Hi, I'm Helen Avery with the Green Finance Institute.
And you're listening to Financing Nature for our final
episode of this series. I'm delighted to be joined by
Justin Adams, Co founder of the Historic Collective and fellow
with the Circular Bio Economy Alliance, to pose a few big
questions about what next for nature finance.
We spend all of this time saying how do we invest more, How do we
scale more? How do we right.
And we find more instruments, more opportunities, more policy
mechanisms to to do that. And it's so important, so
valuable to do that. But what we are ignoring is the
iceberg of this. This is what we see on the
surface, because underneath it is 7.3 trillion, which I think
is probably an underestimate of nature negative activities.
So for all of our work, we continue to ignore the fact that
we can work ever harder, we can become busier and busier and
busier, and yet the mainstream economy continues to extract and
exploit and degrade our environment.
Hello and welcome back to the very last episode of this season
of Financing Nature, The Revenues for Nature season.
And it is my very last episode of Financing Nature, but I'll
share more about that at the end.
I'm so excited, however, to wrap up this season with Justin
Adams. Justin has been a huge
inspiration for me personally at encouraging us to question is
what we're doing in nature finance enough?
We're all working so hard. There are just incredible and
essential initiatives happening, many of which we've heard about
through this season and the other seasons.
And and it's clear that progress is being made, but we also know
that we're continuing to lose biodiversity.
Populations are growing with ever greater needs to be met.
So in these final 2 episodes, as I said last week, we're sort of
departing from the very practical examples of nature
finance to kind of step back and take a bit of a different view.
So Harvey last week posed some bold ideas, many of which still
fit within the system that we're in.
But today, Justin is joining us to sort of talk about actually,
do we need to question more the system we're in?
And are there some changes we need to make sort of
fundamentally? And if so, where can change
happen? It's a journey he himself has
been working through for multiple decades.
Actually, he's been in the field.
And then he took a break to explore what would make an even
bigger difference. And he's kindly going to join us
today to share what he's been learning and what he's working
on. Welcome, Justin, It's so lovely
to see you. How are you first of all?
I'm great sun shining and yeah, it's lovely to see you, Helen.
It's lovely to see you so before, well actually before we
sort of talk about the meat of, you know, how we're going to
tackle nature finance and all the amazing things you're
working on. That'd be really great for
everyone to hear your own personal story because I know
that it's personally really inspired me the journey that
you've taken through working in nature finance and then to where
you are now working on several different projects.
So I wondered if you would do us the honour of sort of sharing a
bit more about that. Let me do that succinctly.
And, and I mean, there's, there's, I think there's two
threads to it. One is the sort of thread that
you can read on my LinkedIn profile of my professional
journey and I did my first nature finance deal 20 years ago
now a carbon deal I inherited. At that point I was working in
BP of all places, but but working on the carbon cycle and
really trying to understand the role nature might play.
And I inherited the Noel Kemp project, which was at that point
the sort of the prototype red project in Bolivia that that
taught us so much around avoided deforestation.
And the more I did with that, the more I sort of realised that
this was the sort of deeper calling for me that.
And I then chose to sort of focus my career from 2010
onwards really into the sort of nature and land use space and
had various, you know, stints and roles helping set up a fund
with the World Bank, moving to a wonderful role at The Nature
Conservancy for five years, than the World Economic Forum where I
set up the nature platform. And then finally into Generation
Investment Management, one of the most extraordinary, you
know, investment firms that's really been pushing the boundary
of sustainable finance for 20 odd years.
And there helped sort of build the strategy for what is now
their nature and food fund. But throughout that journey, I
was sort of looking where and how do we make a difference with
nature finance? Where and how can we really
start to address the, the, the, the desperate situation that
we're in? And I think everybody listening
to this podcast understands that the state of nature and the WWF
Living Planet report that shows the sort of 73% sort of
reduction in species abundance in in our lifetimes, in 50
years. And that that, you know, as much
as the climate crisis sort of really imperils the future of,
of life on Earth. And, and so how and where do we
find levers to do that? But the second thread of that
journey has been one that has always been inspired by nature.
