242 Zach Weiss - On a mission to train hundreds of thousands of people in key water restoration techniques - Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I check an interview with the person who put me on
the path to grasp the importanceof water, of course, together
with Judith DeSward, whointroduced me to Zach in the
first place.
We had him on the show four anda half years ago and, wow, a
lot has happened.
He launched water stories andhas been on a mission to train
hundreds of thousands of peoplein key water restoration
techniques, while working onprojects underground around the

(00:21):
world, and we hear of a fewamazing examples.
What has he seen in the lastyears?
Has the conversation changed?
Have institutions who should beall over this topic because of
job creation, costly flood andfire prevention, reduced peak
temperatures and not evenspeaking about the increased
agriculture production?
Have these institutions startpaying attention?
And how would Zach make thespace investable and bankable?

(00:57):
If it's true that water vaporaccounts for 60 to 70 percent of
the greenhouse effect, whileCO2 only accounts for 25, why do
we rarely discuss it?
Maybe we choose to ignore itbecause it means we literally
need to re-vegetate the entireearth.
Bring back the marshes, themangroves, the perennial
pastures with trees, and regrowreal forests that can bring back
rain in strategic places.

(01:19):
In short, bring back life, lotsof plants, trees, animals back
to many places on this earthnatural climate engineering.
It is time we take our role askeystone species super seriously
.
In this special water cycleseries, we interviewed the
dreamers and the doers who areusing the latest technology to
figure out where to intervenefirst.

(01:39):
They're making, or trying tomake, the investment and return
calculations and plans.
So what's missing?
What's holding us back?
Maybe we lack the imaginationto back them and try
regeneration at scale.
We're thankful for the supportof the Nest family office in
order to make this series.
The Nest is a family officededicated to building a more
resilient food system throughsupporting natural solutions and

(02:01):
innovative technologies thatchange the way we produce food.
You can find out more on theNestFO that is thenestfocom.
Welcome to another episodeToday, a check-in interview with

(02:26):
Zach Weiss, the founder ofElementor Ecosystems, and, since
we last talked, which was in2019, january, beginning of the
year, so more than four and ahalf years ago, depending on
when you listen to this.
He's also the founder of WaterStories and I'm very much
looking forward to talk water Ofcourse, it's part of the water
cycle series, but also to checkin on how he's been, what has

(02:48):
happened and basically to seewhere the world of water is
moving, so, zach, welcome back.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
It's a joy and pleasure to be here, and first
of all, in four and a half yearswe're going to talk about water
stories, but have you seen theconversation change?
Of course we're trying to putas much attention on water now
with this series as possible,but in your experience you've
been way deeper into thisspecific part of the

(03:17):
regeneration movement.
Let's say what would you say inone or two words the main main
summaries of four and a halfyears.
Is it still fighting forattention?
Is it getting finally some more, even though it seems the world
is on fire?
Floods, landslides, likeeverything screams water, but
apparently not enough to theright ears.
What is your main takeaway ofthe last four and a half years?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
You know.
I think we're finally gettingto the point where people are
ready to hear this message.
I think, when times are good,people don't like to change, and
that's just one of therealities of human existence.
And we're now getting to thesituation where it's so in your
face.
You know.
Whether you're looking atextreme fires and then

(04:01):
immediately into extremeflooding, ocean temperatures
reaching 100 degrees, all thisstuff is just right out in front
of you.
And now we're to the pointwhere the fires aren't just
people here and there.
If you're not immediatelyaffected by fire, you're
affected by smoke, and if you'renot immediately affected by the
flood, you're affected by thedisplacement from that flood.

(04:24):
And we're so.
I think a lot has happened.
I think we're still very muchjust in the early adopters phase
of things.
I see incredible hope in thenumber of people around the
world that are starting toactualize this knowledge,
starting to actually do thingson their ground.
We've seen a number ofincredible examples unfold or

(04:45):
unfold over the past couple ofyears.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Farms being saved from fire comes comes most to
like.
If people ask you name one, oneexample, that would blow my
mind.
What would?
What is that?
What's the one that you alwaysbring up?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh, I have a few, but can I pick two?
Is that okay?
Of course yeah actually it'sgoing to kind of be three, but
they're related, so we're notvery strict on formats here,
except for magic one questionsand one bearing.
But one of the most hopeful thatI've seen really firsthand is
Rajendra Singh's work in India,and this is someone that I

(05:22):
visited since the last time wetalked and I've worked with them
quite closely.
We're working.
We created one film togetherand are creating another
currently, and they've revived13 rivers to perennial flow in
this region of Rajasthan 13.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Because I think last time I've seen articles around,
I've not that like I need to godeeper into that, but I think it
was definitely under 10.
And perennial flow, of course,is the magic word here, so not
just oh, we have a nice, niceflow in spring and that was it.
Now we have it all year round,which means you can build on it
in a changing climate 13.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
And you know, not long ago that was just seven In
fact, when we know, because Ithink an article 19.
It was just seven, but the thingis, the movement has generated
such force that now it'shappening simultaneously in all
these different regions.
And so, whereas it took themdecades to revive the first

(06:23):
river, now in just a handful ofyears, they can easily activate
the number of people that theyneed in order to rejuvenate a
river.
And so, in addition to that,they've brought water back to
more than 250,000 wells, causedreverse migration, lowered the
temperature two degrees Celsiusin this region, restored

(06:45):
predictable seasonal monsoons.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
And now you're going to come up with another example
after this.
So we have to first first, butlike, okay, when you rejuvenate
a river, very basically, I'mgoing to send, of course, a link
, I'm going to put a link to tothe film in the show notes, but
in a few sentences, arerejuvenate for people that
didn't listen to our previousconversation and, very basically
, what do you do?

(07:07):
What is the magic there?
To to bring back a river.
Just for clarity, this riverwas there until relatively
recent and has not been there,at least predictably, and year
round for quite a bit, and thismovement has been able to bring
back 13 of those.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
And it's really just a matter of helping the land
receive water.
It is in some ways the mostsimple thing, but there are all
these challenges that we run upagainst when we try and do that.
Some of them are policy, someof them are practical, but
really, when you look at it, bigpiece, structural wise, the
reason these rivers have died isthey've been turned into drains

(07:48):
.
The farm fields have beendrained, dredged, drain tiled,
the rivers themselves have beendredged, the waters can no
longer connect with theirfloodplain, and then the
vegetation has been cleared.
So when rain happens, it surgesthrough the system all at once,
and then there's no groundwaterthrough that infiltration
process to then feed into thatriver.

