movement?

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

Great question. It's been a whirlwind year since I started at Restore. So it's always fun to kind of look back and remind myself how I got involved in the first place. Before I was at Restore, I worked in sustainable supply chains So I worked for a nonprofit that supported companies who were trying to figure out how to get deforestation and exploitation of people out of their supply chains, palm oil and cocoa and soy. I worked mostly in Latin America. And what I started to see was that over time, in addition to the no deforestation commitments that companies were making, there was more and more interest in figuring out how to integrate their forest and ecosystem related commitments with their climate commitments and ultimately what that means is restoration of nature of some sort within supply chains on farms. And so when Tom Crowther, the founder of Restore reached out to me over a year ago to say that he was starting this organization and would I like to come on to lead it, it felt like a perfect transition in terms of being able to approach restoration from a different perspective, from a science-based and tool-based and digital perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 3:08

And so, I mean, I described it in a sentence or a sentence and a half, but what is your, I hate to say elevator pitch, but like restore in a few sentences or a few more sentences, how would you describe it to your grandparents, your children, or anybody that is interested, but doesn't really have the background?

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

Right. So for me, whenever I talk about what restore is, I always have to start by talking about what restoration is, what nature restoration is. And as we think about it at restore, restoration is really a continuous continuum that ranges from sustainable agricultural practices and agroforestry to protecting existing ecosystems to restoring, in some form or another, wetlands and peatlands and forests. And so it involves many, many ecosystems. I think often we just think about planting trees, but there are, of course, many other native ecosystems to protect and to restore. And it involves many different kinds of intervention. So it's not just putting a seedling in the ground, it's also often just fencing off an area and allowing it to restore itself. And there's this huge potential in that range of nature restoration, one, to be able to draw down carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So restoration of forests alone has the potential to draw down about 30% of carbon emissions. It has the potential to prevent about 60% of expected biodiversity loss, and it could improve food security. for over a billion people around the world. And so Fundamentally Restore's mission is to unlock this potential of nature restoration for biodiversity and for climate and for people. And we're doing this by bringing together every nature restoration project around the globe on a single open access platform. Believe it or not, there's actually nowhere you can go today to find all the restoration work that's happening. Whether that's at a large scale or a very small scale, there's just no one single place. We don't know where it's all happening. And so we are bringing those projects together. We're offering free standardized ecological data to these projects to help them with their decision-making. We're offering best-in-class satellite monitoring, which allows them to track progress. And also, you know, it brings transparency to these restoration efforts around the world. And by bringing projects together, we're also allowing them to learn from each other and to gain visibility, you know, whether that's to funders, to other projects to technical tools who might be able to provide them support. So in a way, you can think of us sort of as a Google Maps for restoration, you know, really putting restoration together on the map.

SPEAKER_01: 5:51

And what has been the biggest surprise over the last year or general, but what has been your biggest surprise once you started leading Restore in terms of, I mean, the attention, let's say, has exploded for restoration, regeneration, restoring things in general, but that's maybe not a surprise that maybe we were just waiting for it but what has been your biggest surprise over the last let's say 12 months

SPEAKER_00: 6:13

you know i think that for me the incredible positivity in the space has been surprising working in you

SPEAKER_01: 6:21

know compared to the negative energies in climate in general yeah

SPEAKER_00: 6:25

well yeah you know there's there's a lot of reasons to be worried about the direction that the planet is going but restoration is this very positive space right it's not focused on simply protecting what's there and watching, honestly, a lot of what's there disappear. It's focused on how can we not only keep what is there today intact, but also grow back, right? And so there's just a lot of excitement. There's a lot of potential. We hear because we're bringing together all these restoration projects, we get to hear from people all over the world. Some people who are just doing this as a hobby in their backyard and communities who have been doing this for decades and are excited to connect and to share the work that they're doing So it just feels like a very positive, buzzing place to be.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

And what is, I think investors always like to ask that question of why now? Like, what is it that this moment in time, apart from all the attention, and that's, I mean, biodiversity finally gets attention, soil gets attention, et cetera, et cetera. Trees get a lot of attention. But why, let's say from a technology perspective, or why is this the moment to launch something and to build something like Restore?

