 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, and the beginning of the agricultural revolution, Earth housed six trillion trees. Today we have just three trillion left. At the same time in the last few years, we've seen a growing number of companies interested in investing in forests. Today we're going to be asking the question, what is the business case? Given the size of the challenge, what should we be mindful of as we seek to scale? Thank you for joining this version of the Sustainable Development Impact Summit session, focused on investing in forests co-designed with MasterCard. I'm delighted to welcome Minister Lozano and our esteemed speakers on the panel and for our discussion afterwards. We'd like to make sure that this is an interactive conversation, and so you'll be able to join the conversation through our application slider. Please feel free to either scan the QR code or to go to the session to the link itself and to ask your question. Please be specific regarding the speaker that you'd like to ask your question to and note that you're able to upvote the questions that you'd like to hear a response from our speakers. In the second half of the session, for all those who are dialed in via top link, we'll have some breakout groups and some instructions are being posted in the chat at the moment. In the studio with me today, I'd like to welcome Nicole Schwab, our co-director of the forum's new platform for accelerating nature-based solutions. Nicole, what is the forum doing to stimulate corporate investment and collaboration on forests? Thank you, Jill. Welcome to our participants and guests. In January this year in Davos, we launched 1T.org, the forum's trillion trees platform in collaboration with Salesforce, to serve the global community in our collective effort to conserve, restore, and grow a trillion trees over the next decade. This effort comes at a critical moment as the UN is about to launch the UN decade for ecosystem restoration, recognizing the severe risks caused by nature loss and the need to act now. And it is therefore with great pleasure that we have been able to launch this platform. And one of the core components is to raise private sector ambition and engagement and to offer a space where companies can come together and share best practices but also access the latest standards and tools for what makes credible commitments and what are the best pathways for science-based implementation of such commitments towards forest conservation and restoration. A few weeks ago, we launched the US chapter of 1T.org in collaboration with American forests. And on that launch already, we had 855 million trees pledged to be conserved or restored. This is the beginning of what we hope will be a journey towards trillion trees and is a testament of what is possible, but most of all, what is needed. Thanks, Nicole. What does the forum aim to achieve with this new platform that has been launched? So as we are facing this dual crisis of climate change, but also nature loss and rapid degradation of our ecosystems with severe consequences for our livelihoods and economies, nature-based solutions offer a critical pathway and strategy to address these challenges. And that's why in addition to 1T.org with this platform, the World Economic Forum seeks to raise attention and awareness on action on nature-based solutions, make sure that we not only look at conservation and restoration of our forests, but also how we can halt commodity-driven deforestation with the Tropical Forest Alliance, work on how to ensure that carbon finance delivers nature-positive outcomes and then establish the roadmaps for industry transitions from what today are mostly nature-depleting economies to a situation where we can build and establish nature-positive economies and regenerate our ecosystems. So that's really our vision. And that's how 1T.org fits into this broader picture of engaging the private sector and other stakeholders in transitioning us towards a nature-positive economy. Thanks very much, Nicole. We're going to move to the panel section of this conversation. Peter Menang, fantastic to have you here with us. You're the principal scientist from the World Agroforestry Center based in Nairobi. And I'd love to hear, in your view, what is driving this increased company interest in investing in forests? Thanks, Jill. Thanks, everyone. Good afternoon, good morning, good evening to everyone. I'm glad to be here just to share my thoughts with you in terms of our experience working with companies. A number of things come to mind when we look at growing interest from companies. I think the first one, which looks maybe a bit obvious, is the fact that companies are looking at very reliable and sustainable value chains, supply chains for the material that they require, whether it is direct or indirect. A lot of companies are more interested in this sphere, partly because of that. And you would see that, especially those in the renewable sector that I'm part of, looking at oil palm and its contribution to the sector, the sustainability of that supply chain is extremely important. And looking at something like cocoa coming from West Africa, which comes at a huge cost to the environment in Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire, is a very good example. Cosmetic companies, as you would see now, getting share of butter from the Sahel countries are also facing difficulties because that ecosystem is highly degrading and the trees are only naturally occurring. So in the future, if something isn't done to maintain the ecosystems, then we wouldn't have any raw material. But I think a lot of other companies are coming into this because of the increasing potential of forest and the contributions of forest to climate change. 