 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our briefing today about natural climate solutions, a win-win solution for our environment and economy. I'm Dan Bresset, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Next slide please. ESI was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental, energy, and climate change topics to policymakers. We've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customer. Next slide please. Our session today is the result of a new collaboration between EESI and U.S. Nature for Climate. U.S. Nature for Climate is a coalition of nine conservation, environmental, and sustainable business organizations that work to ensure our forests, farms, ranches, grasslands, and wetlands are part of our overall strategy to combat climate change. I hope you'll take a moment to visit them online at www.usnatureforclimate.org. When I say for, it's the number four, so U.S. Nature, the number four, climate.org. And learn about the science underpinning their work and read about natural solutions and action across the country that are helping avoid greenhouse gas emissions and enhance carbon sequestration in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. Thanks very much to our new friends at U.S. Nature Climate for the opportunity to work together today. You'll be joined in just a moment by four panelists who will help us understand the potential for natural climate solutions to help mitigate climate change and deliver new economic opportunities with lasting benefits for rural and urban communities. I will leave it to them to explain what natural climate solutions are. But I wanted to share some context from our perspective at EESI about how this fits into our congressional education programming. We recognize that climate change is a global problem that requires an urgent mobilization of every available tool at our disposal from every corner of the economy. Sure, energy efficiency, renewable energy, new ways of moving goods and providing services will deliver a lot of emissions reductions. But not all of the emissions reductions we need and not necessarily the ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon-free building and transportation technology will lead to many, many new jobs. But we need our entire workforce to evolve in an equitable way to meet the needs of the decarbonized clean energy economy. And that includes opportunities in rural areas, forested areas, and agricultural areas. So when we discussed cop-emitting sectors during our congressional climate camp series, we were sure to include agriculture. Just last Friday when we highlighted four climate mitigation adaptation win-wins, we featured agriculture and mass timber. And if you read our report on coastal resilience, coastal future for coastal community, a resilient future for coastal communities, excuse me, we covered nature-based solutions extensively, solutions with merit on their own right, as well as alternatives to seawalls, bulkheads and the like that can do more harm than good in the long run. We have to consider every source of potential climate mitigation and adaptation, and that is how our discussion today fits into our program. As a reminder, right from the start, if you miss anything today or you would like to revisit the presentations later, everything, including an archive of the webcast and presentation materials we're allowed to post will be available online at www.esa.org. And while you're there, I hope you'll take a moment to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. One last bit of logistics. We will have some time after our panel presentations for discussions. We have a very large audience joining us today. If you have a question, you have two options to ask it. You can send us a message on Twitter at EESI online, or you can send us an email to EESI at EESI.org. We will do our best to incorporate questions from our online audience into the discussion. And now it's my privilege to introduce our panel. Our first speaker is Catherine MacDonald. Catherine is the North America Natural Climate Solutions Director of the Nature Conservancy. Catherine leads NCS's work in the U.S. and Canada to protect carbon and increased sequestration in natural and working lands. Catherine currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission and is a member of the Carbon Policy Office's Natural and Working Lands Work Group, the Oregon Department of Forestry's Forest Carbon Policy Stakeholder Work Group. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you very much. Really appreciate that. Can we go to the next slide, please? I'm really pleased to be here to be able to talk to you today about the important role of natural climate solutions as a critical part of our climate mitigation strategy here in the U.S. Next slide. Today, what I'm going to do is kind of set the foundation for the other panelists by giving you some kind of basic description of what natural climate solutions are, talking about the economic benefits of investments in natural climate solutions at a kind of broad level, and then talk to you about the important role of the federal government in helping to accelerate adoption of natural climate solutions. And then following me, we'll get more details on the specific kinds of economic benefits from the rest of our panelists. Next slide, please. The Nature Conservancy works towards creating a world where people and nature thrive. And as I'm sure you all know that are listening in today that climate change poses an incredible risk to both of these outcomes to people and to nature. On the nature side, we're seeing incredible range shifts for species. We're seeing an increase in extinctions and seeing whole ecosystems start to turn over. And all those things have an incredible impact on the kinds of services that nature provides to people. And then directly direct impacts to people, the kinds of things that are happening as a result of climate change and global warming are having incredible impacts to our health, the economy, and to our infrastructure. Next slide, please. And while it's critical to reduce emissions from other sectors, as Dan mentioned, we cannot get to one day within 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in temperature without nature. The two reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented a few years ago made it clear that nature needs to be part of the solution. Colleagues of mine at the Nature Conservancy worked in collaboration with many other researchers to look at the global potential of natural climate solutions. And in that research determined that natural and working land strategies or natural climate solutions could be as much of a third of what was needed to achieve the Paris commitments, the 2015 Paris commitment. So it can play a huge role and has many co-benefits, which I'll touch on in a bit. Next slide, please. The other important point that IPCC made in those reports is we have very little time to make a big difference in how we address this issue. While these teenagers are smiling for the camera, their t-shirts tell a very somber note about the importance of us acting quickly to reduce emissions and increase sequestration in the land sector because of the impacts it's going to have for future generations, current and future generations, especially our youth. Next slide, please. So now I'm going to take you back to your biology 101 class and just a quick reminder about the foundation of natural climate solutions. And as you recall, plants are able to take the water that they take in from their roots and the carbon dioxide they're able to absorb from the atmosphere through their leaves. And they form glucose and oxygen through a process called photosynthesis. So that glucose gets incorporated into their plant materials. It creates and then into the soil through their roots, but also as plant materials leaves and then things fall to the forest floor and in our agricultural land. So carbon is stored both in plant materials and in our soils. Both are very important sinks, carbon sinks. Next slide, please. So we can take three broad kinds of actions that can influence how much carbon dioxide is taken up by plants and stored in their tissues and in the soils. And those three are protecting the ecosystems, intact ecosystems we have today, where we already have significant carbon stores, restoring ecosystems where we can build back carbon stores to those ecosystems, and then improving how we manage working lands, whether those be agricultural lands or forests or grasslands and range lands. And those changes in management practices can make a big difference to the amount of carbon that's stored. Next slide, please. The land sector in the US is already reducing our overall emissions by 12% based on the most recent EPA inventory data and research that another colleague of mine led looked at the potential to increase the amount that the land sector could store through 21 different management practices. There's a lot on the slides. We'll spend just a few minutes describing what you can see here. The length of the bar is the total potential that could be achieved through the kinds of actions such as reforestation, cover crops, and the like. We also looked at how much could be accomplished at different price points at $10 a ton, $50 a ton, and $100 a ton. And so the length of the portion of the colored bar shows you what's possible at different price points. And then we looked at the different pathways to identify the kinds of co-benefits that you also get by changing management practices and protecting habitats and restoring habitats. And those are shown in the colored bars on the left side of the axis. So there are significant benefits to air quality, to water quality, to biodiversity. And so those are all secondary benefits that we can get through these changes in management practices. In order to achieve this potential, though, we need to dramatically scale adoption of practices that are climate smart. Next slide, please. So now just to shift briefly to talk about some of the economic benefits, there are already an estimated over 220,000 jobs in the US focused on forest and wetland restoration projects alone. So that's a significant portion of the workforce. And for every million dollars we increase in investments in reforestation and sustainable forest management, we can support nearly 40 additional jobs, so significant jobs. And forest and wetland restoration projects typically keep more of the funding that's invested locally. So there is significant benefits to the local communities around where these projects are happening. Next slide, please. In