 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the webinar, Nature's Blueprint, Biodiversity and Sustainability through Innovative Land Strategies, brought to you by SoCAP Global and World Tree. Today we're thrilled to explore the transformative power of agroforestry at scale and driving global impact and climate action. Throughout this session, we'll delve into the synergy created when diverse groups including financial institutions and organizations unite for a common cause. Now, let me introduce you to our esteemed moderator, Margaret Morales. Margaret is the Director of Carbon at Green Biz Group, bringing over a decade of experience in climate policy, communications and carbon project development. Prior to her role at Green Biz, she held executive positions at Terra Formation, a forest carbon project developer, and launched Sightline Institute, a research program on natural carbon capture and working lands for a climate policy think tank. Welcome, Margaret. Thank you so much, Tova. It's a pleasure to be here. As Tova said, I'm the Director of the Carbon Program at Green Biz, but prior to coming to Green Biz, I worked at a carbon project developer. And what I saw there was that there are so many excellent nature restoration projects that exist and but struggle to get off the ground because of a lack of finance. So I am really looking forward to our conversation with our panelists today, not just about what impact these type of projects can have for climate, biodiversity, economic resilience, but also how we unlock more of them. What do we need to do? So with that, let me introduce our speakers today. We have Doug Wilmore with us. He is the CEO at World Tree, where he spearheads its mission to merge agroforestry with regenerative agriculture while still delivering returns for investors. We have David Sternlicht. He's the head of Nature Investing at Epic. It's an impact investing platform to unlock values aligned investing. And finally, we have Caleb Williams. Caleb is the Managing Director of Agricultural Operations at RRG Nature-Based Solutions. And he leads their operational excellence in regenerative agriculture. So thanks to all three of you for being here. It's a pleasure. Thanks, Margaret. Yeah. All right. We're going to kick it off with a case study. But before we do, I'll remind our audience to please leave any questions that you have as we go. Leave it in the comments box. I'll make sure we reserve at least 10 minutes at the end to get to as many questions as possible. So please post them there at any time. But with that, we're going to start with a case study to ground us in what a regenerative agriculture project really looks like. And so I'm going to hand it over to Doug to speak to us about the Lacobanya project. Great. Margaret, thank you so much. And thanks to Socap for sponsoring this. We really appreciate it. They're a great partner for all of us in the space. So I'm going to take a couple of minutes just to give a brief overview of what we've been working on and what we're looking to implement in the next couple of months. Really, as an example of what can happen when you merge returns and an impact focus. And so, you know, we really, I'm not going to go through everything on these slides in detail, but really just going to hit a few of the high points. And so we started as we looked at developing projects with focus on biodiversity and including that as a significant metric in the design of our projects. And so we're a better place to start than Costa Rica. The small area of Costa Rica has over 6% of the world's biodiversity. Much of it is not protected. And we have a really great growing regions in Costa Rica and many places that we can make an impact. And so we really focused in on Costa Rica as a start of our efforts in this arena. And one of the things we do is we build out agroforestry projects as we've really focused on finding fast-growing, very friendly, non-invasive species that really support other agricultural operations. Many farm trees do not. And so we really focused on the emperor splendor tree. It's one of the fastest growing trees in the world that you can see in the center of that slide. That's a 10-year-old tree in Tennessee. It's one of the few trees that's nitrogen fixing, again, non-invasive, very benign and friendly. The other amazing thing about this species is when we harvest it for renewable, sustainable lumber, it re-grows from the stump. And it will do that for up to five generations. And it became an integral piece of our design because of our focus on impact as well as returns. And so we've worked together on a 3,000-acre project in La Cabana. It's in Limón, Costa Rica. It's one of the poorest areas of Costa Rica. And as you can see, just from the statistics there, much of this project is actually protecting natural forest or reforesting secondary growth areas. And yet still, as you see on the middle slide, we've got a 19% projected return as far as IRR. And so that shows you, I think, as we dive into the details, what can happen when you focus on biodiversity and impacts along with returns. And so with us, we've actually ended up creating a project that has annual crop revenue, that has regular lumber revenue every eight to 12 years. And then it also includes carbon credit revenue, biodiversity credit revenue, and some other sort of below-the-line ancillary revenue streams that you'll see as we dive into this. All of this serves to not only de-risk a project, but also their representations of what the impact is for the project. We'll dive in a lot about what the benefits of regenerative agriculture are through this column. We've got some real experts in that field with us. And then we also, it's a focus of ours is to really have a project that makes a significantly positive impact in the community. And we'll touch on a little bit of that today as well. And so making sure that that hits the bottom line also. And so for us, the partners on this project is obviously world tree us, but then RRG, nature-based solutions, that team is amazing. The technical experts, the expertise they have in this industry is unbelievable throughout not only the globe, but especially Latin