15% of greenhouse gases come from deforestation and forest degradation, but also from agricultural lands that are highly linked to the supply and value chains of many companies. 50% of annual GDP is impacted by forest degradation and degradation of tree-based systems. So if that impacts the GDP, obviously the entire value chain of the companies and the systems, the economies are impacted. But I think a third dimension to this is really looking at the core benefits of investing in forest, really looking at climate change solutions, big innovations in terms of medicine, looking at provenances from forest, but also looking at maintaining tree-based systems for carbon capture and storage, for example, is a huge one. You would see I work in the area of agroforestry and currently we have 1 billion hectares of agroforestry land around the world. This is agroforestry meaning areas from lands or landscapes where you have more than 10% tree cover in the systems. These 1 billion hectares are actually at the moment holding 20 years of continuous deforestation emissions from going up in the skies. So if we get more agroforestry systems in the landscapes, then we are virtually holding up a lot more carbon and making the world green and providing more ecosystem services. Water that is a service that many companies use. We worked a lot with breweries in cities where we work on water systems and ecosystem services. But I think the one last point I think is looking at the whole value web that the companies are involved with because no one company can do this. So I think a forum like this is extremely important where there are interactions and looking at how the companies come together. But because these are complex problems, the value chains are highly linked, they are non-linear. So we do need these kinds of platforms to be able to deliver on the ambitions that we all share, whether it's the private sector research or for a better environment. Thank you. Thanks very much, Peter. You mentioned carbon capture, you mentioned supply chains, you spoke about innovation and food security, all good reasons to invest in forests. Let's hear a little bit from the companies. Christina Kloberdans, you're the Chief Sustainability Officer at Mastercard. Your priceless planet coalition is restoring 100 million hectares of trees, 100 million trees, apologies. What propelled Mastercard to invest in this space? Hi, thanks so much, Jill. If you think about Mastercard and the business that we're in, we're a payments company. And for the last, well, five years ago, we set a target to move 500 million people into the formal economy. We did that this year and we actually increased that in additional 500 million, so a billion people. That's the same population that is the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And so for Mastercard, by investing in nature, we're able to address both and bring benefits to climate, community and biodiversity. If you think about Mastercard, our own environmental footprint is not that significant. We're a payments company, but we have the opportunity for real change when we engage our network. And if you think about our business model, you issue cards through the issuers and the banks and consumers use those cards with merchants and retailers and we have a reach of nearly 3 billion cardholders. So the role that we can play by engaging those consumers is we launched our priceless planet coalition earlier this year. And the coalition, as you mentioned, along with our partners has committed to regrow 100 million trees over the next five years. And with the expertise of organizations like Conservation International and WRI, we've created a global effort that is focused on projects that will drive the greatest global benefit and benefits to climate, community and biodiversity. But as was mentioned just previously, we know it's bigger than any one of us and it's gonna take all of us. It's gonna take government, it's gonna take business, it's gonna take consumers to work together urgently to address the challenges that we face for both people and the planet. And that's what priceless planet coalition is all about. And I'm happy to answer more questions throughout the session and look forward to speaking with people during the breakout as well. Super, thank you very much, Christina. Kathleen McLaughlin, you are Walmart's chief sustainability officer and the president of Walmart's foundation. And yesterday Walmart came out with a big announcement talking about becoming a regenerative company with zero emissions by 2040 and a commitment to protect, manage and restore 20 million hectares of land. Why this, why now? Yes, that's right. Well, we've been working on sustainability for over 15 years now at Walmart, social sustainability, environment sustainability, working on climate, waste, nature, human rights, economic opportunity. But this week we did elevate our ambition in a couple of areas. First, with respect to climate, we have taken our science-based targets, which we set a few years ago, I think we were the first retailer to set science-based targets for climate. And we've elevated our ambition to get to zero emissions in scope one and two without the use of offsets by 2040. So that's across our 27 countries, 10,000 stores, our transportation network, including long haul, transportation fleet and so on. And so that's part of it. Second, we're recommitting and doubling down on Project Gigaton, which is our effort in scope three to transform product supply chains. And that includes forest products, as well as products that come from oceans and are sourced back to agricultural lands, to grasslands, to decarbonize those supply chains. Our target is a billion metric tons by 2030 working with suppliers across those supply chains. And