Connecting Ecology & Economy with NETWORK Type AJ Schlenger

What is your Earth Archetype?  Take the Quiz!
https://quiz.eartharchetypes.com/

The root word “eco” is Greek for home.  So ecology is really the study of home, and economics is the management of home.  For Network Type AJ Schlenger, these two aspects came together as he studied ocean systems.  

Why?  Because the current greatest impact on natural systems is how humans assign value – which is mostly through money.  So AJ now focuses on supporting startups to create value with nature-based solutions and navigating out of date regulations that can get in the way.  

Yet, the conversation quickly reveals that underneath the power of the dollar lies something even more valuable:  relationships.  Listen in for how AJ advocates for a truly Networked style of communication.  

Adam Schlenger (PhD) has a multidisciplinary background in oceanography, systems science, and natural resource management, aimed at understanding the complex interactions between human and natural systems to tackle global environmental issues and facilitate fast scaling solutions. His work currently focuses on taking scientific innovation and emerging technology out of the lab and into direct applications that positively impact both people and the natural world to create equitable and sustainable approaches to solving major challenges like climate change.

Connect with AJ on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-schlenger-phd-8a80584a/

****
Check out how the Earth Archetypes came to be in the first episode – “5 Earth Archetypes Explained: Origin Story”

And if you liked this episode, listen to the conversation with Network Type Freddie Davis III.  

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
But that person may not see things from the others perspective.

(00:04):
They might not see what these other groups are doing or the challenges that are in play.
And so one of the biggest ways I think to overcome that challenge is to bring these different
groups together and have them talk and have them share information, have them meet and build
relationships. And the nonprofit that I currently work for or do project for that's working on

(00:26):
the biotechnology solutions, they host these in-person meetings where they invite entrepreneurs
and investors and scientists and policymakers and communicators and artists and all these people
across these different disciplines to essentially come together and figure out different problems.
And whether or not they come out with the solution, they're still building the relationships that

(00:50):
allow those barriers to be broken down. And so I think that social element is very
key and because everybody really wants the same thing kind of at the end of the day.
They do want to help, but sometimes they may work in a silo or they may just not be aware of
other sort of factors that people have to contend with.
Welcome to the EarthMates podcast. Together we explore how to find your path from climate

(01:17):
anxiety to community action by asking who are you because just like any relationship that matters.
So get ready to be raw and real but also playful and silly with me, Chief Relationship Officer
Amber Peoples as we discover what's possible through the lens of the five Earth archetypes.

(01:44):
Curiosity and subscription buttons highly encouraged.
Welcome, friends to the podcast today. Oftentimes at this point in the podcast, we tune into an
element of nature. And so today, what I would like to share is that it is springtime here as we're

(02:06):
recording this and I wish there's an element of podcasts that could include smells.
Because right here I have this base of daffodils that come from a friend's farm and so they come
up right from the ground and I was recently there swinging in a hammock and getting to watch these
pop right out of the ground and and because of that they have the most vibrant smell to them.

(02:31):
And so I wish I could share that with with all of you today beyond more than just words, but
because words are what we have, I'm going to ask you to tune into what's around you right now.
Like maybe it's not springtime, maybe you're in the southern hemisphere and you're actually headed
towards winter or it is now June by the time you get around to hearing this and it's full blown,

(02:54):
full on towards the solstice. So whatever it is that's true for you in this moment with the
the nature, the land, the air, the temperature that is around you. I'm going to ask you to tune in to
that while I silently count to five and give that opportunity.

(03:26):
Thank you. Now I'm delighted to introduce you to network earth archetype AJ Schlinger.
We recently met through LinkedIn as I was learning about the Nexus group where he co-directs
the impact accelerator. As a founder himself, Adam focuses on taking scientific innovation and

(03:47):
emerging technology out of the lab and into direct applications that positively impact both people
and the natural world. What I found so interesting about AJ and our conversation was how he
combined two major roles that make up the network type, ecology and economy. That Greek root word

(04:10):
eco stands for home and the systems that support it. So with his PhD on the wall and the equivalent
of an MBA from real world experience, I'm excited to share our next conversation here on the
podcast. So welcome AJ. I'm curious to hear what your version of this story is.
Thank you. I really appreciate being here. I think you really captured things pretty well.