SPEAKER_00: 7:36

Well, we're running out of time. to be able to fight the climate crisis, to be able to fight global poverty as climate also compounds that, to be able to prevent species extinctions. And technology can be an enabler. And for me, enable is that key word, right? Restoration is the center of what we do. We're just simply trying to, through technology, enable that to happen more efficiently, more effectively, more responsibly. There's a lot of money on the line. There's a lot of money that needs to be invested in order for restoration and nature-based solutions more broadly to be able to contribute what they need to contribute to address the climate crisis by 2050. I've heard a lot of numbers thrown around, but$8 trillion is what is estimated is needed to be able to unlock the potential of nature-based solutions between now and 2050. And so we need to do that, as I say, efficiently, effectively, responsibly, and that requires is transparency. And at Restore, that's what we're trying to bring to this movement right now.

SPEAKER_01: 8:44

And what do you see your role as a Restore to, let's say, the financial world, the world that wants to put money to work in an investing way is not necessarily the grand side of things. What can you bring already now or like investors that are listening, but what are you also planning to bring in the near future?

SPEAKER_00: 9:01

Yeah. So, you know, today we're making visible many, many projects that never were visible in the past. Some of the restoration projects on our platform already have funding. Some of them are seeking ongoing funding. Sometimes they're seeking philanthropic contributions, but sometimes they're open for investment. And so if you are an investor interested in contributing to nature restoration in some way, again, across that continuum that I described, Restore is a place that allows you to start looking for where you might be able to invest and also guarantee that there's transparency in the long term about what's actually happening on the ground where investments are occurring. And as we build, we want to make that easier and easier and easier for the transparency piece, for searching, right, for projects to support, really building kind of a smart infrastructure for the way that restoration projects can be connected to funders and that real accountability happens between that in terms of progress made.

SPEAKER_01: 10:01

There's a lot to unpack there. And in terms of technology, like how do you make sure that transparency is there? Is that big part and maybe that's why it's happening now like the satellite part of it that you make sure like you cannot choose to not be covered by a satellite like you will be followed in a good way or a bad way but in a good way in this case is that the core of that like we can transparently follow these projects even if the projects itself or the companies or the farms etc don't supply data

SPEAKER_00: 10:29

it is that's a really core piece of it so when projects join restore they have two options they can join publicly or they can join privately So if they join privately, the restore data is really just for them, and no one else can see the boundaries of their project. But if they join publicly, which many, many projects are doing now, anyone can see the boundary of the work that they're doing, and therefore the satellite imagery that we have compiled that is available globally is available to be able to compare with the boundaries of that work. And there's a number of different sources of satellite imagery that we use, but perhaps the most impactful in terms of the visual progress is the Maxar imagery that we're hosting. It goes back to 2011 and there's updates every few years and that's half a meter resolution. So 50 centimeters in some areas, actually 30 centimeters resolution, which essentially allows you to see every tree. And that's an incredibly powerful tool from a transparency perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

And just to give people perspective, that's something that's relatively recent that you have access to, that we as society have access to this kind of level? Or is it something that's been around for a while? Or was it very expensive? Like, why is this happening now?

SPEAKER_00: 11:47

So, I mean, the satellites are getting better and better, like almost every day. It feels like, right, there's launches of new satellites with higher resolution.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

Is that difficult for you or not to keep up?

SPEAKER_00: 11:58

It

SPEAKER_01: 11:59

is. Because so much seems to be happening? Or is it amazing?

SPEAKER_00: 12:02

I mean, both. We have a geospatial team who is responsible both for making sure sure that we're bringing in the best available global satellite data and also that we're building analytics so that you can actually derive meaningful insights at scale. So, you know, I mentioned this half a meter resolution visual imagery, for example. That's terrific if you're willing to take the time to look at any given place on Earth. But if you wanted to have an automated report that tells you how has the land changed here or how many trees here, you need to do additional analytics on top of that. So So, you know, our team is working and with external partners as well to figure out how can we bring the ability to delineate individual tree crowns, for example, to this high resolution imagery. How can we take that imagery and estimate diversity of the area based on the structural diversity that's visible in terms of forest cover? So that's another key piece is, you know, you can show as much as you'd like to show, but until you can actually say something meaningful about what you're doing. Yeah, it's what is often referred to. I mean, I

SPEAKER_01: 13:17

think the amount of terabytes of data coming to decision makers, to farmers, to land stewards, etc., is theoretically enormous and practically as well. I mean, many people are flying drones that collect so much data that basically will blow up a hard drive in a second.

SPEAKER_00: 13:34

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 13:35

But then the question is, what do you do with that? How does it translate into doing it? doing something or not doing something and how does that work? And that there it's where it seems to be where the real juicy part and the magic happens.