America that helps us. And then to find an investment partner like Ethic, who I always, I single them out because they spent as much time focusing on the metrics, the due diligence on the impact side as they did on the financial side. And so it really been a great partner. They've made the project better, our participation with them. And so with that, Margaret, I'd sort of turn it back to you and you can kind of bring in David and Caleb and see where we go from here. All right. Thank you, Doug. Those are beautiful images. So yeah, Caleb, can I turn to you? How is RRG involved in this project? Yeah. Thank you very much, Margaret. It's a pleasure to be here with everybody. RRG nature-based solutions, as we built out a set of technical expertise over the over several years, such that we aim to source, design, develop and operate these types of projects, the types of transformational projects that Doug just explained for various different counterparts, for various different partners. In the case of World Tree, they already had sourced this piece of land and had a conceptual design for the project. And so they brought us in to help out with the technical design of the project, particularly the agroforestry system. And then the development and operation of the project, which we will handle, the on-the-ground operational management of the project once this project is invested by Ethic. Okay. So then David Ethic is an impact investing platform. How is it involved with La Cabrania? Yeah. Thanks, Margaret. Great to be here with you guys. So one of our strategies on our platform is a nature investing platform where we're investing in projects that can restore degraded landscapes and earn a financial return for investors. And so in terms of the impact outcomes we're targeting, carbon sequestration is, of course, an important one and maybe the most fashionable one. But we're actually focused on a much broader range of ecosystem health indicators, including biodiversity and water retention and soil health. And so we're looking at both ecosystem restoration and reforestation projects, perhaps not unlike what you were working on at Terra Formation. And we're also looking at working landscapes like with La Cabrania. So we met the World Tree team probably about 18 months ago and we started exploring projects together last year. And we've been working with members of both of these teams of the World Tree and ROG NBS teams since early summer on co-designing what we think is a commercial project and a replicable model that really optimizes for biodiversity as much as possible and prioritizes the community outcomes that are just as important to us. So I guess I could have just said we're like the backseat drivers, but we bring snacks. So that's how I would describe our role. That's the guest you want on your road trip. That's the person you want in the backseat. All right. So I'm going to take us back a minute. We've built right in to here's an example of a project that uses regenerative practices to manage land. But how is that different than a conventional model? How does it work differently and how are the outcomes different? And Doug, maybe you can describe for us that big picture. Yeah. So I'm truly going to just talk about the big picture and how I like to describe it to people. And maybe Caleb would love to jump in on some of the details is I tell people that the unsustainable nature of our significant land uses, agriculture, forestry, livestock, the key to the unsustainable nature is they're separate. And you know, monoculture projects at a large scale are unsustainable. And to put it very simply, we need to bring those three back together on the same piece of property. So that's a start of bringing plants and trees and animals back together. And by that, by that very nature, you're forced into a more complex discussion, more complex design that produces much better outcomes. Now, you couple that with regenerative agriculture practices, and we can talk more about that. And then you end up with really the start of a really great project. But an evolved step in a way from these large, you know, monoculture plantations and various industries, the large feed lots, the things like that and recognizing that, yeah, we've proven that those are unsustainable. And by bringing them back together, we start the process of creating something that has a positive impact on the environment instead of a negative one. Yeah. Caleb, I want to turn to you. This sounds like very complex systems, multiple revenue streams. What are the challenges with managing a project like this? Yeah, thank you. The primary challenge is that this is a much more knowledge-intensive form of agriculture. We've done a really good job over the past 50, 60 years at trying to boil down agriculture and food production systems to the simplest form. So eliminate all life in the field except for the life that you're trying to sustain. And we've tried to make it to where you can write prescriptions for many of the different production systems. That produces the majority of our food today. And so one of the biggest challenges is shifting the paradigm in people's heads to understand that the prescriptions aren't going to work the same way in each location. And so we need to really develop local knowledge and local ability to adapt these systems to the specificity of the local context, the local soils, local climate. And so there's an educational layer that needs to happen, which is I think the biggest thing that we need to be focusing on right now. And then there's the layer above that, which is the whole system. Not only do the farmers on the ground need to understand these principles to be able to implement them appropriately to transform our systems, but then you have the large CPGs, you have financial institutions, you have the people that are investing into these things. They're used to investing in a specific way. They're used to specific return profiles. They're used to specific timelines for capital outlays and returns if they're investing into an agricultural project. And those things are different, but not inferior within regenerative agricultural systems. But things that are