(08:09):
And so, very simply, by juststoring water on the land,
getting it to infiltrate intothe land, we can fairly quickly
revive the flow of rivers.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And we're not talking about big dams and huge
reservoirs here.
We're talking storing in theland that you mentioned very
specifically.
And then the other piece youmentioned two degrees lower
temperatures.
That's massive, on a big area,so not just near the river.
So we're definitely and that'sone of the themes of this series
talking about cooling here, thecooling effect of a rejuvenated

(08:41):
river system.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Basically, and something really interesting
that happens in that process.
You know there's all these.
This is part of why water is sounderstudied is there's all
these complexities thatinterrelate with each other, but
one of the very big pieces isthe transpiration of water by
vegetation, throughphotosynthesis, and what this

(09:04):
does is, in that phase, changeof water.
It actually absorbs a hugeamount of heat at the surface of
the earth.
That heat is transported up inthat water vapor or and then, as
it recondenses back into cloudshigher in the atmosphere, it
releases that heat at awavelength that does not
interact with greenhouse gases.
So this is essentially aconveyor belt system to take

(09:28):
heat from the earth and put itout into space.
Now there's all these differentfactors, like when that water
vapor is condensed and droppedout of the atmosphere overnight,
now that heat can dissipateinstead of accumulate, and we
see that the biggest increase intemperatures is actually in the
nighttime minimum temperature,because all that water vapor is
acting like a blanket instead ofhaving precipitated out, and so

(09:52):
in this region they went from2% greenery to 48% greenery, and
so that huge vegetationdifference, along with the extra
water, you have all of thesecooling processes from the water
and from the vegetation thatthen result in that temperature
change.
And now that temperature changeleads to a change in the

(10:13):
process of moisture cyclingthrough that landscape, and
whereas they were in a situationthat was so bleak, they were
having the failure of monsoonsin certain years, which was
catastrophic for the driestregion in India, but now those
monsoons are regular once again.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
And is that a process that, like it does?
Where does it stop?
In the center, of course thisis super understudied, but, like
you, continue this process,maybe go from 48 to 60, 65, 70,
whatever is a logical plateau interms of vegetation.
Of course you need space forother things as well, and what
do you like?
Would you go back to, likehistoric, not saying even the

(10:52):
temperature should go down thatmuch, but maybe the main ones
that cause trouble, which arethe nighttime high temperatures,
which are the extremes duringthe day, et cetera, which are
too high for plants even to grow, like, where do you see this go
?
I mean, it's theory in thiscase, but if they continue on
that path and it seems like theyare, because it's sort of like
a flywheel that starts, whatwould be in 10 years, or what

(11:16):
would it look like or feel likein five or 10 years if you had
to imagine?

Speaker 2 (11:21):
It's a great question , and I think it's a matter of
two pieces.
There's the actual vegetativecover, but then there is the
matter of how much water is inthat landscape and therefore how
long can it photosynthesize.
We see a lot of landscapes thatstop photosynthesizing for lack
of water, and now you haveaccumulation of heat without Not

(11:44):
only because it's too hot, theplants stop photosynthesis.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
You're saying because the plant doesn't have access
to water, x amount of the yearit's not photosynthesis.
Or because it's 10 pairs.
So what do you mean by lack ofwater?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Because it doesn't have access to water.
The plant needs water to breakapart into its positive and
negative charge to performphotosynthesis, and so plants,
as they run out of water, theytaper down their photosynthesis
and then they actually will gointo dormancy, if forced into
dormancy.
So in a lot of places where weused to have photosynthesis all

(12:17):
year long in the growing season,now in a lot of places the
landscape is so drained thatthat photosynthetic period is a
month or two after the rainyseason.
Then all the grass goes brown,then all the trees can't
photosynthesize as much and nowyou're ruining the cooling
balancing mechanism that's inplace.

(12:38):
Now, if we can take thoselandscapes and rehydrate them,
we can go from 100 days ofcooling potential to 300 days of
cooling potential, and now wecan help balance out those
extreme heats by that.
Essentially, I think onehealthy tree is the equivalent
cooling power of 10 airconditioners.
So each tree that we can keepphotosynthesizing through the

(13:02):
year is that much cooling thatwe have at the time that we need
it most.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
And these stories like that.
Now we get to the secondexample, but at this scale,
because it's a region which inIndia in any place, but in India
is definitely not small gettingattention from the right people
, the right institutions, or doyou feel that that's changing?
Not just from the people likeus in the space that have done

(13:30):
the courses, have been oninteresting farms, have been in
restored land, but let's sayalso people in cities or in
financial institutions, indevelopment banks, etc.
Do you get more of those peopleinterested in this kind of
content or are we still tooearly for that?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
I think from the citizen side of things 100%.
I mean, whether I'm talking toa taxi driver or somebody on the
street or whoever, when Iexplain that this guy in India
has revived 13 rivers, they'rejust immediately attracted to it
, they want to know everythingabout it and they get very
engaged with it.
We haven't seen a lot ofadoption from more corporate

(14:12):
financial interests and I thinkpart of that is due to some
inherent friction and part ofthat is due to the ways that
this movement in India goesabout things and it's, I think,
very understandable even fromboth sides, if we really want to
look at it objectively.
For example, one of the biggestparties working against

(14:37):
Rajendra's work were the miningcompanies, because in reviving
the landscape and causingreverse migration now these
mining companies had a bunch ofpeople living where they wanted
to mine and so there was a lotmore friction to them being able
to mine that landscape.
When everyone was leaving andgoing to the city, it was great
for the mining companies becauseeveryone was leaving.

(14:58):
They had free access to theland.
They could exploit it howeverthey wanted.
When people started coming back, they didn't want their waters
poisoned and destroyed.
They didn't want their landsdestroyed, and so these
companies I mean everything fromfighting him for years tried to
poison him.
And similarly we see Rajendraactually got involved with the

(15:19):
World Water Forum at some point.
You'd think the World WaterForum would want to support this
work of bringing water toeveryone.
They actually kicked him out.
They threw him out because theWorld Water Forum works as a
shell for Coca-Cola and Nestleand all of these water
corporations to go into thirdworld countries, convince them
to privatize their water supply,buy that water supply and then

(15:44):
sell it to the highest bidder.
So there's some real financialinterest against this kind of
movement, because this movementgives power back to the masses
and whittles down the controland the economic viability of
some of these resources.
I think the easiest way tounderstand it is that in a water

(16:08):
scarce world, water isincredibly lucrative.
In a water abundant world,water has no value, almost.
So there's some inherentfriction between the powers that
control water currently andtheir financial interests and
making a balanced, healthy,stable climate for all people in

(16:28):
life on the planet.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
And do you see what could be paths to unlock that?
I'm not saying get the watercorp birds involved, because
they might be incentivizedagainst this, but what would be
pathways to movements like this?
I'm not saying this specificexample in India, but insurance

(16:52):
companies or somehow unlockingthe potential of
entrepreneurship or thepotential of companies to get
into other regions.
We've had once on zero budget,natural farming also movement in
India, very strong movement,that the Danepeh Paribat was
preparing quite a significantstate loan for a region that was

(17:14):
starting to really increase therollout of that way of farming
and at the end it became statepolicy and so it wasn't no
longer needed, which was aninteresting twist as well.
But it could have been aninvestment.
It could have been I think itwas 800 million or something.
It was quite a significant waybecause simply, the state
subsidies for fertilizer, forNPKs, for chemical fertilizer,
were so high that they could payback this loan just by saving

(17:37):
that.
So there was a very interestingincentive to train.
We see things like that aroundwater, like somehow finding
where the pain is and wheresomebody is picking up this bill
, or probably many are pickingup this bill and somehow pulling
that forward and say, okay ifwe train now a lot of people,
because most of this isknowledge, there's not a lot of
technology involved, but youstart to understand where
probably you should intervenefirst.