addition to the potential benefits in rural parts of America, there are also significant and important benefits in urban areas. Recent research that another colleague at the Nature Conservancy, Len, has demonstrated the inequities in forest canopy in urban areas across America. Over 90% of urban areas have much higher canopy cover in higher income neighborhoods than lower income neighborhoods and neighborhoods that are dominated by communities of color. And that creates a host of challenges. So in addition to creating new jobs, in urban areas by planting trees, we also can reduce energy costs. We can reduce health impacts that are currently occurring in those neighborhoods because of the lower forest canopy around respiratory conditions and heat-related illnesses. And as we've all found out over the last year, being out in nature really improves our mental health and has been a significant, I think, help to all of us during these times of being pretty confined. Next slide, please. In addition to the benefits for jobs and benefits in equity in urban areas, there are significant benefits to producers, to farmers and forest landowners. Recent research by the Soil Health Institute demonstrated that implementing soil health management practices can increase net income for farmers. They focused this research in the Midwest and showed that you could increase net revenue to farmers by $52 per acre in areas dominated by corn and $45 an acre in areas where being grown for soybeans. In addition, adding trees to row crops provides greater income stability on farms. And that will result in economic resilience to those farms. And there is some significant work being led by the Savannah Institute and others that is looking at how to bring row crop farmers and tree crop farmers together to do just that. And then on the forest side, we can not only increase the amount of carbon that is taken up and stored on our forests, that doing that can increase revenues to family forest landowners. So there are significant benefits to forest landowners as well. Next slide, please. And then we get many goods and services from nature. And so there are economic benefits to taxpayers from protecting and restoring nature. Coastal wetlands provide storm protection, valued at over $23 billion a year in the US. And green storm water infrastructure is usually has a lower capital investment cost than gray infrastructure. So there's another benefit to taxpayers and also to utility bills by maintaining forest cover and watersheds for every, we can reduce treatment costs by 20% for every 10% increase in forest cover. So many benefits to taxpayers and to utility payers. Next slide, please. And while there are lots of economic benefits, as I mentioned earlier, it's really critical that we scale up adoption of these kinds of practices. And there are a number of things that the federal government can do to help make that happen, including providing technical assistance to landowners so they have the right information and know how to go about changing practices, providing financial incentives for natural climate solutions while there are direct benefits to producers. There are sometimes transition costs that make it such that having incentives to change practices are really important. There are also some really important investments in our federal lands and in state lands that the federal government should be advancing. And then there are ways that the federal government can help scale voluntary carbon markets. There is significant interest in corporations who are trying to meet sustainability goals in addition to looking at how to reduce their own footprint to scale, to enhance their contribution through acquisition of voluntary offsets. And there are ways that the federal government can help scale the engagement in carbon markets. And then there are ways that the federal government can incentivize smart growth activities of state and local governments. And then finally, certainly, lots of opportunity to invest in workforce development programs that target forestry and ecological restoration. So with that, I will turn it over to my panelists to tell us a little more and go to the next slide. Also happy to get any follow-up from folks on any of the information I've provided. Thank you. And thank you, Catherine. That was a great presentation. Thank you very much for getting us off to a great start. I'm going to move along to our second panelist. But before I do, there was a lot of great information in Catherine's presentation. If you missed any of it, if you want to go back and watch it again, or if you want to view her presentation materials, just as a reminder, everything will be posted online at www.esi.org. And also, if you have any questions for Catherine or for the other three panelists who are about to speak, there are two ways you can ask your question. You can send us an email, esi, at esi.org. We can follow us on Twitter and send it a message that way. And our Twitter handle is at EESI online. Our second panelist is Chris Reynolds. Chris is a fifth generation corn and soybean farmer in the Comis, Illinois. He began his soil health journey in 2013 by incorporating cover crops, no-till, nutrient management practices into his farming operation. He continues to expand and improve their use on his farm each year. He joined American Farmland Trust in 2017. And his primary responsibility is managing programs in the Midwest that promote sound farming practices, help keep farmers on the land, and protect farmland. Chris is a certified crop advisor with the American Society of Agronomy and holds a specialty certification as a for our nutrient management specialist and sustainability specialist. Chris, welcome to the panel today. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks a lot, Dan. And good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. As Dan mentioned, I'm currently serve as the Midwest Regional Director for American Farmland Trust and also a fifth generation steward of the land on a corn and soybean farm here in Central Illinois. And the farm that I'm on today is a lot different than the farm that I grew up on. My grandfather's both farmed, both came from farm families from both sides of the farm. And they typically had a much longer crop rotation with four to five different crops in that rotation. And also livestock was really a vital component to that farming operation during those times as well. And so I wanna talk to you a little bit today about how agricultural lands and the conservation practices that are currently being adopted on the land are a natural climate solution. Next slide, please. So agriculture and conservation have always been a huge part of my life and why I was really drawn to come to work for AFT over four years ago. American Farmland Trust is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect farm and ranch land and promote sound farming practices and keep farmers on the land. The photo on the left there is my grandfather back in the early 1970s, next to the Case 930 tractor that's still on the farm today being used. He used that for a lot of different things. Back then from planting to cultivating and definitely has some different uses on the farm today because of its size and the technological advances that we've made in agriculture since that time. The photo there in the middle is my youngest son back in a soybean field several years ago. This was one of the first fields that I no-tilled into a green cereal rye cover crop and the success from that first year has led me to where I am today and adopting more cover crops and continuing in my soil health journey. The photo there on the right, the STAR program, Saving Tomorrow's Agriculture Resources is a program that we've worked with extensively here in Illinois. It's given me the ability to assess the individual fields on my farm by the practices that I'm adopting and also challenges me to want to do better by the land and adopt new practices. Next slide. So I want to first talk about the role of soils and we know that small changes to the soil organic carbon pool can have major impacts on the global carbon budget. And since the advent of modern agriculture we've lost more than half of the organic carbon that was originally stored in US soils. And the soil organic carbon pool can be up to four times the amount of carbon stored in the vegetation on the land and rebuilding carbon stocks and agriculture soils is not only crucial for the continued productivity of our nation's farmers but necessary to combat the impacts of climate change. Next slide please. So despite the recent uptick in soil health practice adoption fewer than a third of the 260 million acres in row crops are managed with no till or strip till. And less than 5% of those acres are using cover crops according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture. By increasing the use of just these two practices American farmers have an unparalleled opportunity to combat climate change, improve water quality and build on farm resilience and profitability. Some of the many co-benefits of these practices include soil temperature and moisture regulation, winter and early season weed suppression. We can improve the soil structure. We can reduce soil loss from wind and water erosion while also increasing the diversity of soil biological communities and capture more nutrients and make them available for growing crops. Next slide please. So what I'm seeing on my farm and hearing from other farmers that we work with is climate change is having a significant impact. We are seeing fewer favorable planting days in the spring. That's mainly due to more intense and frequent rainfall events. Farmers are noticing that erosion is taking place in areas where they've never seen it before. They're finding it more difficult to manage weeds because of the increased rainfall events. This has made it more important than ever in my mind to adopt soil health practices and to manage our farms for soil health. But at the same time it's making it more challenging for farmers. Cover crops require an additional level of management. They have to be planted in the summer or the fall when harvest activities are really the main priority for farmers. When I began my soil health journey back in 2013 I started with incorporating cover crops into existing no-till fields. I wanted to further reduce erosion, help suppress weeds and also reduce chemical costs that were associated with that weed control. And really since that time I've seen improvements in the soil that are making it more resilient during periods of drought. And overall improving the soil structure of those