(04:38):
I kind of started off just mainly only focusing on wildlife conservation, biology and that
side of things. And as I got sort of further along my career, I realized it kind of wasn't enough
to just look at a single species, we're a single environment, we really have to tie in what's going
on with the climate, what's going on with the chemistry and what's going on with the species and

(05:00):
really taking a holistic kind of ecosystem approach. And then even further past that, I kind of
realized later on that a lot of the problems that we try to solve for in the natural sciences are
natural problems at all. They're very much human issues. And so in order to really find the
solutions to those, you have to combine the natural side of thing with the human component of that

(05:24):
and really tie those two systems together, understand their interactions and use that understanding
to solve problems. And that's kind of, yeah, we're on that in my career.
Yeah, so I found that really interesting that for you, it sounded like there was either an aha moment
or a continued distinction between what you call natural and what you call human. And I'm curious

(05:48):
what that is for you because I know that there's some folks like when I talk with folks that are,
let's say, in the fair housing realm, they'll part of their thing they'll often say is well,
humans are just as part of nature. So as we're dealing with things like climate, we got to look at
like people that have poor housing conditions and like we get fested with mold or whatever. So I'm

(06:10):
curious for you where that distinction is or where that connection is between natural and human.
Yeah, and so we're definitely 100% part of the system as well with the way in which we interact with it
is very different. Or in the wild, you know, one species may eat another species or something like that.
But for human systems, it's more reconnected a little bit more through economics and things like that.

(06:34):
And so the cost of goods or the cost of services, that's kind of how we interact and that's also a
very large way in which we interact with natural systems, whether it's kind of extracting resources
or sort of value to the health of an ecosystem or something like that. Usually that connection or
the way that we interact with those natural systems can be described through economics. And

(06:59):
there's also cultural value. There's aesthetics and things like that. That's a little bit harder to
create sort of a tangible value around, but it's not less important. And part of my work is really
kind of combining those different types of value into understanding where our places in these
different systems and how to manage them. Yeah, that's super interesting. So we know like within a

(07:23):
ecological cycle, everything has value, like the mushrooms that help the tree roots and the
the decomposing thing that feeds the vulture or whatever. So we know there's value, but within the human
systems, we have perhaps just such a sophisticated form of calculating value perhaps.

(07:44):
Is that maybe where you see some differences? Yeah. And also just, it's a way in which people kind of
understand it and communicate it. For example, come from the management world. And so let's say there's
a decision maker, a policy maker, you know, mayor or something. And he's got to make a decision on
his desk. He only has a certain amount of money. And one decision leads to maybe like a 50% increase in

(08:05):
biodiversity. And on the other side, it's a dollar value that goes to, you know, his constituents or
something like that. It's really difficult to understand the value of that 50% increase in biodiversity
versus, you know, being able to look at a budget sheet and cross things down. So having the ability
to communicate what that is to different people is really important. And economics kind of begins

(08:28):
to do that, but it's not the whole complete picture. It's just enough to begin to make moves and
sort of solve problems. Yeah. So that ability to, there's an element of quantifying that sounds like
is is helpful in that in the realm that, you know, in the, perhaps more in the wild in wild life,

(08:49):
which is what you studied, the sense of quantifying is more like, did I, did I survive another year?
Did I, did I finally feed in a time frame that I need? Did I breed in the time frame I need? And
they're more instinctual. And with, with the human element, it's more quantifiable, I guess.

(09:10):
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, in the wild, you can go out there and measure how many of
those certain species is there, or, you know, how big their habitat or something like that is. But,
yeah, the way in which humans interact with the world is very different. And, yeah, one of the
biggest challenges in solving those conservation issues is figuring out how to mesh those, those senses

(09:30):
value. Yeah. And so I'm curious then with, with that sense of meshing those, those types of values,
I was just recently at an event where the, the, the Western law center, Western environmental law
center, they, they just brought on a deputy director about a year and a half ago that is an ecologist.

(09:54):
She does have some policy work behind her and kind of looking at this wildlife human interaction
from the similar lens that you're talking about, but perhaps from more of a policy realm. And as they're
looking at theories of change and how they're moving forward with their ways of quantifying
relationships in that way, they've, they've developed this kind of theory of change that focuses on

(10:19):
kinship and, and this exchange process. And I'm curious within this more economic realm that,
that you focus on, have you found ways that are ways to verbalize this, this theory of change
that is helping people start to value things like biodiversity within, within a more numbers

(10:39):
monetary system? Yeah. And, and I love that idea kinship. And I think that just represents an
interaction that people have between each other and you can describe our interactions with the
environment in a very similar way. But there's already a lot of people beginning to do work on this
because they're seeing how important it is to really sort of making large system scale shifts. And so

(11:01):
the US government just released a report on nature-based accounting and things like that. And so,
they're describing a number of different ways to go about this and how do you measure certain things?
I also do a little bit of work with the EPA on something that they call the ecosystem service model
library. And so they have this big repository of all these different ecosystem models that measure

(11:23):
these different types of services. And then people can go ahead and sort of use that for their
own use or management projects or conservation or whatnot. And so people are telling this from all
different sides. There's things like carbon markets that are coming up. There's biodiversity
credits that people are beginning to discuss. And so it's really finding ways to identify,
you know, what are our interactions with the environment? How do you measure that? And then how do