(17:57):
But somehow pulling thatforward and say, okay, if we use
some kind of financialmechanism to train a lot,
actually there is a businesscase or there's an investable
way of scaling this to otherregions and in other places
around the world.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
I see enormous potential there, and I see it on
two different trains of thought, and I'll say the second one is
more exciting to me, but I'mgoing to save that for a second.
The first one is in protectingassets.
In protecting assets whetheryou're talking government
insurance company or just aprivate household, in protecting

(18:38):
what we have, there is hugefinancial incentive.
And so I think we see thisstarting to actually unfold in
the United States, where in acouple of states, insurance
agencies are saying we won'tinsure your house, we are taking
on no new policies.
State Farm and one other hassaid they're insuring no new
house in California, they'llkeep their existing policies,

(18:59):
but they're going to phase outof the state entirely because
there's too much risk, too muchcost.
Same thing is happening withFlorida, with another insurance
company, and so in these kind ofsituations, people's only
option is to be self-sufficientand resilient, and so now,
instead of paying their yearlypremium to their insurance agent
, they should actually beinvesting that in their

(19:22):
landscape to do the preventativemaintenance that then enables
that property to withstand afire well, withstand a flood,
withstand the drought.
So in the private sector,personal, individual I think
there's huge potential there assome of these support systems
fall away and come offline.

(19:43):
Additionally, in the insuranceconglomerates that insurer
insurers, I think there's a hugefinancial incentive because
they're the people thatultimately pay out in these big
disasters.
Now they don't necessarilyrealize their gains other than
reducing their future risk.

(20:03):
So it's not something that'sgoing to make them money.
It's something that's going tosave them money, which is a
little bit harder of a pitch andsell.
But then the third piece whichI or the second, what I, how I
said originally which I think isthe most hopeful, is the
possibility for microfinancingloans and to specifically go

(20:25):
into areas that areagriculturally underperforming
because of water scarcity.
And when you go into thoseareas and give them a small loan
to implement water resiliency,now you take that community and
you immediately give them thesource material they need to

(20:45):
drastically increase theiragricultural production.
One project I visited in Indiathey, the community, was out of
water.
They could only farm on ninehectares because all their wells
were dry.
They put in 27 wells and theywere all dry.
They spent huge amounts ofmoney trying to fix it couldn't.
And then they put in one waterbody.
That one water body enabledthem to go from nine hectares to

(21:09):
650 hectares and they producedfour times the cost of that one
water body in an increase intheir agricultural productivity.
So you know they needed X moneyto create the water body In the
first year.
Their increased revenues werefor X and that's going to
continue year after year inperpetuity.

(21:32):
So I think, something like whatwaterorg has done for
microfinancing of sanitation, weneed microfinancing of
landscape regeneration and in somany of these cases we see that
these small, effective loanshave a very high repay rate.
I think waterorg has like a 98,99% repay rate and so their

(21:55):
fund keeps growing becausethey're not just giving money
away, they're saying we're goingto give you money, we expect
this much in return, and thentheir fund keeps growing.
So I actually had this concepta couple of years ago that I'd
love to implement someday, of awater bond where we take money
and we would grow the overallvalue of that bond by

(22:15):
implementing projects in keyareas where we know it's going
to be effective, where we knowafter this implementation this
community is going to be able torepay this loan easily.
And I think this also hasanother piece of goals and
directives set by, and thenmonitoring is set by the top

(22:35):
level of governance andimplementation is set by the
bottom level.
This was done with the RhineRiver restoration and was
incredibly effective.
I think a lot of times these topdown movements fail because the
people setting out thedirectives and everything that's
to be done are far away, theydon't have any connection with
the land, whereas instead, likewith this Rhine River, they said

(22:58):
we want these different metricsto all improve.
We have these goals toultimately accomplish.
We're going to give the localpeople the money and as long as
they keep producing andimproving on those metrics,
we're going to keep giving themthe money.
And it was incredibly effective.
They accomplished all theirgoals in a shorter period of
time with less money than theyanticipated.

(23:18):
They even accomplished theirreally far out goals of salmon
starting to be on the riveragain, and so it's.
I think we can follow this model, where we can let the people on
the ground actually determinewhat exactly needs to happen and
where, and let the people atthe top just fund it and say
we're going to follow thesemetrics and as long as these

(23:40):
metrics are continuing toimprove, we're going to keep
giving you the funding.
Now you're leveraging both oftheir skills and abilities
really well.
You have the vision and thestrategy of the higher ups and
you have the land-basedconnection of the lower people,
on the economic food chain, soto speak, and so you can be very
effective by harmonizing thesetwo groups together instead of

(24:01):
one imposing their will on theother, in either direction.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
But you do ask quite a bit of, let's say, letting go
of control from the top down wayof working, which is not
something they're used to, sothat.
And then what would you if youhad to do that, pick a landscape
.
And then we go to the secondexample.
Don't worry, we didn't forget.
But if you had to pick alandscape, what would be those

(24:27):
metrics and how would yousomehow, how would you measure
them?
Of course depending on themetrics, in a way that everybody
would agree on that, because ofcourse there's payouts and then
, let's say, and their paymentsbound to that.
So we need something that iseasily measurable and nobody can
argue about it.
What would you do in alandscape of your choice and how

(24:49):
would you structure a bump likethat?

Speaker 2 (24:52):
It would be different metrics in different places and
there are a few simple keymetrics that you could really
look at to control based on yourgoals in doing the project.
If your goals in doing theproject are reviving a river, I
think dissolved oxygen andelectrical conductivity and flow
rate are three simple metricsthat take Dissolved oxygen.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Dissolved oxygen is how much oxygen is in the water.
So that's usually going torelate to temperature and that
is going to determine how muchlife that water can support.
And so we see in rivers thatare dying, in running low in
high toxicity loads, lots ofagricultural runoff, we see very
low dissolved oxygen.
Fish are dying, aquatic life isdying, that river itself is

(25:39):
dying.
So the more we can increase ourdissolved oxygen, we know that
the health of that river shouldbe trending in the right
direction.
Similarly, with electricalconductivity, that's measuring
how much salts are in the water,how dirty is the water, the
more that all those salts arebeing infiltrated into the
landscape and used in thelandscape instead of in the

(26:00):
waterways where they're notwanted.
Again, that waterway isimproving.
And then just the flow rate andseasonality of that flow rate
is a huge metric.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
It feels like all of these are relatively easily and
you don't need probably too manypoints as well or too many
measurements.
You can sort of I think I don'tremember who said it, I'm going
to say Mark Shepard or maybeGabe Brown, but anyway, the
health of a farm you can see onthe runoff or you can measure it
at the lowest point.
You can measure the quality,water quality.

