Can each of you just give us a quick
summary of the cliff notes of your work to just sort of help the stage set the
stage for this discussion? Sarah, would you like to kick us off?
Sure. Thank you.
It's great to be here with all of you. I'm Sarah Charlotte Powers and the
co-founder and executive director of a New York City based organization called
the Natural Areas Conservancy. We work to elevate the care of the one
point seven million acres of urban park land that is natural habitats across th
e
city. So we work in places to be a mostly New
Yorkers here. Yeah, I agree.
And so we work in places like To Make a Day.
Pelham Bay Park in Cortland Park in the Bronx.
We do take the principles of forest frustration and management and wetlands
ecology and apply them in urban contexts to improve the health of natural
habitats and to invite people into these places through a series of innovative
approaches. Thank you.
Boucher How about you? I am who does Roxy and I co-founded with
such collaborat
ion that essentially leverages the power of acoustic
technology to sort of monitor restoration and conservation efforts.
It's largely in India, which is where most of my doctoral research has
happened. And when I'm not listening to forests,
I'm still studying them. I essentially study what happens when we
try to restore a piece of land. So what happens to biodiversity?
What happens to people living around it? And then I also try and understand why
certain projects, restoration projects, especial
ly you don't meet that goals and
some just go off track. And what are the conditions that help
make that happen so that we can take all that knowledge and put it in due to
really meeting the restoration targets? Thank you.
And last but certainly not least till. Thank you.
My name's Tilly Walton, and I'm grateful to be in this room with everybody who
cares about the planet. My journey started as a career guiding
Whitewater trips through the Grand Canyon and other rivers around the
world. And that
led me to be interested in
environmental science. I had a B.S.
in hydrology and my master's in environmental management and planning
focused on river restoration. And I've worn many hats, one of which
was philanthropy at a major foundation and have helped start programs
to in job creation and river restoration.
And then I've also been involved as an environmental consultant and a lot of on
the ground work, including from, you know, digging soil and doing
all the science studies to the stakehold
er consensus building, into the
planning, into implementation and monitoring.
And from my career as a guide, I found that when people are connected
to the planet, then they connect to them themselves.
And once people are connected, they care.
And so that's led me to be to wonder how can I connect more people?
And so that led to hosting this PBS adventure documentary series where it's
an unscripted adventure on rivers in the Southwest and around the world.
So, yeah, I just figured the more connec
ted
we all are, the more we care. Well said.
So I kind of wanna pick up on some of the threads of our conversation with
Carl right at the end there. We were getting into technology a little
bit and I know each of you has been a researcher at some point.
Pooja, I'm looking at you, still quite active in that space.
So I'm sort of curious how you see the role of technology and data in
restoration. Obviously it's a huge piece of project,
Bonnie, but can you just tell us what you think about the forw
ard future
looking view of what that means? So the biggest reason I co-founded
project planning with other scientists is because I really think we're going to
need technology essentially just remote sensing tools to be able to monitor all
of these efforts. They're huge.
They cost so much money. And we really need to know what's going
on. And we can't do that always with just
human effort alone. So I I definitely think it's it's where
we're headed if we want to take this to scale.
That said, I I
think that some technology is at a mature stage, for
example, spatial sort of spatial tonight.
Remote sensing tools, we've got light so we can understand which species as well.
Just based on light data, for example. But some technology, the one that I sort
of rely on the most acoustic technology is getting there.
But it's at a very recent stage right now where we're still trying to
understand what is the ecological meaning off the
way a forest sounds. How do we correlate what we're hearing
to wh
at a healthy, quote unquote, healthy forest is like?
Because you can define a healthy forest in many different ways and you can
define degradation in many different ways.
So it's not like you can say an unhealthy forest sounds like X and a
healthy one sounds like Y. It's really complex.
So we're still at the stage where we're trying to understand the science behind
the sounds. But that said, again, there's a lot of
work happening on the back end at this point.
And I think in the next few decades
it probably will be where remote sensing is
now, where we can do without it at all. So I'm very hopeful.