I was, you know, very lucky in my early 20s to study with some
indigenous elders and they taught me and encouraged me to
be listening to nature herself to, to find ways of finding my
path and what my contribution might be.
And so that deeper in a journey has been a, a thread that's not
in my LinkedIn profile, but has been just as important as that
professional journey. And I'm sure we'll touch on bits
of that as we move along. Yeah, I know.
I'd absolutely love to. So after sort of incredible work
on the ground looking at nature finance, you then decided to
kind of take a year out if it if, if that's correct and you've
come back sort of refreshed with some different views of some
different approaches that we should and could be taking.
So I'd love if you can sort of share with us about that and
then sort of leading onto to what you're working on now.
I mean, I think it's fair to say I, I sort of very much been an
insider. I sort of worked inside the
system, those various roles I touched on a moment ago that
that believing that we needed to work in the system, we needed to
influence the, the sort of people with power to, to affect
the system and that the system could change.
And I believe that's what a lot of the sustainability world, the
sustainability communities worked on for so, so many years.
And yeah, and we've made wonderful progress, the level of
awareness that's there now. And if you just look at the
nature finance agenda, I mean, what's happening with
disclosure? I mean, just listening back to
Emily Mckenzie's wonderful podcast interview with you a few
months ago with TNF DS were listening to so many of the kind
of other, you know, wonderful examples you've pulled in from
Terasos and Lens and Rimba Collective on the revenues for
nature project. It's it's wonderful seeing how
much progress is there. And and that's yeah, I can give
you various examples of things I've done and, and, and say,
yes, that was great. And we we've made this progress.
But but the dawning realisation, and again, this is actually also
the dawning realisation from spending deeper time in, in
nature as well, was like for all of that progress, we are falling
so far short of, of what is needed because we keep trying to
finance regeneration, but within a system that is fundamentally
built on extraction. And unless we start to get to
the deeper design traits of the system, then I worry we will
continue to fall short. And so here I was, you know,
just after my 50th birthday, and I reached a moment where I
realised the most dangerous idea we have in sustainability is
that we don't have time to change the system or redesign
the system. Because I think unless we start
getting serious about that, we are just stacking up more and
more problems for future generations to deal with.
So how can I, with all the privilege, the networks, the
experience I've got, actually start to try and say what might
we do differently? Not to say anything, All the
progress is bad. It's great, it's wonderful, it's
wonderful seeing how many people are engaged.
But we've got to start pushing for deeper change, deeper
transformation. Oh gosh, makes my heart explode.
I'm just, it's just so refreshing and I'm so grateful
for you for having that sort of experience and sort of
awakening, if you will, that's LED you to where you are now.
Because I think it's when I look out, I see there's quite a few
people who are now similarly sort of following in your
footsteps and thinking, we are so productive across nature
finance now, so many people being very busy doing wonderful,
wonderful things. But as you say, like is it
really changing the system? I think quite a few of us are
questioning. And that's really what we wanted
to sort of end this series with was we're sort of hearing some
of the sort of more provocative big ideas that can go a level
deeper than than where we are at the moment that can really have
that long term system change. So I guess this brings us on to
like, it'd be great to hear what you're working on now.
I know you've got several hats and angles that you're working
here. That's the right way of saying
it. So yeah, tell us all about that.
Well, I think the thing to say is that there's there's lots of
career paths, lots of opportunities, lots of jobs now
in nature finance that are that are, you know, quite clearly
marked out when you say actually, I want to really
fundamentally challenge the premise of the system, right?
It's actually far harder to find jobs that that do that.
And it's one of the things lots of people says, Oh, we'll have,
you know, what, what opportunities are there and how
can we do this? And it's and it's hard, right?
We're sort of breaking new ground, but I'm very fortunate
in having a couple of different sort of hats I am wearing.
So I worked with Circular Bio Economy Alliance where I'm sort
of, I became their reimagining Nature Finance fellow, which is
sort of really trying to sort of push the boundaries of nature
finance and how we might think. And then the other, the
organisation I set up, which was to actually try and create
spaces, opportunities for more people within the system to sort
of step back and have immersive experiences in nature to think
differently about the future. That's an organisation called a
*. So reimagining nature finance,
should we start off with what you observed over your career
and then what sort of came to you on your time out and it has
come to you since that that you see as like not working
specifically? And then we can sort of talk
about what what, what is working, what could work.
