 Good evening. My name is Steve Denning. I'm chair of Gretchen's national natural capital advisory council and It's my honor and privilege To welcome all of you to Stanford to the San Francisco Bay Area to California where occasionally it rains And to our esteemed colleagues from around the world and our special delegation from China a Special welcome to the United States And to all of you a warm welcome to the natural capital projects annual dinner Go ahead and start eating now Gretchen's got a full program tonight. And so we have to we have to Do do do a load here so Let me say that the world is a wash in truly transformational change Facing disruption in many areas and along many dimensions from the artificial intelligence driven digital era To massive demographic changes in Asia from the rise of cities in the reshaping of the urban landscape to the life-changing biological revolution to the life altering impacts of Climate and other environmental changes on our planet Earth These broad forces will dramatically Transform our ecosystems our economy and our society Changing forever how we work live and play We are all here tonight because of our mutual concern about the adverse aspects of climate change And the loss of natural capital earths lands water and biodiversity Many organizations cite the impacts and in dimensions of the challenges of climate change but few very few pose a more proactive positive and Profound means of addressing that head-on than the natural capital project That cap represent represents what many believe is a means of measuring monitoring and mitigating the world's most pressing environmental problems Mary Ruckel's house managing director at net cap In Gretchen's co-pilot Describes the natural capital project as quote a Fundamental shift in the way people think about nature and human well-being It is our great privilege and honor to host this evening a group so dedicated To this fundamental shift You are a group leading a revolution About how we think about the value of natural capital and how we work to incorporate the value into the global resource allocation decision Making framework This revolution will result in a radical revision in how we maintain sustainable economic growth Enviable environmental stewardship Or as Gretchen describes it by valuing and integrating nature Quote we can create the smarter practices policies and institutions Need to live together on this planet harmoniously But this year's net cats net cat symposium there are over 350 participants from 35 different countries With about half focused in research and the other half in implementation Within this group is a special high-level delegation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences That is representative of China's global leadership in the inclusion of natural capital into their resource allocation decision-making framework and Their commitment to pursuing a green economic growth policy Together we that is Stanford University The Woods Institute and net cat Aim to accelerate innovation in how we value natural capital To deepen our understanding of the interdisciplinary science that underpins natural capital and To develop policies that incorporate the value of natural capital and ecosystem services Into our financial and economic decision-making frameworks By doing so Stanford embodies its core mission and its responsibility Going back to our founders Leland and Jane Stanford of being a quote purposeful University our new president Mark Tessie a Levine Describes a purposeful university is one that Promotes and celebrates excellence as a means to magnify its benefit to society That kept impact and its benefit to society Have been derived from its collaborative partnerships Which is something we envision drawing on even more as we move into the implement Implementation and scaling phases ahead Accordingly I Would like to use this opportunity this evening to call on the leaders of our core partners to stand and to say a few Words about those partnerships first Jessica Helman Jessica. Where are you? Jessica's from the University of Minnesota Institute on the environment Jessica Good evening. Let's make sure this works Working perfectly wonderful. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm here. My name is Jessica Helman I'm here to say hello to all of you on behalf of faculty researchers and Students at the University of Minnesota in our Institute who greatly admire and benefit Tremendously from the opportunity to interact with the natural capital project at the University of Minnesota Our Institute is dedicated. We say to leading the future Leading the construction building a future where people and planet prosper together and that is one of the reasons why the Nat Cap project is a flagship project for us because they're it's hard to imagine too many other examples That so well embody the concept of people and planet prospering together you heard this afternoon at least a couple of shout outs to Nat Cap scientists at the University of Minnesota and some of the work that we're doing and We are thrilled to we talked about mission of Stanford University University University of Minnesota brings a land grant mission, which is dedicated to the was initially created to serve the public good And that is again really well represented in our Nat Cap project We are thrilled to be to welcome the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the project as well as formal partners And the Institute on the environment is extraordinarily excited about this new scaling and Implementation phase and we are all in so thank you Now let's turn to Nick second chief conservation officer world-wide fund Thank you very much on behalf of WWF To say we're so excited to be part of this partnership The challenges that we confront today are so gargantuan that no single agency in our case network Can address them working all alone this partnership gives us an opportunity Working together to make a real difference Let's not forget and today sadly. We lost Sudan the last male northern white rhino Let's not forget That biodiversity is under severe threat We face trade-offs on a daily basis and the trade-offs sadly Contra to our conservation aims The natural capital project provides us with the means of generating information Looking at environmental values Helping to bring those values to the table in the cost-benefit calculus of decision That underpins decision-making with economic and social values in order to ensure that we find the right balance Otherwise the world and I come from the United Nations