387 Douglas Sheil - Why fixing water fixes carbon - Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Wow, it seems so simple.
Healthy forests bring in andtrigger their own rain, and most
rain comes from elsewhere.
So should we be more interestedin this elsewhere?
Why are farmers, investors,entrepreneurs, and policymakers
when it comes to agriculture,forestry, and land use in
general much more busy withelsewhere?
For instance, if China realizesthat most of their rainfall
comes from beyond their bordersto the west, even all the way

(00:22):
from Europe, would they getinvolved in restoring farms and
forests all the way to Europe?
Big ideas, and you could argueit doesn't get much bigger.
Yes, we're talking again aboutworking cycles and this time
with a professor at one of themost famous agriculture
universities in the world.
Why has it been so difficult toget scientific disciplines like
theory in one discipline likephysics to enter the world, like

(00:44):
climate science and forestry?
We talk about the huge pushbackthat we have the climate
scientists have encountered toget papers published, and to
have it recognized in the past20 years.
And we also talk about optimismand why water is a much easier
selling carbon and why it mightlead to a lot more cross-border
cooperation.
But we have to think really bigand get a lot better at working
together, which isn't an easyfeat.

(01:06):
Enjoy this wide-rangingconversation about tropical
forests, science, the Sahel,natural regeneration, and
politics.
This is the Investing inRegenerative Agriculture and
Food Podcast, where we learnmore on how to put money to work
to regenerate soil, people,local communities, and
ecosystems while making anappropriate and fair return.

(01:32):
Welcome to another episode todaywith a professor at Wagningen
University in forest ecology andforest management, an ecologist,
forester, and conservationist.
Welcome, Douglas.

SPEAKER_00 (01:40):
Greetings, I'm excited to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43):
And thank you first of all for reaching out and
getting in touch after anotherepisode we did on water and
water cycles with Rob Delat,which I will put in the links
below as well.
And you just did a greatconversation with Alfalo, a
friend of the show, who I willalso link below.
But we always start here with apersonal question, and in this
case, definitely an interestingjourney, so to speak.

(02:05):
What made you spend most of yourwaking hours focusing in this
case on forest and therelationship with forest and the
full landscape around?
Because we're not just going totalk about trees.
There will be an important partof this conversation, but we'll
talk about rain, water cycles,small water cycles, humidity,
and all of that.
But what made you spend so muchof your waking and maybe also
your non-waking hours on thistopic?

SPEAKER_00 (02:26):
Yeah, so thank you.
I'm a biologist by background,and I think I became a biologist
just because biology is eversince I was a child, just
looking for frogs or fish orwhatever on the coast.
I grew up in Ireland.
But the tropics was always themost exciting place, whether
you're watching Jack Cousteau orthese BBC documentaries with
Avon Attenborough.

(02:47):
The tropics is the excitingplace, and just having those
opportunities to see theseplaces for real, for a
biologist, it's just a wonderfulthing.
And then, of course, you can'tbe looking at these places and
not concerned about theirfuture.
And once you're there, you can'tjust be concerned about the
forests and the animals, butalso about the people, because
everything is tied up together.
These landscapes, it's alsoabout people.

(03:08):
So I think that's I got verymuch into applied ecology,
applied conservation, and that'sreally been my motivation.

SPEAKER_01 (03:16):
And do you remember the first time?
Because from Ireland you're notused to, let's say, the tropics,
I'm imagining.
I've never no, I've been inIreland, that's not true.
But at least it's not a tropicalcountry.
First time you stepped into atropical, let's say, environment
and how that was, because youclearly fell in love with it as
a biologist.

SPEAKER_00 (03:34):
Yeah, I should say it's a little bit more
complicated than that.
Because my father, when I was achild, I mean, he worked his
whole career in brewingGuinness, which is about the
most Irish job you can have,this black Irish beer that
people know about.
And he was doing that in Nigeriawhen I was born.
So there's kind of this flavorof travel in the family.
And I guess I was jealous of myolder sister who remembered it.

(03:56):
So I was always going to try anddo these trips abroad.
And then I guess there was apoint in my life where I
realized it didn't just have tobe holiday trips that I would
find sponsors or pay for myself,but actually something that
people would potentially allowme to be a career option.

SPEAKER_01 (04:13):
Yeah, and from the conversation with Offalo, I
really remember at some pointyou switched the tone or the
speed, and it's like this is notjust a pessimistic story, this
is an optimistic one.
And I don't know if that came atthe same time you found this
paper on the biotic pump, or isthat part of the same journey,
let's say?
Like what happened when youstumbled upon that specific

(04:36):
theory?
And of course, slowly it it'sbecoming more mainstream,
although it's definitely notaccepted across the board.
But what happened there?

SPEAKER_00 (04:43):
Well, the bigger picture here is I was working at
a research organization inIndonesia and I looking at
tropical forests and how we canprotect forests and also protect
the people who live in theselandscapes better.
What are the opportunities toactually fix these things?
And I guess a lot of thestories, a lot of the
narratives, a lot of the newsyou hear about these things,
it's often the bad news.

(05:04):
And at that time I was workingon a kind of a book, so I guess
it's targeted more at students,the values of tropical forests,
the issues around conservation.
So looking very broadly, and Icame across this article by
Anastasia Makareva and ViktorGorshkov, and it was about how
forests are actually a majordriver of the rainfall patterns.

(05:25):
Basically, it's not just thatthere's recycling, which I guess
we already knew about ofrainfall, not just the idea that
water is emitted from treesfalls again as rain, but there's
actually an active process ofdrawing in moist air from one
place to another, and thatforests are an incredibly
powerful part of this.
And I was quite intriguedbecause I hadn't heard this idea
before, and I'm at a globalworld center for tropical forest

(05:47):
research.
You think, well, maybe somebodyhere has heard of this.
So then I ask around, and then alot of people initially were a
bit dismissive or suspicious.
If it was true, we would knowalready, or different kinds of
arguments, but you think, okay,nobody really knows, they're
just making stuff up.
So it was, I was very muchintrigued at that point, and I
helped promote the ideas becauseI found them credible.

(06:08):
My background, I got a bit ofphysics in my background from
university days, so I was ableto at least say, well, it makes
sense to me.
And I talked later on toAnastasi and Victor, it was also
clear that they had alreadypublished this in physics
journals, so it wasn't as if itwas crazy physics, it was
actually already peer-reviewedscience, it was just very
difficult to get it through tothe climate scientists.

SPEAKER_01 (06:28):
But I was just in one silo of in one corner of
science and hasn't didn't atthat point, which is amazing
because if like you are in thecenter of tropical forest
research and you didn't hearabout such a powerful concept,
if it's true or not, is at thatpoint even not even irrelevant,
but you should at least look atit, and nobody of the people
around you you asked had heardabout it basically and tried to

(06:50):
come up with answers to dismissit because we would we would
have known it.

SPEAKER_00 (06:54):
Yeah, that's right.
And to be fair, I thinkAnastasia and Victor, these are
theoretical physicists.
The way they communicate inSiberia, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (07:01):
So it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
The way they communicate is to other
physicists, and that's what theywere good at.
Also, to be fair, it's Russianswriting in English, so it's very
great that they were willing toreach out and try and explain.
But they were having realtrouble getting through to, I
guess, people like me who lookat sort of seven lines of
differential equations and say,well, I don't see a mistake, but
would I?
It's not necessarily myexpertise.

