Davos 2023: Don't Let Greenwashing Fears Stall Credible Action

This transcript, generated from speech recognition technology, has been edited for web readers, condensed for clarity, and may differ slightly from the audio.

Andrew Steer, Bezos Earth Fund: Welcome, everybody. The music has stopped so we can begin. My name is Andrew Steer. I'm the President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund. The exam question for today is a really important one. Essentially, corporations and cities and countries have made amazing commitments over the last few years, and they're doing their best. At least most of them are. It's actually quite difficult and they're being criticised at the moment quite a lot for greenwashing. Even the Secretary General of the United Nations, you know, accused them of pretty bad dishonesty and in some cases that's very warranted. In other cases, corporations are actually trying to do the right thing, but they're worried that actually if they keep a high profile, they're just going to be criticised more and more, and it's almost a no-win situation. So, it runs the risk of reducing the momentum that we had.

We want to have a very honest discussion about that and we're going to focus on one sort of part of the issue, which is the nature agenda. In the nature agenda, the issue is companies either as part of their for-profit work or as part of their voluntary carbon market work, they're investing in developing countries and in rich countries, various investments in protecting forests and restoring land and doing all kinds of other things. At the same time, there's evidence that some are actually being quite harmful. We've got a really a remarkably well-qualified panel here. We've got Suzanne de Bianca sitting here in the middle who I'm going to ask the first question to, who is with Salesforce. But in addition to that, she is a leader in the Trillion Trees programme. So I want to start with you, and then I'll introduce the rest of you as we as we go along.

I think a very, very interesting report just come out by the World Economic Forum. I would urge you to look at it. And by the Trillion Trees initiative, it's called Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes. And this is one very, very important element of the issue. So potential unintended damage can be ecological in nature, but also refer to human rights issues and social issues and just inappropriate failure to engage with indigenous people. And that's why I'm so happy we have Helena Gualinga, who is a leader of a youth movement for Indigenous people and we're going to ask her to say some words a little bit later on. Since I've introduced two of you, maybe I'll introduce all four of you now. Catherine Garrett-Cox at the far end is an investor as a CEO of GIB Asset Management. But in addition to that, she's chair of CDP, the Carbon Disclosure Project, as it used to be called, which is the place where you record the emissions each year. And then finally, we've got Luiz do Amaral, who is also Brazilian, but for today's purpose, he is the CEO of the Science Based Targets Initiative. And of course, the SPTi is the place you go to set your target. So, we've got some pretty relevant people on the panel here.

Suzanne, Salesforce has been a leader in so many aspects on climate. But if you could say just a word about how you're engaging in nature and how do you how do you think about this tough issue of greenwashing and making sure standards are high, not slowing things down? Over to you. And by the way, the way we're going to organize this, they're going to speak for two or maximum three minutes each, and then we're going to open it up to a conversation for everybody to ask questions.

Suzanne DiBianca, Salesforce: Thank you, Andrew, for moderating and inspired to be here with my fellow panelists. You know, Salesforce is focused on three things really, primarily, as it relates to climate. Net-zero — we've built an incredible technology product that enables transparency, which I think is key to the greenwashing conversation. The second is nature-positive. A Trillion Trees has been a complete pleasure to work on, and we had the opportunity to celebrate our success collectively yesterday at that effort, being at 125 billion against a very aggressive target. And the third is eco-preneurs and investing in incredible entrepreneurs that are working on climate solutions. So as that relates to nature, there's just a few things that I want to underline. The first is transparency is key. And when we think about our- we've made 100 million commitment just within our own company against the trillion tree goal. And we put up a website called Salesforce.trees.com. It's actually white labelled. Many of our corporate partners can also use this technology but it sort of demonstrates where we're investing over time and you can read about the projects. So again, we think transparency builds trust and we want to be really out there with what we're doing.