(26:31):
I really don't remember whosaid this, but anyway, you
shouldn't have runoff, obviously, but at the same time you can
see there whatever happenedupstream In this case, the same
as the river.
If you have no flow, of course,you cannot measure it at the
bottom.
So that doesn't seem to be toocomplex.
Would you add any others to it?
Or these three are given a goodbase.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Those three are the really simple ones.
That can be done by citizenscience, that can be done by
anybody.
Now, as we have differentmanagement goals, we might
actually have some differentmetrics.
For example, I could see forthis water bond, one of the
metrics of success just beingagricultural productivity of
that area.
How many kilograms of X cropsdid this area produce?

(27:15):
And you will see if you'rebeing effective with your water
work.
You will see a real increase inthat.
Similarly, quality of life ifit's primarily as an aid thing
to improve quality of life, youcan have these qualitative
metrics that will show that verywell.
Now, if we're instead measuringfor, or our goals are to

(27:36):
control extreme temperature andextreme climate, now I would
look at actually measuringphotosynthetic potential of that
landscape, and this issomething that exists but is not
very well known.
But essentially, with aninfrared camera and a camera
that is either trained on red orblue waves, you can actually

(27:59):
deduce how much photosynthesis aplant is performing by how much
red and blue light isreflecting versus the infrared
light that's then being absorbedin that process.
So you could actually putcameras on landscapes and build
out this metric and say, okay,because of our work, these
plants are photosynthesizing 100days longer each summer, and if

(28:24):
you really wanted to get crazywith the calculations, you could
probably figure out the netcooling that that is providing
as a result.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
And would that be something you can do with
satellite imagery or that's toofar Like remote sensing.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
The people that have tried to do it with satellite
imagery that I've talked to, saythat the resolution is too
coarse and so you actually can'tget much in the way of valuable
metrics.
Now, with the latestagricultural drones that are
coming out, they have infraredcameras on them, a lot of them,
so you could very much do itwith drone photography.

(29:02):
But from the people that I'vetalked to about it, they say the
resolution on satellite stuffis just too coarse to get a good
reading on it.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
And of course it depends on I mean, from your
experience of water stories,it's such to like which part of
this quote unquote pitch isresonates the most.
I know it depends, but is itthe extreme temperature, because
that sort of suggests that in alandscape which we've seen in
India, but still that suggeststhat somebody knows that in a
landscape, if you revitalize thelandscape, temperatures will

(29:33):
drop.
Is it the water all year round,like what's?
Is it maybe the agricultureproduction?
What's the story that resonatesthe most with?
Not with people in general, butI would say with institutions?

Speaker 2 (29:48):
It's going to change depending on where those
institutions are.
Some institutions are veryinterested in the fire
mitigation side of things.
Some institutions are veryinterested in water quality
improvements that can beachieved by this.
Others are really interested inthe groundwater recharge
effects.

(30:09):
I think this is one of theproblems with their current
policy framework is everythingis so divided.
We have the people working onfire over here and we have the
people on water working overhere and they're barely ever
talking to each other in anykind of natural system.
You need this whole systemsview where you actually look at
everything as one cohesive unit,because it's not all these tiny

(30:32):
, different reductionisticfields so it's.
You know, we've actually had alot of people from water
districts, water boards and firedepartments join our community,
so I think people really hearit and understand.
You know I've given talks tofirefighters where they're just
like eyes open wide at the endof it and they know the

(30:55):
situation they've been dealingwith for the past 10 years is
not natural and not necessary.
I think it really comes down towhich of these things has an
area been most affected by fire,flood or drought?
Sometimes it's going to be allthree, Sometimes it's going to
be one of those and barely theother two, or some mix of all
three.

(31:17):
I think the story that financialinstitutions are not yet being
engaged with that they should beis that if you don't care about
the planet at all, you don'tcare about people at all, you
just want to save money.
This still makes sense to dobecause we can do a little bit
of preventative work now to savethe billions of dollars of
payouts that happen in a bigfire, in a big flood, in these

(31:40):
big events.
And you know, we could even usethese events as times to
redesign our system.
One of my biggest pet peeves isone of these events goes
through and everyone rebuildsexactly like how they did, and
it's just insanity to think thatit's going to be any different
the next time.
If we don't redesign at thattime when everything's destroyed

(32:03):
, we're not losing anything toredesign.
We have all this money toredesign and rebuild and then we
do it exactly the same way andexpect a different result.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
And the good moment is which, the second example
after the 13 rivers, what is theother one you always, always
mentioned?
And maybe a third, because youhinted to watch a third one.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah, and I'm actually going to combine these
two into one because they're thesame story, two different
projects.
One project that we did inCalifornia.
It saved the house twice oncefrom fire, once from landslide.
The fire came through all ofthe neighbors, ashes this
property, fine.
Then, after the fire, you getall the landslide.
The house was down at thebottom of the gully.

(32:45):
The landslide would have takenit out, but the water bodies
that we created caught all ofthe landslide debris and so, yes
, it had to be dug back out tobe a water body once again, but
it very clearly saved thismulti-million dollar house twice
once from fire, once fromlandslide.
Similarly, another project, afriend of mine in Australia that
I visited, peter Marshall.

(33:06):
He had the fires in 2020 whenAustralia was just crazy.
I was actually over there atthe time.
He had the fires swirlingaround him for two months,
coming in from every differentdirection, but his property
didn't burn.
He was turning crown fireswhere it was growing flaming,
all the way through the crown ofthe tree to ground fires that

(33:27):
he could put out with a shovel,and it was because of his water
management and his forestrymanagement that this place was
so defensible.
So, again, all the neighborsashes this place totally fine,
and so it's very clear we knowwhat we can do to make
landscapes resilient.
But both of these projects Ijust mentioned the one in

(33:49):
California everything we did wasillegal and the one in
Australia he's paid a milliondollars of fines for doing what
he did.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
And, after the one in California, did something
change in terms of neighborinterest, in terms of local, or
are they still being annoyed orpushed by the fact that what
they did was actually illegal,even though it saved their house
twice?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
I haven't been back there since.
I've just gotten letters fromthe client talking about it, so
I don't know how their neighborshave looked at it.
I know that policy has notchanged as a result, but that's
also because we have to bepretty quiet about it, because
we would put this client at riskto make a nice video about this