(07:23):
And a lot of people, I thinkthey just see hieroglyphics on a
page, a lot of maths.
But the point is it ispeer-reviewed.
It wasn't the only articlethey'd published, they've
published a lot of otherarticles.
This one was just particularlyreaching out to people who work
in the environmental field andtrying to make it accessible.
You asked at the beginning aboutthe optimism.
I think what's with a mechanismlike this is it's so powerful

(07:44):
that if we actually can keepforests and make rebuild
forests, restore tree cover, youactually see an awful lot of
potential for making parts ofthe world that are very degraded
much more productive again.
And I think that was hugelyexciting to see that.
We see the pattern in thenegative version quite widely
already.
And I had worked in some placesor seen some places where the

(08:06):
story is quite seriouslynegative.
So I've worked a lot in Borneo,and we've seen serious decline
in rainfall in Borneo.
Since the 1970s, there's been ahuge loss of forest cover and a
20% decline in rainfall.
Now it's a part of the worldwhich has huge rainfall, it's
four meters of rain per year.
So maybe that 20% isn't a hugeimpact on the agriculture.

(08:28):
But if it was anywhere else inthe world, this would be
headlines, of course.
But it's an area where there'shuge amounts of palm oil
development has taken place, soa lot of those landscapes have
changed very rapidly.
So we see these big changes.
So as Borneo is a sort of amicrocosm of what's happening in
the rest of the world, we seehow dramatic these changes can
be in the negative.
But the point I would say istrees actually grow back quite

(08:50):
quickly, particularly in thetropics.
In 10 or 20 years, you can havequite a good forest again.
So we can actually recover thesethings, we can bring the forest
back.
It's amazing how resilientforests are.
There's a very famous area inJava near where I used to live,
which is near to the island ofKrakatawa.
You've probably heard ofKrakatawa.
This was this volcano.
Exactly.
So it was this big volcaniceruption over a century ago.

(09:12):
But at the time it happened,there was a huge tsunami, a big
tidal wave destroying lots ofthe forest and everything there.
So everything that's grown backis grown back since.
And it's just amazing you gothere now.
These are rich forests with manyspecies, the birds, the bats,
the animals.
So it's just incredible howquickly these things can bounce
back.
And I guess, as I say, I'm aconservationist, so I'm used to

(09:32):
thinking long term.
It's not just about one or twoyears.
We're thinking decades andcenturies.
But yes, there is an optimisticmessage here.
And I think to build on this, ifwe look in various parts of the
world, there's a lot of localpeople who actually are very
well aware of this.
There's a lot of people who wantto keep their forests, there's a
lot of people who want to growforests in their land.
So there's a lot ofopportunities here that we often

(09:55):
kind of dismiss in the overallstories that we present.
So I also work a lot withcommunities looking at how we
can do conservation or how, inmany cases, they're already
doing conservation without anyexternal help.
So there's a lot of positiveopportunity here that hasn't
necessarily been as wellexplored as it could be.

SPEAKER_01 (10:14):
And so many different angles we are
different routes and journeys wecan take from here, which we're
going to explore.
But just to get back to, youmentioned it's such a powerful
concept and such a powerfultool, the biotic pump.
Let's we've had Anastasia on thepodcast, we've discussed it many
times, but for anybody in theback that hasn't heard it yet,
can you, as a high school orlet's say student level, just to

(10:36):
explain to all the listenersthat are now thinking or trying
to Google or chat or Claude,what does this mean?
Why is it so important tounderstand not just the sort of
passive role of forests that, ofcourse, evapotranspire a lot of
humidity, but there is a muchmore active role between rain
and a forest?

SPEAKER_00 (10:52):
Yeah, I think the easiest way, I mean, we won't go
into all the physics, I think,but the easiest way to
understand it is in the past weunderstood, and I guess most
people still understand that theway the winds work on the planet
is the air rises over warm areasand falls over cool areas.
And basically, this has beenunderstood since several

(11:13):
centuries, since the time ofIsaac Newton and Halle and
people.
So this was something that wasworked out many centuries ago.
And that's true, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 (11:21):
If you look at people, we're not gonna we're
not gonna display all of this.
This is an end.
There isn't another layer.

SPEAKER_00 (11:26):
Yeah, so if you're a sailor and you are sailing along
a coast, you know that towardsthe evening the air tends to be
going into the landscape, right?
If you're a sailor at the sea,the wind is always going inland
because the air is rising overthe warm land, so that draws air
in.
So that's how we understandcirculation.

SPEAKER_01 (11:44):
Because the air goes up and which sort of creates a
vacuum underneath it, meaning itstarts pulling it from somewhere
else, because of coursesomething has to fill that
vacuum.

SPEAKER_00 (11:52):
So the air where it's warm is rising, and as it's
rising, it there's anentrainment or there's a drawing
in of wind or air fromelsewhere, and that wind is
drawn in, and if it's coming infrom over the ocean, that air
has picked up some moisture fromthe ocean, and as it's drawn in
land and it starts to rise, themoisture in the air starts to
condense and it falls as rain.
So the same process we use tounderstand winds also explains

(12:15):
why rain is drawn in from theoceans to the land.
But what Anastasia and Victordid is they looked at some of
the approximations that havebeen made.
I won't go too much into it, butit's not just about temperature,
it's also when the actualmoisture in the air is
condensing.
It also happens when it'sfreezing, so in droplets or in
ice crystals as these form,there's a change in the

(12:37):
molecules in the air.
And this is something thatpeople will realize if they've
done basic kind of physics orphysical chemistry at school.
It yeah, it's just a term that'sin there.
Everybody agrees it's in there.
And in the models, it'sconsidered negligible.
It's tiny, it's less than a fewpercent of the effect of the
temperature, or that's whatpeople thought.
But what Anastasia and Victorsaid is well, that was an

(12:59):
assumption that was made somedecades ago and gave us good
models.
But what happens if we don'tmake that assumption?
What kind of effects do we see?
And what they showed wasactually surprisingly, it can be
a very strong effect, thiscondensation of moisture over
wherever it's taking place,actually.
But we're talking about overforest here.
If you imagine a landscape withforests next to a landscape

(13:21):
without forests, the forests arevery good at evaporating water.
This is just something thattrees are good at.
They're better than anythingelse, more or less, at emitting
moisture into the atmosphere.
And if you emit a lot ofmoisture into the atmosphere,
you raise the chances that someof it will start to condense.
So if you have an area wheremoisture is condensing more
frequently, on average also airwill be moving that way.

(13:43):
That's basically what the bioticpump is telling us, because
you're actually creating a lowpressure area with this process.

SPEAKER_01 (13:49):
So forests bring in their own rain.
That's uh part of their ownrain.

SPEAKER_00 (13:53):
Yeah, there's a feedback.
So wetter areas bring in moremoisture.
And people often say, well, isit true of other vegetation too?
And I guess locally, yes, any ofvegetation that would evaporate
enough moisture, rice paddyfields, open terraces like in
Java or something, you couldactually get high amounts of
moisture also coming off otherlandscapes, which would also
draw in in air that will thenrise and you will get the

(14:15):
rainfall.
So the point is places that arewet get more moisture.
So that's it sounds very unfair,but if you have a moist place,
it actually creates a feedback.
And wet places get more moisturecoming back.