(11:46):
you communicate that value in a way that other people can understand? Usually that just tends to be
a dollar value. But again, that only captures so much of it. It's just the way that people understand
it. And I think it does go back to measuring those interactions. And yeah, kinship is a way to describe
that. Nice. So then with this, with this ecology background, one of the things I remember in our

(12:10):
last conversation that was really fascinating to me was as you were, as you were studying the,
what was that? You were studying the ocean, but was there a specific animal or specific system
you were focused on? I forget. So I was studying entire ecosystems and how they work and understanding
the energetics and then how do you take that kind of holistic understanding and use that to get better

(12:34):
management problems of natural resource management? Okay. So then it's how to understand that system
to be able to manage it better because if we know variables, we know different places of intervention
points. That's what it sounds like. Okay. And then one of the things that I thought was really
interesting was as you were thinking about applying it to things outside of the ocean, whether that

(12:57):
was, I think the terms you use were ant colony or like stock market is you were looking at levels of
scale. And I think that's really an interesting aspect of this, of this network type is being able to
see these nodules and their connections and scale can mean a couple different things like maybe it's

(13:18):
more connection points, maybe it's larger nodules, maybe it's more nodules, but I'm curious what
scale means to you? Yeah. So that that's literally what I studied back in the day is taking that
systems science approach to how an ecosystem works and understanding what does that network look like
and how much complexity equals ecosystem health and what is a ecosystem that's impacted by climate

(13:43):
change over fishing? What does that look like in terms of its network structure? And the cool part
about this is that there's very universal rules that you can look at across different systems. And
so whether you are looking at an ant colony, whether you're looking at the stock market or Facebook
or social network or even just how the universe works, there's a lot of very general rules that you

(14:04):
can apply from one to the other. And it does change depending on the scale. And so from my background,
you know, you can start at the very small scale, which is maybe two different animals interacting
with each other. And then you bump that up and it's two different populations interacting with each
other. And then you bump that up even further and you have sort of an entire ecosystem and how
they're all interacting. And there's different processes that play out at each of those different

(14:29):
scales. And so if you want to know how best to manage an ecosystem, you got to be able to plug into
those different processes and understand how they work. And I think that same problem solving mentality
can be applied to economics or can be applied to computer science, all these different things. And so,

(14:50):
yeah, I think that network approach is very broadly applicable and super useful. And it's just
pretty much just how the world works. And so I'm curious then, because that that I do find that,
you know, for you, it really it does make sense in your brain to go that the economics route. And for
me, I just find that that route element so so interesting with the eco of ecology, the eco of economics

(15:16):
and the sense that the word means home. We're either just studying our home or we're managing our home.
And I'm curious for you, does does that resonate for you? 100% yeah, we're studying our home and
we're studying how we interact with our home and how everything else that lives in our home,
it interacts with each other. And that's, you know, the core of it. And yeah, I never realized that both

(15:38):
of those sort of terms meant home, but it makes complete sense and definitely resonates.
Cool. So then you focus on a variety of scale and you do work on a wide range of projects from
the EPA to, you know, larger, more established organizations. But then it seems like a passion of yours
is the startup community. Yeah, absolutely. That you are a founder, you work with accelerators,

(16:03):
which are all about helping startups get going. And so I'm curious what role in this realm of studying
our home, managing our home, what do you think is the role of a startup? So my personal interest in
that is I just kind of have that entrepreneurial sort of mindset. I love building something from
from nothing. And of course, you don't get much of a chance of that in the sciences or things like that,

(16:26):
but it's just a very useful way of approaching things from a first principles kind of mentality.
And in terms of startup and just that whole world investing in things like that, you know, we've reached
a new sort of era where a lot of people are beginning to invest in nature-based solutions. And a lot
of people are beginning to kind of see the current state of things in the world and are caring much more

(16:49):
and are willing to put more resources into it. And that's creating a wide variety of new business
opportunities and new ways to not only make money, but also do something good for the world at the
same time. And personally, I don't think that you can really force change by tugging on people's
heartstrings all the time. And sometimes you really have to tie a personal incentive or financial

(17:14):
incentive to a nature-positive solution so that people will get behind it and look towards it. And so
creating these new businesses, creating these new markets and these new sectors is a great way to
really quickly scale a lot of the solutions that are needed for climate or ocean health or all above.
And yeah, startups play a very important role in that. And that they're sort of at the front lines,

(17:35):
creating new ideas and moving new innovations out of the lab and into the real world. And it's very
exciting place to kind of be part of and help out. Yeah, that's super fascinating. We've known
climate is an issue now for good 50 years, especially from the science we've known it. But culturally,