where in my previous job I was the director for sustainable development We presided over the launch of the sustainable development agenda in the SDGs So speaking from that perspective I have to say that notwithstanding an agreement globally to try and pursue development That really and truly is built on three pillars economic social and environmental still today We focus on the economic and then the social and Environmental comes a distant third And so through this partnership we at WWF And we're looking forward to growing the partnership and there are new challenges out there that we need to we need to We need to build in order to ensure that we're fit for purpose But we're WWF are excited to be part of this initiative and hopefully through it to make the difference that we all need Thank you My colleague good friend Mark tersek see all the nature conservancy Thanks Steve, thank you everybody. It's great to be here Every year my colleagues and I at the nature conservancy love being part of nat cap Thanks to everybody at Stanford for hosting the event. Thanks Stanford, Minnesota WWF and now the Chinese Academy of Sciences for being such great partners To be sure All of us conservationists we have to be you know Realistic base real reality base we face some daunting challenges Today I got to give it a talk to the at the symposium focusing on the financing challenges We face and indeed they are huge, but there's reason to be encouraged We all know investing in nature is a very good deal it pays it pays higher returns and The challenge we have is to get more people to see it the way we do And so the key to unlocking that progress more than anything else is the data and evidence and science That the nap cap project produces and is producing you know ever better and at bigger scale and on a faster basis The Chinese example is a really encouraging one with nap cap data the partnership I think can really help decision-makers around the world in government and business Understand how investing in nature is such a good deal That will allow us to scale up our work and achieve our goals before it's too late We are in the race of our lives, so there's no room for complacency But if we keep our you know nose to the grindstone and continue to come up with the data and evidence that can unlock this Progress we she should be in good shape, so it's great to be here and thanks everybody for supporting nap cap Now let me introduce professor oyang director of research center for the eco environmental sciences Chinese Academy of Science is mentioned earlier net caps new official core partner. Thank you Thanks, Steve. And we're very happy to be the new partnership of the natural capital Actually the natural capital project from last ten years actually work together and have a child and mainstream services and a natural capital in policy making the national and the local level actually today This year we are very happy several local Government agency and joined us and they'd like to be the pilot area to be the new mechanism for Marketing extreme services and natural capital and to benefit the local people and the poor people So I believe all the project and the natural capital project for benefit China and the other part of the world Sunday all of you support the change that comes science and support the China Lastly the organization of which net cap is a part The Woods Center for the environment and would it's Institute for the environment Chris field Thank you, Steve Well on behalf of the Stanford Woods Institute for the environment Special pleasure to welcome you all here tonight and to have a chance to express the pride and excitement that Stanford feels About being one of the core net cap founders It's a special pleasure to welcome the newest partner the Chinese Academy of Sciences You know net cap is is made of a huge number of wonderful dedicated creative people But the genuine strength comes from the essence of it being a partnership The vision is ambitious, but there are elements of it that no single institution could really In any way be able to capitalize on and so at least for me the thing that I really want to help celebrate it This evening's gathering and even more profoundly in the symposium that's going on over the the three days is the Essential feature of bringing different interests different objectives and different goals To bear in a way that takes advantage of the net cap tools, but really extends them, you know, at least for me the Essential features of this partnership one that brings together now the Chinese Academy of Sciences WWF TNC the University of Minnesota and Stanford along with Dozens of other entities around the world is that we have the opportunity to advance an agenda That is not only based on ideas We already have but it's going to grow from ideas that are yet to be added and at least for me That's the the spark of what makes net cap exciting is the potential to pursue opportunities Yet unseen. Thanks so much I think there is no question that the challenges are daunting But it's the power of the partnership represented by each and every one of you tonight That is going to allow us to overcome and succeed as major challenge Also want to thank each of our core partners for their contributions over the past 10 years As net cap is defined and refined its unique capabilities and dimension of the data interdisciplinary science and Software to support them We look forward to working with all of you as we achieve the dramatic scaling Necessary to realize our desired impact Thank you. Enjoy your dinner and you'll hear from Gretchen in a few moments. Thank you Hey, everybody. I want to repeat the really warm welcome that That Steve made to all of you. I always get very nervous especially in front of a group like this, so I have Wine here and that lets me take, you know, just one molecule to offset the nervousness and Have to be careful. I don't go one molecule too far So we take a sip and then you can keep eating but I'll just share some reflections on this wonderful moments we have hopefully So I Have to say, you know in welcoming you to Stanford. I was reflecting back on when I first got here And actually my first day here was one of the worst days of my life I thought I had made just a terrible mistake. I had grown up mostly overseas on US military bases and I didn't realize that that was an unusual upbringing and I got here and I just felt You know, I would never fit in Into such a refined community as we have around the tables in this incredibly beautiful just stunning venue the Bing