I, I think we know what's, what's not working and I think
we're all scrambling, we're all super busy, as you, as you said
a moment ago in, in, in trying to, to find solutions.
And, and, and I think one of the things I observed and I helped
co-author the 1st edition of UNEPFI state of Finance for
nature report. I think that was in 2021, the
first version of that came out. And of course the latest edition
of that came out a few months ago and the numbers aren't
drastic particularly different. But what the latest report shows
is that we've got $220 billion of funding a year going into
so-called nature positive investment, which sounds a great
deal of money. But of course, in terms of the
global economy, it's, it's a rounding error and we talk about
the need to scale that nature finance, We're all scrambling.
We're trying to find more voluntary investment from
corporates. We're trying to get more
regulated instruments for biodiversity markets or for for
carbon or for other forms of environmental payments.
And, and So what the unit latest report says is by 20-30, we need
to scale it to 571 billion. So roughly 2 1/2 times scale up.
So I think we spend so much of our time in terms of the
investment side. We spend all of this time saying
how do we invest more, how do we scale more, how do we right and
we find more instruments, more opportunities, more policy
mechanisms to to do that. And it's so important, so
valuable to do that. But what we are ignoring is the
iceberg of this. This is what we see on the
surface, because underneath it is 7.3 trillion, which I think
is probably an underestimate, but we see 7.3 trillion of
nature negative activities. So for all of our work within
the nature finance community, which is mostly the bubble we
exist in and what we're talking to ourselves about, we continue
to ignore the fact that that we can work ever harder.
We can become busier and busier and busier and yet the
mainstream economy continues to extract and exploit and degrade
our environment and many people associated with with that.
And, and that's the fundamental challenge.
And so, so I say it's not simply a capital shortage.
It's, it's, it's a systemic flaw.
And for all of our efforts to try and upscale and find, get
environment ministries to, to create new mechanisms, those
mechanisms, if you and, and you work very closely with the UK
government and other governments around their own green finance.
And again, there's many, many extraordinary, wonderful people
doing this work. But almost all of our thinking
is all driven through market logic.
And that the market logic is the logic of neoliberalism, that if
we could just find ways of pricing this, if we just find
ways of creating a market, private sector money is going to
flood in and that's going to solve our problem.
And yet that's exactly the root of the the challenges that have
driven the degradation. And I I had an indigenous elder,
an extraordinary man now well into his 90s, Orrin Lyons, who's
of the Onondaga Nation from upper state New York, part of
the year, heard Nashoni Nation and he SAT around this council
fire. We had the Nature Conservancy's
leadership sitting in council for three days with the Hoda
Noshoni elders. And he looked at me and said,
you keep talking about these finance mechanisms, you keep
talking about new technology. And yet that is the very same
instinct that has driven so much of this destruction that we have
seen over the last 500 years. And so we're we're using the
same logic to try and solve the problems of the system.
And that is what concerns me very greatly if we're
fundamentally looking to try and shift.
There's a couple of things lately I've heard in the UK that
have really made me sort of think about this issue of we're
just spent with the trillions going into destroying nature.
Not that's not his aim. It's just the system, as you
say. And one was there was Anthropy
and a woman from GCHQ. The intelligence unit was sort
of just reminding us how much is being spent on war and the
damage that that does to the environment just wipes out like
decades of any sort of regenerative investment you may
have made in land in some of the the region which is war-torn.
The other words, there was a discussion around the just
because we're in a world now which has slightly shifted in
the last almost more decades, probably more than that to
having more conflicts. If we put it like that in the
with the West involved, I would say that economic growth must
keep churning to pay for defence budgets.
And then when I heard that, I thought, how are we ever going
to get out of this? You know, more and more
extraction is to pay for military, which will cause more
devastation and then we'll need more extraction.
And you sort of realise it's never ending.