(17:57):
we've struggled with it. And so why do you think that we're at this phase where we are almost
reliant on startups at this point to give us nature-based solutions?
That is a very good question. And I think there are much larger ships, for example, a lot of government

(18:18):
programs are coming out with new sort of research focuses and bringing new money into the different
areas where it's needed. But a lot of those programs like NOAA or EPA or DOE, they're kind of big ships
in the very slow-to-turn. And there's also a lot of regulatory policies in place that were made for
a much older time for different reasons and it's slow to adapt to things. And because of that,

(18:44):
it limits very large-scale money and funding. The other big traditional investors or things like
banks are really, really large companies and they've been slower to get on board. And part of that
tends to be just where the solutions and the innovations are themselves. In order to get
out of the lab and begin to get into field trials and more commercial applications,

(19:07):
you need other types of investment, whether it's philanthropy or grants or things like that.
V-seeing money can help a little bit, but it's just very targeted and can't push an entire field forward.
So it's been slow for the bigger players to move into it, not 100% sure why.

(19:27):
But it could just be the lack of potential for making a lot of money. The markets for a lot of
these things are relatively small, but the creation of carbon markets is changing that and that's
moving a lot of big players into the space. And hopefully things like biodiversity credits
still kind of progress and are developed. I think there's a lot of challenges there,
but those type of financial mechanisms will allow the bigger players to step in and kind of

(19:53):
move the entire field forward. Yeah, so I think I think that's an interesting aspect for people who
don't maybe necessarily think with an economic mindset is with the startups, you have the opportunity
to perhaps niche into something and perhaps grow the market through that process of showing success,

(20:16):
both with the actual function of the product, whether it's carbon removal or 10-bisil in other
helpful things. And then also people being like, oh, we want that. But I think that concept of
a market to be able to move the big players is something that I think might be hard for people to

(20:36):
understand. I'm wondering how do you approach it when you think about that difference between
these niche places where perhaps startups can begin, but then the markets that are required to move
the big organizations. The way I think of it is if you have a good solution that's going to make a big
difference in you're using that kind of private sector market approach, you want to make sure that

(20:59):
there's a big audience for it or a big sort of set of consumers or a lot of people who are willing to
sort of pay for whatever that is and build it. And that really is determined by the scale of what
you're kind of looking at. For example, through the Nexus Accelerator, we're working with an
organization called Lolliware and they use seaweed to sort of extract specific compounds and turn

(21:23):
that into things like alternative plastic straws or councils or things like that. And so
they were just originally going to use their straws, particular things, but then they actually
approached some of the biggest plastics manufacturing companies in the country and figured out a way
to take their little compounds, put them in the pellets and into the machinery that already exists.

(21:47):
So suddenly they have access to this giant market that they didn't necessarily have before.
And there's already a huge demand for those products and because they were able to just essentially
plug into it, it offers a whole lot more resources that go towards their solution and scales at that
much faster. And so really thinking about the end user or the end use of a product from startup is

(22:10):
really important in being able to achieve that scale. That kind of answers your question.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely touches on it because I think I think what you may be feeling is that I
almost felt divided in myself as I was as I was asking the question, which is there's the side of
developing the products, developing the markets, inserting like the example that you gave. It takes

(22:33):
a certain personality and tenacity and all kinds of things to be entrepreneurial. And so for those
that aren't that more perhaps employee-oriented or go with the flow kind of person. And a lot of
those people I think kind of do this emoji character of what can I do when it comes to climate stuff.
So there's the side to of being the market, being the one who's making choices with their purchases.

(22:58):
And wondering how to use that power I guess you could say as well. So I think there is, that's part
of the reason I think the question was divided was there was these two sides to it.
Yeah, and I think approaching it from the entrepreneurial way is a very niche kind of approach and only
certain people are kind of in that position to do so. But like you said, those two parts, voting

(23:23):
with your dollar, understanding what you're buying where it's coming from, how to make is huge.
Voting with your vote is another thing and understanding who's in office and what kind of policies
they're going to create. I think that those types of things are the most amount impact for what you
can do individually unless you're, you know, building a solution yourself. But also I very much think that

(23:45):
there's a systems approach to moving these solutions into the real world and part of it is research.
Part of it is working for a nonprofit and helping with early stage just support for these solutions.
Another part of it is government and regulatory aspects and understanding how to better ease
these solutions into new policies. There's all these different sides of the coin. There's marketing,

(24:11):
there's storytelling, which is something that scientists are notoriously just bad at.
And so there's all these different roles from moving these things forward and really just
depends on what your skill set is and identifying how to put it in. But yeah, I think the amount of
opportunity is kind of never ending as you're really jolant to it. And I love that you absolutely