concert hall and So I felt really scared and uncomfortable and I was My mind can get quite carried away and it was just telling me to get out of here As fast as I could but I didn't know how to go back to where I came from. I couldn't go back into the Those military bases really but luckily By about the third day the president of Stanford at the time Don Kennedy convened all the newcomers like myself. I was a freshman so about 17 and Got us into the biggest hall at the time on campus and You know, we're sitting there and I just had bats in my stomach and was wondering What to do and he said I always will remember this he said if you're comfortable, you're in the wrong place And I just couldn't believe he said that and he said then he said no one sitting here should feel comfortable and I So I kind of decided to pay attention to what would come next and I have no memory of what he said For the next hour, but it was so reassuring to know that it was all right To feel as uncomfortable as I was and the reason I bring this up now is that as you would have felt a bit in the Toast even as we went around among the Five core partner leads. There is a lot of discomfort In the movement in the quest that we share It's a really hard quest at some levels to be all about averting planetary destruction and intense human suffering at one level, you know, that's what we wake up to do and If you're looking at that side of it, you know, there's bad news everywhere and It's hard taking that in sometimes. It's very scary There's a ton of uncertainty The people in this movement work like mad Everybody I know works like mad just around the clock Partly with all of that awareness and yet at the same time we know That even the most heroic effort, you know might not end up Taking us to the dream we have a more positive sounding dream We could say, you know harmonizing people and nature to put it more in the language used in China so You know, I came to a place feeling unrefined a very refined place and then I I feel in some ways I chose an unrefined career path and it's hard even advising students on this career path because All the other career paths that I see and maybe it's that I just don't know much about them but to the left and right of this path look a lot smoother and easier and People don't have to work quite so hard and More secure easier to go Explain to your parents why you're putting all the investment they made in you, you know into this cockamamie scheme of Natural capital for example but if you look at the other side of How we think and how we feel about all this we can say you know whether We regard our situation as hell, you know or heaven It's up to us. It's our perception whether You know, we're out we could Step back and realize there is no clean, you know quick easy fix to the really complex Set of issues challenges that we face There's nothing that clear And it's rather a situation that we are going to live in our lives. However open we are to Accepting that reality and you know really taking it in day-to-day It's a situation we live and to which we can aspire, you know to bring the very very best of ourselves in the mission that was Stated for the universities and certainly also for the NGO partners and So with that I felt You know at Stanford I thought after hearing Don Kennedy I would give it a little time and Once giving this nat cap mission a little time It's amazing how the quest becomes quite addicting It's amazing how the quest becomes deeply fulfilling and It's quite amazing to see how the quest actually becomes joyful It's the weirdest thing and I want to try to figure that out more And I'll probably need some more wine to do that than I've had just now but what I'd like to do in talking about how joyful it is to engage in all this together is Layout two dimensions one is just the vision and the plan the vision and and the plan are incredible They're just so compelling for all the complexity of the situation for all the uncertainty now and ahead Mainstreaming the values of nature and all that involves in all our thinking our feeling and the way we act the way we codify The right way to act in societies and different institutions around the world It is so compelling and satisfying intellectually and then at the level of feeling it's amazing at this meeting every year to see We counted since I gave Steve the you know 35 countries I think they're at least 40 to 45 countries represented here many different languages many different Technical areas of background many different career stages people in all kinds of paths of life Many different cultures. There's such nuance in the different ways we see and live life and we're all coming together to Share and drive forward in this quest and It it might sound soft or you know weak but I Find that feeling that we get you know in every day thinking about how we can work ever more powerfully together just completely absorbing and completely I don't know it just Ignites this power. I feel that we can magnify together and and See ignited in places all around the world So what I'd like to do it's really ignited in China now and I would like to now say more specifically What this quest is about reflecting on China and on the performance that we'll see after dinner So it's incredible I'll first illustrate just like the vision and plan and the way they're being implemented in China Through the leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences a big part of the government many different levels the NDRC the National Development and Reform Commission and then here among us guests Distributed among tables and speaking more in Chinese at that Table of greatest honor there in the center of the room our people in places that today right now are implementing this vision and The idea is caught fire at every level so Xi Jinping is Famous now in China for saying something loosely translated to English as Lush mountains and clear waters are gold and silver We will not trade them for gold or silver And that's sort of looking back at all of the focus on GDP growth for the past several decades and the cost associated with that and Looking forward and saying we're going to make a whole different System here and the system it's it's complex so I don't mean to oversimplify it here, but given Our time in the moment. I'll just say really briefly what the pieces are so one piece is just shining a light on these intimate connections between people in nature and then expressing that connection those many different connections in Value terms and meaningful ways to open up a