SPEAKER_00: 13:46

Exactly. And that's a real midterm priority for us is the way that we integrate existing data that projects might already have and provide meaningful analytics. So drone imagery is a good example, you know, being able to allow projects to upload drone imagery and get simple analytics in terms of, you know, coverage in terms of spectral diversity perhaps. We've been thinking a lot about how we can also help with the bottlenecks in terms of bioacoustic data processing, which could have huge potential in terms of the ability to monitor biodiversity, but again, big kind of data storage and analytic challenge. So we would really like to be able to make it so that anyone on Earth can upload some standard data formats and get useful information from Restore about what's happening in their area and that we can then use that to bring it transparency to what's happening everywhere.

SPEAKER_01: 14:41

And just for anybody, how would you describe bioacoustics? Because I know more or less what it is, but not really. Why is it so promising and why are you so interested in it?

SPEAKER_00: 14:49

Yeah. So, you know, bioacoustics are basically just the sounds that are coming from nature. And I think there's been a lot of focus on, for example, being able to identify birds and estimate bird biodiversity, but also you can do that for insects. You can actually do it for abiotic, right? Non-living fact like water and the sounds that water picks up. So basically when you put together all of those sounds, you know, you get this sound scape, which you can then use to estimate, you know, how much this area has recovered in comparison to an intact area. And the reason it's so exciting from a scalability perspective is that in theory, this could happen through a phone, right? And anything for me, anything that could happen with a handheld device that many, many people around the world have access to is something that we should really invest in. And to be clear, it's not perfect yet. We can't just take any phone and get a perfect idea of the biodiversity in an area. But there are more specific recording devices that, when used with proper protocols, can do that. And we can imagine a path to scale through cell phones.

SPEAKER_01: 15:59

Yeah, so basically, we would be able, maybe with a little add-on on our phone or with a really good phone, and of course, with the GPS built into that and the proper app with the right protocols to make sure that we record a standard. But phones are relatively cheap and they can store, et cetera. So you can imagine a cheaper way or a much easier way to record a lot of audio from ecosystems that then could be analyzed when they're uploaded and things like that.

SPEAKER_00: 16:25

That's exactly right, which provides an incredible complement to the information that we can derive from satellites, which starts to give us a richer and richer perspective on what's actually happening in these areas And I'll just emphasize, you know, bioacoustic, biodiversity, it's a very key dynamic as we think about the future of restoration, especially in the next 20 years when there's so much focus on carbon sequestration. And that's, of course, incredibly important. But if we only think about that, right, we lose many other dimensions of what makes an ecosystem whole. And so the ability to have scalable ways to measure biodiversity and not just carbon sequestration. is something that we're really interested in helping to bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

And how is Restore itself organized as an entity itself? Like what's your quote unquote business model or what's your founding path in that sense?

SPEAKER_00: 17:22

Yeah, so we spun off from the Crowther Lab, a science lab at ETH Zurich in Switzerland at the end of 2020. So we're about a year old now and we were basically set up as a company that is owned by a charitable foundation. So right now, 100% of our shares are owned by the Restore Foundation that was set up in order to be able to protect and restore Earth's ecosystems. And that means that we operate in a nimble startup fashion. We grew our team last year from one to 12 full-time people and a lot of part-time people spread around the world as well. But we fundamentally have a mission to do good. And any profit that we generate in the future will be reinvested into the work that we're doing with restoration projects around the world. And we're still working on our business model, but essentially, we have a core platform which we intend to keep free forever. And we're going to be building digital services, for example, the ability to monitor restoration projects across many sites and compare the ability to select sites for investment and create portfolios. around those sites to be able to generate revenue and cover cost over time. And so we're really eager to experiment in 2022 with partners around the digital services that we build and ensuring that we're really adding as much value as possible to the broader kind of restoration ecosystem as we do that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:45

And I mean, I think the setup by being owned by a foundation is extremely interesting. I mean, we've had Armin Storjanagel of Purpose on the show actually quite a while ago. We should check in. But how to preserve or Yeah, I think it's early for

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

us to decide. I think, of course, the key balance that we want to strike is, you know, maintaining our core focus on our mission, but having the capital to be able to grow, you know. there's not a lot of time to do the things that we need to do in terms of, you know, the piece that nature restoration can play in the broader fight against climate change. So we know that we want to be able to scale quickly. So for us, you know, this year we'll be doing a lot of learning in terms of our ability to both attract additional philanthropic contributions through the foundation in order to grow our work, our own ability to generate revenue through digital services and grow that way. And that will help us evaluate the space for investors in the impact that we're trying to have.

