🌱 This week in NatureTech #19

🐘 Long Read (3 -Min Read)

EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) delayed by a year - What it means for NatureTech 🗺️ 

What happened? The European Commission has proposed delaying its new anti-deforestation law by one year. This law, originally set to start on December 30 2024, aims to ban products linked to deforestation from entering the EU market.

What are the key points? The law requires companies to prove their products like coffee, cocoa, rubber, wood, palm oil, soy, and beef aren't from deforested land. Companies must provide precise traces of their supply chains down to the plot where their raw materials were grown. Those who don’t comply would face fines of up to 4% of their EU turnover.

The challenge? The pushback was the result of pressure from industries and governments who said it would cause supply chain disruptions, exclude poor, small-scale farmers from the EU market, and drive up the cost of food because many farmers and suppliers were not ready to comply.

Impact of the pushback: 

1. For laggards: A chance to breathe out. An extra year for governments and trade partners to resolve these concerns and, hopefully, provide support to smallholders

2. For leaders: Food companies who did comply have said they will suffer losses from a delay after paying premiums (5-10% more) to secure raw materials that comply with the law, and from investing in the systems that helped map their supply chains. 

3. For Nature: Deforestation continues. Crucial initiatives to reduce impact will be on hold at least until EU lawmakers provide more details.

Location, Location, Location

All is not lost for leading organisations who were ready to comply. We believe that the importance of this location data goes beyond compliance with regulations like EUDR.

Global supply chains are under pressure - increased global conflict, increased extreme weather events, and increased focus from consumers on social issues throughout supply chains - all of this translates to volatility and risk for businesses.

Location data can help businesses minimise these risks and make more informed decisions about where they source their products from.

Our take: This data is good business.

NatureTech start-ups addressing these challenges:

1. Bottom-up approach: Meridia -  72% of the world’s population live on physical property for which they do not hold formal rights. Meridia helps smallholder farmers easily map the boundaries of their property and gain legal ownership. They then use this location data to help big corporates trace their supply chains down to the plot where their raw materials were grown.

2. Top-down approach: SourceMap - Sourcemap focus on the large corporates at the top of supply chains. They help these organisations survey their suppliers to gather data on where they operate. These suppliers then request the same data from their suppliers, until eventually supply chains are mapped right down to where raw materials were grown.

Both of these start-ups are focussed on the physical location of assets - the farmland or the factory where products were processed. Other start-ups are focussed on tracking the product itself - the bag of cocoa or soybeans - by attaching trackers or using QR codes in the products.

💬 Snippets for your lift conversations

Big business:

• The World Economic Forum has launched a coalition assisting offshore wind developers in creating projects that benefit nature.  Developers include Enel, Orsted, Iberdrola, RWE, Vestas, AES and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

• Sainsbury's becomes first UK supermarket to offer peat-free mushrooms. As a natural carbon storer, peat plays a key role in regulating earth’s climate. 

• Microsoft just released a whitepaper on Nature investment

Finance

•  BNP Paribas and French non-profit Blue Alliance have launched a loan programme for 1.8mn hectares for coral reef conservation in the Global South

• A coalition of 22 bilateral and philanthropic donors committed to invest $1.7 billion between 2021-2025 to advance forest tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities in tropical forest countries.

Market & Projects

• US-based standard Verra has registered its first biochar carbon removal project more than two years in the making. This marks an important milestone for biochar projects as a viable approach for large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

• A mangrove forest in an estuary located in the Indonesian island of Borneo is one of the world's richest carbon sink, a new report concluded, suggesting that it should be prioritised by blue carbon project developers

• Rice University scientists have tapped into nature’s adhesive genius — the sticky power of mussels — to create bioengineered microorganisms with powerful cling that could help transform environmental cleanup

• What Does a Dying Coral Reef Sound Like? AI Is Developing an Answer

• UAE-based project developer Blue Forest has secured the operating licence for a 155,000-hectare mangrove restoration project -the 2nd largest ever

Policy:

• The Biden administration finalised a landmark rule that would require water utilities to replace virtually every lead pipe in the country within 10 years, to curb water contamination with knock on benefits for biodiversity.

• Australia is finalising an updated battle strategy for its war on feral cats, one of the biggest drivers of native mammal extinctions on the continent

🎣 Deals

2 Start-ups in our network are raising. Get in touch for more info!

• The government of Western Australia and Founders Factory announced the first cohort of six early-stage nature tech startups 

• Basecamp Research raises $60m Series B to scale its AI-powered database of life

• XFarm Technologies, a Manno, Switzerland-based company that helps to digitalise the agri-food sector, raised €36M in Series C funding.

• Neutreeno, raised $5M in Seed funding. They focus on employing advanced material, energy, and emissions analysis to optimize industrial Scope 3 decarbonization efforts without offsets. 

• The VC arm of Australian,Twynam led a pre-seed funding round for Brooklyn-based company Vycarb- The US startup is developing a scalable water-based decarbonization technology

💭 Little Bytes

📊Read: Joshua Bergers guide to Nature measurement

📺️Watch: Spanish olive trees find new home in Hungary as climate warms

💬 Listen: Ancient DNA debunks Rapa Nui ‘ecological suicide’ theory

📆 Events

• 17 October: Wildya+ Masterclass: Show and Tell - Wild Mosaic

• 21 Oct to 1 Nov - COP16 - For those attending check out Joshua Berger’s awesome summary of events

• 16 October - greenwashing and greenhushing: navigating the corporate goldilocks zone - London

• 24 October - Bloom - Colombia

• 29 October: Wildya+ Masterclass: How to find product market fit with Anna Alex (Nala)

💼 Jobs

Special thanks to Theresa Lieb for this awesome list…

Also check out our friends from Superorganism’s job board

🐼 Corporate 🐼 

Tesco, Lead Nature Manager (Hertfordshire, UK) https://lnkd.in/etdq95Vc

Lego, Senior Manager, Global Sustainability Water and Nature (Billund, Denmark)https://lnkd.in/eNzNBStK

Danone, Sustainability Manager, Nature (Hoofddorp, Netherlands)https://lnkd.in/ex4DhJ-F

Danone, CDI — Nature Controller (Paris, France)https://lnkd.in/ekD_XqCK

ClimeCo, Project Manager, Nature Based Solutions (remote, US) https://lnkd.in/ei5mwwH9

IUCN, Programme Officer, Business and Nature (Cambridge, UK) https://lnkd.in/eauQUgTY

WWF, Knowledge Manager, Freshwater Practice (hybrid, Europe) https://lnkd.in/embs7iRY

🐝Finance🐝

BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group, Portfolio Manager (New York, US) https://lnkd.in/ejmizFMP

Conservation International, Americas & Amazonia Bioeconomy Investment Lead - CI Ventures (Brazil, Colombia or Peru) https://lnkd.in/eAYe3znB

🦊 Nature-based solution projects & nature tech startups 🦊

Treeconomy, Product Lead (hybrid, UK) https://lnkd.in/ekn39H4k

Conservation X Labs, Senior Director of Development (Washington, DC, US) https://lnkd.in/eC5Wc_Mc

Carbon Farm, Product Manager (Paris, France) https://lnkd.in/er-nKPJ4