different sometimes scare people. And so again, education in that middle and upper layer of these agricultural systems is critical. Okay, Caleb, can you tell me in broad strokes like how are the cost structures different or what are the different expectations? Is it timelines? Is it, yeah, what's different? Yeah, so part of it is timelines. If you look at developing a regenerative system, people talk a lot about the J-curve. I won't go into the details of that here because I think there's been a lot of discussion around it already. There's argument of whether or not the J-curve needs to exist for regenerative agriculture. Some people say that we need to kind of finance that to where it increases adoption across the systems. And then there's other people that say, no, if you're doing regenerative agriculture correctly, there is no J-curve, right? Because you're implementing practices once they're more financially viable for the project. And so financing these systems looks different. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get to a return and sometimes it doesn't. There's been a lot more research recently, both kind of empirical evidence but also academic research that has shown that these regenerative systems are actually more profitable than the conventional systems. The challenge with our conventional systems, we look a lot of productivity, right? We have this mindset of maximizing productivity when in reality we want to be optimizing productivity to maximize our profitability. And so things like, for example, there was a recent white paper that came out by SLM partners in February of this year. They wrote kind of the original revolutionary white paper on how to invest in regenerative agriculture. And with experience now, they've said that the regenerative edge, as they call it, or in other words, what's the increase in returns you can expect if you're doing a regenerative system versus a conventional system is 1% to 2%. So there's evidence of higher profitability within these systems, which is something that a lot of people are having a hard time wrapping their minds around. And, you know, Margaret, I'd add something to that is that, well, I think what we've created here and designed for this specific footprint at La Cabana is totally appropriate for that land. I'd also say that combining the forestry in that agriculture produces a more profitable project than either one by itself. And a less risky project, less capital upfront, less risk all on one focus and things like that. But it does, like Caleb said, it requires more knowledge and more comfort with complexity as you're designing and implementing that and then seeking funding for it. Okay, David, you come with the investor perspective. So how does ethics evaluate a project like this? Well, so just to piggyback on a couple of things Caleb and Doug said, I mean, I have very little, that was very comprehensive. I have very little to add to what they said. The only thing I would add is the resilience element of regenerative agriculture as well. And I think that will come to light increasingly with more precipitation and climate and weather event volatility, where a regenerative agriculture system with healthy soils will retain water much, much more efficiently and weather droughts much better. And also the dependence of the conventional and chemically intensive agricultural system on nitrogen based fertilizers and the price sensitivity to nitrogen based fertilizers really came to light when Russia invaded Ukraine and what 70% of global supplies of nitrogen fertilizers come from that region. And then all of a sudden prices went through the roof. That was one of the underlying factors behind a lot of the food inflation. And so I think there's a lot of appealing angles to this form of agriculture. And the climate resilience story will be a more evident one going forward as we have more data. But like Caleb said, it's, you know, and to kind of segue into your question, Margaret, like an investor's maximum comfort scenario in evaluating, stripping out the impact angles. And a project investor's maximum comfort scenario is you're investing with a partner who's developed many identical projects to the one you're looking at over the past 20 years and have generated exponential return and why biodiversity impacts. And like Caleb said, because so much of the relevant data and practices around regenerative agriculture are specific to a locale, it's really difficult to find a set of partners or a project blueprint where all of those stars align. You know, not a lot of groups like RG and World Tree have been in a region for eight plus years. And that's part of the appeal to this project here. But you know, in terms of what investors should be paying attention to looking at these projects, it's like this work is hard. These projects are operationally complex. And a lot of the important nature based solutions projects are in the global south and developing economies that are can be can bring increased currency or regulatory or other operational risks. It's hard stuff. It's not rocket science, which ironically is a theme in a lot of investor portfolios at the moment. And so, you know, we on our team have combined natural capital experience and experience evaluating investments in developing economies in different asset classes with different financial structures with so that that breadth across private asset classes with the depth that you need to look at soil biology in a specific region or, you know, a mangrove specialist if we're looking at a mangrove reforestation project. So we're trying to pair investment breadth and some investment depth along with all of the natural sciences and technical practitioner depth that help you kind of peek around all corners with a project like this and assess it thoroughly and robustly and look at all of the important dimensions around, you know, financial model sensitivities, what elements of biodiversity you should be prioritizing given a specific project design in a specific place and how the community is aligned with the operation and success of the project because that's it's important in terms of doing the right thing and doing right