 I'd like to welcome Nicole Schwab to our session on Financing Earth's Future Forests. Nicole is the co-head of the platform for accelerating nature-based solutions at the World Economic Forum. Nicole it's been quite a year on the forest agenda and the trillion tree movement that we saw in the film referred to just now is really gaining momentum. What can we expect from companies in terms of their response? Thank you Jill. I think momentum is the key word. Since we opened our global pledge process just a few months ago we've seen a lot of interest and more importantly we've seen that interest translated into commitments and into action on the ground. And so today we're very excited to be announcing the first 24 companies who have made a global pledge through 1T.org to conserve, restore and grow over 2.5 billion trees in over 50 countries. And these pledges cover different types of restoration and reforestation programs but also conservation of tropical forests either through direct initiatives or also through new financial instruments like LEAF for example. In addition the pledges also include some supportive measures because we know that a lot is required in order to really grow forests. And the other thing which I'm very excited to announce today is that given the growing interest of blue carbon and the importance of coastlines and the role that mangroves can play on biodiversity, on climate but also in terms of resilience and livelihoods we're also launching a mangroves working group in partnership with the Friends of Ocean Action as a place to raise ambition and action for mangroves to focus on the blue carbon market and to bring in expertise on best practice in mangrove restoration. So these are two very exciting announcements that we have today. Thanks very much Nicole. I want to dive in a little bit into the detail on what requirements 1T.org has to help ensure that company commitments are credible and deliver their results for nature, climate and livelihoods. Yes, thank you Jill. That's obviously key and we have three, there are three elements to this credibility. First as a prerequisite for companies to make a pledge to 1T.org we ask that the company also has a Paris-aligned climate commitment such as a science-based target or a net zero goal by or before 2050. So of course climate and nature go hand in hand so it's not only about making a pledge to 1T but also having this climate commitment that's the first point. Second we also ask companies and this is now visible on the 1T.org website for each of the pledges to describe how their pledge and how the activities that they plan to implement align with ecological and social responsibility. And so you can see the details and that's really an element that is absolutely key for this credibility that you mentioned. And then finally all the pledges will be monitored on a yearly basis. We've created a working group together with IUCN, with WRI, with Restore, TENTRY and others to look at the latest technological innovations, geospatial mapping capabilities, blockchain and see how these tools can be made available to companies to inform their decision making and help them track on their commitments. So with these three we feel that this we are you know in a very solid position to say that these commitments are credible and to support companies on this journey which is going to be more and more important as the role of the private sector is key to achieve the targets that we have on restoration on climate and on resilience. Thanks Nicole. Before we dive into the panel I'd like to ask our participants to take a quick poll. What you'll see in the chat at the moment is a link to Slido. We're asking you if you could just click on that link including our panelists and any discussion leaders and just answer the question and what we're asking is where would you position your organization's forest investment strategy today? Is it nascent, early stage ideation, mid stage execution or late stage scale? What this will do is it'll help inform us where we should place emphasis in our panel conversation. All right let's display the results. Okay excellent so we've got quite a few participants in the ideation stage looking at options. We've got some in the execution stage 25% and then scale is the smaller proportion nascent so very few companies have no internal discussions yet or just curious about the topic so that's good for us to keep in mind as we move forward. Okay all right so with that I think what we've seen is our audience poll shows that about 58% of the audience is curious about the topic or exploring options but haven't yet made a commitment to forests and I think with this group in mind I'd like to turn to Anirban who is Mahindra's chief sustainability officer welcome Anirban. We know that Mahindra made a very big decision 15 years ago to invest in forests through the Hariyali program where you grow one million trees that are new fruit trees every year and at the time it was really unprecedented. How did you come to this decision from Mahindra's perspective? Thank you for the question Jill. You know in India we've acknowledged the fact that deforestation has been a big problem not just for the world but certainly for the nation and when we were in school and college we used to discuss this all the time on the 60th anniversary of the organization we committed to plant a million trees a year to as a you know as a contribution towards our forestation and very quickly we learnt that social forestry was the way to go because it had many benefits beyond just planting the tree. Thanks Anirban. Great to hear a little bit more of that background from you so it sounds like that was primarily a corporate social responsibility investment is that still the case today? That's how it started over time we learnt that