SPEAKER_01 (14:27):
And that brings up sort of the fundamental question
in water cycle restoration orregeneration.
Can we can we trigger that?
Can we, with regeneration, withreforestation, with bringing
landscapes back to life,predominantly with trees that
are the king ofevapotransportation
transportation?
Can we go from a degraded or anot so wet place to a wetter

(14:51):
place?
And if we do that strategicallyalong from the coast to the
mountains or the hills, can youbring in more moisture than you
would have brought in otherwiseor would have otherwise
happened?

SPEAKER_00 (15:00):
I would say to that, absolutely, that that's bound to
happen.
If you took people off the landand just allowed the landscape
to recover, it would happenslowly, but it would happen.
And in a sense, we know thisfrom history.
If we look back in sort of paleotimes, the asteroid that
destroyed the dinosaurs,whatever, obviously there was a
lot of vegetation that wasobliterated, and there's been
serious various events of thiskind where we see the forest

(15:23):
come back and the climaterecovers slowly.
And in a sense, we can do this.
It's at a much smaller smallerscale, luckily.
We don't have an asteroiddestroying us just yet.
But I think allowing nature todo what nature wants to do, we
could bring a lot backrelatively easily.
And it to some degree this ishappening in some places
already, I think, where peopleare permitting it to happen.

SPEAKER_01 (15:45):
Yeah, sorry.
And why was it so difficult forthis to land in in other parts
of science and just physics?
Why was it difficult?
It would have been easier, butthat's of course a massive
assumption, if it would havebeen a few scientists in
Wageningen or in Oxford orsomewhere else.
And why has it been it's nowcoming through?
I feel it feels it seems likemuch more known, but it

(16:06):
definitely took a decade plusand took a lot of work from you.
And of course, someone says,Yeah, Victor no longer is with
us.
Um, but it definitely was slowerthan it could have been.
Why was it why was there so muchresistance from the models that
you mentioned?
Like somebody questions a modeland says we have the compute
power now to do a lot morethings than we had a few decades
ago.
Why don't we try to not justassume that should have been a

(16:27):
basic piece of science?
We assume and let's test it, butit'd been difficult.

SPEAKER_00 (16:32):
I I think there's various answers to that, and I
think it partly depends who youask.
I think part of the challenge isthat climate science, at least
in some countries, I wasn't soaware of this when I was first
working on this topic because Iwas based in Indonesia, where I
would say climate scientist isnot so political.
But when you look towards someof the sort of centers of global

(16:52):
communication like the US, it'sclearly become a hugely
political topic.
And if somebody comes in andsays, hey, your global climate
models are wrong, it'simmediately assumed that you
have some agenda.
It's immediately assumed you'repolitical.
You're not, you're not who yousay you're Because why does it
affect climate?

SPEAKER_01 (17:09):
Like, why does it affect the model?
Because it has a cooling piece.

SPEAKER_00 (17:12):
Well, the point would be the physical mechanisms
we're talking about are notfully represented in the model.
So we would expect the models tobehave quite differently.
And we could talk more aboutthis, why I think that is true.
But of course, the climatemodelers who are used to batting
away a hundred criticisms everyday as just politicized
nonsense, they just bat us awayas yet another one that they

(17:33):
assume is politicized nonsense.
And I think that's that's beenmy feeling with some of the
people I try and talk to, thatthey're very dismissive.
They don't even want to engageit.
And I can understand becausethey get so many
non-consequential challenges.
And then if I talk to modelerswho are actually working on
these climate models, try andsimulate how the global climate
models work, if I talk to themone-to-one, they're actually

(17:56):
often quite sympathetic, butthey'll say, you know what, we
have 150 other concerns thatwe're also trying to fix in the
models.
It's not that yours isnecessarily less worthy.
They're already working onthings like Antarctic sea ice
and they're already working onhow to properly represent
vortices, and there's all kindsof complications they have to
deal with all the time.

(18:17):
And uh this to them just seemslike another one to add on their
list of over a hundred items.
And the question, of course, iswould it really make a big
difference?
And I clearly think it would,and I think Anastasia clearly
thinks it would, but we reallyneed somebody to take this
seriously.

SPEAKER_01 (18:48):
Because how would it make a difference for climate?
Locally, obviously, this changesthe game when you look at a
landscape from an investor pointof view, from a farmer point of
view, from a food company pointof view, like this makes forest
and forested areas look verydifferent.
But why is it important forclimate?

SPEAKER_00 (19:05):
I think the opportunity, well, I mean,
there's the negative side to it,and there's the positive side to
it.
The negative side, if we allowdeforestation to keep going,
we're actually going to lose alot of productive land that
people don't realize we're gonnalose.
Because so much of the argumenthas been around carbon dioxide,
all of the climate changediscussions are around carbon
dioxide.
And it's not that carbon dioxidedoesn't matter.

(19:26):
I always have to reassurepeople.
We are not climate, yeah,exactly.
We're not climate changescenarios in that way.
But we are, it is problematicthat currently ever all the
emphasis is on carbon dioxide,and if something correlates, I'm
a scientist, it's all aboutrelationships, what you can show
empirically with data in termsof patterns.
If everything is being fitted tofit with carbon dioxide as good
as possible, and we'redismissing these land cover

(19:47):
effects, then we're not takingthe land cover effects as
seriously as we could.
And I think that's a hugemistake.
So we are already losingrainfall in many parts of the
world, like I was saying, 20% inBorneo, but there was also a
study out of a group in Leedspublished a few years ago
showing this is more or lessgeneral around the world.
Everywhere that there'sdeforestation, we can predict
there's a decline in rainfall.

(20:09):
And that, in a sense, isn'tcontroversial.
You don't need the biotic pumpto explain that.
There's also a recycling effectthat if you're returning
moisture back to the air, it canfall again as rain.
You can have the rainfall fallseveral times over the land
before it washes away in therivers.
But if you don't have the forestreturning it to the atmosphere,
you get much less intensity ofthe rainfall cycle.
You get a reduction in rainfall.

(20:30):
So, in a sense, there's nothingcontroversial there.
We should know this, but ithasn't been taken so seriously.
But there is a danger,obviously, if the more forest we
lose, we can actually tip areasfrom wet to dry.
And that is, it won't just bethat these landscapes will
become much harsher to live in,much less productive to live in.
It'll also be an awful lot morecarbon in the atmosphere because

(20:51):
the forests themselves and allthat vegetation won't be there
anymore.
But the opposite is also true.
If we can protect the forest andrestore the forests, restore
these wet landscapes, areaswhich are currently marginal
will also become productiveagain because we'll bring back
the rainfall, we'll bring backthe vegetation.
It will take a decade or two, soit's not something we can do
tomorrow, but we have to startsoon to be able to see this.