Same on the eco-preneur side. We've invested in a great entrepreneur, many, Sylvera which is a rating agency. So now in in the carbon markets we're starting to see layers to try to get to the quality issue, they use LIDAR satellite technology to measure and rate these projects on the ground. We're continuing to look at quality as being really paramount. And to your point about having an honest conversation, yesterday we were approached by a reporter to ask us about our participation in a project where they had found some human rights abuses and we had pulled ourselves out of that project in 2020 because we couldn't get verified data. And I think that from a corporate perspective, you know, I don't know how many people in the room have seen the John Oliver piece on the carbon markets, if you haven't, should watch it. It scared a lot of corporates, really called out people for projects that they unknowingly have that in some cases were hunting lodges that were already in nature preserves. But what I've learned from that and I just spent some time in London with Helen Clarkson, who runs The Climate Group, who I adore, and I hadn't thought about it from this perspective. She's the founder of Climate Week, and she said, when corporations don't talk, we can't do our jobs. We don't know where to focus our efforts. We can't properly lobby in partnership with corporations. So, it really hinders us from the work that we have to do. And I'd never thought about it through that lens, but, you know, we enter and I were just another panel together. And, you know, my mantra in this area is like, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We have got to go fast and as much as we can, we've got to continue to bring transparency to the effort.

Andrew Steer: Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Catherine, the investment community wants to do the right thing, but you can't be monitoring, you know, on the front lines yourselves. You need some system of information and talk about what you need.

Katherine Garrett-Cox, Gulf International Bank (GIB): So, in your kind introduction, you said I come wearing two hats, which is true. So, on the one hand, GIB Asset Management, we're a London based asset manager, very much focused around scaling capital, supporting sustainable development, specifically for a number of our investors based in the Middle East. The other hat I wear, as you said, Andrew, is I'm very honoured to chair CDP, which for more than 20 years has pioneered data in the environmental reporting space.

The debate this week has been, I suppose, quite interesting because people are very easy to give up on ESG and sort of move on. And we know that actually when you look at market participation and action over the last 12 months, if you were investing in that space, you probably haven't done so well. So, you're probably having a bit of a hard time from your board, your clients, saying, what on earth are you thinking? And what I would say is keep the faith, because there was a period of time when all markets have a cycle. And I think what we look for as investors is increasingly to call out these companies that aren't doing the right thing. And let me be honest: my real sense is greenwashing has many faces, but one of them hides behind a veil of simplicity. Well, what do I mean by that? It's because initially people were very quick to report on things that were easy to do. But as an investment company, when you then go and scratch below the surface, you then find that quite a lot of what they're doing just wasn't substantiated. And hence why, as you indicated, Andrew, certain corporates are stepping back. They're sort of going back under the radar with this green hushing idea. Which actually, you know, isn't the answer at all.

Equally, there’s been a real phenomenon across Europe, where investment strategies, investment funds that were set up to help investors participate in things like nature-based solutions and the whole move towards supporting companies addressing climate change. A number of them weren't doing what they said they were doing on the tin. And undoubtedly, people have started to call them out. So, under sustainable finance regulation, big asset managers, not just in Europe but across the world, have stepped back from saying that their funds are the highest rating, which would be Article Nine under European regulation. And actually, what you've seen in the last quarter of ‘22 was that funds who still were doing what they said they were doing attracted new money, and everybody else or money ran out the door because people suddenly realised that the emperor had no clothes.

So, at GIB, we're really tackling this in two ways. Firstly, we’re stepping up to actually do what we're saying we're doing. So we're supporting a number of initiatives and actually with Salesforce, where we've been part of Friends of Ocean Action for some years, we've issued four papers on Blue Finance, really trying to work out how can we scale and get private sector investment into a space that to date has been relatively unfunded. We're also involved in the Mangroves Working group. Unsurprisingly, the Middle East is a part of the world upon which they depend on mangroves, and so we're very much involved in those two initiatives.