fields and making it more resilient. Next slide please. So at AFT we put together nine soil health case studies across the nation to quantify the economic benefits of these soil health practices for family farmers. We used a partial budget analysis to estimate the net economic benefits that farmers have experienced from investing in soil health practices like no-till, strip-till and cover crops. We also used USDA's nutrient tracking tool and USDA's comet farm tool to quantify the water quality and climate benefits of those practices. And these case studies really show how these soil health practices across the United States can have both economic and environmental benefits. Next slide please. So ideally when we think about carbon markets we think they could be an economic driver of conservation practice adoption but they really have to be open to all regardless of farm size or production system. They need to be fair to farmers. They need to be real and verifiable using carbon registry best practices but also transitional for the economy and designed for permanence with appropriate safeguards in place. Next slide please. So recognizing that change does not take place overnight. One such goal could be to roughly triple the adoption of cover crops from the current 15 million acres to a total of 44 million acres. It's also important to determine whether equip and CSP payments for cover crops are high enough to help farmers overcome barriers to adoption as well as income loss. The success of conservation programs like equip and CSP and rapidly delivering cover crop adoption is really dependent upon adequate technical support on the land. The agency should look at ways to improve the TSP program or the technical service provider program as part of this emphasis on technical assistance. In addition, NRCS should also meet new demand by capitalizing on and expanding its ability to work with third parties and providing essential technical support. And we also need regional specific research on the best cover crop species to use, how they improve soil organic carbon, the amount of carbon sequestration that occurs from the different species and their ability to increase the overall water holding capacity of the soil. And finally, we should explore crop insurance's role in conservation practice adoption. And I'll talk more about that on the next slide, please. So as we look at crop insurance, we recognize that crop insurance is a trusted safety net program. It has established acceptance in the ag community. And because of its widespread use, crop insurance plays a significant role in shaping the decision-making in American agriculture. To identify additional opportunities to harmonize the crop insurance system with cover crops, we recommend that a study be conducted on additional insurance barriers to adoption and how such barriers can effectively be addressed. Next slide, please. We know that cover crops are one of the most effective tools that we have when it comes to reducing nutrient loss and promoting climate smart agriculture on farmland. This graphic shows the environmental outcomes from the 50,000 acres of cover crops that were enrolled in the fall covers for spring savings crop insurance premium discount program this past year in Illinois. Demonstrating the financial benefits of cover crops to farmers and expanding incentives for their adoption are crucial. Pilots, pilot programs in Iowa, Indiana and Illinois have proven that incentives as low as $5 per acre can generate significant farmer interest in expanding cover crop adoption. This can be used as a template for similar programs and additional states. It also offers the opportunity to combine state, federal and private funding for additional incentives that will have an even greater impact on the adoption of cover crops. Farmers accrue a lot of different costs across their operations. This includes a cost of adopting cover crops which can average as much as $30 per acre for new adopters. We also know that it takes a few years for farmers to become more accustomed to new practices and to recoup some of that initial investment. And the $5 per acre can help relieve some of these costs by adopting cover crops as a regular practice by providing a discount on those crop insurance payments when farmers purchase their plans in the spring. The funding for the premium discount program goes directly from the individual state Department of Agriculture to the Risk Management Agency which oversees the federal crop insurance program. Farmers do not receive any direct funding from the program and only see a savings as a discount on their crop insurance when they sign up for these plans in the spring. Next slide, please. And lastly, wanna talk about agricultural land. And we know that ag land offers significant opportunities for carbon sequestration. But when it's developed and when it's lost, the ability to harness these carbon sinks is also lost forever. New farmland development is often preceded by removing topsoil from the land which causes stored carbon to be released back into the atmosphere. Development often disproportionately impacts nationally significant land, our nation's most productive versatile and resilient. Of the 11 million acres converted or threatened, almost 4.4 million were considered nationally significant agricultural lands. The loss of this land really pushes agricultural production to more marginal land, which can require greater inputs to achieve comparable production levels. And final slide, please. That's why we believe it's imperative that conservation practices on working agricultural lands and protecting farmland needs to be included in any meaningful climate strategy. Just like to thank you for your time today and I'm looking for any questions that you all may have later in the program. Thank you so much. Thank you for an excellent presentation that was really interesting. I have a quick follow up for you. You said you're a fifth generation. What was the first, what did the first generation farm? Was it sort of everything to make a go of it in Illinois or was it something that was specialized? Yeah, no, I think it was in the late 1800s, the typical farming, the typical crop rotation was corn, hay, small grains of different modes, sweet things of those nature. Soybeans started to come into play in the, I believe around the 1930s or so. Originally, I think one of my grandfather's planted soybeans as a hay crop, kind of how it began. And of course, we're not too far away from ADM here in Decatur, Illinois and really revolutionized the soybean industry many years ago. So a lot more diverse crop rotation. Of course, livestock was integral in that operation and a lot of different crops, all our fields than what we have today. Yep, a lot fewer tractors back then, I'm sure. A lot less mechanization. Well, thanks for indulging my follow-up question. We are going to hear next from Rob Schott. Rob has been with Casey Trees for three years as an arborist and director of tree operations. Previously, he worked as a garden designer for Cotswold Gardens in Shimizu landscape design. He received a bachelor of science degree from Clemson University in business management. He received a professional horticulture diploma from Longwood Gardens and studied at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in Scotland. Rob, welcome to the panel today. I'm looking forward to your presentation. Thanks so much. Good afternoon, I'm Rob Schott. I'm the director of tree operations at Casey Trees and I'm honored to have the opportunity to discuss climate solutions here today. And I'd like to thank EESI and all the other panelists. Next slide, please. So Casey Trees is an urban forestry nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to restore, enhance and protect the urban forestry of the nation's capital and to connect people to trees and through trees and to try to just help educate and advocate for trees and inside the district a very powerful city but really trying to kind of expand our scope as well. Next slide, please. So simple goal amongst many other smaller goals but the large goal is a D.C. tree canopy of 40%. So that's using lidar, kind of top-down view of the city. So taking into account all the impermeable pavement, asphalt, buildings, grass also would not sort of count. This is just canopy coverage. So looking from the top down, just leaf coverage in August and we're looking to try to hit 40% canopy coverage. We're currently at 37 in change, 37 in a quarter. So feels like we're close but that 2% in change is about 400 acres of increased canopy and obviously trees are a living being and so trees are gonna die, new trees get planted but it takes a while for them to get to full maturity especially inside an urban forest with pretty challenging growing conditions. Next, please. So this side just wanted to give you a sense of KC trees, the growth we've had as an organization and then as even as a tree planting tree operations department, so started out young and we've just kind of steadily grown. 2020 as many organizations and businesses had a little bit of a decline, had sort of shut down operations in spring but we are looking to hit 4,500 trees this year and looking to hit 5,000 in 2022. Next, please. Awesome. So this is a look into some of the programs that we offer. So green infrastructure is a huge part of what we do. Trees being a huge piece of green infrastructure. So we also do stormwater BMPs. So we do rain gardens. We plant a little bit of herbaceous material, often planting trees inside those BMPs as well. We do community events. So again, this connection of people to trees through trees. So we love having volunteer events. Couldn't really do it without them. 2020 was a challenging year for many different reasons obviously but we weren't able to have volunteer events. So we're looking to get back to doing volunteer events. We also do pruning tree inventories and we have a survival study of the installed trees we have. I'm a big believer that we need to understand the location and the condition of the trees, the green assets, if you will, to truly understand their value and their economic benefit. Next, please. I'm gonna get into some GIS maps and graphics to just give you a sense of how we strategize. Where we like to put our resources. So we're fortunate enough to have several grants through, you know, easy government and we feel very fortunate to get those and they're for tree planting all over the city. So public space, private space, you know, Department of Interior and you know, there's a lot of opportunity. So we need to make decisions on where we want to focus our tree installations. So