then third, and perhaps most relevant for this conversation, we set a target for nature. We're committing to conserve, restore and better manage 50 million acres of land, including forests, and a million square miles of ocean. And these are landscapes that are critical for the production of food and other consumer products. So we're going to be working with our suppliers through business initiatives, as well as philanthropy to do that. And so it'll be a combination of improving standards for sourcing, working at landscape level in jurisdiction projects with people to change the way landscapes get managed and also making investments in enabling factors, things like traceability or transparency tools, capacity to organize these kinds of initiatives. So that's what we're committing to do and really ultimately our goal is to change the way that consumer products and retail as an industry work. We want to work in harmony with nature for the benefit of people. And it's what we mean by talking about becoming a regenerative company. We'd like the whole industry to take a regenerative approach. Thanks very much, Kathleen. Very inspiring to see the work that you're doing and to see the way in which Walmart is breaking new boundaries in this domain. Ralph Fitzner, you are the global lead on sustainability for the Volkswagen group. Thank you very much for joining us here today. Volkswagen's put a very big focus on conservation in your work related to forests. And I'd like to understand why that made good business sense for you. Yeah, thank you, Jill. Good evening, good morning. Good afternoon to everyone. Let me put that commitment on conservation also into context because a bit other than, let's say financial services companies such as MasterCard, the carbon footprint of Volkswagen really matters, especially if you take scope one, two and three into account. Because if you sum up basically 10 to 11 million cars a year over the life cycle, you end up at approximately 1% of global carbon emissions. So whatever we do in terms of decarbonization, it really matters. And so our key aim overall is to become carbon neutral by 2050. And we also set interim targets first for 2025, reducing the carbon footprint of our life cycle of the passenger cars by 30% versus 2015. This also includes a certain amount of CO2 compensation. And we furthermore just have released today the approval of our science-based targets. So we're happy to announce this basically first time to the public that we got that approval as well for well below two degrees pathway. And what's important to us in also having the diesel scandal and as a background, credibility matters. And it's absolutely essential for us to be credible in everything what we do. And therefore we define the hierarchy of reduction measures. So starting first with reducing emissions by improving energy efficiency and manufacturing, for example, same as within our supply chain. Second, then rolling out renewable energies. And thirdly, this is basically the last but not least measure, compensate a certain amount of non-avoidable carbon emissions. And in this context, we also just launched the ID3 as a first carbon neutral car handed over to the customer powered by green electricity and manufacturing also from our battery manufacturers. But we believe it's important for our customers that there are really opportunities and options for carbon-free or carbon neutral individual mobility. Therefore we hand this over to our customers and here comes the conversation into play, the conservation of forests because first thing is, I mean, it's significant in size, what we have to do and what we have in our plan. We also love planting trees and have a lot of corporate citizenship activities and plan that I think two and a half million trees over the last years in different areas of the world. So that's happening as well. But for the decarbonization program, one important cornerstone is to scale and to create an impact. And therefore we believe forest conservation of endangered forest, protecting biodiversity in natural heritage is the effective and efficient way. And therefore we have a strong focus on these types of projects. Thanks very much, Ralph. I'd like to go back to Kathleen because it's really interesting that you have both a business hat within Walmart as well as a philanthropic hat. And I'd really love to understand what in your view is the business case for investing in forests and how did you make that case to Walmart within the business? Well, what's become clear through the work of many scientists and others is what is happening on our planet with respect to climate and ecosystems. And it's clear that as a society, we are now exceeding the boundaries of the planet. So from a very basic perspective, as a company that sells food, that sells apparel made out of cotton and other things, we won't have supply of commodities to sell to our customers. And perhaps more importantly, the communities that all of us live in are at risk. So whether we're talking about associates at Walmart or our customers around the world in all of these communities, obviously the prosperity of nature is the prosperity of humankind. So business case is pretty clear. And so for us, the reason that we pursue these things through business and philanthropy is what we're talking about is massive transformation of societal systems. So we just heard Ralph talk about transportation, we heard Christina talk about financial services and so on, well, same thing in retail and consumer goods, the kinds of things that we bring into our homes to eat or to wear or to decorate our homes. Changing the way all of that gets produced is a massive systemic undertaking that will take business action. It'll take philanthropy. It's going to take