And then the other thing I'd mentioned, it was, and I think
you said that you've seen this as well, was that that
dramatisation of the water sector issues in the UK, dirty
business where you could see very clearly that for all the
amazing grants that are put into cleaning up our rivers means
nothing if the water companies are illegally pumping out sewage
into our waterways. You just, we just can't fight
it. So I think there's quite a few
people at the moment who are really sort of questioning this
is that point you said around how can we ever fight against
all the the negative impacts that are almost like a byproduct
of the system that we live in. So I'm keen to hear how are you
approaching changing that? Because a lot of people you talk
about system change and I don't know about you, but in the past
I've, I rolled a little bit because I thought, look, we're
in a capitalist system. You kind of got to live with it.
And it's only now I'm starting to think actually inspired by
people like yourself, like it's time to challenge it.
But it also doesn't feel very practical, you know, when you
talk about system change. So I'd love to hear what what
are you thinking about the actual changes to be made?
I mean, we're, we're talking, you know, at a time of, you
know, heightened geopolitical conflict, we're talking at a
time of kind of increasing ecological unravelling and, you
know, a water crisis that that in certain regions is just
starting to kind of escalate and escalate.
We're talking at this time as sort of, you know, deep
inequality, deep unhappiness with our political system and
yet so many people in power. Your example of the the lady
from GCHQ and we see it in the 24 hour news cycle.
We're all bombarded with it's like we're just stuck within
this system that we don't have any alternative.
Let you know we've got to increase defence budget.
We can't regulate the water companies more because then, you
know, they won't be able to just keep the function of water
delivery to our homes and and our businesses.
So we're sort of stuck within this logic, even though, you
know, more and more people are realising goodness, right?
Things are not working well for many people.
They're working fine for a few people, but but for the majority
of people and certainly for the majority of species, this system
is not working well. So I would say when I stepped
back and again, what a privilege to have that opportunity to take
a year to step back and just reflect on what the heck am I
doing and where the heck are we? I realised that we have this
crisis of separation. We've separated ourselves from
each other and from the natural world.
Now we've got this crisis of individualism and crisis of
meaning because we've separated ourselves so much.
And I, I, you know, I have young adult children who are kind of,
you know, talk about this sort of isolation that, that so many
young people are feeling as well, this dislocation of where
are they in this at this moment. So I think this crisis
separation and then this other thing is this crisis of
imagination that that we, we struggle to see beyond the
boundary of the system that we're in.
And the number of times that I end up in circular discussions
of like, you're kidding yourself if you think we're going to
change the system, you're kidding yourself if right, this
is what it is. And so let's just just put your
head down, get on with it. And, and, and I can't tell you
how many times I've heard that. And then what's the answer?
Well, the challenge with the new system is it's hard to see, it's
hard to analyse. I got in trouble the other week
because I quipped that, you know, it's not going to be a
McKinsey report that helps us. Just analyse our way into this,
which is a sort of, which is not so much a, a comment on
McKinsey, but a, a comment on the logic of our current system.
We can't imagine that. So I look for inspiration from
kind of other world views, other ways of thinking about seeing
the world. And you've got these deep kind
of spiritual traditions around the world.
But we've, we've also got, particularly in the nature
world, you know, indigenous traditions who have maintained
deep relationship and a deep understanding that we are not
separate, that we are completely interrelated.
We are one part of this living extraordinary tapestry of life,
this one living world. And, and so I have taken great
inspiration from indigenous principles, indigenous ways of
understanding and relating to the world and what that might
mean in terms of alternative. So that's an area that we could
sort of tap into a little bit in terms of sort of where some of
those opportunities might be of a of an alternate system.
I have taken inspiration from some of the emerging experiments
on the fringes of, of technology and what technology is enabling
in terms of decentralised distributed finance mechanisms
that are happening in a very, very small way that in some ways
might build on the microfinance experiments of, of recent
decades and, and enable things to happen at a much more local
level. I've taken great inspiration
from some of the, the, the teachings of Buddhism and the
teachings of into being and, and, and sort of how that may
relate to different ways of, of working.
I take great inspiration from the rights of nature movement
and how in giving rights to nature.
And yeah, I spent time in New Zealand with the, the, the
Fanganui River and the, the sort of the idea that a river might
have rights. And what does that mean in the
context of a culture like the UK where we privatised top water?