(24:33):
walked into my archetypes without me prepping you. Because that's kind of the concept of these
these five archetypes is this stretch, the spectrum of skill sets and you hit on a couple of them.
And I know with with both Nexus and another project that you work on, I believe it's called the Far Away
Project. One of the things that I've heard you say is that you're excited about these projects

(24:59):
finding a way to redirect resources to new leadership who meet at most. And so I'm wondering how that
ties into this idea of, you know, are these new leaders coming up with whole new ways of understanding
how we can use these resources? Yeah, I think so. And so I am currently Board Member Far Away Project.
And there's essentially a nonprofit that helps as initially being a fiscal sponsor for other

(25:24):
corporate impact organizations and nonprofits who are trying to build out their solution. But they
also offer, you know, services to help support the development, whether it's administrative or
storytelling or PR or accounting or any of that really just help expand their impact. And they work
with different individuals and different teams and help with leadership. And, you know, depending

(25:48):
on which team you work with, they all have their own unique sort of philosophy and approach.
There's a lot of what are called sort of accelerators today, which is essentially organizations that
kind of do the same thing. They just help businesses be better at their business and provide them
connections and support with a financial or just expert sort of advice. But they help

(26:09):
definitely with leadership in that respect. And one of the most important parts of identifying
successful kind of solution is the team around it and the support system that's there. And,
yeah, I can't say, you know, to what extent specific philosophies work in a given area versus the other,
it really depends. But, yeah, I think that that leadership and cultivating that culture around

(26:31):
these solutions is just as important as an illusion itself. Yeah, that's that's really key. And
you've touched a little bit at the beginning about this idea of the cultural aspect being just as
valuable but harder to quantify, harder to put on a spreadsheet. Yeah. But being a suit certain
element and one of the things that I wonder within this realm of ecology and economics is and

(26:55):
entrepreneurism is this idea of risk and failure. One of the things that I think is super interesting,
kind of across the spectrum of archetypes is, you know, within kind of a science realm,
failure is not cool unless like you can replicate the failure over and over again and prove that
something doesn't work. But within kind of this more creative field or entrepreneur field where we're

(27:22):
building something brand new, like it's kind of a necessary element. But yet if you're having, you know,
investors support you can only really do that so much until they're like, this is a problem. So,
I'm wondering how you navigate that in the startup world. Yeah, I mean, this is such a core element of
just human psychology as well because a lot of people will consider, oh, I didn't get what I wanted

(27:46):
or the thing I was trying to do didn't work and therefore that's a failure. I should stop and quote
and just turn my attention somewhere else but failure is part of the process. It's how you learn,
it's how you test things, how you gain more information. You know, the several quotes that say fail
early and often it's kind of a an essential component of just getting better at anything. And

(28:07):
you know, it really depends on the scale you're talking about. Scientists tend to be very conservative,
very risk averse. And it kind of makes sense because the mentality is like, I want to leave nature
as it is and not mess with anything and screw it up. But we're already doing that everywhere,
all over the place. And so there really isn't a, you know, a pure baseline of nature anymore. And so
especially in like the management world of the nature based solutions people are willing to take

(28:32):
a little bit bigger of a risk in order to achieve these new things and really sort of keep pace with
the scale of change that's happening in the world. But you know, within those perspectives, I think the
ability to very quickly learn and adapt and change your process, which people will make
consider a failure at each one of those little steps is critical. And you know, especially as an

(28:56):
entrepreneur, you've got to be able to roll with those punches and move forward and adapt very quickly.
And just every time you fall out, just get up and wipe the dirt off and do it again. But you know,
government again is also very similar and they're very risk averse in a lot of these things.
So it depends when you talk to and the culture around those different groups, which sometimes will
limit their speed and ability to a very quick thing. We want to thank you.

(29:20):
And one of the places where those intersect, this idea of kind of the risk adverse,
slower moving government and quickly adapting entrepreneurship that we talked about in our last
conversation was you highlighted a key really interesting pinch point between the two, which was like
permitting in regulations. And how it's still just humans that are behind pushing that paper long,

(29:43):
but changes in those humans or the systems that they're up against can cause permitting to slow down
as slow as like 48 years is my memory of what you said. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And I'm curious, how do you, how do you help? I'm assuming that's a big part of what you help
start up snavagate. So how, how do you navigate that? There's a period I was working on sort of

(30:06):
ocean based solutions to decarbonization and now kind of focusing on using biotechnology
for conservation issues and both those fields are hitting that bottleneck where the Toronto push
these solutions forward, but they, there's a very stringent regulatory process and some of those
regulations, again, were written for pollutants that were used back in the 40s but have no, you know,
overlap with what's going on today and just people who have very different sort of perspectives