(21:13):
And there are positive stories.
It's like the greening that'shappening in much of the Sahel
of Africa.
There was a time when I wasyoung when the Sahel was always
about disaster, and recentlythere's really positive stories
out of the Sahel.
A lot of farmers are growingtrees quite intensively in their
fields, and they don't see areduction in their crops.
They have a much moisterlandscape.
And some of this is probablyjust natural climate variation,

(21:36):
and some of it is the feedbacksyou get from having more trees
in the landscapes.
So we are seeing some of theseprocesses already.
I think for me, when I startedat this, the big challenge is
how do you do this in landscapeswhere there are people?
And the really nice thing withthe West Africa story is hey,
you don't have to worry aboutit, it's already happening.
But to some degree, these thingscan happen if we allow them to.

SPEAKER_01 (21:56):
This is not a story of we have to remove the people,
fence it, and then hope for thebest.
But there is a lot that can bedone on the land with people,
and actually a lot that has tobe done, or the only way that
this can be done is going to bewith people, land stewards,
peasants, grazers, all of thatcombined.
And but just coming back to theclimate piece, because with Rob

(22:17):
we also discussed a lot of thecooling potential of healthy
landscapes.
Is that something that isstarting to be recognized or
not?
Is that still much morecontroversial?
Not just because of landscapeland use change.
Obviously, you release a lot ofcarbon from soil, from trees,
from shrubs, etc.
But also, and you can store ifyou restore, but also the

(22:37):
effects on the atmosphere.
There's a potential coolingeffect there of healthy
landscapes.
Is that something you look at,you are comfortable with, or is
that a touchy one?

SPEAKER_00 (22:46):
I think, well, for me personally, I clearly believe
that's true.
I think we're not always verygood at joining up the dots of
scientists.
We've become we've become a bitoverspecialized.
And of course, you have to be alarge-scale thinker to think
outside of these boxes.
And this is the danger.
It's a bit like the carbonthinking.
If your box is carbon, thenyou're gonna fight for your box.

(23:06):
But of course, if we should bethinking more about the problems
we're trying to solve, which ishaving a nice planet to live on
with all the biodiversity andhappy people and production that
we need.
And then how do we do that?
How do we achieve that?
And I think for sure a lot ofthis is about keeping trees and
forests and natural habitats onthe landscape.
It's not just about conservingthings for rare beetles or
whatever, but it's uh there'sreally a human welfare aspect to

(23:29):
this, which we should beemphasizing much more.
And it would be really nice ifthe policymakers would listen.
I have to say, a lot ofcolleagues, particularly older
colleagues who I talk to arequite sympathetic.
But I think a lot of theseinternational initiatives, it's
a bit like steering an oiltanker, right?
It's you you it's hard to makethe to adjust the course, to
make the all these processestake account of a whole new kind

(23:51):
of angle.
Yeah, that takes a lot of time.
It takes enthusiasm enthusiasticpeople who are willing to really
pick up and run with it.
And uh, I feel I've been pushingthis quite a long time now.
Rob DeLay has been pushing it,obviously.
Anastasia has been pushing it.
There are some of us, but we'rejust three or four people.
And uh the carbon juggernaut isin full swing and it's uh

(24:12):
charging forwards.
It's hard to be heard sometimesabove the noise of the engine, I
would say.

SPEAKER_01 (24:17):
And has that been definitely not an electric
engine, no, but has it beenchanging?
Do you feel that this has beenlanding differently over the
last couple of years?
We've been looking at watercycles probably for eight, nine
years, of course, with a smallpodcast, not that we're a huge
megaphone, but since the timeWalter Jenna and others, DD

(24:39):
persons, like others that havebeen arguing quite actively,
it's been it seems to be mostlyin that little bubble, but it
also feels like the last year ortwo, maybe it's just my subsect
bubble and the people I readthat it's growing, but it seems
to be slightly changing,changing the tone.
Do you have that feeling aswell?
Or is it just my bubble?

SPEAKER_00 (24:59):
I think slowly, slowly.
I think for us, and I know Italk to Anastasia regularly in
the past about this, it isfrustratingly slow, but it is it
is progress.
It is progress.
I think one time we had anarticle where we that there was
Anastasia was talked to, and Iwas talked to, and there was she
was quoted in science.
I think it was consideredslightly rude, but she says

(25:19):
science sometimes progresses butone funeral at a time.
And the problem is when thesenior people become dogmatic
that they're not willing tolisten to new ideas, and that's
that's definitely seems to bepart of the issue.
But as I say, it's also thepolitics.
I think the politics has madethings polarized, people don't
take each other at face value,and this gets in the way of the

(25:40):
science.
Science is always about debateand discussion and doubt and
argument, and that's creative,but in this case, people are
just batting away the criticismrather than listening.
So that's a shame.
And I think also because uhmaybe that Anastasia and Victor
obviously come from Russia, andmaybe that's not the ideal place
to be coming from at the moment.

(26:00):
But yeah, it makes thingschallenging.
I think they've done a great jobof trying to communicate more
widely, and I've tried to helpthem with that, and I do think
we have made a lot of progress.
A lot of younger people are seemto be open-minded about these
things.
But then when they look foropportunities for funding and
stuff, it's not so easy.
And particularly I work in auniversity, I wouldn't
necessarily give a PhD studentor something this as a as a

(26:23):
task, because it's just toodifficult to navigate
politically, I think.
You want to give people thingswhere they would feel are quite
safe, whatever answer they cometo, that they'll have something
useful and publishable.
And a topic like this, yeah,people get provoked by it.
I think there's very strongviews from sometimes from
surprising directions, I wouldsay.

SPEAKER_01 (26:42):
What's the most surprising one?

SPEAKER_00 (26:44):
Well, just people who are immediately dismissive.
I think people who I think of asgood scientists, I shouldn't
name names, but people who Ithink I think of as good
scientists.
And I've done this a lot.
I've gone and knocked on doorsand tried to talk to people or
sent emails and said, hey, couldI discuss this with you?
And some people are open-mindedand we'll talk privately.
But some people don't want totalk about it at all.

(27:04):
They see it as almost toxic.
It's like being saying thatyou've been, I don't know,
abducted by aliens or something.
It's going to be an embarrassingthing to admit that you've
considered that the biotic pumpcould be true.

SPEAKER_01 (27:14):
This is when the conversation took a very
interesting turn.
So tell me about the UFOexperience.
No, I it's a fascinating point.
And I'm I've been wondering, myhope is that let's say the
entrepreneurs and investors andfarmers who are maybe that don't
have the luxury, they cannot betoo dogmatic, otherwise, their
investment will fail, theircompany will fail, and/or their
farm will fail, will come to therealization that even the

(27:37):
biggest farm or the biggestpiece of land you manage is
never going to be big enough tomanage to influence you
influence on a local scale, butthe landscape and the watershed
and the even the weather aroundit.
But so you have to think at alarger scale, you have to act at
a much larger scale on to beable to navigate the next 20
years, which are going to beclimate shocks left and right,

(27:57):
behind you, in front of you,like you can't imagine.
And but I've been reallysurprised how little this idea
of okay, we have to be verystrategic of where we regenerate
in a landscape, and we have tobe very strategic in terms of
thinking how do we move water upthe mountain literally, or how
do we bring it to where it needsto go or where we need it, and
how do we recycle it multipletimes?

(28:17):
That's been also with fundersand investors, and we've done
two or even three, two watercycle series or landscape scale
regeneration series.
It's been a journey to educatepeople like look, this is not
sci-fi.
Like we know we influence this.
The question is how much, howlittle, where do we start,
where, how do we use the computepower we have now, how do we
model this?
How do we calculate?