And my last point, coming back to what investors are looking for, I come with the CDP hat on. As I said, we’ve been a reporting depository for organizations, cities, investors for more than 20 years. But last year, just before Montreal, when we were really trying to focus on biodiversity, we issued a questionnaire to around eight and a half thousand organizations as to whether they could disclose what they were doing around nature. The good news is 90% of them came back and said we're doing some cool things. We have plans to do this, that and the other. The less good news is that really only half of them have done anything. And so, my personal sense is that the way forward, which is where Luis comes in, is we just have to live in a world where mandatory reporting is going to become more relevant. It isn't enough to be sort of voluntary and hope that no one calls you out. Investors will look to the data because the theory of change that CDP believes in is disclosure drives insight and insight drives action, and action is what investors want to see on the ground.

Andrew Steer: Thank you very much, Catherine. It's great to have Helena Gualinga here. She is the co-founder of the Indigenous Youth Collective for the Amazon. And you're based in Ecuador, I believe. Tell us just a little bit about your organization, but then what your concern is and how you see this issue.

Helena Gualinga, Indigenous Youth Collective of Amazon Defenders: I come from an Indigenous community called Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We have a very long history of fighting big oil. Ten years ago now we were able to also kick out big oil from our communities. So, we do have no oil exploration in our territories. Despite that, despite a really important regulation happening in Ecuador when it comes to indigenous people's rights, after that, we still have threats to our territories and we still have threats to our territories because we have neighbours that have threats to their territories. So, what the

Youth Collective focuses on: it's a group of young people. We all come from different nations and different communities across the Ecuadorian Amazon. We all face different types of threats. Amongst them are deforestation, mining, oil and hydroelectric power stations. Actually, one of my best friends, him and his community, the young people were able to actually kick out an entire company on their own, just like four or five years ago now. So, it's really young people coming together and saying, okay, we're going to follow in the footsteps of the leaders and the people that have been leading this fight for decades. And we're all standing on the shoulders of the leaders have come before us. It's really a young new generation that is confronting the threats that we're facing.

I think something that, now that I listened to your discussion and I've thought about this before and I wasn't planning on talking about this, but you were talking a lot about how you can track, you know, if there are any human rights violations, if people are actually walking the talk on the ground, your partners, etc. I mean, there has been in the context of the Amazon and indigenous peoples rights many times we do see human rights violations. I recently had a dear friend of mine was threatened by a very high executive in a mining company face to face. And it was quite brutal words that were used. And when we took this to the company, they said, oh there is some link on the website and you can report that and then we'll look at that, you know, and in the communities, we don't know what links we should use when we should report these kinds of atrocities. But what I think there should be is for us to be able to track back to you, right, as investors. Because if you contract to me, there is not a lot of transparency when you go really, really down. Right, and that's why you had to pull out from the projects where, you know, you found human rights violations or you didn't find transparency. You couldn't actually check what was happening. So why not create the tool for indigenous people, for people on the ground to actually track back to you and let you guys know. Not some random link on a website, but actually an entire tool, an entire mechanism, that’s making sure that we can track back every single step back to you.

Going back to restoration and restoration projects and conservation, the most efficient way of actually conserving and protecting ecosystems, bodies of water, forest is giving indigenous people rights and making sure that indigenous rights are guaranteed, making sure that we have our territorial rights, that our lands are demarcated, that we have the control over what happens in our territories. And I mean, you're the data guy, but if we look at data, if we look at numbers, it actually shows that the most preserved places in the world are under Indigenous custodianship. So, it is the most efficient way. We don't need new technology to save the rainforest, for example. It's there. And, and I always say this, it's the only thing that we want in my community at least, is that no one comes there and cuts down the tree. And that's the most simple solution. Of course, we need support to implement other projects when it comes to health care, education, etc., but it's quite simple when it comes to conservation. And we just need people to let the rainforest, let the forests, stay without touching them. And when it comes to restoration, we talk about Indigenous inclusion and Indigenous people being consultative, but it doesn't work like that in our communities. We have our own structures of governance, we have our own structures of decision making. We have quite developed structures of decision making and of governance. And that needs to be taken into account when these when these projects are wanting to collaborate with Indigenous people, and that is making sure Indigenous people are actually at the centre of decision making, not being consulted after the decisions have already been made. That is really respecting the self-determination and autonomy of Indigenous people.