(30:31):
and incentives within their organizations. And, you know, for example, a lot of those different
things, solutions, whether it's in the ocean or biotechnology, they need field trials. And in
order to get that happen, that permitting process can last up to anywhere from two or 26 to eight years.
And if you're start up and you have a very limited runway and overhead, you don't, that's, you

(30:54):
don't survive that. And so that's what they call the valley death and the permitting process is very
much causing a lot of businesses to go under. And somebody told me that they were trying to do a field
trial off of Hawaii for this renewable energy project. And there's one scientist who works in NOAA,
who studies the particular, or is responsible for a particular population of crabs, put the whole

(31:15):
thing to a halt, their halt. And because that's his specialty, that's what he's dedicated his career
for your sheep. And it's been studying and that's their job, that's the responsibility. But that
person may not see things from the others perspective. They might not see what these other groups
are doing or the challenges that are in play. And so one of the biggest ways I think to

(31:36):
overcome that challenge is to bring these different groups together and have them talk and have
them share information, have them meet and build relationships. And the nonprofit that I currently
work for or do project for that's working on the biotechnology solutions, they host these in-person
meetings where they invite entrepreneurs and investors and scientists and policymakers and

(32:01):
communicators and artists and all these people across these different disciplines to essentially
come together and figure out different problems. And whether or not they come out with the solution,
they're still building the relationships that allow those barriers to be broken down. And so
you know I think that social element is very key. And because everybody really wants the same thing

(32:24):
kind of at the end of the day, they do want to help, but sometimes they may work in a silo or they
may just not be aware of other sort of factors that people have to contend with. And yeah, that's
a big part of that. I think that's such an interesting insight from this viewpoint of the network
archetype is as you're seeing these different groups and you're seeing the nodes and you've seen

(32:46):
them trying to go in the same direction, but there's no connection points between them. There's no
lines that's bringing them together exactly. And do you think it's just because we all have, we're
overworked in like trying to include a bunch of people as hard or it's there's just not the systems
in place to help or is there something else that we can look at to help try to spark these

(33:08):
conversations faster and more in depth? Yeah, I'd say yes to all that and much more. It's such a complex
thing for example different agencies or even different groups within a government agency
will sometimes compete for for money and for funding and that causes them to separate into
little silos. You see the same thing in academia where somebody has to become an expert in their niche

(33:29):
in order to get grant money and because of that it forces them to be very narrow focused or to
see other scientists as competitors in some cases. You know, that's one part just the incentives
that people kind of lit by. Other parts of it are just institutional kind of barriers that
have been in place for years that people just work in and never really think about and never kind of

(33:50):
move past. But you know, having worked in academia and government and profit, each one of those
sectors has their own sets of strengths and their own sets of weaknesses. But when they're combined
and bridges are built between them and like you said, you're creating those connections between
the different nodes. That's when you create a much stronger system and a much greater or more

(34:11):
successful pipeline for moving the solutions into the real world to solve problems.
But you know, getting to that point is very complex and it's very case by case and it takes a lot of
work from a lot of different groups and is no easy challenge for sure. We talked about kind of
where is the line between nature and humanity and what you just described about getting us back

(34:33):
more in connection is I've heard the term rewilding and it's not quite rewilding but it almost has
a similar vibe to it of remembering how, you know, as a species, we should be pretty, we should be
more interconnected than we are. And that's a style of remembering that and that natural way of being
that we have the option to return to. Yep, I love that mentality and you know, that's kind of a core

(34:58):
philosophy of problem solving and that, you know, you bring together the groups or you learn the skill
sets that are required to solve a problem rather than just taking one skill and having that be your
your particular thing. And I think a core component of that is the collaborative nature and it's
building these bridges and breaking down those barriers. And yeah, it's just not as widely sort of

(35:22):
adopted as well, my hope. So now that we're in kind of this this realm of talking about how these
these connection points between the nodes are are essentially relationships even though we didn't
say that we're out loud. And so I'm curious, how do you help people establish, define, create the

(35:42):
sense of relationship within these networks? I wouldn't say it's necessarily like what I'm very
good at doing but I've seen it work in a lot of different situations and one example I was go
back to is there's a movie called "Chasing Coral" and it really kind of shows the sort of big coral
bleaching events that happened in the Great Barrier Reef. But on that they have this one coral reef

(36:04):
nerd and you just get super excited about everything and he's really into it and he just geeks out and
he's just got this passion that's infectious and people can relate to that and by creating that sort of
relationship in a way that makes sense to other people even if somebody lives on a farm in
Iowa and has never seen a coral reef ever before, they can still see that aspect of human nature
and really get into it and it opens up a door into what the rest of the content is. And so I think