the carbon removals from the trees are very important for the climate solution we are looking to scale the plantation program but yes it started as CSR and we realise its impact on society and climate now. Interestingly that's an experience that we see from many of the companies that are working with the 1T.org corporate alliance a lot come in through the CSR approach and then recognise some of the other benefits carbon included. Perhaps I can go to you Pablo Machado the director of corporate relations and sustainability at Suzano welcome. Suzano is a company that's working on pulp and paper in Brazil as a part of 1T.org's pledges Suzano has committed to connect dispersed forests for biodiversity conservation in the Cerrado, the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon. Why does this commitment make good sustainability sense and also good business sense from your perspective? Hi Jill, thank you for the question it's a pleasure to be with you all today. I am super enthusiastic about this goal in particular because it combines three different things it combines business it combines shared value and collaboration. What we aim for with this goal is to connect 500,000 hectares of fragmented forest creating biodiverse corridors in three different biomes. Why does it make business sense? Because we combine planted forest with native forest in a new way of managing our forest along our supply chain. Second it delivers share value because we will restore degraded areas and it's done in a collaborative manner because we are doing that within our on land but also together with farmers and other third parties. So this is a project that will certainly engage many many different stakeholders all over the country. Excellent, thanks Pablo very interesting to hear that angle looking both at the sustainability but also what makes sense in terms of the forest that you grow as a company. I'd like to reach out now to Suzanne de Bianca the Chief Impact Officer at Salesforce. Salesforce has a commitment to conserve restore and grow a hundred million trees up until 2030 a very big commitment from your end and just in the context of Pablo's message related to the Amazon and some of these tropical areas. I'd like to dive in a little bit more to the LEAF initiative which seems to be a new form of innovative financing mechanism for tropical forests and particularly for conservation. Why did Salesforce go in that direction Suzanne? Hi, thank you. Congratulations to 1T.org on your exciting announcement this morning of 2.5 billion trees as part of your launch just fantastic work and thank you for having us here today. As it relates to the to the LEAF coalition specifically you know we know that tropical forests are critical and the role that they play in sustainable development and we see the unfortunate and consistent degradation of tropical forests all around the world and you know we know that we used to have you know six trillion trees on our planet before the onset of agriculture and are now down to three trillion trees so you know we know that we need to mobilize which the LEAF coalition is doing at least a billion dollars for large-scale tropical forest protection and sustainable development and really I think it's the kind of bold leadership and climate ambition that we're going to need to meet the Paris targets. We know tropical forests in particular are one of humanity's most important and valuable assets and we really need everyone to be part of the solution and so for Salesforce we really try to take a holistic approach to our conservation restoration and growing programs and really look all around the world and see what kind of financing mechanisms can come into play to to really make a difference and make an impact at scale. Thanks Azan. On the topic of your holistic approach I want to dive into another biome beyond tropical forests than mangroves. We've just launched the mangroves working group and Salesforce is an inaugural member. What's the rationale from your perspective of investing in mangroves? Again, another key component of the solution, ocean ecosystems also critical. We know the mangroves in some cases cluster up to five times more carbon than other kinds of trees. We know they're a critical food source for many communities and protection for ocean ecosystems with fish and storm protection also. So as we're thinking about climate justice and we have to think again about not only what's on land but what's in the water and how it's improving and supporting livelihoods. Thanks Suzanne. Great to get that perspective and see the holistic approach that companies are taking. As you mentioned a critical aspect and every biome, every location is different which requires a different kind of approach in terms of generating results. I want to dive into the 42% of our audience who mentioned that they're in the execution and scale phase and we know that it's not possible just to put a tree in the ground and leave it there and hope that it'll achieve maturity that there's quite a bit more that's needed there. Now Anurban, you mentioned the social side of responsibility in terms of your investments in India and we recognize that countries like India, like the Sahel, the livelihoods component is quite important. So what is it that in your view that you really feel propels that long-term survival rate of a tree? You know the survival rate of a tree depends critically on where you plant it and who's going to look after it. So in our initial years we did a lot of experiments and survival rates varied from something as low as 30% to something as high as 95%. And the key to the whole thing was where are you planting the tree and who's looking after it. And this is why we work with the indigenous people, tribals as they're called here in India and planted trees on