Great things. I support to shift a little bit to our
IRB session is on connecting people on planet.
So let's talk about the the social element of this.
You know, how do you define a community? Even there's you know, I think we've had
this conversation on our prep calls, but it's just fascinating.
Each of you are working in such different regions.
Community means a different thing to each of
you.
So how do you approach that in your work and how do each of you see, you know, co
benefits, identifying co benefits for each of the particular communities that
you're serving and working in? Sir, I'll start with you.
Sure. I'll actually pick up on that sort of
data theme and then sort of Segway into talking about community.
Two pieces of data that have actually informed how we think about community is
using New York City as an example. The first piece of data is a piece of
ecological data,
which is that we have over 7000 acres of intact woodlands
within the five boroughs, which is really surprising to many New Yorkers.
Those forest areas have 85 percent native canopy, which is similar to
places like the Adirondacks. So we have these ecological communities
that are much healthier than most people, including people who work within
our city anticipate. And then we pair that with social data,
which shows that 50 percent of New York City residents have never experienced
nature outside
of their city park system.
So we married together what we know about the benefit of spending time in
nature, having access not just to traditional sort of recreational park
space, but to awe inspiring natural spaces and beauty.
And we think about the communities that are served and not served by these urban
oases and how we can connect those communities more wholly and how we can
shift management through things like workforce development and employing
local people in the care of our natural spac
es, creating robust networks of
trails and access in parts of our city that have not traditionally had that
kind of invitation into nature. And we do.
In our case, we do a lot of that work in very close,
sort of slow moving collaboration. A lot of time spent in community is in
schools, in community meetings, really getting to
know the needs and desires of the residents and then really taking the
technical knowledge and expertise that we have and bringing that into this
collaborative spirit to re
ally elevate both the communities that we're working
with and the places that we want to make more inviting for them.
As you go through.
I think I. I've had a similar approach to Sara.
So to be clear, I've got I'm not on the implementation side and one the research
side. But, you know, based on what I've seen
working in researching restoration projects, one, I think we use the word
local community a lot. We're really it's just a group of very
different people put together. So, for example, most
of my research
happens in central India and you can have a village as small as one of 50
households. Each of those 50 households wants
something different and they have completely different aspirations.
So I would think that when we see community, we're still dealing with
wildly varied aspirations, even within a small group.
And anything that brings me to to to the point of of using different
approaches to meet the needs of people. So, for example, even though this is
this panels about restorati
on, when you think out of the box,
you're going to end up reaching your destination as well.
So a simple example. Some of the research I was involved in
a few years ago, we found that. We actually found that.
Forests sort of grew back. Warsaw was restored thanks to an energy
and housing policy that was introduced a few years ago, and so no one expected
that to be the result. The point the point of those economic
policies was was human well-being. But it ended up having an effect of
reducing degr
adation. So I think, you know, we're dealing with
so many different aspirations that we really need to think out of the box.
And this is clearly a room of creative people who who are here to find a
solution. So I think
yeah, I think out of the box and I think people would be much happier with that.
Thanks. Tell you what does community mean in the
context of your work? Well, I think I'll go back to something
that Carl said about the benefit being that we have a planet that we can live
on. And so
I guess I would take the scope of
this as Team Earth. And so we're all we're all hearing and
community, just like Sarah said, with a biodiversity.
You know, what makes a healthy community and nature is a lot of diversity.
And I think also what makes a healthy community in terms of our restoration
projects is also including a broad, diverse group of people
like Fisher said that, you know, have these different interests.
And for me, what I've seen in the work I've done is that at least in terms of
water, water's a common thread that binds us all together and we can't live
without it. You know, it's our power, it's our food.
It's it's what you know, you can go three weeks without food, but three days
without water. And so I think.
Community to me is pulling in all the diverse voices, but then finding the
common thread through it. And I want to pick up off off of that
point and point out that you work in the American West quite a bit, which this
country is obviously divided on many things,
but particularly in that region.