(36:30):
storytelling is huge the way that we share information, the way that we create these very kind of
you know universal similarities between us and those kind of connections,
honing in on those and really embracing them and putting them the forefront is a really good way
to do that but it is still a big challenge honestly. So that as we're developing these solutions,

(36:56):
one of the one of the pieces of science that just kind of blows my mind is because I do come from the more
artistic, metaphorical realm of being in the world and thinking and this idea of emergence has
always been a part of my life but I found myself studying the science of emergence recently
and found it really fascinating. So if we simplify it to two things and they start to intersect or

(37:19):
interact and then all of a sudden we get to a point of chaos and they're all over the place if
this is like points on a chart, they're all over their wild but then there's this interesting thing
that my understanding of the science tells us is that at a certain point those two points that are
in chaotic relationship literally lift the pencil off the page and plop down in a whole

(37:43):
another location within the graph and that's emergence or perhaps even evolution as another word to
describe it and I'm curious to see if you see that happening within these realms that do tend to be
more quantifiable and numbers based. Yeah I mean I see that that stuff everywhere because in the

(38:03):
system of science world like anytime you have just a number of little individuals interacting with
each other and you go up scales it turns into that weird crazy complex patterns that form and you
see in ecosystems you see in the way that humans form their cities you see in the way that countries
are established you see it in Petri dishes you see it in the universe is literally all over the place

(38:26):
and I think that component of it is really cool and the way I guess it takes shape
you know in the context that you're saying for example you know climate change is causing a lot
of issues that's upping that that chaos factor and it's causing people to interact no variety
of different ways to adapt and to adjust to it and because of that it's led to new systems or

(38:51):
new patterns or new ways of behaving like carbon markets or biodiversity criticism other example
where these things are beginning to emerge as a response to those kind of chaotic forces if you will
and yeah it's very much in flux and so but I think you you really nailed down the the science of it

(39:12):
and how that works and yeah it's kind of all around us yeah and one of the things that you know in
that moment of course that came to mind was we talked about scale earlier and one of the things
that I know is a fear that's become something that concerns people including myself is when we get

(39:34):
to this level of scale how do we know what what version of it we're using is a legit solution so
like with carbon markets we know that there's some that maybe they're a good idea maybe they're not
so how do how does somebody that is a joe schmo off the street person be able to help
us out the the the true solutions that they want to support or use their own dollars to to vote for

(40:01):
I mean that's that is one of the biggest issues or challenges that were definitely facing because
you know climate the way that that skill works is we may be able to put in a solution now
and there's a lag time of 10 to 20 years before the real sort of consequences of that or impacts are
in place and so that skill is different from the way that humans behave on kind of like a day-to-day

(40:22):
basis and but even in terms of the the suite of carbon solutions out there there's a lot of
unknowns there's a lot of uncertainty and so there's a big push for MRV or monitoring measurement
verification and really trying to fully understand what the impacts of these different solutions are
how they're actually achieving those sort of goals over time or not and unfortunately when you put

(40:49):
economics into things and there is that desire for profit as well you brings in players who aren't
necessarily acting in good faith and so for example carbon markets there's been a lot of distrust for
companies coming in claiming all these credits that really have no actual impact on things but
they're just jumping on the bandwagon and trying to make money off of it and so that is is

(41:10):
unfortunately just an aspect of human nature is good people is bad people is grey again
everything in between and the difficulty is navigating that complexity and identifying what the
real true solutions are just because it's hard doesn't mean that we should be doing it and actively
going in that direction there's a ton of awesome amazing people who are very very firmly pushing

(41:30):
in these different areas and making leaps and bounds and so yeah especially from the outside
you know the people who are experts and it don't even necessarily know at the moment they're just
trying different solutions and they may not even know like I said for another five to ten years
before things actually go into effect and even if so many crates like an amazing solution
it may not have a huge impact until it's scaled up to be used across the world or something like that

(41:55):
versus being used in someone's backyard or even in just one country and so yeah it's hard to to
navigate that I turn a lot to the social sciences whether you know emergence is as a physicist is
as a physical physicist's physics style can't even say it but then I look a lot at like behavior
change theory which is a social science and so I'm curious for you across that spectrum what you see

(42:22):
as as what's helpful with science in both these realms of quantifiable solutions as well as
perhaps once again going to that term cultural solutions. Yeah and I think it really so for example
economic some people consider that more of like a social science and the kind of sort of forces

(42:42):
behind behavioral change and there's a lot of actually groups that specifically focus on behavioral
economics and how do you get different large groups of people to adopt better practices or change
different ways based off those different incentives but also going back to like I mentioned before
the storytelling aspects of it the relationship building aspects of it are just as important because