(34:37):
project and show exactly how itworked and what we did to fix
it, which is exactly what weshould do, so that other people
can do it.
But we're directly putting thatclient at risk by doing that,
so we can only talk about itvaguely in this way that I'm
talking about it now, so thatthey don't get discovered.
So I think it hasn't had theimpact that it could have and

(34:59):
should have because of thepolicy impediments.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
And I think this is a good moment to talk about water
stories.
What is water stories?
And don't all go now on yourphone or on your laptop.
Where are we listening to it?
I will put a link below what iswater stories and what was the
reason behind setting it up?
Because when we talked four anda half years ago, I don't think
it was even there yet.
Maybe in your head, butdefinitely not on the web.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
And not even really in my head yet.
I mean, it came from aconversation with Seth Holzer,
who has been an amazing mentorto me has just totally changed
my life.
He called me his best student,but then he said and this is
what I love about Seth he'salways looking to the next thing
.
He'll never really say muchnice about people, but if he

(35:47):
does, he's going to immediatelygive you the next thing you
should be working on.
And so he calls me his beststudent.
And then he says but one of youis meaningless.
We need hundreds or thousandsof you.
Millions would be better, andthis was really.
It took me a little time forthat all to set in, but I really
realized I can work myself intoan early grave doing every

(36:10):
project I can and never spend aminute of my life doing anything
else, and it will have nomeaningful impact as far as
where we need to go and what weneed to do.
And that really opened my eyesto that I need to train as many
people as possible to have allthe same skills that I do in
terms of being able to readlandscapes and make positive

(36:31):
changes.
Then, around the same time, Imet Regendra Singh for the first
time and I started tounderstand the incredible power
of community based movements.
And so, with these two ideascombined to form water stories,
which is part awareness abouteverything on the water cycle,

(36:51):
films and stories of a newmythology for humans that
recognizes our ability toenhance and to create and make
the planet better, healthier,stronger than ever before, and
it's also a community wherepeople can come and learn from
one another, connect with oneanother.
And then we also have coursesreally geared around training

(37:12):
people to do what I do in oneform or another.
Maybe they do it professionally, maybe they do it as an
advocate, maybe they do it as aland steward, but to have the
same core abilities andunderstanding that I've had the
incredible blessing to be ableto learn from a sephulzer and a
Regendra Singh and all of theother great leaders and heroes

(37:33):
that I've had the great fortuneto spend in time with.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
And I think the training piece was already there
when we talked, because youwere talking about how do I
scale myself or how do I trainthe trainer maybe not train the
trainers how do I train and sortof repeat not repeat but
replicate myself or clone, whichobviously we don't want to.
But how do we do that?

(37:58):
Because I'm just not going tohit the number of hectares
simply that we need to hit bymyself.
It's just not possible.
And so what has been yourbiggest lesson from maybe on the
course of SIDIC?
How to train other people.
How difficult is it?
Because it's so contextspecific and there must be so
much knowledge in your head.
How has that experience been?

(38:19):
Training others to do similarwork, not your work, but similar
work.
What's the biggest lesson there?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
That's a great question, and you know, when we
were speaking last, I was goingwith a very different strategy,
where I wanted to give a lot ofeffort and focus on very few
people to hopefully createreally good practitioners, and I
learned that that was just tooslow, too slow and not gonna

(38:48):
work.
And you know, we took on fiveapprentices.
Three of them turned out to bereally good and continue to work
with our crew.
But you know, if I'm trainingthree people in two years, we're
not gonna get anywhere.
And so I really recognized thatI needed to figure out a way to
scale in the modern world, andI think that you know I'm

(39:11):
actually amazed at how effectiveit's been.
We take people I try and takepeople through five years of my
life in six months, and so Ireally try and distill things
down to what are the mostessential pieces.
All of the extra fluff thatmight be nice, but it's not
necessary.
Just let's just throw that outbecause there's too much to
cover already.
And I expected that it wouldwork in a couple of years that

(39:36):
we take people through the sixmonth program and then in a
couple of years they'd beworking as a professional or
doing projects.
But what we find is because ourprogram pushes people to action
throughout the whole program.
I think that's one of the thingsthat I've really learned as
part of being education is, ifyou just show people, they're

(39:57):
not gonna do it.
You have to show people andmake them do it and then they
can do it on their own, and soour course is very heavy on
actions.
Every module has a bunch ofactions that people need to go
out and do on the landscape.
So we say it's online, but it'sreally at home, and what this
has done is it enabled thissystem where, you know, in six

(40:18):
months or one year, we know howpeople working, doing this kind
of work around the world, beingfeatured in newspapers, starting
their own YouTube channels,doing all of these different
things that are how they want tocontribute to this movement,
and it's actually happened somuch quicker than I could have
imagined.
We already have people from 199different countries in the

(40:40):
community.
It's like two-thirds of all thecountries in the world almost,
or actually a little bit morethan that, and you know it's
just in two years time.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
And to play the devil's advocate here a bit, as
you are perfectionist I'm prettysure you are what about the
quality of the project?
Like, are you scared?
Have you seen examples ofthings just not working and then
coming back to you?
Or like, what's the qualityaspect of this, which I think is
one of the reasons you went forlet's train a few people very

(41:12):
close to me so I can make surethey are completely able and
they're perfect, etc.
Etc.
And this is like in terms ofless thing of control.
This is a whole different levelof that as well.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, and I mean, you hit it on the nail on the head.
As far as me being aperfectionist, but I think
that's where having people gothrough all these actions is so
critical, because we see a lotof things that need to be fixed
or could be better in theirfirst projects.

(41:42):
But those first projects areonly for us.
Those aren't for other people.
So people are making theirexample water body and I can
tell them hey, your spillway istoo steep here and this isn't
big enough and this isn't right,and so all of their mistakes
and failures happen in thisenvironment, where it doesn't
matter, and it's actually.
You know, we want people tomake failures and mistakes.

(42:05):
Failures and mistakes are howyou improve, so we can.
I think another piece thatreally helps is, whereas when I
was training people, directone-on-one, we were only seeing
the projects that we wereworking on, whereas now we have
this catalog of projects thatwe've recorded and we can show
people all of them through theprocess of going through the

(42:25):
course.
So people see a lot ofdifferent examples.
They are not just seeing a few,but they're seeing all the
different flavors, differentclimates, different contexts,
and so I actually I've seen lotsof work in the grading stage
that I want to see improvementson, but I haven't seen much work

(42:46):
in the actual implementationphase where they're doing it for
other people.
That isn't anything short ofexceptional.
Now would I do it in a slightlydifferent way sometimes?
Yeah, sure, but my way is notthe right way.
You know, the right way issomeone following nature and
listening to that landscape, andthat's the part that we train

(43:09):
and that's why I think they'reso effective.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
And what about the role of technology in this?
Not obviously on the coursesand education piece, because
they are the online technologiesfundamental, but in general,
have you seen things over thelast four and a half years?
I asked about remote sensing,but in general, of course, the
drone piece that you say, wow,this is.
This is really changing or thiscould be a game-changer.