But now we're seeing some of our own river ways, the River Wye
and others that are starting and have a river guardians and
people who are speaking for the river and the species of the
river. What does that start to kind of
open up in terms of new possibilities?
So I just use those as little examples of sort of seeds of
what a future might be, as difficult as it is to, to, to
conceive, because the last thing I would say is, is that I think
we suffer from this, what I call the tyranny of scale, right?
That in our existing system, finance only matters if we're
going to start talking about, you know, 100 billion or, you
know, one of the, the things I realised when I was at
generations as we were building this nature and food fund.
And it's it's again, it's going to do some fabulous things.
This is not a critique of the fund.
I'm so excited for that team and what they're starting to do.
But, but understanding the smallest cheque size we would
want to write as an investor might be 2530 and ideally $50
million, right. And you think what actually are
the needs of nature, what are the needs of community?
Because inherently so much of this work is local, but we're
operating in a, in a homogenised global financial system that
just wants scale. And so unless it's at that
scale, we ignore it. So, so I think the tyranny of
scale is something we need to break if we are going to
actually start to align to what nature's principles might be and
what nature finance may be nudging us towards.
So gosh, there's a lot in there and I have multiple questions.
This tyranny scale. I love that.
I hope you TM that. But I was thinking about the
Seychelles. I can't remember if it was the
debt for nature swap early on or a blue bond, but I remember it
was a journalist at the time and I commissioned my colleague to
go there and write the story. Obviously we were hoping to say
what normal success it was and one of the biggest things she
came back and said was that the money was actually too much.
It was a country of about about 94,000, I think.
And the money from the blue bond to support action was $15
million, which was too much that could be put to use really.
So some projects needed more like 35,000, I seem to remember
some, perhaps even less. Not to mention that it was also
a country that had, you know, some challenges.
There was some corruption, but also 10% of the working
population had a heroin addiction problem at that time.
And that kind of money, actually, you can cause more
problems. So the solution for the
Seychelles wasn't necessarily, you know, like large amounts of
money for conservation. Actually some of the fishermen
needed a much smaller amounts that they could could put to
work. I mean, it was a long time ago
that we wrote the article. So I don't know what happened
since. And hopefully it has been a huge
success and all those challenges were ironed out, but it really
stayed with me. To your point on scale mismatch,
but I had a couple of questions. 1 was, so do you think this
calls for different financial institutions?
Is that something you're exploring?
I'm not exploring new financial institutions at this point.
I think inevitably it does. But yeah, we've also got to work
with the institutions where it's like this whole question of
transition and transformation and how and how do we get there.
I think it does require for new financial instruments and
instruments that are enabling, you know, exactly as you just
described, right. So many of these communities
places, right, require far smaller amounts of capital than
our existing system is going to work, right.
It's, it's so how can we actually get decentralised
finance working because of the risk return kind of dynamics of
what drives large scale financial investments that
anything that a small scale immediately just sort of flags
up as too risk as too risky. I mean, if you, you can speak to
folk in sub-Saharan Africa and, and some of the analysis has
been done there, it's like almost any African country
counts as too risky, right. So this is with our existing
logic. We can't finance so much of
this. And there's a whole emerging
movement around regenerative finance, which is still small
scale, but it has the potential for how we can then distribute
finance at a much more localised, decentralised
distributed scale. And I'm really interested in
that. I'm really interested in some of
the mechanisms of that. And I think fundamentally what
I'm trying to start to sort of set up and look at some of the
case studies and prototypes for is how might we bridge, you
know, the, the relative sophistication from a Western
perspective of financing into what some of those more
decentralised, localised regenerative models might be.
I've just returned from the Andes fabulous project there
called Action Andina that won the Earthshop Prize in 2023.
Amazing leadership between an organisation called Global
Forest Generation and Echo and that is linking the, the
conservation restoration of the high water towers of the, of the
Andes to kind of how do we get nature finance to work?
And we're starting to think what new mechanisms might be needed
because the, the magic of what they're doing is they're working
with now 180 communities across I think 5-6 countries of the
Andes and getting money to them. It's still based on grant
mechanisms. It's still clunky, kind of how
do you get the money to work? How do you get to flow, but how
do you give real decision rights and real governance to some of
those communities themselves? If you can start to use some of
these new technologies that enable that and then you can
start to link that to actually how many companies, industries
are dependent on water from those mountains.