government action. We have to rewire the practices, policies, resource flows, tools, technologies, mindsets that are at work in all of these systems. So yes, it's critical for business, but it's critical for all sectors of society to collaborate. Thanks, Kathleen. And this takes me to my next question. I'm going to go to Christina on this one. We spoke a little bit about the business case. And as you mentioned, Kathleen, it's not just about one business taking action in one location or in one value chain, but we really need systemic action across all industries and within all industries. So Christina, I'd love to hear from your perspective what support do you feel is needed for this industry-wide effort? Yeah, thanks, Jill. And it's interesting with Kathleen and with Rolf. I was shaking my head at everything that they were saying because we come from different sectors, but we're all after the same thing. We may be doing it in slightly different ways. But as I've said, it takes all of us. And so I think it's interesting at MasterCard, as I mentioned, we're using our business model with our different partners. And so we are working with them to activate so that it's not just a donation or philanthropic, but it's actually part of their business model of how they reach their consumers as well. And if you think about actually adding consumers into this as well, and consumers, we know they care, and if we can actually help inform and inspire and enable them to take action themselves against their own carbon footprint, we really have a chance at a movement. And so as you mentioned, Jill, we're private sector companies and we know our business, but we're not the experts in reforestation. We learn and we're gonna learn from each other. Bar from each other, we're gonna partner with each other. But we also need opportunities to learn and to continue to grow with this space because it is continuing to evolve. And so that's one of the things that working with the 1T.org and the Corporate Alliance, that we've had the opportunity to have expertise engage with us and actually learn from other companies that might be one step ahead and are beginning to pilot certain things. So it's gonna take us all, but if we can all get behind this, then we have a chance at actually reaching scale and real impact. Super, thank you, Christina, for that. Interestingly, in consulting with the companies, one of the issues that was raised very prominently was credibility and Ralph, you mentioned that credibility is key to Volkswagen and the way in which you're implementing your programs given some of your history. How do you help to ensure that your programs are credible? And by that, I mean not just impact this year or next year, but in a decade from now, in a century from now, how do we make sure that the trees are still standing and the rivers are flowing? It's a great question, Joe, thank you for that one. So again, I think we have to differentiate between two parts. One thing is corporate citizenship, CSR activities where we often do have projects which are close to company sites where we engage our employees. And basically, since it's close to sites where we planted, meanwhile, two and a half million trees, those projects are, let's say, adopted by our employees and there is also a close monitoring by the people who engage in this. So that's basically the credibility side that people nearby take care of this. The other one, if we're talking about this one million hectares which is really massive at scale, then we have decided in our decarbonization and compensation strategy that we will only go with a higher standard. So either the gold standard or the VCS plus community and biodiversity standard in terms of certification. And that's one thing which helps us to get a certain level of credibility. The other thing is that we also carefully choose our partners whom we work with. And going forward, we also intend to really set up our own project. So it goes way beyond simply, let's say buying some rep plus credit somewhere on the market and then you post on your website, we've compensated something, but we're really going deeper into that. We've selected the countries which we are working with where we have a footprint, where we have operations. So that also these projects despite they will be most likely in the tropical area which are the most productive ones, they are again closely tied to our business in that country. Thank you Ralph for that. And turning to the grassroots, as you talk about what it actually takes to have impact on the ground, I'd like to turn to Peter and understand from your perspective, how is the business case being made on the ground in communities that are interested in reforestation? What does it really take on the ground to ensure that this impact is sustained? A couple of things, thanks. Really interesting question, a couple of things. I think the first point I think is really to make sure that the whole reforestation, restoration, forest investments are linked to local jobs, working with ecopreneurs, local businesses. So making sure that the whole small and medium size enterprises link to sustainable forest management, sustainable tree planting is a big part of the business because without that, there is no commitment. I think a second thing is to really make sure that we are not only investing in the trees because if you look at the history, we've planted so many more trees that we wouldn't be at the point of planting trees anymore if we were only looking at what we've done so far. But going beyond tree planting to tree growing where the trees are actually meant to survive and managed in the ground is extremely important. And that means you have to design incentive systems that go with those, that make sure that the trees are managed long term and that the ecosystem services that are desired by diversity are actually followed through because it's not a day's process, right? It's a long, long term process in many places. So that incentive system needs to be there. And that means in many cases where we have experiences across Africa, Latin America and Asia, there is a big missing middle problem that needs to be addressed. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you have on the one hand, the companies and the investors with the goodwill up there and you have the ground where the people can work but that middle level capacity at local level that understands the local dynamics, especially the tenure issues that relate to trees because land ownership, tree ownership is a big issue. And if you don't have people who understand that working with you and having the capacity to follow through then that doesn't really work. I'll stop there. But those are sort of like really some key and major things that would enable things happen on the ground. Thanks, Peter. Very interesting to hear your remarks there. And this takes us then naturally to our next question and some questions that we are already being asked through Slider related to some of the criticisms that we've seen on tree planting initiatives. And I'd like to turn to Nicole for this one. On the one hand, critics are saying, companies should be focused purely on emissions abatement. That's where the attention is needed now. On the other hand, they say, this is not so easy to do. You can get it wrong with plantations, exotic species. How would you respond to some of those criticisms? Thank you, Jill. I think what's very important is that we get away from this either or mentality because it's really not helpful. It's absolutely clear that we need to decarbonize our economies. And it's also very clear that we need to protect the ecosystems that are still intact, our old growth forests, and we need to restore the graded ecosystems. So it's not an either or. It's a both and both for climate reasons and for biodiversity reasons. So that's the first point. Second, as Peter just made very clear, it's not just about planting. So of course, the criticisms around, just planting trees are valid. It's about making sure that these trees are nurtured and have the capacity to grow until maturity. So that's the second point, I would say. And finally, of course, it's not about any tree anywhere. It's about the right tree species in the right place, in the right context. It is complex, but there are sufficient examples that show us that it's possible. And as we've heard from the three companies here on the panel, it is a both and approach. And I think we also need to stay away from this simplicity and embrace the complexity and see the solutions that show that it is possible. Thanks very much, Nicole. Appreciate that. So I'd like to just close out this piece of the panel by asking each panelist one question, which is what has been your greatest learning in implementing your initiatives to date? And then we'll turn to Slido and get some questions from the audience. So perhaps first we'll kick it off with Christina from Mastacod. Sure, thanks so much, Jill. I'd say there are a lot of learnings. I would say one of the biggest learnings is don't wait to start until you have it figured out. Start and set a big goal and then you learn. I think it's also one of the things that I've found is that people, when you talk about the criticisms, people typically think of nature as the victim and not necessarily the solution. And so one of the things we're hoping is that through the Priceless Planet Coalition and demonstrating restoration at scale, that we can hopefully change that and that nature is seen as the solution and therefore more investment will in turn come. But Nicole just hit on it and also learning that it's not about planting a tree, it's about regrowing forests. And so with that, it's science matters. It science matters. And it's gonna be really important that there's transparency in investments as well as impacts. And if we have that, then I think we have a solid chance. But yeah, I guess the biggest learning to sum it all up is to get started because there's no time. There's no time to stop and wait. We need to go. Thanks very much, Christina. Can I turn to Ralph to give your response to the question of your greatest learning in the process of implementing your programs? Yeah, happy to do so. And I would slightly like to rephrase what we just heard in terms of start and learn because I'm fully with you if it comes to basically planting trees in areas where you have access and where you already know what's going on in the context. But the other thing I would like to mention here, and this is also one of our learnings, the situation, especially if you want to protect forest at scale, it's quite complex. And you have to be mindful to think before you act and not to do things without knowing the circumstances, knowing who owns the land, who has ownership rights, especially if you go to tropical areas, you don't have these typical recordings like in Western European countries in terms of land ownership. So you have to do a very careful due diligence. You have to do the stakeholder involvement on the ground. Otherwise you would easily run into risks of violating principles of indigenous people of running into reputation issues. So that's why we also have chosen to partner with an experienced project developer because otherwise, if you are too fast and on the other hand, I'm fully with you that we have to act fast, you have to be mindful about the risks. And this is one of our learnings. Hey Jill, can I jump back in really quickly? Absolutely. Okay, good, Rah, I totally agree with you in the sense that I say