(43:05):
that kind of transfer of information or that transfer of a mentality or perspective
is just as important as finding a specific science tech solution or even just creating a new
financial market for something and it's all of those different systems working in conjunction with
each other that actually leads to the biggest change and so I think that the social cultural aspect of

(43:31):
it is just as important you know there's indigenous groups that have been living with nature forever
at this point and they don't have that extractive perspective so maybe we can take some of those
aspects and put it into the broader culture and really learn from that so that's a good example
I think there's plenty more of how that broader behavioral change can be accomplished.
And so as we talk about that broader behavior change as we talk about relationships

(43:56):
word that was interesting that popped for you in that in that or at least popped for me in your
answer to the last question was the word transfer and that brings up to mind the phrase that I find
really fascinating to both use as well as see different definitions of it. I think it became
popular through Robin Wall Kimmer who is a both ecologist and an indigenous person and her attempt to

(44:22):
kind of figure it out for herself as to how to combine the two is this term reciprocal relationships
and so I'm curious where you see that interacting within this realm of both ecology and economy.
Yeah it's kind of unique because when you get to like real basics of what sort of system sciences

(44:42):
or network sciences is really sort of the transfer of information between two different groups
and that's like really what a connection is at the end of the day and it can lead to just
better healthier it's how you pass on solutions between different sort of groups and how
and you see this in in like bacteria all the time you know they release their genetic material

(45:06):
and they may have an adaptation that makes them really good for surviving a different environment
and they pass it on to all their buddies and then they incorporate into their own genome and suddenly
the entire population is better at surviving in that specific place and you know vice versa and I think
that vice versa is really what leads to a very fast learning process and that exchanging of ideas

(45:29):
leads to kind of the most optimal pieces of information bubbling to the top if you will
and yeah so that rest of the priestly is very important in maintaining that.
Awesome well I am noticing as I look at our little countdown clock that we are near the end of the
hour it went amazingly fast thank you so much for sharing all that you've shared and there is one

(45:56):
last question that I always love to spin at the end of these episodes and that kind of turns the
table a bit and asks you what something you wish I would have asked what did I miss what did you
want to talk about it could have been science related it could have been something about what you
ate for breakfast I don't know so more personal related but what is it what is it something that

(46:19):
within this realm of of talking about nature based solutions and answering the question what do I
do that you wish I would have touched on. Man that's a good question we definitely tackled a lot of
great stuff and I really appreciate what the conversation went. Yeah I think there's ways to learn

(46:41):
about what's going on and what sort of solutions people are working towards and yeah maybe going into
sort of these little demo events or there's sort of what they call clusters they have a bunch of
ocean clusters these days which bring together whether you're scientists or an investor an entrepreneur

(47:02):
or storyteller they bring all these different groups together and so maybe fighting opportunities
or how to find opportunities to get more involved with those things to hear different perspectives to
just speak exposed to new information to create those links would have been a good thing to chat about
but yeah I'm happy to offer any sort of information offline and point people in the right direction.

(47:22):
Amazing so yeah it does sound like you know we touched on that as as a big piece of the puzzle that you
felt is needed is is how to connect these nodes these silos knowing that you wish wish I would have
asked more about there is there a kind of a button you want to put on on that thing for for people that
are listening as to how to get involved or why to get involved in that in that particular way.

(47:45):
Yeah I wish I had very specific things to say but there's such a broad array of different events
in different groups and different things out there that it's not one size fits all and it depends
on where your interests are and where your passions are but I just say get out there trying to
get more involved try to meet new people try to find chances to get that exposure.

(48:06):
Yeah well and what it actually brings to mind now that I I heard your reflection on that was
I know somebody who coaches people who struggles to find like friends and so one of her major
recommendations for people is to find a book club. Yeah yeah because then you don't have to worry
about small talk you know what you're going to be talking about you put in the reps of seeing people

(48:30):
on a continual basis because I guess the science says before you have a friend that you need to
clock like 34 hours or something like that with that really yeah yeah right kind of an interesting
concept and so what I'm hearing is something similar in the in the these clusters that you're
talking about is you know go find those equivalent of the book clubs that are reading the types of books

(48:52):
you're interested in and then put in those hours put in those times and and you'll have those those
structures that provide support to really feel like it's worth being there and and you're getting
something out of it and providing something in return. Absolutely strengthen your network make
those connections between the different nodes and I think that leads to emergence of good solutions

(49:14):
and good sort of steps absolutely amazing well thank you so much AJ for your time and all the amazing
stuff that you're doing in the world to really push nature-based solutions forward at at all these
different levels and all these different nodes such a such a delight to get to know you and and connect
with your world. Thank you and likewise I really appreciate you having a year and I really enjoyed

(49:38):
the conversation. Hey Earthmate how did that episode resonate? Did it stretch you inspire you
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(50:02):
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