Andrew Steer: Thank you very much. Evidence is just mounting — I'm sure everybody knows this — that when Indigenous people who manage 60% of the world's land, even though may only have 2 or 3% of the world's population, something like 60 or 70% of the biodiversity, is that when groups of Indigenous people have legal rights and the ability to protect those rights, the deforestation reduces enormously. Just a mounting evidence from institutions like the World Resources Institute, like Rights and Resources Institute, academic institutions. It's just a fact that we need to embed in all our thinking. And by the way, this report, again, is really very good on precisely the kind of thoughts that Helena laid out so, so very well. Luiz, how do you see this? You're close to some of these issues from where you live, but as the CEO of the SBTi?

Luiz Fernando do Amaral, Science Based Targets initiative: Well, thank you, Andrew, and such an honour to be on such a distinguished panel and sharing those thoughts with such inspiring leadership. So obviously, as you said from the beginning, I'm a little biased on this topic, having worked for 15 years and as you already hinted at, being Brazilian, on trying to protect forests and promote better land use in my country. Today either on a not-for-profit trying to use remote sensing to protect forests or on a bank, trying to promote better practices for farmers or in the industry trying to regulate that. That was my life for 15 years.

But for the past year now, my life is leading Science-Based Targets initiative. And what we do is work within different sectors to try to define what good corporate climate action looks like from all of the sectors all across the globe. The idea is exactly to avoid that the corporate climate action becomes a storytelling competition, helping companies define from the start what success looks like. So, then it's very easy to harmonise what success looks like. And then, you know, and you can evaluate progress towards that, right? And you do that by two ways. We develop the guidances of what good looks like based on the best available science. And it's difficult, I must say, because we were trying to translate complex scientific concepts into actionable corporate insights. It's navigating the edge of knowledge, but that's what innovation looks like. Then the second thing is that we evaluate if companies’ plans adhere to those practices, right? So, this is what SPTi does in all sectors, including food and agriculture, including other sectors, that can use nature based solutions as a means to also implement that.

To that point, let me come to this point of the discussion today, right, about promoting restoration, promoting a nature-based solutions and how do you guarantee the, as you said, the speed and scale of guaranteeing that we're guaranteeing the investments are flowing, but we also have the guardrails in place to guarantee that unintended consequences, as Helena rightfully presented, are met. So, there's supply and demand. So there's one issue which is supply. What are the good investments, what are the good projects? And to that I'm not going to talk — Helena is much better positioned than myself, and there are others that are working on what does good investment look like on nature-based solutions. And then there's the demand side, which is what are the good demand for that type of investments? That's where we come. Because what we try to do with those guidances is really define what good looks like. So, what are the actions that companies should take within their supply chains, because that's what they need to do first, is mitigate their own business cases and then what do they do beyond their value chains? And what do they do to support other projects that maybe are thousands of kilometres away from their operations to guarantee that? So that's where we focus on, is guaranteeing that their demand also has the credibility that is needed for those projects.

Andrew Steer: Terrific. Thank you very much indeed. I want to be open now to questions. So, at any stage, feel free to raise your hand. But I'm going to ask just one question before, as they think about their questions. Let's get to you, Suzanne, and others may have a thought. The Trillion Trees is a wonderful initiative of the World Economic Forum, and you've been very heavily engaged in it. And I hope later on Nicole Schwab might just say a word about it. You know, obviously it's possible to do this wrong. So, you need a system in place. I mean, you could be big industrial plantations in places where just not paying enough attention either to the ecosystem or to inhabitants of that particular area. Could you say a word about how that process happens and what gives you confidence? Because I mean, it's impressive the way I think you're thinking this through, and by the way, the Trillion Trees, if you want a way of thinking about this, which is simplistic but is actually useful, you know, there used to be six trillion trees in the world. There now are three trillion trees in the world. So, this will add a trillion trees by, is it 2030?

Suzanne DiBianca: 2030.

Andrew Steer: 2030. That's a pretty exciting vision if you think about it. Anyway, over to you.

Suzanne DiBianca: And sequester about 250 gigatons of carbon.