this shows you on the left, the wards. So there's eight wards in DC. We focus a lot of our attention in Ward five, Ward seven and Ward eight and I'm gonna get into a little bit of that strategy. So the middle image is the MS4 sewer system, excuse me, compared to in the middle is the combined sewer system. So MS4 is, you know, environmentally speaking, a higher focus. It is running directly into tributaries, creeks and into the Anacostia and the Potomac, obviously, the combined sewer system is being treated. So we focus a lot of our attention in the MS4 areas. And then on the right, you see sort of heat index and heat islands and you know, there can be 10 to 12 degrees difference in neighborhoods just inside the district, which is, you know, which is a small city. And it's generally focused around the, you know, trash transfer station, neighborhoods that don't have a lot of tree canopy, railways, things like that. So, you know, in the Northwest, you'll see that it's much cooler and it's just frankly more parks, more trees. And so that's a little bit of a segue into how we try to focus where we do, where we use our resources. Next slide, please. So this is a pretty powerful collection of images. It's income on the left, the poverty below or above poverty line on the middle and then demographics on the right. And really simply put what this shows is people below the poverty line with lower income and, you know, people of color, it's all in the same areas of the district. And with that, we really, Catherine touched on this a bit as well. We're really trying to focus our attention and our resources in the areas that need it the most. It's not always the easiest access, you know, that there's sort of thoughts of crime and safety that are, you know, inherent with trees, which there's certainly research that disproves that, but I completely understand where the citizens are coming from and I, you know, I absolutely try to sort of work with them and help them understand, but it's a pretty staggering three graphics for me. But again, you know, we are trying to target these areas on the East and the South part of the district. Next slide, please. Again, this is the heat vulnerability map. This is pulled from open data source. This basically takes into account income. Heat health, again, Catherine touched upon it a little bit. Respiratory challenges, lower life expectancy in some of these areas. And so then in the middle, we have some specific neighborhoods that we sort of, you know, deemed to be target areas. So we're putting our outreach into those areas. We're trying to connect with those communities to try to enter the community, but not just plant trees and walk away to engage the community to educate so that people understand what we're doing, what we're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to come in and gentrify a neighborhood. We're trying to come in and improve the value of certain areas that the health environmental impact. So, you know, it's a very like deep process of trying to engage communities. And I think what's really important to remember is when you have engagement, the tree is gonna do better. There's gonna be more of a connection and people are more willing to give you a call when it's not doing well or water it or weed it, mulch it and that type of thing. So the, you know, the Casey trees sort of motto of connecting people to trees is really key. We're not just a landscape contractor. We're really trying to connect and strategize where we're going based on needs. And then on the right, this is, it's a little bit tough to see, but it's DCHA, so the Housing Association. And so what we do is we take these, you know, subsidizing in public housing areas and we look at open canopy and we're trying to target these areas in wards five, seven and eight. And so this is, you know, what my foresters and my sales team use along with our outreach department as well. Next slide, please. Cool, so on the left, this is actually as I've mentioned, we've gotten into BMP, best management practices, green infrastructure, rain gardens, bioswales, things like that. This is taking, this is DOE, a map of green infrastructure all over the city, publicly, publicly on public lands. And we're starting to get into management of these. So making sure the trees are doing well, you know, making sure the inlets are clear because to us, all of this is a very connected sort of one big ecosystem and it's very connected. So it's not just trees, it's not just herbaceous and shrubs, it's all of it kind of placed together. And so we wanna make sure these BMPs are being, are as successful as possible. And so maintenance is a huge part of, you know, anything living, it's not a set and forget, it's really continuing to maintain water, it's a growing being. So it's important to kind of keep an eye on it. And then on the right, this just shows since 2018, since I arrived at Casey trees, this is where we have focused our tree planting efforts. So, you know, obviously you see a little bit in the center, there's less efforts there, that's the combined sewer system. In fairness, that's also, you know, sort of downtown DC. So it's a little bit of a trickier place to be planting, less, you know, green areas for sure. But we've done over 50% of our tree planting in wards five, seven and eight, which is really, I'm very proud of that, proud of the organization, proud of my team, and just really happy to be continuing our efforts in these areas. Next slide, please. Cool, so the obvious environmental impact, I mean, carbon sequestration, Catherine again, you know, had a really awesome throwback to sort of biology class that was pretty fun talking about carbon sequestration, that was, I mean, that's great. I think we sort of all recognize that trees do that, but sometimes when you see the figures, it's hard to imagine what 53 tons of carbon is, but just to think that 100 trees can have that much value, it's just we have to continue to sort of restore and protect and continue to install these, you know, green infrastructures. And again, stormwater mitigation, especially in municipal areas, I mean, the water is just taking toxins, litter, and soil is actually another really big challenge, taking soil into the rivers and salt and changing the pH, which changes the entire dynamics of the river. But I wanted to touch upon just, you know, some simple numbers, economic value that trees can add that aren't always thought about. So in the middle, I discussed a little bit of shade trees and what they can just do for your cooling. I mean, no question, if you have a large shade tree, you know, it's like any day, you go and stand in the shade. I mean, it's considerably cooler that, you know, 56% change in your air conditioning costs. That's, I mean, that's astronomical, you know? So that's huge. You know, heating is not something that I think is often thought about in terms of just like their economic, you know, money in your wallet, sort of coins staying in your pocket, evergreen screens and windbreaks. You sort of see it at farms a good bit, windbreaks, near hoop houses and things, because, you know, it's challenging to keep those to a temperature needed. It can do a lot, you know, 5% of your heating is, I mean, that's impressive, just having something that's aesthetically really beautiful, you know, mitigating stormwater, sequestering carbon, but also lowering your heating expenses. And, you know, there's, it's becoming more of a sort of trendy, a trendy, the Wall Street Journal just had a, had an article about sort of how this new status symbol, if you will, is having large trees and how there's firms that are actually transplanting large trees to people's properties because they want to have, you know, big white oak that their property doesn't have and they want to look like their house has been sort of seated in this position for some extended period of time. So, you know, obviously the environmental impact of trees and of stormwater mitigation is huge, but I, you know, I think as we're all here to discuss the economic impact is certainly notable. Next slide, please. Yeah, so to continue on sort of the economic impact and the value, wanted to just touch upon three, three quick things and then I'll pass it off. So, Casey Trees helped pass legislation alongside the DC Council, Urban Forestry Division, which is a great partner of ours. They fund a lot of our tree planting on private locations, really couldn't do much of what we do without the Urban Forestry Division, which is part of District Department of Transportation. So we created laws that are essentially to protect special inherited trees. So the trees that are having the greatest environmental impact, you know, it takes maybe 10, 15 years for a tree really is creating that impact, kind of becoming net zero. And then it's starting to really, you know, just be a producer of environmental impact, if you will. And so what it says is you basically can't cut down special inherited trees unless they're hazards or dangerous and even on a private property. So special tree is, you know, 44 inch circumference and a heritage tree is a hundred inch circumference. And, you know, even if you're having a construction project or you just, you know, maybe want to expand your garage or what have you, you have to pay to cut these trees down. Personally, I think it's a great thing because these are just valuable resources. And so, you know, a heritage tree, a hundred inch circumference or 31 inch diameter, maybe a little bit easier to understand, which is a big tree, no question, but trees that we see, you know, probably every day, you know, without really recognizing, we see heritage trees every single day. I mean, you would incur a $30,000 fee if you took that tree down without it being deemed hazardous. So that's very substantial and sort of goes to show how important this is and sort of speaks to the economic value of these trees. And then I wanted to touch upon just another sort of simple way that trees are given a value, sort of monetized for property values and things like that. And this is called the trunk formula. And so it's essentially taking into account species, the location, the health, the environmental sort of benefits. So the carbon sequestration, the stormwater mitigation based on species. So a white oak, much more valuable than a dogwood. You know, a smaller flowering tree is less valuable than a large shade oak tree, beech tree, something you might be familiar with. And also forecasted longevity to provide. So, you know, a tree that a sugar maple, for example, might have a little bit of a lower rating given its growing zones, you