their land and because they would look after the trees and we achieve survival rates in excess of 90% on their land now. There are so many other benefits they get from it because they've been coffee cultivators. At one time the coffee was not great quality but it was simple coffee but now because of all the effects of the fruit trees planted and the biodynamic farming practices that have been brought to them that coffee is now available in France and Australia and Ireland and various other countries of the world. So it's many experiences, one learning you must have people looking after the trees that you're planting and not just randomly plant them anywhere and hope that they will survive. It just doesn't happen. Thanks Sanaband for that. I want to turn it over to Pablo because I want to explore a little bit more this kind of quality question. It's really interesting to see that the coffee or that the idea of a crop being higher quality as a result of restoration in the surrounding agricultural area and I just want to understand from your perspective and Susanna's perspective do you see that synergy between the sustainability and the actual productivity of your plantations? Absolutely Jill and this is a very interesting feature of our business. We realize that having planted trees intertuned with native forest would make our our plantations be more productive and this is super important for a couple of different reasons. The first one is if we are more productive in our plantations this means that we need less land but this also means that we need less natural resources and that we emit less carbon for production. Second when we do what we call our mosaic plantation which is as I said a planted trees intertuned with native forest we enhance a lot biodiversity by creating great masses of forest where animals and habitants can take benefit of all that ecosystem and thirdly when we when we do that we also see improvement in terms of water availability so it's a super wing-wing type of game. One thing which is also very interesting is the carbon capturing. The more productive our forest is the more carbon it captures so we are already today climate positive also because of that we capture more carbon than we emit including scopes one two and three which is a great thing. Fascinating to see how wildlife corridors can help to propel the biodiversity but also result in bottom line improvements for for your businesses and I think this is going to be a topic of conversation for us going forward because the reality is that we need to make the case for both and while historically the CSR responsibility has been a driver we're seeing that actually the pie is growing and that there are more and more opportunities to invest for more different kinds of reasons so really interesting to dive into that a little bit more. I want to come back to a point that Anirban mentioned just about indigenous communities Pablo are you seeing in the Amazon and the Cerrado Atlantic forests you know what's that relationship with the indigenous communities and how do you help to nurture that? Yeah some of our mills are indeed close to indigenous communities and we we have a very good relationship with them in many different ways one thing which is very interesting is first of course they they have their own culture traditions and the way of exploring the land some of the tribes they also want to produce so one very important thing is opening the right dialogue with them and understanding better how we can interact just to give you an example in the state of Espíritu Santo in Brazil we have a partnership with an indigenous tribe whereby they they use a small portion of their land to produce eucalyptus and they sell these eucalyptus to us we help them produce this generates revenues to them at the same time we provide education to them so we build schools and hired and trained teachers so the ones who want to take let's say more formal and classical education they have they have access to that they have access to income generation at the same time that they also have all their traditions and their land fully respected so this is a reason of of problems to us. Thank you for that it does seem as though the long-term relationship with those who are on the ground irrespective of the geography is really critical as we're looking to to move forward and ensure that these trees are standing when they reach maturity so really good to see the ways in which this is being done in different geographies and for anyone who is still in the ideation phase and looking to invest i think that's something really to take away from this discussion Suzanne i'd like to come to you now just to look a little bit at what's happening later this week on saturday it looks as though we're going to have a 24 hour event live with with Global Citizen live and what can we expect from that what are the plans yeah thank you Jill i'm really thrilled to to announce that the Global Citizen has taken on our mantle of 1T.org as part of their events coming up so it's a live broadcast 24 hours six continents we have a number we'll have Dr. Jane Goodall joining us i'll have to give a shout out also to her she launched something this week called Trees for Jane this is a way for individuals to take action i would encourage everyone we're sending it out en masse to our employees as well it's a great way to sort of activate the individuals in your life and honor such an important person in this world so Global Citizen will be a great event Jill i'm i'm so glad that they've taken up the 1T.org mantle we have 50 companies that we've been able to mobilize that have made either Race to Zero or 1T.org commitments and they'll be featured also at the at the Global Citizen live event it'll be live somehow they're doing it in Central Park in New