(28:38):
How long does it take?
10 years, 15, 20.
These are not impossible forfinance because we do that all
the time with solar panels.
But it's been surprising howlittle the uptake has been, or
how and now I see a fewentrepreneurs that are saying,
okay, how do we put these piecestogether in this puzzle?
Because if I invest in a farm, Iwould love the whole landscape
to move forward or to regeneratebecause it makes my life a lot

(28:59):
easier, just as you want yourneighbors not to spray all kinds
of stuff.
Like you are part of a biggersystem.
But it's been, yeah, it's been,I'll get off my soapbox now, but
it's been a journey.
But my bet is would like it'sgonna move in certain landscapes
with people putting piecestogether that can't afford not
to do that because otherwisetheir livelihood will suffer.
And then we're gonna figure outfinance mechanisms and all of

(29:20):
that and agreements acrossborders, which you mentioned
with Alphalow as well, which isgonna be fascinating if we have
north and south of Europesuddenly arguing about how do we
get more water on the land, inthe land, instead of arguing
about all kinds of otherpayments.
But it's been, yeah, most peopleare like, oh, water, interesting
area irrigation.
No, it's a bit it's different,it's about rain and patterns
like that.
So if you are working onsomething, listeners, please get

(29:42):
in touch because we just need toreally start yesterday, as with
all good tree planting, treeplanting projects.
And what would be your messageto I love to ask, let's say we
do this in a theater, maybe inWachningen and maybe Amsterdam
or some kind of financialcapital nearby, and the audience
is full of investors and peoplemanaging wealth, either their

(30:03):
own or maybe pension wealth or abank, and we do a full evening
with a lot of nice imagery onstage, like very visual.
Maybe we bring people to atropical forest with nice
glasses on, etc.
But people also forget like thenext day, what do you want them
to?

SPEAKER_00 (30:15):
remember what would be a seed you want to plant in
their mind if you had that powerto to do yeah it's a great
question because I'm oftenthinking what's the easiest way
to encapsulate this and I Ithink what I would say it's so
much easier to engage peopleabout water than for example
about carbon.
Everybody's why why didn't howdoes that not land yet everybody

(30:36):
everywhere cares about reliableaccess to water and a farmer in
a remote part of Africa or in aremote island in Indonesia
everybody cares about the or inIreland.
Yeah exactly and just the floodsor the droughts everybody this
impacts everybody.
Carbon is a difficult pitchcarbon is a difficult sell.
You can't see it you can smellit water is an easy one I think

(30:58):
because everybody careseverybody knows why it matters
you don't really have to stopand explain in detail what
you're talking about.
And the idea that vegetation hassome impact on water this is
also very intuitive for mostpeople in most places
frustratingly perhaps it's theclimate modelers that are the
most difficult to persuade butanyway let's step aside from

(31:18):
that.
The point would be also to showhow there's a lot of synergies
here.
If we could fix water we canalso fix many of these other
issues.
So we could the carbon wouldnaturally be much easier to fix
if there was more water for allthe carbon we want to grow.
The trees we could grow overmuch larger landscapes because
there'd be more rainfall so thatthere would be less limiting of

(31:40):
water.
The biodiversity which initiallymotivated me to get involved in
this topic the amazingbiodiversity in tropical forests
of course we need forests forthat as well.
So there's a lot of these bigkind of global concerns and also
showing that you can actuallyincrease productivity in
landscapes with trees.
You don't have to have a costfrom trees.

(32:02):
I think that's probably what Iwould also emphasize if I had
enough time that there is a lotof misinformation out there.
And this is something I've beentalking about quite recently
also with colleagues becauseunfortunately there are some
simple slogans out there whichare wrong which is that trees
always use water therefore treesalways cost water.
And of course it can be true ifyou grow a big stand of

(32:23):
eucalyptus trees in a drylandscape yeah it will dry out
palm oil in Borneo well it willdry out but you also get other
effects and a lot of theseeffects we've known about for a
long time but I think peoplefind them they've people find it
easy to dismiss them because wedon't emphasize them enough.
And I think an example I oftenuse which is really nice is a

(32:44):
study we published in I thinkjust in 2016 so it's less than
10 years ago.
So this was a study in BurkinaFaso.
So this is a dryland country inWest Africa in West Africa.
And a landscape where most ofthe people or at least most of
the women are spending much oftheir lives walking around to
carry water from wells reallydeep wells very difficult manual

(33:06):
labor just to get the water youneed.
And in this landscape peopleassume more trees means less
water and it's a very denudedlandscape already there's a lot
of hoofed animals and goats andstuff walking around.
But what we were able to showwith the measurements I didn't
do the measurements but reallypainstaking work for several
colleagues for several years andshowing that actually having the

(33:28):
right amount of trees in theselandscapes and we're not talking
about dense tree cover herewe're talking about scattered
tree cover as a drier landenvironment could improve the
infiltration several fold.
So the amount of infiltration ofwater the capture of water in
that soil profile went up byseveral hundred percent and as I
say to people we're not talkingabout 10% 20% we're talking

(33:49):
several hundred percent maybe500% was the estimate we had
maybe 600%.
But this isn't a small effectthis was a huge effect and it's
something I think people haveseen.
So it's bizarre we even hadtrouble publishing it because
reviewers were skeptical oh butwe all know that trees cost
water is yeah it's frustratingsometimes that people get stuck
in a certain mindset.

(34:09):
And this is I think it's still acommon mindset because okay we
published this 10 years ago butI think a lot of people would
like to say oh yeah maybe thatone exceptional place that was
what they found but it's stillnot true generally and it's no
we think this is probably truein many places.
See native tree cover not theplantation type exactly
scattered tree cover in thiscase but it improves the

(34:30):
infiltration it's also true thatother measures can also improve
infiltration other vegetation orcreating kind of buns and
ditches and stuff there areearth working methods.
But trees have other benefitsthat you want they have fuel
they provide fodder shade andfruit there's lots of reasons we
would want trees so why not usetrees to do this?

SPEAKER_01 (34:49):
Yeah the point being this positive effect was even
disputed at that point Wow yeahwhich just wonders like how long
it will take for more and morepeople to to get on board with
that the role in landscapes it'snot just reforestation and
regeneration it's actuallyrestoring these kinds you can

(35:10):
bring back the rains like youcan influence you can and it
might take a decade but a decadeis nothing if you plan awens for
a living or like this is thislike most farmers are used to to
think multi-generational in manyplaces and it's just bug
mind-boggling that it doesn'thasn't landed yet to a certain
extent that people are stilllike oh that will be interesting
and no that's actually like it'spublished there's a lot of

(35:33):
research we better get on withit and we'll better figure out
ways to plan strategically atscale or to reserve preserve at
scale and what would you do ifyou would be at the other side
of the table if you had asignificant investment portfolio
of course we're not givinginvestment advice I'm not
looking for exact euros ordollars amount but I'm
interested where people wouldprioritize people deep in the

(35:53):
space like yourself if you hadin this case we like to say a
billion euros to put to work sothese are this should come back
at some point but can could beextremely long term 50 100 seven
generations that doesn't matterbut it's meant as an investment
where would you start what wouldyou focus on?