act, but not blindly. You have to act with, and that's why partnering, I think, with credible organizations that have the experience, that have the credibility and the reputation and the science-based approach, I mean, as a business, learn from those organizations. By all means, yeah, don't just, don't just run. How should I run with you? Without anyone in the seat with you, partner and learn from them, exactly. It's an interesting balance between making ambitious commitments and then actually implementing them. And it requires perhaps a bit of both. Kathleen, unto you, what has been your greatest learning in your position in this process, particularly focused on forests? Well, first of all, apologies if there's background noise. This is the joy of live recording. My neighbor has geared up the power tools. Not sure what he's doing. I hope he's not cutting down a tree, but it's a bit of noise here. For us, I would say it's to challenge this mentality of trade-offer either or, and look for the natural overlaps between, if you're a business, between business and addressing nature. And that's the place to work is that intersection. We are all on this one planet together and the linkages between economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, social justice have never been more profound. So working at that intersection and then translating the nature goals into practical actions that a business can take in concert with civil society, governments, local communities and so on and applying the same innovation approaches, problem solving that you would bring to any kind of complex scientific problem or business problem to figure that out. That's how we're able to make progress. Thanks very much. Finally to Peter, any thoughts from your end, particularly on something that you've learned in the process of working on forests? I think a key phrase for me would be to embrace complexity and deal with it, because there's no way it's not a simple problem. It's very complex and it does need many hands on deck and many brains thinking differently. So that's really and applying some evidence-based approaches. Thanks Peter. Peter, I'd like to stay with you for a moment because we have a question from the audience here about how can we incentivize tree planting? What's the case that can be made here? And any thoughts that you have on that? We've been working on a number of incentives. So there's a suite of incentives that we do apply. Of course there's financial incentives, but there's also, at the same time, you apply financial incentives, more policy incentives, but you do have to come in with some rules as well and be able to apply these incentives as well. So we do normally talk about the carrots, the sticks and the sermons, the carrots being the incentives that push people, motivate people to do it, the sticks being punishment in terms of violations of forest policies, infringements, wrongful clearance, and then sermons being more the educational parts of the story. So there's a suite under each of these three categories that we do apply and we have a lot of experience on how it works in different places and in different contexts. Thanks very much, Peter. There's a question here from Nicole. What's the formula to take this to the top of government and private sector agendas? Well, I think that this type of panel, like we are having right now, is a way of showcasing what is possible, what some companies have already been demonstrating which does show leadership coming from the top level of these companies. And when it comes to the public sector, we will be hearing in the closing from Minister Lozano of Columbia, the president of Columbia also supported the launch of 1T.org and we really see this very much as a public-private partnership. I mean, obviously multi-stakeholder, but the way we are working with 1T.org is from the beginning to engage the private sector at the highest level and the governments so that this effort can really bring all the different parties along as we've heard from some of our panelists that this is really what is needed. Thanks, Nicole. We have a question here about related to the issue of incentives which asks what about incentives to locals to stimulate natural regeneration? That's much better than planting trees. I'd like to take that question to Peter, given your work on the ground. What's your view in terms of stimulating and aligning the incentives with local communities? Oh, absolutely. That's really, really key in almost all of the experiences we have. A lot of the times, some of the incentives will be building on local knowledge using local technologies, using local systems, but also getting them to manage it themselves and actually get the benefits because we have billions of people that depend directly on forest and if you get them to directly benefit from it, it's much, much, much bigger. Sometimes there are financial incentives but there is a risk with that that it tends to crowd out other motivational incentives that are more intrinsic. So you do need to look at the context carefully but local incentives are really, really the best way to go in most contexts. Thank you. A question here for Kathleen. How did you determine the size of your commitment and how big is big enough? Yeah, so we worked with Conservation International to take our supply chains that link back to natural ecosystems. So mostly food commodities caught in as well and we took our major commodities and then just mapped it back to understand what are the landscapes based on scientists' best estimates of typical yields in those regions, translating into products that our customers are using around the world. And we're in 27 countries, we have 270 million or so customers each week that rely on us for their food, for their