know, just with real climate change and how it's getting warmer. And so it's based on all of those things. It gives it a value. So if it's like in your garden, something like that. So, you know, a 20 inch, 22 inch white oak would be, you know, given a value at over $13,000. And I think that's valuable. Also just like very important, I think, it helps sort of educate people, helps us understand that this is, this is a very valuable resource for the environment, but also there is, it's fiscally valuable. I mean, it monetizes it. I think that's the way of the world these days. That's an important aspect. And one last area I'd like to sort of discuss is stormwater retention credits. So that's another sort of valuable green infrastructure economic resource. So the nature conservancy does some of this. We work with them to do as a contractor essentially. So simply put, you know, there's a lot more depth than what I'm gonna get into. That's for a whole nother debate, but simply put it's green infrastructure, trees, stormwater, BMPs, permeable pavers, you know, things along those lines that can be purchased by a landholder to offset their inability to actually manage the required stormwater on their site, on their property. So, you know, an example might be a new condo building, you know, which is built and they want to have, you know, a roof pool, you know, a dining area, you know, something along that for their, you know, to help them sell their building rather than a green roof. So essentially they're incapable of, you know, maintaining and mitigating the stormwater that would be required of them on, you know, by the Department of Energy and Environment. So what happens is these credits, these BMPs they're installed on, you know, private land in the MS-4 stormwater zone, and then that, you know, contractor or building owner will purchase the credits from another landholder. So maybe a cemetery or something along those lines. They'll purchase them again to offset their inability to manage the stormwater. So, you know, I think in DC, it's a little bit in its infancy. Other countries have certainly, I think, done more with stormwater retention credits than we have, but it's, you know, it's essentially a currency, which, you know, I think if you're gonna talk, you know, sort of economic value, that certainly becomes a big piece of it. So stormwater retention credits are something I'm very proud to be involved with, and I think it's something that in time will become more and more valuable. So again, appreciate it. It was a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to the Q&A, and thanks to all the other panelists so far. It's been great to do here. Your presentation really has. Thanks so much. Well, thank you very much. That was a great presentation, and I am going to resist every temptation to ask you about cicadas, because we need to move to our, as all anybody wants to talk about it later, if need be. Yeah, we can get to that later. But anyway, it's actually more important for today's purposes to hear from our next panelist, Chris Adamo. Chris is Vice President at Denone North America for Federal and Industry Affairs. He assists the world's largest B Corp with strengthening the role of business and driving social and environmental good for all. He helps Denone North America navigate a confluence of issues related to public policy, especially to help Denone sustainably grow and provide healthier options. Chris, welcome to the panel today. I'm looking forward to your presentation too. All right, thanks for having me. Good afternoon, everybody, or good morning, depending where you're watching from. Pleasure to be here. I'm going to do a couple of things here. Number one, briefly just talk a little bit about who Denone is. You may not know the company, but you probably know some of our brands here in the United States. And I want to talk then get into how we're a bit of a implementer and investor in natural climate solutions. So hopefully I can walk you through some of those examples. And also the policy angle, we are an advocate. We do engage in public policy. We feel it's an important part of the overall puzzle is how we operate as a food company here in the United States and globally, frankly, towards natural climate solutions. Next slide, please. Very important to us. This is something that is front and center to everybody that works at Denone, both our purpose and our vision, which I think are relevant for the conversation today. I mean, just fundamentally as a food company, reminding ourselves daily that we are bringing health or food to as many people as possible. And then complimenting that is dual vision, right? As a food company, we think obviously first and foremost about human health, but that the planet is there to support that as well. So one planet, one health is something that is a part of our daily operations and daily thinking. Next slide, please. Again, this is just a quick glimpse of our US brands and just so you know who we are as a business, because this again does pertain to how we think about investing in nature. You probably know us as Dan and a yogurt company here in the United States. So going back to the 1940s, one of the oldest and first yogurt brands here in the US. I mean, we're over a hundred year old company globally, started in Barcelona, Spain back in 1919 as a yogurt company. We've since expanded quite a bit since then into the premium milk market. Horizon Organic is a very big organic dairy brand here in the US. In the plant base as well, we are a big dairy company, but we are also one of the largest plant-based alternative companies with brands like Silk and So Delicious. And then the water bottles. Bottling water is a big part of our business. Evian is the big brand that you'd know here in the US. And then specialized nutrition. Happy Family, if you're like me and have small kids running around the house, Happy Family might be a brand that you're familiar with in large organic baby food company. That's just a quick sampling of some of our bigger brands, but if you think about again the supply chains, the commodities that feed those brands, that's really where we're gonna get to first and foremost as a part of our nature-based strategy. Next slide please. And again, just again, I give you a little bit of a mental map of how we operate here in the US. We have facilities 12 across the US in particular, two headquarters, New York and Colorado. What's not on that map are our supply chain farmers. Now get to this a little bit, but dairy in particular being our biggest commodity, our most important commodity in terms of volume and size. We work with over just about 700 farms across the US. And that's pretty unique for a company our size to have that line of sight to those farmers. In many cases, we have direct contracts with those farms. In many cases also, many of those contracts are long-term contracts that we actually have a year or two, three years. In some cases, five to seven year contracting, which really sets up a different type of relationship between us and the farm. And we can talk a little bit about risk and farming. And we think it sets up a different sort of business relationship where the risk is a little bit more distributed and we can think about doing things a little more innovatively with those farms. Next slide please. Again, another one of these taglines. Yes, I know it's a little bit of corporate marketing here, but it's important. It's a part of our culture, a part of our vision. We do believe that we as individuals working in the company and you as the consumer can help vote for the type of world that we want. It matters in politics, it matters as a consumer. And so this is an important part of our ethos. Next slide please. Another big piece of this is that we are not your typical global company. We are a public benefit corp here in the United States. Up until about a couple of weeks ago, we were the largest public benefit corp. If you don't know what that is, take a look. There's about 25, 26 states here in the United States that allow public benefit corp registration. Anybody can go create one, but it's pretty unique as a publicly traded company to have that sort of designation. And basically in essence what it does is it allows us to state our social vision within our corporate registration. And for us that's both health and sustainability. The B Corp or B Lab is a nonprofit that then certifies us every two years. You don't have to do this as a public benefit corp, but we choose to do it because again, it gives us that extra third party map about where we can continuously improve in terms of our governance, our sustainability programs, and overall just how we work with our communities and our workforce. So it looks at a whole aspect of the business and how it's run. And again, gives that kind of third party validation and transparency to what it is we're doing. We just got recertified. We were first certified in 2018, 2020. Every two years you get recertified. It's quite a undertaking for a company our size to do this and we're working with B Lab and others for more and more companies our size to do this. You might be familiar with other leaders in the space such as Patagonia and Ben and Jerry's, which are notable B Corps. But you can go on the B Lab website and check out kind of a whole network of growing businesses that are taking on this both cultural and legal designation to say that we're not just here to return profit for our shareholders, but we're also here to do good for a larger stakeholder audience. And that's a really key critical part of the business. Next slide, please. Sorry, you can skip one more, thanks. From a sustainability standpoint, these are the four buckets that we think about from a strategical standpoint. Climate change arguably actually could be the overall umbrella to all of these things. But we do designate, there are some water pieces, circular economy, that's our packaging, the materials that go into our products, things like plastics and creating new materials that are either recycled or biodegradable or a big piece of the overall pie. And then again, because we are a food company, agriculture is such a key component to the business. And I'll get to this in a minute. The agriculture, if I could, agriculture could draw a nice little line to water there and it should draw a nice little line to climate. It links to both overall. But we keep it separate for a few reasons because there is number one economic arguments for looking at agriculture as a company. We want certainty and stability on pricing and resilience. I spoke about those 700 farms that we work with