SPEAKER_00 (36:10):
The opportunity I see is quite a real one I think
in many parts of the world butprobably the most obvious place
would be somewhere like drylandAfrica where I think the natural
vegetation was much more treecover.
The communities of peoplethemselves are aware that the
trees can be beneficial and thengoing into work in these
landscapes to bring backextensive large scale tree

(36:33):
cover.
And then we would have to thinkstrategically how to do it.
But to show that this can work Ithink doing it somewhere where
there is we don't have to sellit too hard.
I think there would be a generalagreement of the value of trying
to do this.
And I think many of the Africancountries you are seeing that
they're probably more aware thanthe Western countries the
significance of water thesignificance of trees to local

(36:55):
livelihoods.
I don't necessarily think thatneeds to be a hard sell.
But then actually trying tothink how we do this
realistically what kind ofmanagement interventions.
I'm not so keen on planting whenwe can avoid it.
So thinking about naturalregeneration I'm much more on
the conservation side naturalvegetation is what is best
adapted to most of thesesystems.
It has evolved in these areasit's a product of these

(37:18):
landscapes there's many sort ofspecific ecological phenomena
which you can't necessarily justexpect one tree taken from one
place to another place toprovide those services and
values.
Yeah working somewhere like WestAfrica I mean there's maybe
easier places in terms ofadministration maybe places like
Western Australia where a hugeranch from a couple of
landowners were maybe already onthose kinds of scales we're

(37:41):
talking about but we would wantto re-vegetate bring back forest
tree cover to several hundredsquare kilometers to show that
we get a rainfall benefit withnatural vegetation maybe
thinking about how theselandscapes can still make a

(38:43):
profitable living for the peoplewho live there.
It's easy enough in theselandscapes which are reasonably
sparsely populated maybe tothink about how we might do
that.
But there's a number of thesevery dry places that shouldn't
be so dry and I think that's anopportunity.

SPEAKER_01 (38:58):
And so how how would you go about and let's say West
Africa would you like how wouldyou because a billion is a lot
but it's nothing at the sametime and like how would you
strategically pick the places toalmost like acupuncture points
what are the steps like wherebecause you have to prioritize
something.

SPEAKER_00 (39:23):
I mean there's all political parts to this as well
you have to find the agreementbut let's assume that's the easy
part.
The technical part is I thinkthinking in terms of this large
connected landscapes we reallywant to we really want to see
vegetation as being a little bitlike a vast conveyor belt
bringing moisture in land.
So you really have to think onthese large scales from the

(39:43):
coast right into the interiorthere's this great green wall
project in Africa at the momentwhich is this little sliver of
green and of course it'sexpanded a bit in some places
but rather than just having awall we would want to have a
huge band coming right the wayin from the coast with as much
tree cover as possible as muchnatural vegetation as possible
probably trying to include goodblocks of existing natural

(40:06):
vegetation within that as seedsto refeed species back into
these landscapes because I I dowant to underline that I think
the native vegetation is what weneed to be restoring.
We haven't really explained whybut things like most vegetation
in these dry land tropicsthere's a certain time in the
year they green up and they usemoisture and then there are
other times of the year theydrop their leaves for example.

(40:27):
And to actually have the righttiming where that's the correct
behavior is one thing for thatplant but that greening up also
has an effect on the climatelocally.
So we believe that greening upsay in advance of the rains is
actually a key trigger increating the rains or the
monsoons or whatever with thesethese seasons.

SPEAKER_01 (40:45):
Oh let's double click on that.
So you're saying I know you'resaying this because I've heard
you say it before but theseplants they green they use the
last bit of moisture they havewaiting for the monsoon to
actually to green before themonsoon even arrives before we
even feel the rain before we seeit and that actually brings in
the monsoon.
It's not just oh I'm greening upnow to be ready no I'm actually
greening to be ready and I knowI'm going to be ready because

(41:07):
I'm partly triggering or as aplant I'm thinking as a plant or
tree but I'm partly bringingthis in.
So there's that activerelationship between plants and
trees and the monsoon and notjust I'm passively waiting for
some drops please.

SPEAKER_00 (41:18):
Yeah no I think that's right.
The word passively often comesup because climate modelers tend
to treat vegetation as if it'ssome passive little component in
their model but we won't say novegetation is an active player
in creating the climate we haveand the rain we just lost the
last few climate modelers thatwere listened.

SPEAKER_01 (41:35):
No I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 (41:35):
No but I think people are aware of this
complexity.
So the greening up is somethingthat plants will do and in many
parts of the dry land tropicsyou get this kind of
synchronized greening up inadvance of rains.
And of course it's also terribleif the rains don't come at that
point.
So this is a kind of adysfunction thing.
But in terms of the opportunitywe need we need to create

(41:56):
vegetation again which greens upat the right moment and doesn't
emit water away at a momentwhere it can't trigger the
monsoon.
So that's one another thing wehaven't talked about yet today
is when moisture condenses inthe atmosphere it's actually
quite difficult to get pure airpure moisture in the air to to
condense and what actuallymostly happens in in in the

(42:18):
weather system is there are tinyparticles.
There are just tiny particles inthe air which help create these
condensation nuclei they call ittechnically but these particles
a lot of them are actuallyemitted from vegetation and it's
a very specifically it'sspecifically trees but also
other organisms as well sofungus and stuff yeah there's
all kinds and it's a kind ofit's it's a it's a hugely

(42:40):
complicated subject we'retalking thousands of different
compounds thousands of differentkinds of particles they all have
their own origins their lifecycles and what they do and what
they do when they're in theatmosphere so this is
complicated.
But if you look another argumentfor a native metagens yeah
exactly so the point is thevegetation produces what we call
these particles or the compoundsthat help these particles make

(43:02):
water condense and this also hasa big impact on rainfall.
And this is something we'rebeginning to understand better
at least that it happens andmaybe it wasn't so well
understood in the past but it'ssuch a complex thing we're not
going to understand it fully inthe next decade or so I think
it's just too complicated.

SPEAKER_01 (43:18):
But uh but importantly that's not an
argument to not act now becausewe know it works.
We just don't know how and howmuch but let's not postpone this
further because let's just do abit more research.
Let's just do a bit more no thisis not an argument for no
action.

SPEAKER_00 (43:32):
No it's an argument also for not replacing what we
know works which is the nativevegetation with something
different which produces a verydifferent compound.
So like palm oil is grown inthese huge oil palm plantations
and this just happens to besomething I've studied and oil
palm plantations are a majorsource of one of these compounds
called isoprene which is verymuch involved in this rainfall
nucleation process.

(43:53):
It also makes a lot of smog inAsian countries that are nearby
so it's very much a compoundthat influences the atmospheric
chemistry and what happens interms of water condensation.
So we know these things have aninfluence we know they have an
impact but we can't just swapout this group of trees for
another group of trees withoutknowing about this stuff.
So it's actually probably anargument for being cautious and

(44:15):
seeing as we know nature works,replace nature at your peril I
would say because it'scomplicated.