Andrew Steer: Wow.

Suzanne DiBianca: So it's trees, and mangroves are really important in the solution. We had a breakfast this morning with PE firms called Money and Mangroves. And we need more investment. The way that we think about it, our mantra sort of: right tree, right place, right time, right people. And you know, I think there is a danger to have mono crops. You know, that's not what's important. We've been incredibly privileged to be guided on this journey by Dr. Jane Goodall. Conservation is first. It's the most important thing. We need old growth. But we think about it as, you know, there's so many biodiversity- we have a crisis in biodiversity regardless of climate change at some level. And you know, if we just take mangroves as an example, you know, that's a food source for many populations and it provides jobs, it provides storm protection. There's so many things outside of just the carbon sequestration that's really important. And I really agree with Helena. It sort of reminds me of the days of microlending, when Muhammad Yunus focussed on women as a way to funnel loans because they had a much higher payback rate. They know, you know, just naturally what to do. You know, indigenous people know exactly what to do. They have the right tools already, have had for hundreds of years. And so just empowering local people to make this effort theirs is just such an important part of the criteria. So, when we assess these projects, we look at all of those things, we look at biodiversity, we look at jobs, we look at food, we look at is this a project that's being driven by the local community and not an agricultural company, as an example.

One thing I just want to also say is TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Disclosures). We just hosted a workshop in our London office that there's now kind of a movement and the TCFD, the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures, there's now a movement to put the same in for nature. And so, we brought together a number of our customers. We're a software company, we don't have a huge impact on nature. We have some things with water in our data centres, but we also don’t own most of our data centres. So you know, we did our own sort of assessment, but we're thinking about it more on behalf of our customers and this product element or how do we put in the standards for nature that we need to really be able to track them over time. So, he was supposed to be also on this panel, but I'm very impressed with the work that they're doing in that area.

Andrew Steer: Yes, indeed. And five years from now, we need the same disclosure on nature as we now require for carbon. And as you know, some decades ago, we required for financial issues. The floor’s open. Who'd like to ask a question? Yes. And just say who you are?

Audience Member: I'm Jen Jenkins, I'm with Rubicon Carbon. We're a company that has just launched recently, actually, and with a goal to scale the carbon market for just this kind of investment. I am really interested in this conversation about greenwashing for two reasons, right? I think I see two main barriers, things that we hear from our customers, and our potential customers, as we're talking to them about the solutions that we offer. The first one is they're incredibly afraid, right? And they are afraid because in many cases, right, so some of the projects that we own and participate in are REDD+ projects, right? These are 30-year projects. So, they might be 10 years in. And you don't know, there's a journalist sort of lurking in the corner who's ready to pull out a negative report, you know, on the basis of maybe interviewing one or two folks from the community or somebody who is disgruntled for some other reason might sort of - and then that journalist will prepare a negative report and completely blindside everyone involved and make the companies that invested in that project look bad. They've been with the best of intentions, you know, in investing in what they believe is and what the certifying organizations and the registries have endorsed as a legitimate project. I would love- it's extremely frustrating and I would love to hear this group sort of expound on that particular type of phenomenon. How can we provide support to companies that are trying to do the right thing but really end up sort of getting dragged into this counterproductive conversation, in my view. Just one more thing. I think the other- and actually at WEF yesterday, a report was released that was co-written by Bain and the World Economic Forum, and it did identify a few sort of barriers to the carbon market. And one of them, and I would love to hear from Mr. Amaral, is the interpretation that companies are making of the SBTi guidance around investing in offsets has actually had what I believe is probably the opposite impact that that was intended. It's actually chilling the market. Companies are choosing not to invest now in offsets because they believe for whatever reason that the guidance tells them not to buy offsets until the year before the [inaudible].

Andrew Steer: Who’d like take the first question, essentially, which is, you know, good journalism should expose bad things. But sometimes journalists seize onto a story that might be very micro-level and it’s sort of generalised. I mean, presumably that's why we need data that is verified that we can actually know the truth. Is that right, Katherine?