by the folks who are ultimately the long-term land stewards of a landscape that encompasses a project. And it's also an important project de-risking mechanism. If the community is not involved and not incentivized, then, you know, the whole project can fall apart. So we really do see a lot of these dimensions as reinforcing the other. And so I guess I'll pause there. I think, you know, is the project important for the landscape? And what's the what's the participation of other critically important institutions nearby in the landscape? Okay, I want to dive down on something you said there, which is the importance of biodiversity for making for a high impact and making these projects resilient. We hear about biodiversity now everywhere. It's at COP, it's in Davos, it's a climate week. So Doug, I'm curious why what is behind this sort of like big focus on biodiversity right now? You know, well, part of it is the world has discovered that the strategy that we've been following is a failed strategy. So the strategy of, okay, let the governments get together and decide how much of our natural space we're going to protect. That's going to be our key action that we need to take. And we've discovered now just through data that it's a failed strategy, not only have we failed to meet our goals, every government has failed to meet the goals of protecting native spaces. But here's the key thing. And it's one of the reasons, I mean, David and Caleb and I and our teams are really bonded around this key factor. We've also discovered through data that when biodiversity drops on managed landscapes, it also drops on protected native landscapes. So we can protect all the native spaces we want, but if biodiversity continues to drop on our agricultural spaces, forestry spaces, livestock spaces, it will continue to drop worldwide. And so the shared purpose that we all have here with La Cabana and projects like this, how can we show that you can make a huge biodiversity impact and rebuild biodiversity on the greater landscape while still having a productive piece of property. And so that's one of the things that we think is a real challenge that we face globally is demonstrating how you can do that and some of the key principles that are involved in doing that. And so I think it's become such a big issue because we've really discovered as a world that, hey, the strategy we had that we thought would be successful isn't. And we've also discovered all and now how closely intertwined biodiversity loss is with the inability of landscapes to retain carbon and sequester carbon. So they're closely intertwined with the climate fight as well. Could I take a minute and just talk about biodiversity within the productive system as well? Because Doug did a fantastic job explaining the importance of it from a productive system across the landscape. Within the productive system itself, it provides some fantastic benefits and there's more than we could cover here. But just to give you a couple of ideas, when you have above ground biodiversity, when you have increased above ground biodiversity, you're attracting predators to the pests that you're trying to fight with pesticides. When you have really abundant enriched soil microbial biodiversity, not only does that biodiversity do the same thing as doing above ground where you attract the predators to your pests. And so you reduce your need for fungicides in the soils. But you are also increasing the nutrient cycle of the organic matter that is being deposited in the soil through your increased biodiversity above ground. So reducing your need for synthetic fertilizers. But you're also increasing your soil aggregate structure. Your soil aggregate structure, it increases your soil water holding capacity. And so you're able to be a lot more efficient with the water that either comes from the sky from precipitation or comes from irrigation systems. So you drastically reduce your need for managed irrigation in these projects. And so biodiversity is a massive tool within a productive system that increases resilience, decreases costs, and therefore increases profitability. Okay. So David, I want to hear how you think about this. You're the head of nature investing. Is nature investable? I don't think I can say no to that question. I want to address the last question you asked to real quick because I think it was very cool how we were Doug brought us to the landscape. Kayla brought us down into the roots and now I can kind of zoom us back up to the 30,000 foot view. But one of the reasons biodiversity is becoming such a hot topic is like there were a few seminal research pieces, one from the World Economic Forum four years ago now, that estimated that $44 trillion of global GDP at the time, which was half of global GDP is moderately too severely dependent on nature. And that's almost an incomprehensibly large number. So if you look at this, yeah, could we pull that slide back up? So if you look at this slide, we've kind of parsed that number apart a little bit to focus on specific elements of biodiversity and specific ecosystem services that are generating enormous amounts of economic value. Inset pollinators, that's about a half a trillion dollars in global agricultural production that they directly support. So their habitats are critical economic engines and that that number does not even acknowledge the societal instability we would face with a mass insect pollinator collapse. You know, healthy oceans support multiple trillions of dollars in economic activity, forest problems is close to a trillion dollar industry. So I think it's collective investor and asset owner and corporate realization of these risks that's driving this topic of biodiversity and nature pretty rapidly up the sustainability agenda. Because it's a real risk whose financial implications are playing out over a clear near term time horizon than a lot of climate risks, which can be difficult for corporates to factor into their planning because it's their risks over multiple decades. And so it's not always true that the agent in charge of day-to-day decision making is going to be incentivized to move the needle with respect to long-term climate mitigation