I mean, land use issues. You know, political opinions on
environmental issues. So how do you sort of grapple that, you
know, if there's people that really, you know, aren't on board with these types
of projects or there's tension with, you know, between different stakeholders in
this? How have you dealt with that?
Well, a number of ways, like an example, when we worked, we did a big project
outside of Yuma, Arizona, which was a large scale restoration.
And we ha
d you know, we had the tribes and we had
the local city government. We have very conservative farmers.
We had very left leaning environmentalists.
And we had the economic development group from the city.
And everybody had a different point of view.
And so one thing that I think is key is listening to people, because most people
just want to be heard. And then the other thing is creating
communities. So creating these stakeholder consensus
building groups where you provide pizza, you get rid of b
eat barriers to entry so
you can include everybody. So you have pizza, you have child care
and then you listen and then you write down everybody's ideas.
But the other thing I've seen is in talking with people for the show is all
go to a very, very conservative rancher and talk to him about water.
And then I'll go and I'll talk to a very liberal leaning, say, tribal leader,
environmentalist. And
what it is, is everybody is actually saying the same thing.
They're just using different language. So
it's fascinating. And I will say a pizza in childcare gets
very far in my book as well. Just.
Right. Right.
Who doesn't love it? And a planet to live on.
What? I don't want to go to you.
You know, we talk often about how vulnerable populations are and are
disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.
I wondering how that plays out here in New York City in an urban environment.
And how does that factor into your approaches on these projects?
Sure. It's a great question.
And it's
probably, you know, for us, we could be here all day.
One of the most pressing topics, a couple of years ago, extreme heat lapped
other forms of weather related death and human health implications to become the
leading cause of climate related mortality in our country.
And that's particularly, particularly hits hard in urban areas
where people live really close together. And the urban heat island, which is the
phenomena where cities heat up in really hot days and don't have the capacity to
cool
down at night because there's so much built infrastructure that holds on
to heat even as the ambient temperature begins to cool.
That has become a real focus, not just for us in our work, but for many folks
working in the urban space around the country.
And so we are really interested in kind of thinking about that in two different
ways. One is proactively taking the approaches
that we know do work, like planting as a complement to things like changing
building infrastructure, adding air conditi
oning, but also conducting new
research. It's kind of amazing how there is these
big information gaps even in a sort of policy landscape where you sort of
think, you know, everything. So but last summer, for the first time,
we conducted research across 12 U.S. cities looking at the heat gradient, not
just from the sort of uncharted environment into shaded neighborhoods,
which there's tons and tons of research on that topic.
But all the way into the interior of natural parkland to really understa
nd
not just, you know, is it better to have a tree in front of your house, which
spoiler? It's definitely better to have a tree in
front of your house. Really hot day.
But we are just beginning to understand the sort of neighborhood scale air
conditioning effects of having larger oases of natural space adjacent to the
built environment. The ability to really pull heat from
neighborhoods and to cool entire residential or commercial areas.
So I would say, yeah, really thinking about kind of those
emerging threats,
what we do and don't know and using a combination of creation of new knowledge
and innovative and collaborative practices to address those threats in
the best ways we can. Great.
Thank you. I want to put my good friend Michael
over here on notice. We're not going to take questions right
the second, but start raising your hands.
I'm going to ask our panelists one. One more thought and then we're going to
get around to. So he's he's on the lookout for you.
We'll get to that in ju
st a second. But, you know, we do have an audience
here that is a lot of corporate investors.
So I'm curious how each of you look at, you know, corporate involvement in
restoration projects. Your practitioners, you people on the
ground in the research. So how do you collaborate best with, you
know, other types of of people who are interested in getting involved in these
projects? And sort of what would you like this
audience to know about, you know, the nitty gritty of your work?
Pugel I'll star
t with you. Leslie I'm with God on decarbonise.
That's most important. But in terms of corporate getting
involved, I think I think what we need to do is marry the
top down perspective with the bottom up. So in rooms like this, we're fabulous at
understanding the bigger picture. We understand global commitments,
national commitments. We've got a very top down perspective.
