… Hello NatureTech Memo’s

Three years ago, Colin and I set off writing The Triple Bottom on a journey to speak with fascinating and accomplished people tackling the climate crisis from every angle and discipline.

200+ editions later and we’ve grown to a happy community of ~3000 ClimateTech Folk. We’ve been blown away by the insight, support, and generosity we receive from you each week. 

Our guiding belief has always been that we cannot de-couple climate considerations from a broader view of earth’s systems and natural resources. If we achieve net-zero emissions yet fail to address water shortages or safeguard biodiversity, what will this mean for the wellbeing of people and planet?

Zooming out the picture isn’t pretty. According to WEF over $44 trillion of economic value generation – more than half of the world’s total GDP – is dependent on nature and its services. Yet, the degradation of this vital resource is happening at an alarming rate - a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970.

Thankfully, a growing collection of innovators are working to enable, accelerate and scale-up solutions that improve how we interact with nature.

These solutions require significant new investment. The most widely accepted estimates suggest we need to spend an additional ~$ 711 billion each year on nature-based solutions to reverse biodiversity loss. 

There are multiple barriers to financing but one thing is clear - to mobilise capital to nature-based solutions and NatureTech we need to build trust. Trust in the $ value risks posed by nature loss, trust in the effectiveness of solutions, and trust in the viability of financial returns from investing in nature.

Unpicking these challenges requires working together like never before as systems problems need interdisciplinary points of view. - it will be critical to break out of silos.  

With both of our backgrounds in Nature - Ollie from his time in conservation research, and Colin from years on the farm and in the Agri sector - we’ve decided to double down to focus on these challenges.

Our aims:

• A) To produce insights that demystify NatureTech, Nature-based solutions and Nature Finance to build trust amongst investors, founders and nature-loving folk

• B) To be a platform for the flow of information, ideas, and capital needed to accelerate nature-tech and enable collaboration to break out of silos

 What does this mean in practice?

Each week we’ll spotlight early-stage innovation in Nature. We’ll also unpick the relationship between Nature and the other systems on which we rely such as Food, Energy and Financial systems. Once a month we’ll send you a free insight report on an area of NatureTech. Today marks our first edition…. 

Did you get sent this email by a friend?

In today’s edition:
⚡️ Facebook, AI and the Carbon Markets

🚜 A UK Nature-Tech mega deal

🐘 Want to work on bringing back the Wooly Mammoth - check the jobs section?

🐘 Long Read (1-Min Read)

Meta using Artificial Intelligence to Map the Earth’s Forests

What happened: Meta (Formerly Facebook) and World Resources Institute are using Artificial Intelligence to map the Earth’s Forests to a 1-meter resolution. In an effort to advance open source forest monitoring, all canopy height data and artificial intelligence models are free and publicly available.

Problem being solved: Critical gaps remain in the scientific understanding of the structure and extent of global forests. Because the vast majority of existing data on global forests is derived from low to medium resolution satellite imagery (10 or 30 meters), there is a gap in the scientific understanding of dynamic and more dispersed forest systems such as agroforestry, drylands forests, and alpine forests, which together constitute more than a third of the world’s forests. 

How this helps: Improving remote monitoring will enable more accurate monitoring, reporting and verification of the carbon sequestration of forests - and therefore can also build greater trust in forest-based carbon credits. Open-sourcing this data will enable early-stage innovators to build on top of the data to further facilitate accountability and transparency in the carbon market.

Why it matters: Ecosystem services provided by forests underpin an essential defense against the climate and biodiversity crises. Forests cover almost a third of the global land area and harbour over 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species, and 68 percent of the world's mammal species. (Full story here)

💬 Snippets for your lift conversations

• Finance: Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador are among a group of nations in talks with development banks to launch a “Amazonia Bond’ to raise billions of dollars of low-cost funding to protect the world's biggest rainforest.

• Finance: First-of-its kind research led by the Green Finance Institute estimate the scale of nature-related financial risks to the UK economy for the first time - 12% of UK GDP.

• Finance: A new report highlights the growing appetite for natural capital investments in institutional portfolios, with half of UK asset owners saying they already invest in natural capital or will do so within the next 18 months.

• Energy: Renewable project Developer Queequeg Renewables has partnered with a consultancy specialising in Biodiversity Net Gain to to bolster biodiversity across five solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.

• Energy: UK investor launches a nature blueprint for renewables - A guide to help land managers, developers, asset managers and operators to implement nature positive management practices.

• Food:  Australia has called on the EU to delay deforestation laws over concerns that it could impact Australia’s $143m European beef export market, which accounts for 1.3% of total beef exports.

• Policy: Malaysia plans to introduce "orangutan diplomacy" in its relations with major palm oil-importing countries, offering the animals as trading gifts in an effort to allay concerns about the environmental effects of growing the commodity.

• Research: Researchers found that of all the “global change drivers” that are destroying ecosystems, loss of species was the greatest in increasing the risk of infectious disease outbreaks

💭 Little Bytes

📊 Stat: Scientists have determined that the number of stars in the Milky Way ranges from 100 billion to upwards of 400 billion, but there is an estimated amount of 3 trillion trees on Earth.

📺️ Watch: Coffee plants that can alert farmers if they’re dry or diseased

💬 Creature of the week: Discovered of the coast of Indonesia in 1998, the mimic octopus, impersonates a variety of other animals on the fly, morphing from an octopus to a banded sole to a lionfish to a sea snake to fool predators

📆 Events

• 16 May - Natural Capital Investment Americas - NY, USA

• 22 & 23 May - Carbon Unbound - NY, USA

• 12 & 13 June -  Forestry & Agriculture Investment Summit - London, UK

• 25 & 26 June - Nature Tech Expo 2024 - Leeds, UK

• 26 June - The Nature Positive Hub at London Climate Action Week 2024 - London, UK

• 16 July - Using Green Finance to Drive Nature’s Recovery - Online

💼 Jobs

• Lead Biodiversity Scientist @EarthAcre

• Marketing and Research roles @ Colossal Biosciences

• Engineering and Product roles @ Sylvera

 🎣 Gone Phishing (1-Minute Read)

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up. Guess which:

• Emotional support alligator taken and released in swamp

• Two year old becomes best friends with a crow 

• Local library finds rare book collection hidden in the ceiling

• Family discovers gigantic bee colony in the wall of their home