So that you can start to recognise this is a collective
risk issues that countries, companies, industries have got.
That starts to say there's new ways that we're going to need to
unlock this and start to think of, you know, this is a current
or old economy term, but but nature as infrastructure for the
absolute fundamental security of those communities and those
those countries, because water is life, right?
There's ways that we can start to think about finance to work
in a different way. So that's the type of
opportunity I'm really excited to be developing so that we can
actually build regenerative principles into that and start
to come into a very different type of financing future than
the the the one we currently got available.
That it's either pure philanthropy or we're going to
have to create some large company that that you know, is
going to manage all of this and have.
Double digits. Double digit, yeah, double digit
returns. And and then we've got to have
kind of, you know, MBAs from Harvard and, you know, Stanford
that are going to come in and need to run it and need to
write. It's like we've got to get
smarter around how this is going to work versus just sort of
replicating the bits of the system that we know are
perpetuating business as usual. So again, so many questions, but
one thing I wanted to hear from you is, is 1 some more examples.
I think that's always so helpful if you've seen examples where,
where things are working or offer a sort of an alternative.
But I know you and I have talked in the past about this
disconnect of the short termism of finance versus like the the
long term efforts that we need to be taking really if we're if
we're thinking sort of decades down the line of future
generations for the environment. So a couple of themes there, but
I just wondered if you sort of have other examples you wanted
to talk about, maybe reflect on that governance or long term
thinking? Yeah.
I think as we step back and I co-authored a report a few
months ago called Reimagining Nature Finance.
And there we touched on the kind of the deep design principles of
the finance system as we have it.
And let's remember that that finance system is a finance
system that that has evolved in particular over recent decades,
maybe over centuries and at most a couple of 1000 years old.
But nature herself is, is has evolved over hundreds of
millions of years. And yet the finance system,
particularly this sort of hyper accelerated neoliberal finance
system that that we've got is incredibly short term in focus.
It is point based and reductive. It is disembodied from place.
Right. And you can just see the
examples time and time again. Yeah.
And my father's side, you know, is from the the South Wales
valleys. And you see capitalism that sort
of came through and and there was a brief sort of flourishing
for 100 years. And then capitalism moves on and
the environmental devastation and social devastation, you
know, continues a century on, right?
And you see time and time again examples of sort of how finance
system just moves on. It doesn't, it's not connected
to place. And finance is inherently
accumulative. It wants to just keep growing.
This idea of perpetual growth, which I think is so problematic
where nature recognises there are periods of growth and there
are periods of actually stabilisation and then there's
periods of decline by comparison.
Nature is complex, it's relational, it understands these
deep connections. It's moves resources around the
system to where it's needed as opposed to just accumulating
wealth in in one area. It's regenerative by design,
it's long term and it's fundamentally rooted and
embodied in place. And I think that's what we were
starting to explore in this report of what could a finance
system look like. And so just, I mean, sorry to
labour that a little bit, but I think it's those principles and
understanding some of those principles that that well for us
to discern, are we actually perpetuating business as usual
or are we actively working to support a different type of
system, a different financing of the future?
And I think that's what starts to tip the balance.
Again, these are going to be small examples to start with.
This is not about mobilising hundreds of millions of dollars,
but this is this is how I think we start to sort of discern
where this future comes from. Yeah, there's so many wonderful
kind of examples that I could point to.
There's more. There's a wonderful project up
in British Columbia and sort of northwestern US called Salmon
Returns, which is working the idea of salmon as this sort of
great sort of example of the cyclicality of life of where
they they only return to their birth place as they go back up
the river to die. And there's a wonderful
organisation that's supporting many community and indigenous
LED projects that are about restoring regenerating land,
right? They're really experimenting,
pushing the boundaries of of what regenerative finance might
look like. Canada is a hotbed of innovation
and indigenous LED governance mechanisms that I find really
inspiring. There are examples in the
Amazon, there's a wonderful organisation called Bio Fi
Project led by a lady called Samantha Power and she wrote a
book around bioregional financing facilities and this
idea of sort of bioregionalism and how that can actually
support sort of longer term regeneration in place.