When we meet in such rooms, when we really want something to work,
what I think we need to do is is sort of marry the top down
and bottom up.
And when you try the bottom up perspective, I'm guessing telling you
you've probably seen that a lot where there's just too many opinions and you
need to make something work. So it's not good.
It's not going to work. If we we try to take a very prescriptive
approach where we go in with a plan and then expect everybody to make something
happen. Instead, you have to do the hard work of
consulting with people on the ground and seeing what they want, because really
people on the grou
nd, you don't you know, you know the place
you live. You know what?
The best people understand what the impact of climate change is.
People understand what the impact of deforestation is.
They have so much knowledge. You need to incorporate that into your
work. And I would say let's not go for quick,
easy solutions. We've seen a lot of these quick and
easy. Tree planting programs that have gone
south and they haven't produced the benefits they want.
So we need to do it efficient, efficiently,
yo
u know, responsibly. And I think that we can see benefits for
people biodiversity. I meant
that. It really means that we we need to do
the hard work, not go for the quick and easy solutions.
I think sometimes we get lost in the, you know, time is of the essence or
checking a box, but really engaging at that level with the people who are on
the ground with we're going to be impacted by.
It is super important to me. Let's go to you.
OK. Lobo, how do you feel about this issue?
Yes, please. I think
that corporations have such an
important role to play. And I think that having unusual
bedfellows in the room is is really important.
And I guess one note, I guess plug I would
put in is that, you know, there's restoration where we're trying to
manually recreate these ecosystem services that the planet provides.
And that is very expensive and very important in places.
But there's also the keeping a place intact.
That nature is already created because it does the work the best.
And so an example,
I was hiking in the mirror woods in California and talking
to these people and they said, oh, we're doing stream restoration for the salmon
because salmon lay their eggs in the river, they swim into the ocean and then
they come back to lay their eggs where they eat, where they were born.
And it's a great well, how many salmon have come back?
And they said, well, this year we had three.
And in Alaska, there's a place called Bristol Bay, which is under threat from
some potential mines. And right
now, every year, 50 to 60
million salmon return. And so trying to recreate that in a
restoration basis is a challenge. So I think if you can do conservation
and preservation first with innovative solutions, that's great.
And then the on the ground restoration work is so important and the community
building. And also, I think the storytelling like
the connecting people to place through stories and individual because people
really connect. To it.
And as Sara also said, just, you know, it's not jus
t restoring the ecosystem,
it's also restoring our mental health or well-being because we all feel better
when we're when we're in nature where around water we're in these parks we
have shade to be in. Like all of these things are both good
for the health of a planet and the health of everybody and the health of
our businesses. So great.
Sarah? Well, I'll take a sort of hyper local
approach to answering this question and say there are so many opportunities for
direct employee engagement in local
projects in New York, but also all
across the country and across the globe. We have had such positive experiences
inviting groups into the work that we do to plant trees, to build trails, to help
us to take care of local wetlands. Those opportunities are meaningful for
us as hosts and they're meaningful for the communities that we partner with.
But they also provide a really deep connection, I think, to the parts of
corporate missions that have to do with giving back to communities and to the
e
nvironment, because they really make that those concepts really tangible and
a very shared way. So that would be one piece, I would say.
We also do a lot of work mentoring young people.
We run a really robust workforce development and internship program and
we're always looking for folks from the corporate sector who are interested in
doing direct mentorship for young people on high school and college age.
And recent graduates who have an interest in the environment are trying
to figure out kind
of what that path should look like.
Many of them come from backgrounds where a lot of the work that
many of us do is not that accessible to them or just not that known to them.
And so those are other ways I think are really, really both personally
meaningful, but also can have a really lasting impact over the course of the
career of the people that we seek to match.
Great. Well, let's go to some audience
questions. Anybody have anything for our panelists?
Hi, Dr. Chelsea.
You mentioned the hous
ing policy that led to a degree of reduction in
degradation of the forest. Can you describe the mechanism there?