directly with. We'd like to work with the same farms over and over if we can, so the health of the farms and the resilience to those farms matter to us as a business. Next slide please. A little more detail about some of the commitments and in the areas of climate, packaging and agriculture, I'm gonna point out in particular on climate change. We are dedicated to a science-based target. That's a third party governance where we have committed to a 30% net reduction whole company globally by 2030. And then a 50% reduction in carbon intensity to our supply chain or sometimes it's called a scope three. That's a pretty big jump. I mean, that's not an area that we ever anticipate being regulated on, for example. I mean, that is a voluntary action that us and many others are now taking within science-based targets. Again, it kind of ties back to knowing our supply chain, creating clear lines of sights and transparency and then finding new different strategies depending on for us what the commodity may be. And that's gonna look very different. Obviously, a palm coming from Indonesia is one strategy and then dairy in the United States is gonna be a very different strategy but they both require a line of transparency and understanding what's going on in that supply chain in order to enact change. It's not buying a commodity through the black hole system is not an easy way to do sustainability impact. Next slide, please. So regenerative agriculture is a term that has crept up more and more. I've been with the company three years. I think I first learned about the term three years ago when I joined. It's open for debate as to what it means. Soil health practices are clearly a part of regenerative agriculture. Another term that gets used often, I certainly use it as climate smart agriculture. These things can mean different things to different people but for us, again, it's a broad umbrella for thinking about agricultural management. Certainly at the crop side of things, the feed that go to our cows, for example, can also entail different management practices in the barn with the animals for dairy, for example. So the overall theory being that we can do more restore, not just do less bad but actually restore through management practices at the farm said. And then also thinking about the health, again, of the farm and the health of the animals in terms of a livestock system. So it's a very holistic way of thinking. Next slide, please. So we started here in the United States in our regenerative journey with soil, with the crops that feed the cows in particular. Thinking about the different systems is whether for us, we're drawing milk out of the Northeast, we're growing milk out of the Midwest and we also have some Western systems that we draw milk out of both Texas, Kansas, Idaho and California to be exact. So you can imagine those are some very diverse agricultural regions where, for example, water varies quite a bit amongst those regions and size of fields and types of fields, gradient varies across those systems as well. Soil health as actually was put quite well from our previous speakers here, there's a lot of fundamental practices whether it's cover crops or types of tillage or nutrient management that make up soil health practices. We also get into edge of field practices like different buffer systems. These are things that we've gotta play with. We gotta work with the farm and we have to experiment. They're gonna look different in different places. Just as was mentioned earlier, cover crop varietals and types and just cover crop termination management practices can vary quite a bit. So we undertook this back in 2018, put a $6 million commitment down to begin experimenting and piloting with farms who are willing to do this in our system. Now, fast forward almost four years later, we're now entering year four of our program. Next slide, please, in fact, we'll get a little bit easier to follow, thanks. We announced our year three update last December, so now entering year four. We have 82,000 acres enrolled across those various regions. I think we're up to nearly 40 farms now enrolled. We expect to be about 100,000 acres by the end of this year. And when I say enrolled, what I mean by that is it's a very intensive data benchmarking process. We pay for that service through a partner group called Sustainable Environmental Consultants. They are the partner or intermediary at times between us and the farm. So for example, when that data is collected, they ensure that it's kept private for the farm. The farm still owns that data. We don't hold it, we don't do anything with that data other than learn about the results of their actions. So we get that benchmark first and foremost in year one when a producer enrolls. And then after that, we're able to do annual monitoring and tracking. So if they're implementing a new practice, we can then start to compare and see the impact across those systems. And carbon and greenhouse gases is certainly our main KPI, but we're also looking at water. We're also looking at biodiversity. And again, economic resilience. We actually have an economic ROI model that we use with the farm to start to sense, again, it's alluded to very well earlier, so we won't go in depth, but inputs, for example, become a big part of this. Can we reduce inputs? It may be an herbicide, it may be the diesel use, irrigation efficiency, a whole number of things that can improve the overall efficiency of that farm. So this is a full data collection system that we're using with our producers. It can be a little onerous and a little burdensome to get in first time, but once we get a producer in, that data starts becoming quite useful in providing not just learnings about what the impact is, but also a map about what future potential investments can look like. Next slide, please. So we're doing this corporate wide, Danone, as I mentioned, is a lot of different brands. Just taking dairy alone, we have both organic, non-GMO, and conventional systems enrolled in our program. We also, this past year is, I think the previous slide mentioned, we have almonds now in our system as well. Silk almond milk would be a big recipient of those, for example. But here with Horizon Organic, it is probably the largest organic dairy brand in the country, perhaps in the world. It's a significant supply of milk for us. So we saw the opportunity with Horizon Organic to start using the power of our brand to actually be not only a driver of implementation down in the supply chain, but also as a way to start connecting with consumers about what it is we're doing and hopefully draw some value from them and educate and get them along the journey. So a year ago, committed to being carbon positive, 2025, that's another way of saying carbon neutral, that's gonna be the certification that we attempt to reach by then. This is value chain wide, it's not just the farms, I should be clear. So from our processing facilities to our packaging down to the farm, we'll be measuring the overall impact. In fact, we just put a life cycle analysis up on our website if you'd like to check it out. It's a very, I think very fun, interesting attempt at taking a very complicated, wonky piece of material and putting some fun infographics around it so people can understand what it is, what our greenhouse gas impact is along the entire value chain. Not surprisingly, over half of that impact is at the farm. So again, when we think about our limited budget and where the investment should go, most of that should be going and it will be going to the farms that are enrolled in our program. Next slide, please. The other piece I'd like to mention to this, again, 2025 is right around the corner. Becoming, having 100% zero impact within our supply chain definitely is not gonna happen by 2025 and one could argue may never happen. I don't know that these systems ever can get to a true net zero in and of them by themselves. But when we think of carbon neutral, we are gonna be thinking outside our supply chain too. So another form of natural climate solution investments can be through the voluntary market to help complement and supplement this overall value chain investment. So we don't look at it so much as an either or. I mean, certainly we'd prefer to be investing first and foremost with the farms in our supply chain. But as we start to think about how to get that overall planetary impact that we want, we need to think outside the supply chain. So we are now starting to look at various voluntary investments in the carbon market and we have not yet made any yet but the team is now starting to build out what that looks like and we want those investments for this brand in particular to stay in the United States. So we're looking at forestry projects, grassland projects and potentially some future agricultural projects too that might meet some of the emerging voluntary market standards. So this is an exciting piece of the overall strategy and program that we'll be building out in the years to come. Next slide please. And one more slide. So this is the piece where I have to remind everybody that and this is an important piece. So we can do a lot of good within our supply chain within our business operations and that's important for us to do it. But we believe we also have to advocate and have to call for better policy. Not just to help ourselves but to help the community at large of folks in the land sector, folks in the food and agricultural sector in particular. We all know that this is not a localized problem that we're trying to solve but policy is gonna be absolutely key to working alongside the private sector and accelerating our efforts and just overall we know where we have to be by 2050 and if not sooner. And so one company alone is not gonna do that. Had a colleague of mine, Tina Owens, testify about a year and a half ago in front of the house. We continue to use our voice in many different formats. In fact, just recently last week submitted some comments to the Department of Agriculture here in the United States giving some explanations or at least our opinions about how we think some of the public policy at USDA can bolster activities such as ours and other food companies work with farms better to build voluntary markets. You can check that document out. It's in the federal register public domain. But another example of ways that we are thinking about advocating and growing our voice is through coalitions and we work in coalitions with environmental groups. We also work in coalitions with other companies. And one example of that is to the right there on the slide, the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance. And