York City with over 70,000 people there in a hopefully very safe way so please join us in the live broadcast see if this is that and one thing i want to dive into a little bit more there is the relationship between the emissions and the climate agenda and the forest and nature agenda why are these too important to deal with simultaneously as Global Citizen Live is doing well i think it's a front of the hand back of the hand conversation Jill so you know representing the corporate sector we know we can't just talk about offsets we can't talk about kind of paying our way out of whatever you know we emit so we have to make bold goals around emission reductions we said here at Salesforce that we will our absolute emissions will come down by 50% to our 2019 baseline by 2030 we see many corporates making bold emission reduction targets at the same note we're a growth company we continue to acquire great companies like Slack which we did this year so you know we'll continue to grow our company knowing that we'll never be able to get down to you know exactly zero in our operations but we know that we have to offset what we what we do emit through high quality carbon projects trees are really critical in that strategy you know as our oceans for example what you what you mentioned clean cook stoves you know other other projects that there are to help us kind of keep in balance you know what we are both emitting and and how we're growing and this week at Dreamforce I'm here in San Francisco in a hotel it's been a long week here that we did we did a live in-person conference so my voice is a little scratchy at this point but fantastic week and you know we have we announced that Salesforce is a net zero now company so we accelerated both our commitment to emissions reductions and we pulled in our entire value chain and and and took it from 2030 to 2021 but in addition to that we also announced the acceleration of our trees commitment and so you had mentioned a hundred million trees we had pledged over a decade and we've accelerated that we're now at 42 million trees just in the first 18 months so that's almost halfway to our goal so we know we just as a as a sector as a planet we just know we have to accelerate on every angle. Well very inspiring to see how that is ramping up so quickly and also to see that the scale is actually possible and that is something that we've learned also I think from from the 1T.org community is that the issue is not capacity the capacity exists there are implementing partners ready and available to absorb these resources if they are invested and that they are able to do that in a in a thoughtful way which does have the potential for long-term results at the same time with the wildfires and all the destruction that we're seeing the opportunity continues to grow so very inspiring to see what Salesforce is doing on and building the the pipeline for for many other companies I think to to get involved perhaps as we wrap up this section of the discussion I just like to come to each of you to get a little bit of a sense if you are speaking to a company or someone within a company an employee who you know is at the beginning of the journey either you know looking at options or just starting to have initial discussions what advice would you have to them in terms of making the next right step in terms of your experience to date and and all that you've learned through the process perhaps I'll start with Pablo sure the first thing I would advise is pair your business strategy with your sustainability strategy because otherwise it it will not get scaled over time second listen to stakeholders the stakeholders tell what they expect and and they challenge us and these challenges are good for us to develop our our own strategy and third create the right tools within your organization make make your analysis of investments of growth also include the environmental dimension and that will certainly lead you to success thanks Pablo anaban so in addition to everything Pablo has said all of us know the problem set the right goals pick up the right solutions there's a lot of learning out there implement the solutions in the correct way so that impact happens and we are all able to deliver on the solutions to the problems that we have Suzanne yeah same and in addition to the to the wise words of Pablo and anaban I would say you know what is your superpower so our superpower is technology and we've been thinking a lot about how do we you know make this relevant in the climate conversation we built a product called sustainability cloud it's what we do it's what we know how to do it enables our customers to manage measure reduce their own carbon we'll have an exchange on there it will be its investor grade data we're hearing you know from our customers that they they they want to they they want to get going and they don't really know where to start so you know like Pablo said what is our business strategy you know our business strategy is all around customer relationship management carbon relationship management is how we're thinking about it in this context super thanks very much for that very exciting to hear technology thoughtful implementation ecological responsibility social responsibility and ultimately impact we're going to transition to the next piece of our discussion and and thank all of our speakers for the comments and an input that they've shared with us before we transition I just want to again in the chat there's a link the question we're asking you is what is one thing you took away from the discussion just now I invite all the panelists and participants to put your thoughts in there you have 25 characters if you need a little bit more you can enter multiple entries but here is an opportunity just to share what it is that you feel you've taken away