SPEAKER_01 (44:21):
And is that an argument for let's say a lot of
these intensive tree crops existin many places are expanding as
well Portugal's an exampleSpain, Italy to a certain extent
with olives and other places aswell to integrate as much
biodiversity and as much otherspecies as possible because it's
a very profitable model with allthe issues there are in terms of

(44:42):
pesticide or herbicide use andof course labor abuses and that
but I don't think we're going tostop a superintensive train
anytime soon.
But there are and we've had along episode with Dimitri Sisos
on that like how far can we pushit and can we have not the same
but a similar effect if it's notjust a monoculture of olives or
a monoculture of almonds or amonoculture of any like how far

(45:03):
can we still have a productivelandscape in terms of profit
because we need to or the landsto owners need to but also push
it in terms of different speciesand thus creating a similar
effect of course not the same asa forest but a similar effect is
that because then probably theowners are interested as well
because they need the water theyneed the rain they need the pest
production they need thebiodiversity for all of those
functions like the functionsthat you wrote the book about is

(45:25):
there in the agroforestry spacelet's say a middle ground there
I think there's lots ofquestions there which still
haven't got concrete answers butthe cautious side and as I say I
come from a conservationbackground I'm always going to
say I think nature knows how todo this best.

SPEAKER_00 (45:40):
So we need to really follow nature as far as
possible.
There's all kinds of serviceswhich maybe people don't
necessarily think that carefullyabout which we only value once
they're gone.
And maybe the rainfall is one ofthese but I it's also things
like pollination we see inlandscapes again in Borneo where
I've looked at this that theactual pollinators that many
crop species or food speciesdepend on are much depleted in

(46:03):
these oil palm landscapes andthey're much higher in forests.
So you actually want to thinkabout many of these values that
are created in the landscape byhaving native vegetation.

SPEAKER_01 (46:14):
And do you have you seen ways of integrating that
into still a highly productivecommercially I'm not saying that
a forest isn't productive but ahighly productive let's say
agroforestry system to integrateto intervene interwoven other
species to push or even themulti-species of course we have

(47:04):
the centropic side which is verydifferent than the monoculture
have you looked at any of those?

SPEAKER_00 (47:09):
I'm not so much an expert on the agroforestry but I
would say that there are goodmodels in various parts of the
world so like in the island ofJava these mixed home gardens
they call them are very muchlike multi-story forests and I
think if you look at satelliteimages it's really hard to tell
what's a real forest area andit's these damar agroforests so
these are agroforests that havebeen created for growing resin,

(47:30):
damar resin.
So it's very hard to actuallytell if you're not an expert
that these aren't naturalforests.
So there's a lot of these veryforest like anthropogenic
landscapes and it's also inother parts of the world like
around Kilimanjaro the Chigapeople also have a very sort of
rich agroforestry systemmulti-story agroforestry.
So I guess many indigenousgroups many kind of traditional

(47:51):
agricultural systems were awarealso of the value of
diversification because youdidn't have these mass markets.
This is something modern sopeople learned to do what they
needed sustainably a community.

SPEAKER_01 (48:03):
Yeah and and these systems were reasonably benign
in in many cases and do you seeinterest from larger agriculture
companies you could argue lotsof the soy in Brazil is
completely dependent on certainparts of the Amazon or the whole
Amazon for the rainfall andirrigation could argue a lot of
I don't know the exact streamsbut let's say from the Congo

(48:24):
basin probably feeds most ofagriculture around it the same
probably in Indonesia the samein many places even the same we
could argue in Europe to acertain extent like we're all in
the same boat.
Are they starting to wake up?
Are they reaching out at all topeople like you that have been
pushing for this for a long timelike how do we use this
knowledge or how do we applythis in our super complex, super

(48:47):
commodified supply chainsunfortunately?

SPEAKER_00 (48:50):
I think there are positive trends but whether
they're quick enough this is thechallenge right it yeah you can
see it as positive you can alsosee it as frustratingly slow.
I am aware of certaininitiatives where some companies
are interested in these things.
I know people also working inbanks who are starting to look
at these as risks associatedwith the large scale
agricultural kind ofinvestments.

(49:11):
What is the chance of the severedrought or tipping points in the
Amazon for example?
Exactly what you're asking.
So I think people are startingto look at these things.
So at the moment I have one PhDwho is looking at the effect of
recycling of rainfall in theAmazon basin and particularly
from the perspectives of farmsecurity I think and a lot of
the companies that she's inshe's Brazilian the companies

(49:34):
she's been interacting with Ithink they're actually quite
excited and interested to hearabout this once they're
convinced that this is really aproblem.
Or potentially a problem.

SPEAKER_01 (49:45):
And and a potential way of at least acting there's a
lot of things yeah the climateis changing carbon and we have
to decarbon but this is actuallyyou could influence part of your
rainfall or part of your droughtcycles or part of your and it's
not completely out of yourcontrol because it's somewhere
in the Netherlands or somewherein Germany actually it's in the
same continent at least orsubcontinent.
So I I think that's what makeswater interesting as well

(50:08):
there's a very real concrete wayof acting as soon as you let
let's say the light bulb goesoff there's a very way of
getting involved for almostanybody somewhere in the food
and egg space you areinteracting with water if you
like it or not.
And so you can get active butI'm still surprised many that
it's not a risk factor.
I just saw a report coming outof FAIR which is a big

(50:28):
institutional investor grouptalking about the risk of water
and I'll put it in the linkbelow but not like water
scarcity and of course thereneeds to be more regulation and
there's not a word about or atleast in the press release
there's not a word about any ofthese topics there's there is a
real risk of tipping points andthere's a real opportunity of
these things as well not a word.
It's great that they look atthat and they say of course

(50:49):
dairy is very water intensiveand lamb farming as well et
cetera etc but none of therecycling or let alone
triggering rain is part of thatlanguage I'll reach out to them
let's see what they say but weneed groups like that that are
pressuring large because theyinvest in large companies or
they represent investors inlarge food companies like we
need to yeah report on waterrisks and water opportunities

(51:10):
but yeah that's still that feelsthat still feels a bit a bit far
away at this moment nodefinitely I think there's still
we talked about it brieflyearlier that there's just too
much people thinking in silos ifI'm happy in my topic the other
topics don't matter but ofcourse a topic like water it
matters for everything and itmatters for everything in a big
way it's not a detail it'sfundamental.

(51:32):
Yeah which also gives a greatopportunity because compared to
biodiversity or not not nothingagainst obviously which
basically is nature itself ifyou and us and we're mostly
non-human cells but and carbonand soil carbon or soil and all
of these topics are areinteresting for the geeks like
all of us and not necessarilythe general public but water

(51:53):
touches anybody and mostly us aswell and and so I'm betting that
it will be a much morepotentially cross-border cross
spectrum political spectrumacross many like this is a topic
we can probably find some kindof agreements on or we're gonna
fight wars about which wealready do in terms of
accessibility you discussed itas well with Alpha Low and some

(52:14):
of these big hydro dams or bigriver systems why are they not
discussing how do we grow morewater instead of arguing about
the limiting source that slowlydries up and it's going to be an
endless fight in scarcityinstead of the abundance but
that's flip I haven't seen yetmany places but I can see it it
makes so much sense to have thatconversation to really push the

(52:34):
waters to make it a centralpiece and it's probably one of
the cross border ones we canagree on.
Probably not on carbonagreements and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 (52:42):
Yeah I think that's challenging but I was going to
say I think if you're a farmerin China and of course there are
a lot of farmers in China andyou have to think where is your
rainfall coming from it's reallycoming from to the west there of
Asia and even in Europe.
You really have to think aboutthese large scale processes much
more.
And it's the same in parts ofWestern Africa in parts of South

(53:05):
America a lot of their rainfallis coming from elsewhere and I
think we're only just beginningto really think about the these
connections and what they imply.
Okay we've known about them formaybe 20 years and people
started to quantify them fairlywell maybe a few years ago but
the policymakers haven't caughtup with this yet we really have

(53:26):
to be talking much more abouthow our water is coming from
elsewhere.
And I would always say with thebiotic pump it's still it's the
forests that are upwind of youbut also the forests that are
downwind of you.
The forests that are upwind arebringing the water but the
forests downwind are drawingthat wind to you.
So particularly if you're livingin a landscape with very little

(53:46):
forest you may be in trouble.
Or if you're surrounded bydeclining forests you may be in
trouble.