(43:33):
It could be an iPhone moment,let's say for the sector, maybe
not now, but maybe in a fewyears if it keeps developing
like that.
Have you seen any of that thatreally excites you or not?

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Of course that's also an answer I would say you know,
from what I see in the landdesign movement, people are
mostly already way too dependenton technology and so in some
ways I think as the maps getbetter, people become worse

(44:05):
designers because they're notlooking at the landscape as much
.
I can't tell you how many timesI walk a landscape and the main
vein of the landscape, wherethe springs are coming out,
where the water flow is, is notwhere you would ever put it on a
contour map.
It doesn't make sense on acontour map.
It doesn't make sense based offthe landscape, because it's the

(44:25):
geological layering underneaththat landscape that actually
determines those things.
I was just on a project where Icame in after a big name
permaculture designer and, tonot mince words, I mean the
design that they had was kind oftrash.
It left all the structuralproblems in that landscape in

(44:47):
place but it painted over themwith a pretty hedge.
They left all the drainsdraining all the fields in place
, but they made them an ediblehedge drain.
And so in many cases we'releaning on these tools so
heavily that we're notperforming the basic site
analysis that we should be.

(45:07):
I recognize and see how muchbetter the mapping is getting,
and I also see that it's makingpeople even worse designers as a
result.
Now I will say one thing thatis a project that we're working
on.
That would be great if anyone'sout there and finds this
interesting.

(45:27):
We need funding for it, we havethe skills, we have the ability
, but basically machine learningas a data metric and where we
could essentially have twodifferent devices One that would
be a macro invertebrate sensorfor waterways.
Now, instead of people havingto go out and perform samples,
we could just have a continuousstream of data coming in for the

(45:50):
macro vertebrate levels inthose waterways, which is one of
our major indicators of healththat we use in science.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
What are the macro ones you're looking for?
What are like the quantity?

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Basically all of the insects in the waterway.
A healthy waterway is full ofaquatic insects.
A sick, dead waterway is gonnahave very few.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So you need a good sensor that continuously can
monitor a waterway, basically interms of aquatic insects.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
And then actually recognize them as the different
types of insects and say, okay,for this amount of flow, we have
this many of this kind, thismany of this kind, this many of
this.
Similarly, we want to do thesame thing with soil Right now,
if you want to understand thebiological constituents of your
soil, you take a sample, you putit in a bag send it in a mail.

(46:40):
It sits in a lab for two days,three days, before they sample
it.
Now the sample is already waydifferent than it was in the
field and then you get theresults a few days later and it
doesn't really enable a quickfeedback of management and
feedback, whereas what we'recreating is a device that would

(47:01):
be in field, that you would hookyour smartphone up to you,
would run some soil through itand it would tell you all of
your different levels ofbacteria, fungi, protists, all
the different things that youmight want to have as a metric.
Now you could take a samplebefore you plow your field and
you could take a sample afteryou plow your field and
immediately see okay, whatresponse did my management

(47:23):
create?
Similarly, with sprayingsomething, whether it's a
compost tea or a pesticide or anherbicide, you could
immediately see what kind ofresponse does that have on my
soil.
So if we're able to bringeither both of these products to
market, I think that could be ahuge tool in making the unseen

(47:44):
more seen.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
It's a very nice way of putting it.
I think I have to look back atwho said it, but there's an
interesting piece on the waterand on the soil piece the air
piece as well, I think is tomake the air side more visible,
or the unseen visible would befascinating as well.
I know people are working onthe handheld device to be

(48:07):
in-field and to basically beinstant and still lab worthy in
terms of results, becauseotherwise you're gonna be all
over the place and that's notvery useful for any farmer or a
land steward or a practitioner.
And would that be I'm justre-asking the magic wand
question, but probably would bea different answer what would

(48:30):
you change if you had one thingthat you could change overnight,
and what would that be?
Probably not those twotechnologies, but like what
would that be?
Would it be policy?
Would it be which is similar toyour answer you gave before
four and a half years ago?
Would it be something else?
Would it be consciousness?
I mean, of course, waterstories and more attention would
be great.
Or if everybody saw the 13River or the 7 River video that

(48:54):
now turned 13, I can't imaginepeople are not moved by that.
But what would your magic wandanswer?

Speaker 2 (49:01):
You know, I've been thinking about this listening to
your other podcasts and I gotone that I think would be really
simple and I would love to makehappen.
If just every person had thesame understanding around water
that I've gained through thelived experience.
So if everyone, for everyperson, could experience

(49:22):
firsthand one of these projectsin India Sepulchre's Kramaterhof
some of the projects in Spain,some of the projects that we've
done, if they just understoodthat we have everything we need
to live a beautiful, simple,healthy, resilient life and, in
fact, if we just care for waterand treat it respectfully, we

(49:46):
can solve all of the mostpressing issues from a climate
change.
We can't necessarily solveeverything, but you know,
climate change is somethingcaused by the energy sector and
the land use sector, but it'sgoing to be felt in the water
sector for all of the peoplearound the world.
And so if we could help peopleunderstand that that water

(50:07):
sector doesn't need to be thatway, that we have all the tools,
all of the understanding, allthe ability to change it right
now, and if everyone understoodthat that was possible, I think
things would just change in theblink of an eye.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
And do you think that this new I haven't used it yet,
of course, because it didn'tcome out yet, but to stay in the
iPhone movement terminologythat these new virtual reality
or augmented reality, like howdo we we cannot all bring
everybody to Austria, forexample, to Sepholzer, or to
India Is there a way to partlydo that remotely?

(50:43):
Like you wear certain very, verywell done glasses and
experience like the transitionof a farm, like that, like also
over the years I think that'sone of the powerful things of
the biggest little farm, likethe same shot seven years in a
row.
Like you can see, of course,production, quality, budgets,
very interesting pieces as well,but like you can see the change
.
You can feel the change.
You really feel for the peachesand you really feel for not the

(51:06):
snails because they get eatenby ducks, but you feel like
you're there.
That's not even an immersiveone.
Do you see something there tosomehow bring this to the people
, instead of bringing the peopleto these examples?
Or are you saying, look, thereare examples everywhere, within
a few hours drive, everybodycould actually experience this
and that's better, or what'syour feeling there?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
I think there's a few pieces to that.
I think that you know for one,we need demonstration projects
everywhere, because it's gonnalook a little different
everywhere and in reality,people never believe what they
hear.
They believe what they see, andso I worry that even if we're
able to create an awesomeaugmented reality experience,
people are gonna say, oh well,that's virtual reality, that's

(51:52):
not in existence, that's notreal, that's someone's
imagination, whereas when yousee it in existence on the
ground, there's no refuting that.
You're there, you can smell thewater, you can taste it, you
can taste the food.
So I think that there's thatpiece.
As far as helping everyoneunderstand, I think this is

(52:14):
where stories come in.
Stories are the best ways toremember facts and figures.
They're what humans have usedfor our own mythology.
For as long as we've hadlanguage, we've had story, and
so I think we don't necessarilyneed to have this augmented
reality to understand that story, in fact, showing people real

(52:36):
footage of real projects andreal results.
You know, now we have all thepower to do that, whether you
have a smartphone in your hand,or you know, we have never been
more able to create anddistribute content easily
amongst people, and so I reallythink it's just in the power of
story that this work can spread.