Was it intended for that purpose or was it a knock on effect of something else?
So thanks for the question. If so, the fallacy was
this governmental policy on the central governmental policy on building like a
one room house. Because know it would.
It was more a well-being policy. It had nothing to do with restoring
forests. The reason it hadn't, in fact, is that a
lot of the policies
require good timber and that timber is is decent sized.
And that's not saying there's any problem with that.
If you create your wood lots and you use it responsibly, there's no problem at
all. But this just happened to be an
unintended consequence that we picked up to some remote sensing work.
So it. All right.
Anyone else? Follow couple hands earlier.
Hi, Nina ISE from NASDAQ. So you all spoke a little bit about the
connection, the importance of connection.
I know a lot of corporations are int
erested in restoration projects and
reforestation projects. You know, now we've got this whole
spectre of greenwashing hanging over our heads.
You know, how do we tell this story without making it look like we're paying
lip service to it? You know, how do we integrate these
kinds of programs, whether it's in our you know, our offset strategy, our
carbon neutrality is the strategy. And and do it in a in a way that's
really authentic without it being accused of how you're just doing this
for lip s
ervice. Great question.
Who wants to tackle that? Once you know what I mean, but who wants
to go first? I'll take a stab at it.
Well, thank you for the question that is so important.
And that is I think that is a challenge that all corporations face.
And, you know, back in the days of where people just started to get into the same
sustainability work, you always risk the you know, this is just a greenwashing.
But I think that if your company culture is authentic and if the strategies that
you're
building for your five year, three or whatever plan,
you know, actually have measurable effects, I think that you have something
that you can go back and say, look, this is not greenwashing.
We restored X number of acres. We created this many jobs.
We did whatever the focus is for your organization.
I think that if you come at it from an authentic perspective and have the data
to back it up, you know, people are going to greenwash anyways.
But I think that, you know, like a friend is doing.
He'
s doing all this work in Africa on some of these last great rivers and he's
sponsored by Rolex. And I think it's so cool to see his
picture of the Rolex watch with the elephant behind him.
And yeah, you can say it's greenwashing, but you know what we need?
We it is not because we need each other. You know, the environmental groups, the
people on the ground, the researchers, we all and the corporations, we all need
to be working together. And so I think at some point we all have
to just be willin
g to kind of listen to the noise when we're out in the public
and and and move forward with it. So you feel sad, sir?
Yeah, I love that question. And I think just two additional thoughts
to add to it. Tully's very smart response.
I think one is we see a lot of benefit in establishing and maintaining
partnerships with with the same groups and the same recipients of those
philanthropic and ESG dollars use a much greater opportunity to really build
relationships and to co create project goals, whic
h means you're not just sort
of counting on a partner to feed you a set of metrics, but you're really
thinking about what your corporate goals are and what those partners can offer.
The other thing that I think is emerging that I'm very interested in, in the
urban space is something that sort of blends together quantification of carbon
and nature benefits, sort of speaking to referencing some of what Karl spoke to
with the ability to quantify some of those social and community benefits.
So inste
ad of it being just a credit or just I sort of feel good community
project, we can talk about that sort of stacked benefits of carbon nature and
also jobs created or also increase, you know, doubling the number of people
visiting a park or increasing the number of families that have come out to
volunteer. And that ability to in some ways kind of
broaden the focus from just thinking about sort of those green metrics to
thinking about a more holistic impact. I think actually have a opportunity to
deepen the story we tell and to bring more authenticity to the way that we
describe that impact as you move into.
I think the only thing I'll add to that is open yourself up to scrutiny.
I think that can be a lot of collaboration between people in the
corporate what RTS academics doing, trying their best to do unbiased
research, demand that the data be open, the data speak for itself.
So I would say the more you put out there and there's more transparency
perhaps that could address that. You kno
w, the greenwashing, the fear of
greenwashing. Great.
Sara Chantilly, thank you so much for joining me.
Really appreciate it.
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