SPEAKER_01: 21:00

And what do you see as a more general role for investors in this restoration movement and space? You mentioned, of course, a few projects are looking for investors, etc. But what I imagine I usually like to say, I mean, we're in a digital space now, but let's say we're recording this in a theater and we're sitting on stage and the room is full of smart impact investors. They've read the books, they've seen the nature-based solutions, documentaries, etc. And they want to get involved? Obviously, without giving investment advice, but what would be your pointers like where to look or where to dig a bit deeper or where to get involved if people want to start getting involved also with their investment amounts?

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I guess in no particular order, I would say I'll reiterate kind of my message about thinking beyond carbon. So as investors are thinking about investing in climate change solutions, thinking about the thinking about people and are thinking about biodiversity. Remembering that restoration, regenerative agriculture, it's not a silver bullet from a carbon perspective. And, you know, I think often that's, it's something that I talk a lot about when we talk about restoration, because I think kind of a common concern about forest restoration, especially as a solution in the climate world is that we will only focus on that. And we will forget that we also, you know, We'll use that as an easy way out and we won't focus on the investments needed in renewables and the changes in behavior that are needed and the changes in government policy. So it's a long way of saying if a project is promising that they are, you know, the solution to climate change, you probably want to look a little bit deeper because it's always just going to be one piece of the solution. Look for science-backed initiatives as much as possible, I think is really important. What is the tie to the scientific community? But on the other hand, you know, what is the social focus that projects are bringing? Because this is really key to the long term sustainability of work.

SPEAKER_01: 23:26

there because there's so much noise and a lot of things look and sound like science and not necessarily are. The way we've had a very interesting scientist turned farmer on the regenerative ag piece, Jonathan Lundgren in the US that left the scientific world, but not necessarily. He set up a farm and does a lot of research there with the scientific world, but says in terms of regen ag, he says the most interesting things currently are happening on farms. The problem is we, as many university scientists have no longer farmed or haven't farmed in a long time. So we We don't see either what's happening or it sounds impossible. Like this is, you cannot do this according, but he says we have to set farms up again and then be in deep science work and write the papers and do the work and not the other way around because otherwise we miss this movement, unfortunately. So there's the tension, but that doesn't mean obviously that we should, I mean, the scientific principles are extremely important there.

SPEAKER_00: 24:19

Yeah. No, I'm so glad you brought that up though, because it is, it's about holding that tension of the knowledge of actually doing Right. Practitioner knowledge, local knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and the ways in which we scale that. And one of the paths to scale is, you know, through the scientific process and understanding common principles and thinking about how to bring that elsewhere. So, you know, it is attention to pay attention to and not something I think to be taken lightly in terms of science providing all of the answers.

SPEAKER_01: 24:52

Yeah. And especially many things might sound impossible and many things are but some of them actually are not and our common knowledge in five or ten years and we all look back and thought of course now we know that the trees communicate to each other and of course now we but at that time the person and I wouldn't say discovering that but the person really banging the drum and writing the papers was put away as a complete idiot and there are many examples of that the problem is figuring out which one actually makes sense five or ten years down the line and we don't have that time so it's a very interesting tension to not understand underestimate the seemingly impossible which we have a lot of things like that in regeneration and restoration I mean we get promised the moon and the stars of stabilizing climate bringing back rivers and all of that and some of it might be true and some of it probably is true but not all yeah So what would you do if you would be in charge of a large investment fund? It could be a billion dollars. I used to say a billion dollars, which was a lot of money until billions started flying around everywhere. But let's say a lot of money. What would you prioritize if you had to put that to work?

SPEAKER_00: 25:55

That's such a good and hard question. You know, I think big picture, you start with dividing your values, right? Setting policies. And, you know, I mentioned that I used to work in the sustainable agriculture world and the supply chain world. And there are a lot of good standards that exist out there around no deforestation, no exploitation, you know, respect for indigenous and local communities and including smallholders and supply chains. And so I think starting there and saying, you know, what is the baseline? What are the values that I want to hold as I'm thinking about investment is really important. Mapping enabling conditions, you know, government policy, where are subsidies, what is incentivizing or disincentivizing regenerative agriculture. And then thinking about a diversity of approaches, both geographically, in terms of farm size, bottom up versus top down, right? You can think about going through, you know, a giant supply chain, corporate supply chain and reaching farmers that way through their buyers, or you can think about starting at the grassroots. And I would want to think about testing several of those different approaches and really building on that. And what

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

do you see as most underrepresented or under, I wouldn't say funded or underinvested, but most overlooked in the conversations you have, let's say with the financial world? Is that the biodiversity or is that beyond carbon piece or the other pieces, maybe it's the oceans or the mangroves or the insects in general? What do you see as most neglected in this space at the moment?