And they've just come up with a design for the Amazon Sacred
Headwaters initiative in the Ecuador, Peru of the headwaters
of the Amazon. So the sort of wonderful
examples, they're closer to home.
There's examples we're starting to look at how do you start
stacking different types of environmental payments to
support long term regeneration? And obviously you see it with
projects like Natigal, but like NAP and that these sort of
exemplar kind of projects that are there, but but starting to
really think, how do you take sort of longer term regenerative
principles into that? And so I chair the board of the
Trust for Oxwich's environment and then starting to do
wonderful projects, working with BNG revenues for local land
owners, but also working to really inspire communities to
drive regeneration at the local level.
So I'm really interested in sort of this idea of localism as one
of the aspects of how we can do that.
There's many, many examples, but it's the quality of that
engagement, it's the values, it's the behaviours and the
principles that we're holding that I think are going to start
tipping the balance towards what that more regenerative future
might be. I love that because I think we
can often think what do we need to do?
Create that will ultimately change the system like something
new, some new institution, some new instrument.
But actually what I'm hearing you say is that system change
will really come from probably at first intentionality,
different thinking and then through principles that
influence design of projects. And I do think there's a huge, I
think you can feel the zeitgeist for place based work.
I think, and I mean, certainly in the UK, because some of
that's led by devolution, that people are returning to that
thinking. But also I think people
recognise that resilience starts with that local approach,
whether it's, you know, social resilience, environmental
resilience, economic resilience. I'm really conscious of time.
It's just so much. I'd love to ask and I'm sure
everyone else has got so many questions for you, but they'll
be able to find you, I'm sure. And we'll, we'll, we'll mention
where they can find you at the end.
But just to kind of wrap up, I mean, I think people might,
might listen to this and feel, OK, but what do I do?
What would you recommend? Because we're sort of doer
people, aren't we? Rather than being people, which
is part of the problem, I'm sure.
So is there any sort of work you recommend following Books you
recommend? Actions that we can start to
take? So many.
I want to just make one thing clear before I just get to that.
I think I, I want to be clear. There is no critique of people
who are working on nature finance within the system and
that, that all of that is important.
And, and what I'm starting to argue more and more is that it's
insufficient and we've got to be bolder and it grasping the need
for deeper transformation as well.
And then then just to finalise that, it's that that
transformation, I think I've lived in a world for 25 plus
years believing that change was going to come top down.
And this is the whole premise of places like Davos and, and
right, that if you just get CE OS and heads of state, right,
those people are actually more embedded in the system.
They've got more to lose. It's far harder to see how
change is going to come from the centre of the system.
And if you look at all the old stories and, and if you look at
where change really happens, change mostly occurs from the
edges, right? And so one thing I would
encourage people to do is start to explore the edges because
change is going to come bottom up.
You talked about play space, the resilience of play space.
Change is coming through our ability and what we need to do
is get much smarter. How do we connect up much
smaller place based projects that start to point to a very
different future and start to actually break down this sort of
political bounds or political kind of ideologies that are
there because, you know, people live in communities.
You know, actually we need to start caring about our
communities and the people we live close to and the places we
live close to. That's where change is going to
come from. So in terms of inspiration, in
terms of books, I mean, I think the most important thing I would
say is actually for everybody working on nature finance, the
thing that gives me most confidence and most comfort is
Pierre. There is some visceral
connection we have to to nature herself of remembering that we
are nature, we are not separate from nature.
And so actually spending the time in nature is for me the
greatest opportunity our community has to start to think
differently and act differently for the future and find the
courage and the boldness. For me it was, you know, finally
it was fasting down in Dartmoor and the wonderful, beautiful
Wilds of southwest England. I was fasting for four days and
there was this biblical deluge and the river rose, the river
Dart rose. And it was like there was a
moment of just realising, Oh my goodness, business that that I
am not separate. I am part of this and that, that
I finally need to find the courage to challenge this and do
and try and do this differently and try in a very small way be
an inspiration for others to to do that.