we built this, it's actually a young group. We built two and a half years ago, summer of 2018. It is four companies. It's us to known, but also Mars, Unilever and Nestle. And it's three other fairly like-minded companies who are trying to provide a bigger social impact in a number of different ways. As like-minded food companies, we often find ourselves advocating similarly for nutrition policy, labeling policy, food safety policy but sustainability and climate policy has become one of our biggest work streams. And so I just wanted to point that out that, I used to work in the Senate for a number of years. I worked in the executive branch in the past. Rarely did I have food companies lobbying me for better agriculture or better climate policy. So I personally, and the company agrees with me, believes that this is an important step forward in public policy to add another important set of voices to the table. Certainly not, and many times we're agreeing and working with environmental groups, our opinions aren't necessarily that novel. But again, it's just a way to amplify and hopefully build an overall chorus of important voices to get the change we need. Next slide please. Another thing we've been working on as a public policy advocate is actual, again, this kind of ties the policy to the implementation. We've been trying to get grants with USDA. And I wanna be clear, this is not an ask of public dollars to Denone, but this is an ask of public dollars to farms in our system. So when we put up a dollar of our budget, we're asking to get a dollar of USDA budget to match so that we can, in some cases, double our efforts within our supply chain. We've had one grant successful so far. We've used National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as a partner there. They're actually the lead grant applicants, not to known, but we have been working with them. This is actually the year two of the grant coming up from a 2018 Farm Bill program that we worked on called Soil Health On Farm Trial Program. It's if you know USDA programs, it's a part of the Conservation Innovation Grant programs. We were lucky enough to get $3 million dedicated to building soil health systems within our supply chain. And last year put out about 1.5 million matched, again, by our dollars, Denone budget dollars, and we'll put out a very similar amount this year. The hope here is that we can then take some of these learnings. Again, going back to what I described earlier, some of the data that we're collecting and actually be able to showcase some case studies across our supply chain. And hopefully case studies that will be big, small, medium farms across different regions of the country too, so we can get some different learnings on cover crops and tillage and nutrient management and some buffer systems. Another example of a project we co-invested in this past year are some very interesting manure management techniques. Manure, again, with Darry's, we're learning more and more. There needs to be an array or spectrum of options on manure. Many of you might have heard of bio digesters. It's a wonderful technology that works for some large farms, not so well often for medium and smaller farms, which is a large population of our supply chain. So we've been looking at a whole host of different manure options for different farms depending on what the fit and need is. So that's just another example of what this grant is helping us sort through and find a ways. And hopefully again, a year or two, three years from now, we'll have more concrete data to say a little bit more specifically what we think some of the better economic and environmental options are for different farms, again, depending on the region and depending on the size. Next slide, please. A little duplicate of your, I apologize, but again, another reference to our sustainable food policy alliance. I think this is the last slide on the deck. I'll just quickly wrap up maybe a little more on the public policy side. There are a lot of great ideas out there. In fact, in my 15 years of experience of public policy on agriculture sustainable policy, I've never seen this much energy behind land sector policy and agriculture specifically. It's a great opportunity. It may be one of the biggest windows we've ever seen in terms of having a massive constituency from companies to NGOs to farms, perhaps for the first time ever, calling for very similar things, the technical assistance, the research, the financing opportunities that USDA hopefully can be a really large opportunity for. So I'm very optimistic that some good things are gonna be coming down the pipe. We've been working, I think, on a pretty good trajectory over the last couple of years for better policy, but I think right now we've got an energy that I've never seen before. So very excited to see that. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for that presentation. And thanks also to Catherine, Chris and Rob for their presentations as well. We are going to transition now. We have a few moments for questions and discussion. And I'm going to, we're going to pull a question from our audience. Someone sent us an email asking about, basically making the point that what we're talking about today with respect to natural climate solutions, it's going to be taking place over time. Our situation with respect to mitigation and adaptation is changing. And the work that the four of you have described today will be happening alongside things like increased urbanization, water scarcity, the changes in transition between young forests, to farmland changing over time. Catherine, I'd like to start with you. And then we can go through the panel sort of in the order of the presentations. But how do we address sort of the fact that our landscape is changing and how do we build in sort of staying power to the natural climate solutions that we're working on so that they don't go away because of trends impacting them, five to 10 years from now? No, it's a great question. It is really important that as we think about how to design natural climate solutions that we think about not only today, but what will be happening 20 and 30 years from now when we really need to make sure we've eliminated emissions. And so that means upfront, thinking about the kinds of trees we plant, where we plant them, what we should be doing to make sure they're gonna be trees that are successful and their location in the future. It's about looking at how we can improve how we make decisions about the design of our communities, not only to reduce transportation emissions, but also to make our communities healthier and to reduce the conversion of land. So each policy needs to think about the situation we're in today or each strategy, the situation we're in today and then what might be coming down the road in the future and make sure we're using the right tools in the right places. Thanks. Chris Reynolds. Yeah, thanks, Dan. Great question. I think as we looked, farmland protection is one of the ways to combat climate change, focusing on that most prime and resilient farmland and making sure we keep it in production, but also looking at becoming more diverse in a lot of our areas, getting back to a more diverse crop rotation, providing more diversity, more opportunities for cover crop usage within those operations, but also learning more about how beneficial cover crops can be and I think gaining more knowledge about the many benefits that they can provide farmers and landowners. And I think that's also another big thing that's going to be happening in the next few years. We're going to see a lot of land that will be changing hands. You know, currently a vast amount of the farmland is owned by non-operating landowners and so we have to not only educate the farmers about the benefits of conservation practices, but also the landowners that own the land. Thanks. And Rob, your business happens in a very urban area. How are these trends impacting your work at Casey Trees? Yeah, absolutely. Super applicable. And those were both very strong answers and it's a great question. I think a lot of it just real simple is sort of like a policy work, advocating for protection of natural lands or incentivizing new installation of green infrastructure. And something I think Catherine just kind of touched upon is, and Chris as well, as an installation sort of organization and in some respects, sometimes a subcontractor, I think it's really important to promote biodiversity, to promote sort of plants that sort of function over fashion. So plants that are going to really have an impact with fodder remediation, with stormwater mitigation. So it's not just a small flowering tree in a certain, it's not just a unit, a tree's not just a tree is a tree. It's planting the right tree in the right location that can have the largest impact in the future. I think that's very important from people in my shoes, but I think that in reality, a big piece of it is going to be policy. Chris? Yeah, I think for a company like ours doing the work we're doing, again, pretty rural settings mainly with the farms that we're operating in, but very different rural settings, right? I mean, if you look at the Northeast, just take the dairies that we buy milk from in Vermont, state New York and Pennsylvania. These are areas that buy in large, I mean, literally hundreds of dairies that we buy milk from in that region alone. And the vast majority of them are definitely under 200 cows, many are under 100 cows. And if you know anything about dairy right now, that's a bit of an anomaly, especially in the Midwest, or let alone get to the West. So number one, finding business models that keep those producers in production, number one is highly important to us. We need milk in that region and we need to make it work for those farms. And two, being flexible, I think, in terms of thinking what is the right business model? Like if we keep running the same business model over and over and expect it to work in all places, then we're not gonna be highly successful for a number of reasons. And number two, we've got to be flexible with the farms. We've got to meet them where they're at, right? Each landowner's gonna have their own unique challenges and perspectives and sometimes just family barriers or whatever it may be. There's a number of always obstacles and challenges, but being flexible and being optimistic because a lot of cool things can get done and then how do we take that optimism and find the small wins? And then hopefully there's a tipping point where it becomes a little more commonplace across our value chain or perhaps even just across agriculture in