SPEAKER_01 (53:52):
So there's a lot of people who will be affected by
these changes in landscape inthe future and I think
particularly places like Chinathere's there are so many people
and they're very vulnerable tothis yeah so it it's not even
impossible to imagine because inmany ways they're quite forward
thinking or long term thinkingthat they will start funding

(54:12):
regenerative agriculture foodagroforestry restoration to the
west all the way to where therain comes from and that's
probably a good thing and itwould be not absurd at all just
like they're doing the silkroutes and trade routes like you
need the rainfall and you needthe rainfall to be starting
somewhere seated somewhere andget all the way to you and then
triggered otherwise yeah whybother?

SPEAKER_00 (54:33):
Yeah no people will have to start thinking really
big and thinking reallycooperative.
It's a challenge but let's bothof those things are a challenge
we have to be optimistic.
I think most people you talk toone to one they find this common
sense so yeah I think therethere is opportunity here
because it there's nobodythere's nobody against this.

(54:54):
It makes a lot of sense I thinkthat we all benefit from having
a wetter more productive landright and this is something that
I do think is achievable.

SPEAKER_01 (55:01):
We just have to share this vision and there's
some fascinating stories inIndia on the subcontinent which
of course much more than acountry of bringing back rivers
and really I think the guy whobrought back rivers I don't know
the legend but I think thecurrent count is nine if we look
at water stories of Zekwise wesee updates there and it's
literally a whole landscape thatcame back to life because of

(55:23):
water harvesting techniquesbecause of agriculture changes
because of natural restorationand it's not everybody that
always says ah this is this alsopossible at scale I'm like I
don't think you look far enougheast in terms of possibilities
but of course because it's inIndia we don't really talk about
it in the West necessarily wedon't study it too much and but
I think there are examples ofLis plateaus another one in

(55:44):
China and some others but weneed more we cannot just have
always those two because that'sjust not convincing enough and
as a final question we alwayslike to ask which usually lead
to other questions but if youhad a magic wand and you could
change one thing over timeovernight sorry in in one shot
what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 (56:01):
I would make the climate community more open to
these landscape effects becauseI think for the policy agendas
I'm trying to persuade they havebecome the roadblock.
They yeah would in a sense it'ssimple because it's just an
opinion that we need to changebut we just need people to wake
up to this importance of thesetopics.
I think a lot of people areawake but there's also yeah this

(56:23):
pushback all the time I feellike I've been taking 20 years
basically just pushing againstthe people who disagree and why
are they disagreeing?

SPEAKER_01 (56:30):
It's common sense right yeah this unwillingness to
hear from some people so I thinkthere is some people that have
something to lose because ifyou've built your whole career
on CO2 equivalent CO2 e carboncarbonate then and we're saying
yeah actually not nobody'sdenying any of that but there
are other emissions and thereare other pieces of land use and

(56:51):
and vegetation that have a largeeffect.
How large?
Let's see but it's notinsignificant and it's the other
leg of the climate stool as Ithink Dr Mion loved to say when
he was still around like it's abig piece that we're ignoring
but yeah people have builtcareers on that and so it's
gonna be difficult maybehopefully not with one funeral
at a time like Anastasia sayslike slightly earlier would be

(57:13):
nice because we don't have timeto to wait for that.

SPEAKER_00 (57:15):
No exactly I think I I find it sometimes slightly
frustrating that we're talkingabout saving the earth and in
fact all I'm doing is yetrevising yet another scientific
article to persuade another tinygroup of researchers that this
is worth thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 (57:28):
It's like we should be really talking about this at
a much bigger scale because theopportunities and the
significance I do think is itit's unparalleled really and I
think it's a perfect moment towrap up I want to thank you so
much, Douglas for the work youdo, the work you have done
because you've pushed thisargument, this conversation not
this one specifically but you'vepushed this really far over the

(57:50):
last years you've really been abridge let's say between a few
scientists in in in Russia andSiberia a few months a year and
other places to out of thephysic world into the forestry
world into the climate scienceand definitely wouldn't have
been as far as it is now withoutyou and thank you for coming on
here to to talk about it andthank you for an optimistic

(58:12):
piece on on forest and thepotential and of course the
risks and challenges and all ofthat.
Okay thanks very much for theinvitation I enjoyed talking to
you thank you so much forlistening all the way to the end
I'm really happy to have youaudience on the show and
wondering what do we do withthis why is this important why

(58:33):
is this conversation sofundamental I think it's it's
such an important ease tounderstand why it's so difficult
for the scientific community toexcept for really good reasons
because of course there's a lotof untrue stuff out there a lot
of new hypothesis that we provedto be wrong.
In this case with the bio thepotential is so enormous and the

(58:53):
research on the physics side isvery compelling that it deserves
more attention and it deservesit it could be one of those
crucial ones we look back 20years from now.
And I find it just veryinteresting to look at how it
receives so much pushback andwhat can we do about it?
Like what is this is not a showabout talking like oh this is an
interesting story we get a lotof pushback and that's it.

(59:14):
It is a show about how do we dostuff and that's an invitation
to you listener hopefullyentrepreneurial in a way and
excited about what you're cyclesand hopefully building things so
if you are I think we made avery strong case in this episode
about the need for entrepreneursand entrepreneurial people to
start building things andshowing things on top of this
research and the data at a scalethat starts to be recognized by

(59:37):
policymakers, by investors, byinsurance companies by the
general public we really need tothink big and we are all part of
this one blue planet which ismostly blue and mostly what
turkey and if if China realizesmost of it really comes all the
way from Europe if Europerealizes a lot of it comes from
North Africa realizes it etc etcetc and we get a lot of we are

(01:00:00):
in the same way together so ifyou're working on something
please let us know and if youknow any stories of people doing
things please let us know andkeep banging the drama and what
is like illustration with abetter term because this is one
of the defining ones maybe oneof the defining stories of our
area thank you thank you forlistening all the way to the end

(01:00:22):
for show notes and links to thisguy check out our website
investinginregenerativeagriculture dot com slash if you
like this episode why not shareit with your friend and get in
touch with us on social mediaour website or via Spotify and
tell us what you like the mostand give us a rating on either
podcast or Spotify or yourpodcast player.
That really really helps usthanks again and see you next

(01:00:43):
time

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387 Douglas Sheil - Why fixing water fixes carbon

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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;}387 Douglas Sheil - Why fixing water fixes carbon