(52:57):
Yeah, now I'm seeing these.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
I'm not saying they should be imaginatory, or I
think it could be a way for manyto visit Zepholt, basically to
experience that without havingto fly from Australia to but of
course in Australia you canvisit nice places as well but
like too.
And but then always theargument could be yeah, that's
far away, that's there, it worksthere, just like we see with

(53:19):
farmers in transition.
Like yeah, but that's anothersoil and that's another like.
There's always an argument andif you experience it nearby,
obviously that argument shouldgo away.
Doesn't always and you touchedupon something before when you
explain what water stories isand I would like to double-click
on that you're like to helppeople understand like the role

(53:40):
we play I don't think you usethe word keystone species but
like the role we play in like wehave a positive, potentially
positive role, let's say,instead of just sort of wishing
that humanity wasn't there andthen everything would be fine.
I'm generalizing here.
But what have you seen there?
Or what made you?
Do you remember when yourealized that or when you came

(54:02):
to that conclusion?
Like look, we have a role herewhich is actually on the
positive side, not just on thenegative side, because I feel
like very often we get stuck onthat.
This feels like a wholedifferent podcast, but we get
stuck on the negative piece andnot necessarily on taking our
keystone species role, anddefinitely part of the water
cycle series is double-clickingon that and going deeper, so I
didn't want to leave that onebefore we wrap up.

(54:24):
What's you remember when thatcame to you or you realized that
was a very early in your careeror later on, like we have that
potential.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
That's a great question.
It's something that you knowcame up throughout life, from
childhood onward.
But it was really reinforced inmeeting Sepp Holzer and not
even going to his place.
Yet it was reinforced to awhole nother level to go to the
Kramaterhof, but in just beingaround with him, spending time
with him, understanding thatsomebody is doing this.

(54:57):
That really opened the doorsthere.
And I think a big part of it isin the stories we are told and
the stories we listen to and youcan find anywhere whether it's
in documentaries, in HollywoodTV series and movies, or whether
on the news station, it's veryclear the story of humans

(55:20):
destroying stuff, humans makingthe environment worse, humans
making the landscape worse.
Where are the stories of humanshealing the planet?
The reality is that they're allover the place, but they're
just not told enough.
You know there's these peoplefrom.
In your conversation with MilanMilan, he mentioned how the
water cycle is only operatingwith half its capacity.

(55:42):
Victor Schauburger, more than ahundred years ago, was talking
about the half water cycle andhow what we had at that point
was the half water cycle at halffunctioning.
So this is a story that's comeup time and time again and it's
been proven time and time againon every continent except for
Antarctica and every place, butjust the stories haven't spread.

(56:05):
Now, I think in a lot of caseswhen these happened, there
wasn't the infrastructure forthese stories to spread.
There wasn't the internet, yetthere wasn't, you know, great
documentation of the beginningof these projects.
There's not before and after ofVirginia's projects, because 35
years ago, when they werestarting, there were people
starving in the desert.

(56:25):
They weren't worried aboutgetting before footage.
They didn't think they'd beable to accomplish this.
That's what often is theproblem.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
We don't like keep like to everybody listening and
evolve in any kind of theseprojects.
Take before pictures, please,because you're gonna regret it,
like render drone somewhere,let's say in steel one, but like
figure out a way to document asmuch as possible, because
you're gonna regret not doing itlater on.
And now we have at least mostof us have somewhere a decent

(56:54):
kind of camera in, necessarilyin our pocket, but, let's say,
nearby and it's reallyinteresting how that might shift
over the next years, as thesethings actually have been
documented from the beginning.
We can see the massive, thebefore and after, which is still
the most powerful thing we have, like those fence line pictures
or those pictures of a projecthere and a project there.

(57:17):
So that's shifting potentially,and our ability to then
distribute the stories, ofcourse, changed completely.
And a shout out to you, becauseme and the interview came out
this morning, basically, so Idon't know when you listen to it
, but that was.
That's impressive and it'sinteresting.
Yes, there have been people, ofcourse, on this for a hundred
plus years.
The question is now does itfeel different like?

(57:38):
Is it like I'm asking questionhere?
Do you feel that this?
Why would this time bedifferent?
Why would this cycle aroundtalking in water cycles be
different than all the otherones where I think also people
like bit their teeth and broketheir teeth I don't think it's a
way of saying but on this issueand somehow didn't get to where

(57:59):
we need to go.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
I think the key here that will either make or break
us is the connectivity betweencommon people, and whereas in
previous times we were alwaysdependent on the conscious
awareness of the leaders, of thehigher ups of the oligarchy, of
whoever was in charge, we'renow at this point in time where

(58:22):
we're all so well connected.
We could overthrow thosesystems pretty easily if we set
our minds to it, and we don'teven necessarily need to
overthrow those systems at all.
We just need to start doing thework that we can, and so, in in
so many places, there's thisincredible disempowerment around
the management of land, but itis still the people who live on

(58:46):
that landscape, whether legallyor not, who are in control of
the day-to-day actions thatunfold on that landscape, and so
I think that's gonna be the keydifference here is can we awake
the conscience of the commonpeople and have us all
collectively start to play arole in this, or are we going to

(59:08):
wait for someone else to fix it?
And the reality is, someoneelse is not going to fix it,
because they're making a lot ofmoney off of the way things are
exactly as they are, and so theyhave no incentive to change it,
and so I think that's.
The big difference now is justthat in how quickly stuff can
spread around and how wellconnected we are and how we can

(59:29):
support each other and cometogether.
It reminds me of these projectsin India.
The government wanted to takecredit for a lot of the work
they're doing, so the governmentstarted to come in and do
similar type projects, but theydidn't talk with the local
community, they didn't work withthe local community, and now
those government projects havetotally fallen into disrepair

(59:52):
and don't do anything foranybody, and so they can't take
credit for it because theyweren't actually in connection
and they didn't have buy-in fromthe local people living there.
And so we see a lot of thesemovements happening through this
grassroots energy, which Ithink is what may be our saving

(01:00:13):
grace in this whole mess.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
And as a final question, which is a question I
didn't ask years ago yet andwhich is an interesting tension
with the top-down, bottom-up wediscussed before as well what
would you do with the billiondollars if you had to invest it?
So how would you put it to work?
I had just some things throughmicroloans etc.
But maybe something completelydifferent.
So if you had this enormousamount of resources, very

(01:00:38):
concentrated, which is in manyways not a good thing, but let's
say you did wake up tomorrowmorning and that was the case,
so you now have the burden ofthis or the luxury, what would
you do and where would youprioritize and how would you go
about it?