general. We've talked about so many of these things for years. I think what I find optimistic about it is, say 10 years ago, it was all about the four hours. We've talked four hours, four hours, four hours. Then we talked cover crop. We came to this big revelation how amazing cover crops are. Well, now it's not one practice. We're thinking a little bit more holistically across a whole number of practices. And to me that it's hard, definitely not easy, can be overwhelming sometimes for some producers, but to me there's a lot of optimism that comes with that because again, Catherine, I think you had it on your slide, 20, 40, $50 an acre in a lot of that savings, I'm guessing. Those are input efficiencies, most likely in many cases. We're seeing the same thing. Even $20 an acre is a massive jump for some producers to find that. Now you might ask, well, why aren't they just doing that on their own if that's the case? But it's not that simple. They need a partner. They need a journey to get there in many of the cases. And it may take two or three crop seasons too in some cases to find that efficiency. So there's a lot to be optimistic for, but we got to be flexible and we got to be nimble in our thinking. One other point. Sorry. Catherine, why don't we go to you and then we'll follow up with Rob. Just briefly, adaptive management is really important and that just highlights the importance of continual investment and research and development. And in the monitoring that we need to do to give us the feedback on when we need to change a practice in the future. Yeah, no question. Yeah, one other just small thing, and this is a bit outside of my purview, but I think it's the flexibility and creativity and really just thinking a little bit more expansively. I mean, you know, the last 15 months it had shown us specifically in DC. I mean, the space that has been allocated towards, you know, urbanization is gonna be, I think largely focused in the fact that there's a lot of need for housing and people moving to coasts and to municipalities. Well, they need places to live. And as that number grows, that's gonna be more and more development. You know, we've sort of shown, I mean, in large respects, my team needs to come in and grab a truck and grab the trees, but, you know, we're all at home. So maybe repurposing some of these like dwellings that have been sitting fallow, you know, no pun intended for the farm talk, but have been just sitting and still are, I mean, that could be used for housing. So K Street, downtown DC, maybe that switches a little bit and we have a more creative model of how we work and how we use space, I think could go a long way to, you know, accommodate, but decrease development. Thanks. That was a great set of answers. And thanks to the person in our audience who asked that today. We have time for one more and many of you, actually all of you talked about adaptation, but I think it's fair to say that most of your presentations may be talked a little bit more about medication. So I'd like to go through the list, the roster once more and Catherine, we can start with you again. Like to help just, if you have in a few words, help our audience understand maybe where some of the best opportunities are for nature or natural climate solutions to contribute to our resilience and our ability to adapt to climate change while we're also reducing emissions and sequestering carbon. Absolutely. I think my mind first goes to our coastlines and our flood plains. I think those are two places where we can get double benefits, both mitigation benefits through protection and restoration of tidal wetlands on the coast and flood plains anywhere. So those are two places where we're gonna get both adaptation and mitigation benefits. Thanks. Chris. Yeah, so I think as I talked about earlier in my presentation, we've seen us light uptick in conservation practice adoption, but we have a lot of room for improvement. And I think we look at these soil health management systems that include cover crops and no-till and nutrient management and that suite of practices. And we know we have a lot of room for improvement and these practices can go a long way to not only combat climate change, but also specifically what we've been working on here in the Midwest a lot over the past over years is improving water quality and the Gulf of Mexico and the Hypoxia zone. So I think we have a long ways to go to reach some of those goals and we have to continue to work with farmers and landowners to show the benefits. And as Chris mentioned too, I think we have to have the technical service providers to help them along this journey and make sure that they're prepared to adopt these practices, but also we want them to be successful in adopting these practices so that they can maintain them for the long term. Thanks. Rob, could you explain a little bit more about maybe some of the resilience and adaptation benefits of your work? Sure, I think it's interesting, I think just to dial it down just slightly, I think just on a real personal level and not just me, but humans in general, I think there's a lot of literature, a lot of studies, a lot to steal a little bit from Chris and Danone sort of like ethos, but every decision we make has a huge impact. And I think if as just a conglomerate, if we can sort of make better decisions, each decision has so much weight that trickles down the street. I mean, everything really kind of runs around clean water and storm water in my opinion. And if we can just dial things down and adapt sort of as a culture and as a society, I think it will go such a long way, just in simple decision. I mean, just how much has changed in the last 18 months in terms of footprint, just because we were sort of forced to, but we can make these decisions as organizations, large, huge corporate organizations, small nonprofits, farming. I mean, I think you're always going to need huge large farms and there's also going to be small farms. And I think we can all sort of make these simple decisions as a sort of a collective people that will just go so far to improving kind of like some of the challenges we're dealing with. Thanks. Chris Adamo, I think that gives Danone the last word on the panel today. Oh, no. Well, I think it's almost impossible for us, at least at the farm level, to separate mitigation from adaptation resilient. I mean, the tie and the Venn diagram is so tight there on most of these things. I mean, as was just mentioned, the soil health practice alone, I mean, whether it's the crop, you may mitigate for climate and maybe we get more CO2 in the ledger as a result of some of these practices, but at the same time, you're building that resilience, you know, the water distribution in the field is better. The, you know, you might be able to get a crop in where your neighbors might not, you know, if you're running good cover crops and good tillage efforts, especially in some of these unseasonal spring, wet springs we might be having. We've got some very arid growers in Western Kansas, for example, where, you know, I hate to say it, but local NRCS didn't want to spend money on cover crops, they didn't think it was doable. And those guys are going in and running better irrigation systems and running meters in their field and burning less diesel as a result and also being able to do some cover crops and having overall, not just greater carbon benefits, but the resilience and adaptation benefits are massive there. So they're super tightly related, which is encouraging because it gives us a couple more things to value, not just a ton of carbon. Great. Well, thank you for that. That was a great way to end the panel and I'd like to express sincere thanks to our panelists, Katherine, Chris, Robert and Chris for joining us today to talk about natural climate solutions for excellent presentations. If anyone in our audience would like to go back and rewatch anything or review additional materials, just as a reminder, that can be done very easily by visiting us online at www.esi.org. And it wouldn't be a briefing if I didn't plug multiple times our climate change solutions newsletter comes out every two weeks and it's the best way to keep up with everything that we're doing at EESI. I'd like to also express my thanks to our new friends at US Nature for Climate for making our session today possible and special, special thanks to project manager Nathan Henry for being such a great partner as we plan the session today. Thank you, Nathan, for everything you did in the run up to today's event. Thank you very much. Also like to thank everyone in our audience. We had a big audience today, thank you for that. And while I'm the one on camera, by no means am I the only one at EESI who does any work. I'd like to thank everyone on the team here who helps make these briefings available, Dan O'Brien, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, Amber Todorov, Anna McGinn, Omri Laporte and our interns, Celine, Jocelyn, Kimmy and Rachel. And today actually is our last day with Celine and Rachel. So not just thanks, but also best of luck, Celine and Rachel in your future endeavors. We get Jocelyn and Kimmy for a little while longer. It's always too bad when our interns leave and Celine and Rachel have been two of the best. So thank you so much. Let's go to the next slide as we wrap up here. This is a slide with a survey link. It's a huge help to us if folks in our audience would take two moments and help us by filling out the survey. It's a great way for us to understand how we're doing, if you had any technical issues, any audio issues, if I was fidgeting too much, all feedback is fair game. Sorry we didn't get to the cicadas today, but we were out of time. We have to do another briefing with cicadas. Maybe we'll have a cicada come in and be a panelist if we can figure that out. But anyway, if you have a moment, please take the survey. It's a huge help for us. It really does improve our product and our ability to bring information to Congress. The last thing I will say is just one last quick plug. Next Wednesday, May 12th, 2 p.m. We will be having a briefing. It's our next briefing. Ambition and Opportunity in America's New Climate Commitments, US pledges to reduce emissions more than 50% by 2030. We will have three excellent panelists. My colleague Anna McGinn will co-moderate with me. It's gonna be a really, really excellent session. So if you haven't already RSVP for that, I hope to do. Thanks again. I hope everyone has a great rest of your Friday and a great weekend and hope to see you back next Wednesday at two o'clock for our look at the NDC. Thank you so much and thanks again to our panelists.