decisions. So I think this is one reason why it's gone from kind of relative obscurity in the conservation sphere was the only, you know, the nonprofit conservation sphere was the only group that was talking about biodiversity 10 years ago. Not the only, but it was not a mainstream sustainability topic as it is now. And then we can just keep this slide since you asked a question about is this investable and go to the next slide really quickly. So the, you know, we refer, I refer to nature as an asset class a fair bit and I think it's important to clarify since folks use it to refer to like balance sheet assets or a class of listed asset or an investable asset class in the eyes of a chief investment officer. And I think all are useful like natural capital accounting on a company's balance sheet, better ways to have markets fully value nature that those are both important. But to me, making this an investable asset class and positioning it as such is the most important because by the end of this decade, there's a projected, as you see on the slide, $800 billion annual financing gap required to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. So the typical sources of funding like this are, you know, as you can see, I guess, no, sorry, go back to that slide. So current funding is about $166 billion and that's mostly from the government and philanthropic sector. $29 billion in current capital flows are coming from the private sector. So, you know, governments are only just starting to get a hold of climate change and rally meaningful resources behind that. In terms of philanthropy, all global philanthropy is coincidentally about $800 billion also in climate and wildlife related philanthropies only a single digit share of that. And then if we bump to the next slide, professionally managed assets, all professionally managed assets that that's a $100 trillion market. So if you put $800 billion in that context, all of a sudden it feels fairly manageable. And how do you tap into that pool? How do you access that pool? Well, it's by making the case that this can be an asset class that a chief investment officer might say, I could put 1% of my portfolio in this. I like a number of the characteristics it offers in terms of diversification relative to other assets in my portfolio, the robustness of the cash flows. So we've gotten a couple of questions from the audience and we've alluded to this a couple of times already. We're talking about timber, a diversity of crop revenues, biodiversity and carbon credits. This is a fairly robust project in terms of diversity of cash flows relative to the risky monocultures that Doug alluded to earlier. And we keep an honest score sheet ourselves on what is it going to take for the biggest financial institutions in the world to see nature positive investing as an asset class and where are we with respect to perceptions of those? And I think we're well on our way to that. This movement is going to have to accelerate it, probably 10x this pace that the climate movement took to become a little bit more mainstream from an investment perspective. And so far it feels like it's moving that quickly. What do you think about biodiversity credits? Do you think they have a future? I do think they have a future. It's a little bit wild westy at the moment in that we've seen 5, 7, 10 different methodologies for calculating and tabulating a biodiversity credit and whereas carbon markets are kind of trading in a more fungible unit or currency like a molecule of carbon is the same in the atmosphere here as it is in Southeast Asia. Nature is very not fungible and biodiversity is very place specific. So I would envision that the way biodiversity credit markets evolve is regionally. And where a lot of the supply and demand will be from a particular region and the buyers of those credits will have some sort of strategic or operational incentive to support the biodiversity that that credit is derived from for their own supply chain, for their own branding or marketing. And that market's evolving slowly in part because of how inconsistent some of these methodologies for generating a credit are with one another and also because this whole movement is like I was saying a second ago, it's just kind of picking up steam that this companies are just starting to disclose through the task force on nature related financial disclosures, their nature related financial risks. That's starting this year. Investors are going to take a minute to ingest and react to that and then apply pressure to reduce those risks, adopt more nature positive practices in their value chains, much of which will be around regenerative agriculture and means of production. And then a market for targeted biodiversity credits will likely emerge as part of that like mitigation chain. So yes, optimistic, no, perhaps not overnight, but demand for what a biodiversity credit represents. That is something we're quite confident in. Okay, we're getting so many good questions. I'm going to turn us to audience questions in a minute. But before I do, I have one more question for Doug and Caleb. I wanted to dive into there's an interesting nuance here because when people talk about biodiversity, I think they typically think of conservation. And the case study that you've shared with us today is actually an agriculture project that incorporates biodiversity. And Doug, you walked us through the Empress splendor tree, which is not native to Costa Rica. So can you tell me more about how managed landscapes, even with non native species, can still restore biodiversity? Yeah, that's a really great question. We get it a lot. And it's, I think it leads from not many people not fully understanding this space yet and what the issues are. So we tell people what a project like this is not replacing the need to reforest deforested areas. It's not replacing that to reforest with native species. In fact, some of the space on this property, secondary growth areas, we're reforesting with native species. And so when you look at our managed landscapes, the places that we need for food and for, for wood and lumber and for livestock and things like that, then we're looking at where really