But that was nature herself speaking to me.
I don't want to anthropomorphize that.
But that's the the biggest inspiration I have.
But I would also say, you know, look at some Indigenous
scholarship. Robin Wolk Kimmer is probably
the easiest accessible. People talk about brainy sweet
grass, but the service Berry yeah, talks about an economy
that is based on gifts and abundance as opposed to an
economy that is based on extraction, right.
So Robin Walkimer's work, I think is great.
There's other many examples of that.
You know, Kate Rayworth is a great inspiration for me of
actually writing about a different way of thinking about
our economy, an economy that works for all of life.
So Kate Rayworth's Donut Economics is a is an
extraordinary book as well. I would.
I mean, there's so many examples of some of the things I pointed
to and the talk, but I would also point to, you know, the
science, right? We've we've just had it.
There's 12 and the Manchester meetings that I know you're a
big part of, right? But it, there's 11, which was in
Winthrop, Namibia came out with two reports.
One of the reports was commissioned in 2019 after the
global assessment which led up to the global biodiversity
framework of the Kunming Montreal Agreement.
But that transformative change assessment came in in December
2024. Should be required reading for
everybody working on nature finance.
It doesn't shy away from the need for transformation.
The scientists have been telling us for, for years, and this is,
I don't know how many authors, you know, hundreds of
co-authors, I don't know how many hours of, of, of human
endeavour have gone into that. But it's an extraordinary
compendium of the need for transformative change and how we
might go about it. It's the most important paper
that that for me and our agenda that nobody's heard of and very
few people have read and yet that that is a blueprint for
some of what we should be doing. So I could go on and on, but
I've talked far too much and I've loved it.
But I hope some of it's helpful. Oh gosh, all of it.
I think just to inspire a, a different ways of thinking as
well. I think all of us can, you know,
you're just there living your life, doing your job, and it's
hard to take a breath to look outside and think, is this the
most effective way, even if it feels extremely productive.
And so, but so I do hope at some point there'll be a I'm just
throwing this out into, into the, this is my intention, maybe
seeing Asara festival at some point.
I think that would be wonderful to gather so many great people
together to sort of share some of this thinking.
And you know, I always think the more ideas you can put into the
ocean of consciousness, the the better and the more more likely
we'll withstand a chance of change.
Justin, it's such a pleasure. Thank you so much for all the
amazing work you're doing and for being sort of brave to to
think outside the box and challenge some of the status
quo. Oh, thank you, Helen, and thanks
for everything you are doing and you have done at GFII know your
own time at GFI is is coming to a close.
And I salute your own decision to step away and so excited for
your next steps. And but yeah, excited to
continue this conversation in whatever form.
And but yeah, thank you for the opportunity.
Well, that is a total wrap on our Revenues for Nature series.
Thank you so much for coming along for the ride.
I always welcome your feedback and love hearing what you're
working on. And you can find me on LinkedIn.
As I alluded to, this is my last episode of Financing Nature as I
will be leaving the Green Finance Institute at the end of
April. It's been an incredible 6 years
and I've so enjoyed working with such committed individuals in
this field of nature finance, both within GFI and, and all
over the world really. And, and many of you I'm sure,
and I know I'm heading off to a great team at GFI, but I'll be
taking a summer break myself to explore this broader question of
how do we turn the tide on biodiversity loss, especially
for the UK? But one of my GFI Nature team
colleagues, Phoebe Tucker is actually she's going to pick up
the baton for a short 4 part series on UK nature finance
running in May. So do check that out.
She's going to be looking at water measurement tools, the UK
carbon market and community finance and it's going to be
fabulous. I know, but it's been a pleasure
being your host. We have 2000 followers of the
podcast on Spotify alone and 10's and 10s of thousands of
downloads. And I must thank Robin Lieben
for all his editing support. But I wanted to leave you with
this. What is this bird that sings at
the very beginning and end of this podcast?
Because I picked it out like 4 1/2 years ago and I have no
recollection what that bird is anymore.
And I would really, really love to know.
So drop me a line if you do know no cheating and I will owe you a
beverage of your choosing. It's been a blast and thanks
very much.