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Yeah, great question.
I think it would be amulti-phase process to burn
through all that capital in abeneficial way.
The first step would really bein an awareness campaign and in
lobbying to actually change laws, to create laws that give
people the power to stewardtheir water, that give first
right of rain to the land whereit is received.

(01:01:16):
So much of our problem is inthe prioritization of downstream
flow, which all of our legalapparatus around water
prioritized.
Downstream flow.
That is going to, as peoplehave just heard from Milan,
Milan that's going to make lessand less water in that system.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
That's the main line in water First right of rain.
What does that mean Basically,the rain that falls on Milan?
Let's say I'm up in a watersystem I'm not legally obliged
to drain as quickly as possibledown.
Is that like I can have itactually soak in my healthy
ecosystem?
Because now I'm basically Ihave to push it off Milan as
quickly as possible.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
You don't own that water.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
The state owns that water.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Whether it's in the sky, on the ground or in the
ground.
And so exactly the basicallygiving the people to hold water
on their land, to create waterbodies, to create infiltration
structures, to first have thatland, wherever it meets the
earth, first serve that portionof water Water where it meets
the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
You said that, yeah.
So whenever it touches that,that's where the magic needs to
start.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
So that's a big piece of it, you know, really
leveraging policy, Because rightnow we've got this insane
predicament where there are lotsof people out there who want to
do good, but they're not evenallowed to do the best good.
They're only allowed to dothese side projects that won't
really make a big difference andthey're not allowed to work in
the areas that actually needhealing.
So time and time again, youknow, we see that a waterway

(01:02:50):
that has been turned into adrain sometimes put in a drain
tile and dredged is now a youknow, a water resource or a
wetland and you're not allowedto touch it, You're not allowed
to do anything with it.
So whereas it was a wetland,now it's a drain and you're not
able to fix it from being adrain and push it back towards a
wetland.
So that policy piece reallyneeds to change for people to be

(01:03:11):
able to actually implement someof this stuff.
So outreach and lobbying maybe10% of that fund.
The rest of that fund I wouldjust put fully into a water bond
and into these micro financingloans and essentially look
specifically for places that arelimited in their water resource

(01:03:32):
, that are under producingagriculturally, and then I think
you have a sure bet to getrepaid on those loans.
And so, whether if forfinancial incentive of making
more money or just making theworld a better place, you could
have all of these additionalfunds feed back into the water
bond.
That then keeps fundingadditional projects.

(01:03:54):
We see on every project we do,people would go bigger and they
would go farther if they a hadthe legal right to do so and B
had some funding support to doso, and in most cases they would
have no problem repain thatfunding.
They just don't have thefunding on hand.
So in that billion dollar fundor that big fund, a big portion

(01:04:17):
of it would be in changingpolicy, but then the even bigger
portion of it would be infunding local projects.
And again I would do it asimilar setup as that Ryan River
, where you know the fund itselfwould maybe determine we're
going to follow these threeenvironmental metrics and we
expect these differentcheckpoints along your way and

(01:04:39):
then you get this next bump offunding each time you hit one of
those checkpoints.
But then let the local people,with some guidance, actually
determine what projects and howthey spend that funding and then
make that amount small enoughthat if they spend it on the
wrong thing at first and theydon't get the metrics, they
don't get access to the rest ofthe funding.

(01:04:59):
So it's really again thatmanagement goals and directives
set by the top but the actualdetails of implementation set by
the people on the ground.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
I think it's a perfect way to end this
conversation.
There are so many other ways wecould take this, but we're
already an hour in and I thinkwe'll keep that for another
conversation.
I don't think it's the lasttime we talk.
I want to thank you for comingon here, for listening, first of
all, and for doing the amazingwork you do and coming here to

(01:05:33):
share about it, spread about it.
I was going to use another word, but coming here to check in
with us and see where we stand,and hopefully the next one is
not going to be four and a halfyears, but a bit sooner.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Absolutely.
I would love that.
You know I love your podcast somuch myself and I hear so many
good things about it from mystudents.
If ever I miss a key episode,they're always sharing it in the
community.
So really appreciate what youdo, really appreciate you
getting this information out toyou know one of the most
critical audiences to understandthis.

(01:06:08):
The first time I had dinnerwith Seth he said when children
are raised in tune with nature,when those children become
politicians, the silentrevolution is complete.
And I look at that even alittle bit more broadly.
Yes, that would be the best wayto do it, but if we can get the
people in charge of all ofthese major levels of levers of

(01:06:29):
investment and of policy tounderstand what we can do from a
water standpoint, things canchange very quickly for the
better.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Absolutely, and I think we're at a point I mean, I
hope that we were at that pointa few years ago already, but
the conversation seems to bechanging and maybe out of
desperation, but this is a month, just whenever you're listening
to this, but Europe seems to bepartly on fire either, going
through the usual cycle ofdrought, fire and flood, but

(01:07:01):
actually multiple islands inGreece had to be partly
evacuated because of fires andthere the pain is very real, of
course, of the people livingthere, but also the pain for the
tourism industry, and there's avery we had heat waves here
that we haven't seen in a long,long time.
So let's see if this time isdifferent and people start

(01:07:21):
googling or start searching forand then find the relevant
content Because it's out there.
You just have to look for itjust a bit better, but it's out
there.
The education is out there, it'saccessible to almost all, and a
lot of this work doesn't needto cost the world or break the
bank to get it implemented andthe returns are very interesting
.
What we need is a lot ofcreative people to figure out

(01:07:42):
ways to scale this and to figureout bonds and to set it up and
to then turn it into really goodPowerPoint presentations that
actually get funded, becausethat's a whole different job to
get this into Wall Street, intoLondon City, into New Delhi,
into Shanghai, etc.
Because that's a differentworld, a different language.
But we need those bridgesenough.

(01:08:03):
We can accelerate that a bitwith this.
So thank you so much for beinghere and thank you so much again
for the work you do and forspreading literally the water
and the message.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Likewise, thank you for everything and thanks for
having me gone.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Thank you so much for listening all the way to the
end.
For the show notes and links wediscussed in this episode,
check out our website Investingin RegenderEggerculturecom.
Forward slash posts.
If you liked this episode, whynot share it with a friend?
Or give us a rating on ApplePodcasts?
That really helps.
Thanks again and see you nexttime.

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242 Zach Weiss - On a mission to train hundreds of thousands of people in key water restoration techniques

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}242 Zach Weiss - On a mission to train hundreds of thousands of people in key water restoration techniques