looking at that landscape is what's the friendliest way to actually produce something that's that's useful in the market as well as very, very friendly to the environment. And in many cases, certainly on the tree scale, you're going to be growing non native species. So when you actually look at designing a project, one of the characteristics of many native species, they can be more aggressive because they survive. And for splendor tree, if we just left it in Costa Rica planted without any care or anything like that, we'd come back 10 years later, there's probably five or 10% of the trees left, they would get overtaken by native species. So we want for on the on the forestry side of this project, we want a very friendly benign species that's not going to take away from other things that were growing very friendly to the soil, very friendly to other crops and plants. The fact that this is a real economic powerhouse and carbon powerhouse is sort of icing on the cake. But above all, you start with, how can I use what can I use that's very friendly to everything being involved here so that we're we're productive, and we're producing a return at the same time that we're we have a mix of both forestry and agriculture that's attracting pollinators and soil health and and all of those things that we're interested in doing to greatly raise the biodiversity level. Okay, this rolls us right into an audience question we got, which is in Caleb, I think you could answer this. How do you choose what products to grow and make sure there are markets for them? Yeah, it's an incredible question, one that is it's challenging. It's very challenging to do this well. We've been doing it for a while, and we we take a couple of factors into consideration throughout a very iterative process. First, you need to understand the ergonomics. Will a particular crop grow economically in a region? You need to with that understand the climate, not just the climate today, but we we have built predictive analytic models GIS based models that allow us to understand what we think the climate is going to look like 10 years from now, 20 years from now, given given the most commonly accepted climate change models. You also really need to understand the cultural context. Is there a local market for this or not? Are you going to be exporting this? If not, you need to make sure that there's a local market for it. You also need to understand the infrastructure implications. If you're going to an area that has no forestry, no forestry infrastructure, you got to figure out how you're going to get your skitters in there. You got to figure out how you get the expertise that people then know how to do a forest, you know, to harvest a forestry operation at the end of its lifetime. So you take you take a look at you survey all of those different elements, and then you start to put together a particular combination of crops, and then you stress test it. You go in and you build a financial model around it and say, okay, if we have this particular combination of a multistrada agroforestry system, what does it provide the financial returns that we need? Are we going to have a secure enough market for it? And do we have the cultural and infrastructure support that we need to be able to produce this in this region? And like I said, so it's very iterative. This reflects perfectly the process that we have gone through with with world tree and with ethic in the development of the Lacobanya project. You start out with a couple of ideas and then you start to stress test them and adapt it as you go along. Okay, so we got another audience question sort of about other revenue streams that could be part of this project, but aren't now. Doug, I'm curious for your thought process behind that. So like recreation, ecotourism, education, research cooperation with universities, how did you evaluate whether to incorporate those or not? Yeah, so well, first of all, we do have two universities in Costa Rica that are research partners on Lacobanya and will be with other projects that we're developing in the area. We're excited to partner with them. We're not part of the ecotourism lane, if you will. But one of the things I think David and Caleb and I would all say is, boy, you know, find your role and do it and do it well and make an impact. And so I mean, with this webinar, with the projects we're developing, what we're doing together, the goal for us is to really, for all of us to be able to learn and give it away. And I think there's lots of opportunities just from what I know, certainly how I travel in the ecotourism field, and that's certainly exploding. Lots of greenwashing going on out there. And I think one of the ways that it's going to be helpful to weed that out is David and people in his field are going to have to do it from a finance perspective that it's like, okay, let's get very real about the impact on this project. And Ethic did it by bringing together a real powerhouse science team for their nature investing that they really made our projects and our future projects better because of the science questions behind it. So that's what I'd say, hey, there's all sorts of opportunities out there that I think one of the problems that can happen in the climate space is people can focus on what's the best thing? Well, you shouldn't say, hey, there's so many things that have to happen. Find that and do it well. And I think ecotourism would be the key part of it for someone. It's not something that we do, whether we're likely to get into. I think David actually may have looked at some projects in that area to finance that was brought to him. But yeah, that's what I would say is go for it and go for the impact. Yeah, we've looked at, I think it's interesting that Italy has a pretty robust agritourism industry because people like to go to farms and scenic places and drink wine, and that's not exactly what this project is endeavoring to do. Wine helps though. I think we consider ecotourism as in scope because it's one of the revenue or business models that can be directly aligned with restoring biodiversity in the landscape. The question is like matching the developer and key partners' talents with