pathway for green and inclusive growth so everything that inclusive part is essential everything is about poverty alleviation and social equity and about the green so elevating the well-being of people and Securing the environment at the same time green growth national security. It's at that level and Once shining a light then it's about talking about it talking about what you see and feel with that light developing a common language that Becomes standardized and the Chinese are amazing in that with the written language established over You know going so far back to unify the country at the time of the first dynasty In China's history So it's spoken in many different ways, but there's that unifying language across the entire culture And then what oh young and others have developed is a system of accounting You have to have that for ecological performance So we have all these systems of accounting for economic performance and for say other types of performance But there was nothing and now there's been established this China ecosystem assessment every five years. There's sort of ongoing Accounting and reporting every five years on how natural capital is doing and they just announced Only a couple weeks ago that they're doing this actually across the whole Silk Road the new Silk Road the Belt and Road initiative They call this the digital Silk Road So using a lot of this system of accounts is based on satellite imagery and other remote sensing They're doing this across the entire You know modern day and and future dream of the the Silk Road to come And then related to that and using invest which we've co-developed over these many years and refined in many ways using the incredible Data and ability to sort of road test all the models in China estimating the flow of benefits to people that whole side of it and Then so that's that's a one huge piece a system of accounts and the flow of benefits the second big piece represented by the most honorable people who have joined us tonight is bringing that into policy finance and management and They as you know reading the paper day by day, there's massive restructuring of the government All of it really empowering the environmental side of things to bring in to policy finance and management this information on ecological performance and Using that I'll just give one example of what's happening. They've zoned the country It's called red lining you might have have read about that and in these zones I'll mention that the natural capital focused zone Spans 49% of the entire country is prioritized for investments in natural capital to Deliver these benefits for this dream the you know Xi Jinping puts it in terms of China's dream becoming the ecological civilization of the 21st century and this is happening the the last related to that zoning is investment so I'll mention one last thing it's way more complex than this But the last thing is they're developing a new metric to help guide investment. It's called GEP It's going to be reported right alongside GDP gross domestic product stands for gross ecosystem product and The whole system is pretty much there and ready to go GEP is now being road tested part of our symposium this week is focused on Kind of the final Details and getting that metric right it will illuminate, you know the contribution of ecosystems to society It'll show the ecological connections among regions in China and show What financial flows ought to be happening in this green growth model so who's supplying These ecosystem benefits what landholders and others are there supplying and who benefits and How can we compensate in a way that maintains supply and brings awareness to where all that life support is coming from and Then finally it's going to be used as a performance metric for government officials partly not to penalize people Doing a fantastic job in securing the environment and yet not getting much credit for it because they don't have 20% GDP growth or something But all that financial compensation today is already paying about 200 million people every year every day for ecosystem conservation and restoration for benefits to society so and for securing the country and All of this really can extend across the world So many of the other countries represented here are here to learn from China and See all the things that they've managed to get right even coming out of a Pretty desperate time that would get my spirit down, you know thinking about some of the days We're in Beijing when you can't see your hand in front of you But really lifting out of that time and moving into a very inspiring Transformation so even the city of London. I was sent a couple days ago has developed a natural capital account a reporting on the total value of the green space in London the value of those assets and Annually an eight billion pound Stream of benefits to people living and working in London So from all this those are some of the details on China on the vision and the plan But from it comes such a powerful feeling and I think it's over many years as professor Oyang mentioned that we've been working together deepening our understanding Just feeling the compassion and all of the work we've been taken by Professor Oyang to every corner of China to the richest cities and out to you know The poorest areas where people haven't heard of electricity much less experienced it in the amount of trust the courage the dedication and the Admiration that you feel working there or working in any of the many countries With individuals like these here and here together in the room with all of us Just the exhilaration and the beauty in in what we can do if we are all kind of activated and sharing in this feeling So it's the deepest and best human experience really. I'm glad I stayed at least this long here at Stanford and I want to thank you very very much and Raise a toast and some of the wine here is thanks to yet another wonderful activated person John Miller and has vineyard in Oregon Let's enjoy the evening together. Cheers Cheers again and Mary might come up here if anybody wants to throw us some easy questions Because now we've had a bit too many molecules probably for a hard question We can just have a brief exchange and then we're gonna The the performance will be explained to us But you know the performers have come all the way from China and their performance will embody basically this flame of Working toward harmony between people and nature going back long long time Yeah And if you don't want to ask a question that's fine with us What if we just enjoy the evening, yeah