SPEAKER_00: 27:36

I mean, you've mentioned a lot of key ones. I do think that

SPEAKER_01: 27:41

the...

SPEAKER_00: 27:42

Yeah, I

SPEAKER_01: 27:44

had

SPEAKER_00: 27:45

to pick one. Like your favorite neglected pet. more and more. There's often a lot of lip service, and then perhaps not the follow through in terms of funding. But I think that it's, you know, there are steps being taken down the path to center the biodiversity and people part in addition to the carbon part. And I hope that we continue to take those steps really purposefully. And that investors are a really important piece of making that path really walkable in the long term.

SPEAKER_01: 28:39

And what do you see the role? I mean, in how How much are you already asking those questions when projects are registering and filling out the data, etc. On the people side, are you asking those questions already? And if not, how would you do that? Or when will

SPEAKER_00: 29:00

that come? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we think that an important piece of what we're building is ultimately making it more and more desirable to share more and more information, which allows us to be clearer and clearer about how the social aspects as well as the other pieces of restoration are visible.

SPEAKER_01: 30:00

Yeah, because especially land ownership can be very sensitive, very interesting, but I can also imagine maybe prohibitive of people sharing if they have to fill it out. But yeah, how do you still tease it out? Because it's such an essential piece of the restoration movement and a very often overlooked

SPEAKER_00: 30:17

one. of many different actors, right? There might be a larger landscape with many small farmers who are brought together through cooperatives. And then you have, you know, NGOs and government agencies who are funding. And so there's no one quote unquote manager of that project. It's a big collaborative effort. And so right now, really on a ad hoc basis, we've addressed particular concerns that have come up about projects that have been put on the platform without perhaps the knowledge of one of the actors. And we've made it easy for projects to have multiple managers so that you can really bring in that multi-stakeholder effort. But as we grow, we will have to continue to formalize the way that we address any potential concerns around the ownership and management of a particular site.

SPEAKER_01: 32:00

And this might be a good segue to a question I always like to ask. If there was one thing, it might have to do with land tenure, maybe absolutely not, but if there would be one thing you could change overnight, so you have a magic wand and you have only one wish, unfortunately, what would that be? It could be in the restoration movement could be anywhere else as well, but what would you change?

SPEAKER_00: 32:20

Thinking about your work and your space in the regenerative agriculture movement, it strikes me that farmers are risk averse, right? And for good reason, because implementing change at the farm level takes time. I think if I could wave a magic wand, I would take away the risks that farmers face so that you behavior change could come more quickly. And, you know, parts of that is just funding that transition, right, from going from traditional agriculture to regenerative agriculture. And, you know, some of it is about opening up, I think, you know, farmer minds to being able to think about change. But I, you know, and I say that with deep respect for, you know, decades and centuries of farmer knowledge that have built practices. But that's a piece that I keep coming back to is how do we help with this transition? that is so complicated from a management perspective and from a behavior perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 33:22

And in terms of Restore, and let's say the agriculture side, what are you most looking forward to bring on where the beginning of the year, like this year in 2022, on the agriculture side, are there any exciting things coming or any things you obviously, if you're comfortable sharing things that you're looking forward to, let's say on the ag piece?

SPEAKER_00: 33:43

We've had some exciting conversations with, and I won't name specific names, but organizations and companies who are connected to many, many small farmers and who are trying to support farmers and bring better wages, better compensation to farmers for their environmental and social practices. I'm really excited about working to get larger groups of farmers onto the Restore platform, both so that we can think about the ways in which perhaps additional compensation through carbon credits or others could supplement income that they have today through the sale of the products that they're producing. And also so that more broadly, we all, and I use we very broadly here, can learn from the work that's happening in the farmer space and we can inspire more and more farmers to change the way that they're practicing. So I know there's a little bit of vagueness there, but ultimately, as I say, restoration includes sustainable agriculture and the umbrella that that represents and And so the more we can highlight that and make that visible and also reward those farmers who are doing that work, the better, you know, for all of us and the more we can expand what we think of as the restoration movement.