Katherine Garrett-Cox: I was actually going to make that very point that I think it really comes down to the integrity and authenticity of the data. So I think firstly, I think data has slightly failed this generation in some senses, which is why a lot of people hopped on various different bandwagons. Companies are very quick to sign up to certifications of all sorts. But sometimes, as I said, you know, when you scratch below the surface, it's not really there. I would say specifically from a corporate perspective, having come from a place where I was running a PLC, sometimes there’s safety in numbers. So, if you can perhaps marshal a group of people who've gone through similar experiences to share learnings, that's a really great place to start because knowledge can really help you avoid making the same mistakes. So that might be one thing, just to try to sort of build a bit of a coalition of people who are a bit afraid, put it on the table and see what you can do. But I think the responsibility of the data providers is to make sure that investors who are frankly parting with money, fiduciary money or private money from a family office or whatever, need to make sure that that data is truly authentic and stands the test of scrutiny. And that's why organizations such as CDP are so important. And one of the things we're really working on is, you know, how can we broaden the scope of the work and the data that we've been gathering over the last 20 years, and how do we make sure that it's accessible? Because if it's not accessible, then no one knows. And so those would be sort of my two Ps, for what it's worth, and your point on offsetting is spot on. But Luiz, I'm not going to veer off into your space.

Andrew Steer: Luiz, are you having a chilling effect on carbon markets?

Luiz Fernando do Amaral: As you said at the beginning, we are navigating the edge of knowledge, right? We're trying to do stuff that was never done before and it comes with a little bit of bumps in the road that we quickly need to adapt. And one of those, as Jen pointed out, is that there is a misreading and a misperception of that. So, I'll make two comments on that specific question while answering Jen's. So, the first thank you for the question, because I think I really wanted to touch that. But in 3 minutes I didn't have the time. Now it gave me enough time to do that.

SBTi is not against carbon markets, quite the contrary. What the misinterpretation of reading said is that the net-zero standard says that at the end of your net-zero journey there will always be emissions. And those emissions at the end of the journey by that time, you absolutely will be obliged to compensate them through removals, and why removals? Because by then we have to have solved deforestation. So haven't we, then we were in a different type of position, right? That's what he says. And folks understood that, that it was saying, oh, you can only use carbon credits and investments only in the end and only for removals. That's not right. What he's saying is it's obligatory at the very end to compensate for your residual emissions. That's one thing.

The other thing that we say is you cannot buy your way out of your corporate climate plans, meaning you cannot continue to grow your emissions forever. Just go out there in the market and offset everything with the carbon market. So that's the other thing which is true because we want to transform businesses. But then what we see is that we strongly encourage the investments and folks who go above and beyond their own plans, invest in nature, invest in carbon markets if the two other requirements are met. We are currently developing a beyond value chain mitigation guidance because we recognise there was this lack of interpretation. So we want to facilitate that, because you all want more investment into those things. So we are working on that new guidance that is actually going to bring more clarity Jen to this type of misinterpretation. So this was just on that question. And finally, Andrew, if I have 30 seconds more to your question, I would say that we are actually facilitating carbon markets and investments. We were all there 15 years ago when was the first gold rush of carbon markets. And we all know what happened: crashed. I remember at the time I was doing carbon markets, I was in the bank investing and creating a project to restore lands. And I think if I'm not mistaken, we're one of the first voluntary restoration goals that we were doing at the time. When the project started, all the math was good. At the end, prices had crashed. It was not even worth it to get the auditors to go out there in the field and see it.

And that happened because demand disappeared. So, what SBTi does is actually it creates the demand, right? We are actually helping regulate the market by guaranteeing the demand will exist for that, not only now but in the future to avoid that crash in the future.

Andrew Steer: And one reason that demand disappeared is because the quality of supply was weak which is what we want to avoid this time round. Other questions? Yes, back there.