the project design with the landscape. And there's no doubt a good ecotourism industry in Costa Rica. People travel frequently to see the wildlife there. It is a biodiversity hotspot. This is one of the most biodiverse provinces in the country. But yeah, I guess it's not our intention to kind of shoehorn that in because ultimately ecotourism projects are often green hotel and hospitality development projects. And so it's just a very distinct skill set. And yeah, again, one that if the opportunity arises to bolt on as a cherry on top with an existing project like this, I think we would consider it. But there would have to be the right third partner involved too. Okay, Caleb, this is a question for you. Can you give examples of the regenerative techniques that you use? Yeah, so there are a lot of frameworks out there that lay out essentially the same 15 practices in different ways. But there's a set of common practices that are considered to be regenerative in nature. Things like cover cropping, both with a commercial crop and non-commercial crops. Cover cropping in between rows of trees or cover cropping over a fallow season in the winter. Biological application, so applying beneficial fungi bacteria to your fields. This can happen, you can propagate your own biologicals on your own farm or you can buy stuff off the shelf shelf. There's a lot of the big input providers that are starting to provide some really interesting biological products. Composting and compost tea production. Biochar is one that we've yet to find a really good economic case for it, but it does some great things for your soil. Any kind of incorporation of animals into your productive system has massive benefits as long as you do it in the right way to protect the commercial crops that you're growing. And the list goes on and on. You can look, like I said, there are many different frameworks out there for regenerative agriculture and they'll do some form of listing those same types of practices. The challenge that we face with all of these practices and we're finding solutions to it is measuring the outcomes because the outcomes are very diverse. If you look at something like a cover crop, not only are you potentially abating your wheat pressure, you're also increasing your nutrient cyclone, you're protecting your soil from erosion, you are increasing the microbiological activity in your soils, you're providing a habitat for your predators or the pests, predators to your pests. And so quantifying all of those things is something that we've, people have been doing it for a while, but in earnest, we started to see some research and some studies come out in the last two, three years in a big way. We're starting to understand them better, but we still don't understand them clearly like we understand many of the different conventional practices in our systems. Okay, I think we've got time for two more questions. I'm going to sneak them in here before we close out. So Doug, this is a question for you from Rick Griffiths. Do you think carbon credits and biodiversity credits will ever be a benefit to smaller farmers who are managing more like 10 to 20 acres? You know, I think there's some programs around the world now that aggregate together small farms into one large program and actually generate carbon credit revenue. You can think of one in Africa, for example, it's challenging because one of the things when you're developing a carbon credit project, you have to, there's a principle called permanence, and you know this well, Margaret, is you have to say, okay, this isn't just a one-time thing. We're actually going to develop a project and monetize credits, but we have to guarantee that these benefits are let's say for at least 30 years with La Cabana, the goal is 100 years. So it's much easier to quantify that when you have an operator and an investor all together like this, who are committed to the same goal to aggregate small farmers together into a project, it's much more difficult to do. That's one thing I'd say. The second thing is, you know, World Tree has a, we have a program with small farmers, we have 6,000 acres with 300 farmers that we're growing trees with, and we would be able to aggregate those together and get the farmers some carbon credit revenue. The issue has been the investors in that program, all retail investors that finance it and fund it and get the returns, one of the benefits to their investment was they wanted to offset their own personal carbon footprint. So if we were then, while it would be legal for us to aggregate these and sell carbon credits, it wouldn't be ethical. I mean, that's the proverbial double counting of credits, which is a problem in the industry right now. And so, I mean, the people that invested in that program wanted to retire the credits with their, or that carbon credit with their investment. So I think it's going to be a growing practice, especially in areas where there's a price on carbon in Europe. I think you're seeing more and more projects related to that and smaller farms aggregated together. In the United States, it looks to me like it's a ways away. By diversity, I don't know, David may know more, Caleb may know more, but I definitely don't see a pathway there. I mean, I'd have to guess as soon as we're able to value it, we'll find a way to be able to create a market for it. But I think I don't see that pathway right now on how to get there. And David spoke some interesting comments earlier about the progression of biodiversity credits. It is a wild, wild west. And the key benefit for small farmers right now is like Caleb said, is not only to feel good about what they're doing, but to see the benefit in the returns and the sustainability and resilience of their property by changing practices. I may not be able to monetize that yet, but it definitely shows up in the bottom line in those other areas once they make the switch. Okay, I'm going to get one more audience question in here. This one's from Dare Brady. And this is for everybody. I'd be curious to hear from each of you. How do you measure impact? What is the metric you look at to know if you're succeeding? And Caleb, I'm going to put you on the spot