SPEAKER_01: 35:00

And do you see that the vision that sometimes, sometimes I feel that that's quite clear on like the restoring nature movement and let's say the regenerative or agroecology or sustainable agriculture movement, they don't always seem to talk. Do you see that often in the projects you work with, or as they're often landscapes or larger pieces that often they include both? Or is it a very divided space? The restoration one, like one side is growing food and the other side is trying to restore?

SPEAKER_00: 35:32

Yeah, I do think that it tends to be divided or it has historically been divided. And there's many, many reasons for that. There's sort of traditional Western views of what conservation and kind of restoring to a quote unquote natural state look like. And those are often in contrast to what it means to have restoration in the place, that as Restore, we can help raise awareness about both the interconnectivity and the nuance and the great diversity of what it means to be able to restore and the many, many different reasons why restoration is important for climate, for people, for biodiversity.

SPEAKER_01: 36:34

And if there was one thing you could wish for, like in terms of technical, would that be a special satellite or be a really good data set on biodiversity, like on the Restore perspective, what would really help you? What is I would love

SPEAKER_00: 36:55

to be able to, I guess, skip over all of the development work that I mentioned bioacoustics. So it's on my mind that if we could skip over all of the development work that still needs to happen, and we could simply say, okay, with your existing smartphone, download this app, stand out here, record, put it on restore, done. If we could kind of skip the development that's still needed, I think that would be great. think that would just be an incredible gift to the restoration movement.

SPEAKER_01: 37:23

Yeah. And I think it's, I've seen, I've had to look, there's an American artist on the soundscaping side that has done some very interesting, and of course the name doesn't pop into my mind now, but I'll put it in the show notes below, some very interesting work on showing the soundscapes basically of forests, intact ones, even some of them have selectively been cut. And the difference in sound, like the forest seems the same, but the difference in sound is stunning, like the quantity, the quality, the diversity, etc. You can hear the difference, but not see the difference, which is very, very interesting, obviously, from an investor perspective as well.

SPEAKER_00: 37:57

Yeah, exactly. And there's so much incredible work, right? That's already happened in this space. And so really, it's about figuring out what are the pieces that we can pull together to make it accessible, to make it scalable, to overcome the hurdles around the analytics of all of it. But it's not like we're starting from zero.

SPEAKER_01: 38:16

No, luckily not. Luckily not. And then of course we have to map and compare and your baseline and all of that. So that's, that's an extremely, and do you feel we're close to that? Like if we have this conversation in a year from now, have we made a lot of progress with the acoustic side of things and the biodiversity side?

SPEAKER_00: 38:33

I do think so. Yeah. We're going to be piloting. I mean, again, many people around the world are doing this work and we're trying to just build upon the, the incredible work that's already happened so far. We'll be piloting that work with a number of projects this year. we'll be piloting the integration of that onto the Restore platform. So I think that by the end of the year, we'll have the beginnings of what it looks like for anyone to be able to upload an audio file and get some basic information from Restore about what that area looks like.

SPEAKER_01: 39:05

Wow, that's extremely exciting. I'll definitely be checking in. And I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing this early journey. I mean, it's a year, which is a lot and nothing at the same time. Going from one person to 12, obviously, but it seems like there's a lot of momentum behind it and I'm very much looking forward to follow it over time and also what this means for agriculture, for agroforestry, for ocean farming and then all of the pieces of this globe that have to be restored.

SPEAKER_00: 39:33

Well, thanks so much for having me, Kuhn. Yeah, I'm very, very excited about continuing to bring together these narratives of more traditional forest nature restoration and agroecology and the agriculture space and I think that these kind of conversations are a really terrific opportunity to help bring those worlds closer

SPEAKER_01: 39:51

yeah they're definitely not separate as we we i'm saying in the global north have thought for a long time that's nature in one corner a big fence around it and it will be okay and agriculture somewhere else and city somewhere else it's it's all a flux and a continuum yeah if you found the investing in regenerative agriculture and food podcast valuable there are a few simple ways you can use to support it number one rate and review the podcast on your podcast app that's the best way for other listeners to find the podcast and it only takes a few seconds number two share this podcast on social media or email it to your friends and colleagues number three if this podcast has been of value to you and if you have the means please join my membership community to help grow this platform and allow me to take it further you can find all the details on gumroad.com slash investing region egg or in the description below thank you so much and see you at the next podcast