Audience member: Thank you. Hi, my name is Rima Chakrabarti. Thank you all for being here. I'm an investor in early-stage biotech, now starting to focus more on biology-based solutions for climate change. The question I have on carbon credit and verification. Suzanne, you had mentioned investing in a company that's focussed on tracking and

there are methodology tracking agencies like Verra, for example, where a number of our companies are actually going through the methodology process with them. And something that happens with all regulation is it takes time. And so, there is often at odds this relationship between moving fast, innovating fast, and then being at odds with the time scale of regulation. Knowing how important quality is to this, that's what we've been talking about, things around permanence and the actual size of the offset and all of these other points you all understand better than I do, how do we balance the speed of solving this problem with regulation? Is it by relying on a number of third parties to regulate? Is there at some point a central agency which gut tells me will take longer to regulate? I'd love your thoughts on that.

Andrew Steer: Well done. Well we could be here all day on this subject. Anybody want to give a crisp answer to that?

Suzanne DiBianca: I think we do need a global standard. I am glad about the regulation in Europe; looking different in the US. I think we need one global standard. I am a deep believer in that. I also just want to say, you know, there's good systems for transparency today and they're getting better every day. So, Forest Watch under the World Resources Institute has been incredible at this. And Andrew would know this more so than I. has been at this, I think, for a decade in trying to really bring transparency. And there's a programme that you can talk about if you want to around the Land and Carbon Lab, which I'm fascinated about. So, we've got so much better technology today that we can do this fast and good and get better sort of the evolution.

Andrew Steer: Yeah. These are early days and your point is absolutely right. Yeah, there is a there is a need to go fast, but it takes too long and some of the investments will require a bit of time. But once you get them in place then you'll be able to do lots of them quickly. So, for example, on nature-based solutions, you really want a jurisdictional approach. Project by project might be quicker, but the quality won't be so good. Once you've got a jurisdictional approach, you've got the governments with plans that you can monitor. And as Suzanne says, we now have, for example, the Land & Carbon Lab, which Bezos Earth Fund supports, and WRI and various other organizations run it. I mean, we will be able to know three years from today, not only every tree that's falling in the world, basically ten metres by ten metres everywhere on the Earth's planet every month or so, we will also know trees that are growing. We'll be able to capture that. We’ll be able to see crops that are changing, land use that's changing and we'll be able to see the carbon embedded in all of those transitions. So, for the first time ever, we'll be able to get the so-called carbon flux at the hectare-by-hectare level. Well, you think about, what that will enable us to do — it won't be perfect to start with, but over the years, because of the way that you have sort of continuous learning algorithms and ground truthing that helps get the better algorithms through drones and so on, we will get really quite good. We have to head towards the end of the session now. I'm going to ask each of you to say one thing that you plan to do in the coming year that you think would help us get more clarity on this issue that we've been discussing today. Should we start at the far end, Katherine.

Katherine Garrett-Cox: Thanks Andrew. Since you put me on the spot, I'm going to do two things with my two different hats on, which I think is only fair. So, with my CDP hat on, we are going to relentlessly pursue better reporting around biodiversity and absolutely, I think touching on Suzanne's point about TNFD, I think, you know, creating the standard and making sure it becomes mandatory, we're all in for that. In terms of my GIB Asset Management hat on, we are absolutely committed to continuing to support the Mangroves working group, the blue ocean agenda and trying to crowd in more private sector financing because it's not one person that can tackle all of this. So, bring authenticity, bring money to bear on the scale of the problem. That's what we'll do.

Andrew Steer: Thank you. Luiz?

Luiz Fernando do Amaral: I think we were going to do two things Andrew. One is going see that growth on SBTi, which is growth of demand for this type of investments, right? So, companies that get targets instead to say, here's what I want to achieve, those are the ones that are actually going to be triggered to be investing into those solutions. We had last year when I was here at WEF we had 2,000 companies committed, now we have 4,000 companies committed 2,000 companies out of which have already validated. So, it doubled the size. That exponential growth needs to continue to guarantee that this wave of additional investments on nature exists, including companies that will do that outside their supply chains, such as yourselves, but also the food and agriculture companies. They need to do that inside their supply chains. This is one.