families. So doing the math on that works out to about 50 million acres of land and a million square miles of ocean. It's largely Western Pacific, fisheries and Cantuna is the main thing for us. So we mapped it back and that's our starting point. It's a starting point, it's a rough estimate, it's hard to get the exact number but we thought, well, let's start with that. And then the notion is to work with suppliers and with others, the NGOs that we work closely with, local communities through a combination of place-based projects, but also things like improving standards and certifications, trying to progress towards segregated commodities, much better transparency and traceability tools, building on some investments we've already made over the years in things like global forest watch or other tools. And as I was saying before, it's really partnership and it's total ecosystem transformation that's gonna be needed for every one of these chains. How much is enough really for all of us as a society? It's the planet, you know, what folks like WWF and others have been saying is, we need to restore nature back if we're at about 30% nature coverage. Now we need to freeze any further loss and move it back up toward 50. You know, that's what we're hearing. So, and that's gonna take a collective effort from everyone. Thanks, Kathleen. There's a second question, which I think is best placed for you to answer as well related to suppliers. The question is, how receptive are your suppliers to your focus on forests and what convinced them to engage in this agenda in a greater way? Suppliers are very receptive. We have 2,300 supplier companies. So these are consumer companies across all categories already engaged in Project Gigaton. So they've signed up and they're working on meaningful initiatives to decarbonize their supply chains. And this is just an extension of that. What they tell us is they're hearing from their own customers, their own employees, their own communities about the urgency that we face both with respect to climate and natural ecosystems. And so it's in their interests for their own stakeholders to pursue this. They say that they actually appreciate having a customer like us ask them to participate because it gives them a reason to turn within their own leadership teams and say, listen, Walmart's asking us to do this. How about we join in? Gives them a reason if there isn't alignment about pursuing this to do it and also support on building out capabilities. So we work with NGOs, we work with suppliers to help people who might need support to figure out what to do to go faster on some of these things and connect the dots. And I have to say the suppliers, many companies are in the lead on this already. There are a number of folks. You can look at Denon, Unilever, for example, Mars, a number of companies are already out there at the forefront doing really creative work around nature. And so there's already an ecosystem building. One planet business for biodiversity is another example of a consortium of consumer companies that have started down this path. And we hope just to bring everybody along to make it accessible for all companies, regardless of what size you are to just build this into how you do business. Thanks very much. A question for Peter Manang here, likely from one of our young audience members, likely a global shaper. They ask, how can grassroots organizations, including global shapers, help companies and NGOs reach their objectives faster? Yeah, I mean, local organizations are really what I was calling the missing middle because we do need a critical mass of this group of people who understand the local complexities, who understand the tenure dynamics on the ground, who can sort of manage the incentive schemes at the local level, who can actually be sort of middle people in terms of conveying more complex knowledge to the local level work on trainings. That's our experience in terms of looking at how local organizations and young institutions can do this. But there is a lot of capacity building that is required and there is some homework to do that we do need to together build on to enable them to do that. But there is a lot of scope and we can actually further develop that. Thanks very much, Peter. Final question, and I'm going to pose this to Ralph. How do you decide where in the world to invest and how do you find your partners? Well, one thing I mentioned earlier on and Volkswagen has basically 120 manufacturing side or 120 through three all across the world, 660,000 people working for us. So it's a quite significant amount of people. So one criterion is wherever we do projects in terms of forest conservation or tree planting activities, there has to be a link also to Volkswagen production or Volkswagen business in that country, which is not too difficult with 123 sites and being all across the world. In terms of scaling and creating an impact or creating a bang for the buck, we also said, let's focus on tropical forests because basically they're more productive. So in terms of storing CO2, the impact is much higher. And also if we look for example at countries such as Brazil, I mean the deforestation is the biggest danger there and wherever we can contribute to stopping deforestation and forest restoration, I think this is the most urgent topic. So that's why we currently focus on tropical countries. Thanks very much, Ralph. I'd like to thank all panelists for your really fascinating discussion. We are now going to come to the end of the first phase of the session. If you've joined by top link, please just give us a moment. If you're a part of our webcast audience, thank you very much for your time. If you'd like to collaborate with us, please go to 1T.org or if you're based in the US, US.1T.org.