and ask for you to start. Yeah, I don't think there's one metric for all of this, but there's a couple of key ones that we look at. We look at our soil health as measured by the abundance of life, diversity and quantity of soil biological activity, because that is one thing that has massive positive impacts on the rest of the project. We look at profitability, because that's a key to keeping projects running over the long term. They can maintain profitability, that of a conventional system and greater. And we also look at, this one's a little bit harder, but we look at how this project is received and perceived within the community and the benefits that it is bringing. If you are bringing benefits to the community, then the community supports the project. If you are not bringing benefits to the community, then the community looks for ways to take advantage of the project or to get rid of the project. Okay, Doug, what about you? What are your metrics of success? Yeah, so I will say regarding La Cabana right now, we haven't chosen the metrics yet, because we decided together we're going to do a pretty massive baseline survey as we take control of the property in the next month or two and base the metrics that we're going to target on that. But I'd echo a couple things that Caleb said. First of all, it all starts with soil health. If you don't have healthy soil, it's going to be almost impossible to drive other positive metrics on that site, especially that are sustainable in the long term. So that's one thing I'd say. The second thing, and I think it's one of the things that bonded the three of us together is the commitment to a social side of things is that we also looked at it like we don't have a sustainable project unless we're making a positive impact socially. And I don't just mean the good paying jobs part, but educating and regenerative techniques, access to education and health care, performance bonuses. So you have families that are actually able to build some wealth as opposed to just live check to check to check. And to be a real positive impact on the community as a whole. And that's not just right now, but then it's also, ethic is the key financial partner deciding how they want the next 100 years to be and how that impacts the community is a big part of that choice and that decision, not just the environmental impact of, okay, this is a 100 year carbon project, but you can take that in many different ways. And so we really, one of the things I think we all look forward to is the robust publication of data that is going to be going on along the way that we'll be learning from, not just delivering results, but actually learning from making tweaks and mid-course corrections and improvements and all along the way. Yeah. I just add, we're working on a North Star metric that encapsulates all the complexity that we're talking about across carbon and soil and water and biodiversity and community health. It's boiling all that up into a simple roll-up metric, even if someone would have a bone to pick with the weightings of any individual component of that calculation. It helps to make what we're doing, but we at Ethic and what all of us are doing on this project a lot more relatable. Like we're aiming to drive this number up, which represents a lot of smaller numbers that we all agree to be important. And so we are in the workshop on that actively. We're talking to a few university and technology partners on how we would, yeah anyway, the right tools and observations that would contribute to that calculation. Okay. I want to give you each a minute to sort of close us out. And the question I would ask for you to close us on is if you could wave a wand and make something happen this year to unlock more projects like Lacobanya, what would you make happen? And Doug, maybe you can start. Well, you know, I run into, and I think it's one of the things we'd love to continue to spread out there. I run into all the time, and I don't know if David would echo this. There's not enough great projects out there for the money that's available. So yes, there are definitely some learning on the finance side, but I'd love to see more people in their own way, in their own lane, in their own products really embrace more innovative, complex methods of taking care of the landscape and having productive projects as we go. And you know, that's our goal is to really to grow that whole, help grow that whole movement and hopefully, help shine a light on a pathway on how we get there. Okay. Caleb, what would you make happen? That's such a good question, hard to answer. But I think that I would wave my magic wand and and change everybody's mindset about these types of projects, specifically the mindset that this type of agriculture and forestry is concessionary, because it's not. It is not concessionary. It is the better way to do agriculture and forestry environmentally, socially, and economically. And so I think I'd put that in people's mind if I had the magic wand. Okay. And David, I'll give you the last word. What would you do? Well, Doug reminded me of this old saying where if there's one lawyer in town, they go broke. If there's two lawyers in town, they break even. And if there's three lawyers in town, they make a killing. And what that says to me here is supply can be get demand. If there's greater supply of high quality projects, then more investor demand will come off the sidelines. And yeah, I just echo what Doug said. But if I could wave a magic wand, it would be every big investor that constitutes that $100 trillion in the chart with all the dots I showed about a half an hour ago, everyone would understand the systemic risks that they're facing by not investing with a nature positive lens and reducing extractive and nature negative exposures and the rest of their portfolio. It's like they need to allocate some portion of their assets to this type of work. And they need to strip all the negative out of the rest of the 98, 99% of their portfolio as well. So I think it's just kind of what Caleb said, wave a magic wand and have them all wake up and realize the cost of an action. All right. Thank you all. This has been an absolute pleasure.