And then the second thing we are working, as I mentioned, on this new guidance, which we call very jargony, we need the better names, but beyond value chain mitigation is exactly to Jane's point to try to clarify more and more to the marketplace. What are these centres of these incentives structures? Where are the guidelines and standards on how to do best the investments when they're not with operations and then they far away

Andrew Steer: Thank you very much.

Suzanne DiBianca: I'll just do one thing with both hats, which is really be guided by youth, in particular in Indigenous communities, as decision making bodies. One, we were talking earlier about Earth Uprising, which is a group I'm very involved in, and the founder of that was inspired to set it up as a result of forest fires and asthma. And I'm just incredibly humbled. I'm impressed deeply by the work of young people, and I think they deserve a seat at the table. I'm appreciative to give panels and all of the things to get voice out there, but I actually want to take a different approach next year, and think Nicole and I are on the same page as it relates to the One T effort, but for Salesforce, I'm going to give a youth council my business plan and say, what's missing, what makes sense? And I really want more youth voices in the decision-making context.

Andrew Steer: Wow, that's wonderful. Well, that's a very natural segue. Over to you.

Helena Gualinga: Yeah, I agree. I think young people and indigenous people need to be at the tables where decisions are being made. I mean, we have seen a lot of failure before. We need to change strategy. We need to make sure that we have new people on these tables making decisions. Andrew, I think my commitment can be to hold all of you accountable.

Katherine Garrett-Cox: Good.

Andrew Steer: Good, great. A short sentence, but with real content to it. It's brilliant. Look, we have to bring this to an end now. I'm struck by the sort of genuineness of this conversation. And it's one thing. I mean, I'd commend you, Nicole and the WEF team for this, really having very genuine conversations. I mean, yesterday we had a brilliant session bringing renewable energy investors together with the miners that find those precious minerals that are required in order to build a windmill together with the nature community. And on the issue essentially of permitting, you know, that is the point about things going slow. It's a brilliant sort of transparent, honest confrontation, exactly where we ought to be right now.

It seems to me that coming out of this session, some things should be absolutely non-negotiable. So, engaging in the right way with indigenous people, as is sort of suggested here, that should be non-negotiable. No tradeoffs there. The overwhelming message is data, and verifiable data. I was struck by your question about, you know, a journalist does a story and how do you defend against it? Well, imagine an equivalent. Suppose the journalist does a story on your finances. You know, Salesforce has a great big hole in its finance. What would you do? You wouldn't try and defend it. You'd go and talk to the auditors who audited the accounts and you talk to the accountants and you'd say, well, is it true? And you'd be able to see that either it is true or isn't true. And if it is true, you fire the auditors. If it isn't true, then the journalist has no story. We're baby steps at the moment. Fair enough. We've only been in this business for ten years, but we need over the next decade to get to that situation where we could have that degree of transparency and verifiability. So, thank you. Nicole, Why don't you end us?

Nicole Schwab, World Economic Forum: Thank you very much, Andrew. I want to thank the panellists, and thank you for this parallel as well with the financial sector. So, we're very much committed at the World Economic Forum to everything that's been said here, to accountability, to transparency, to trust, but also to this transition towards a nature-positive and net-zero economy. And with 1t.org we've also just released the first set of 30 implementation reports from the 80 pledges that we have today. The first 30 have released a kind of a tracking of where their implementation is at in partnership with the IUCN Restoration Barometer. So we now have a mechanism for the private sector to track their pledges. And I think this and everything you've heard here are all examples of efforts that can help us bring more transparency in the system and thereby encourage more companies to join because they know that what will be highlighted are the good efforts and kind of this recognition for the positive efforts. And, you know, moving us away from the greenwashing. Scrutiny is a good thing. So, we actually welcome this additional scrutiny so that we can recognise what good looks like. So we want to invite all of you to join this movement and to join 1t.org and our other initiatives at the Forum. And if you have any questions, of course, please reach out to us. We are here to support this transition. Thank you all.

Andrew Steer: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you. Katherine, Luiz, Suzanne, Helena. Well done. Thank you.