 My name is Jill Einhorn. I am head of innovation and transformation in our center for nature and climate. A warm welcome to those who are in the room with us in this snowy sunny Davos and to those who are tuning in online. Most of us know forests as a biodiversity solution. It is home to 80% of terrestrial wildlife. Today we're going to look at forests as a climate and livelihood solution. How are forests supporting our response to the climate crisis and to supporting human health, well-being and livelihoods at the same time? We are in a climate crisis. We're at 1.48 degrees of warming. And that can lead to us worrying, to fear, to anxiety. But it's also an unprecedented time for hope, for collaboration, for action. And we've seen that through engagement across sectors, generations, stakeholders, which has never been greater on the forest agenda. As an illustration, I'm pleased to announce today that 1T.org has over 100 companies who have committed to quality action to conserve, restore and grow forests, which represents about 12 billion trees in 100 different countries. So we've made a lot of progress since 1T was first launched just four years ago here in Davos. The new companies that have committed to this are BHEL, Burberry China, Gotu, Gojek, RPG Group and Vale. We also have a new cohort of uplink innovators who are looking at restoration at scale. And they are being announced today. And if you'd like more information on that, you can access the 1T.org social channels. They're building a momentum for change. And you can be a part of that process with us too. So let's dive into our panel today. We have some very eminent guests with us. Dr. Jane Goodall needs no introduction. Jane is a primatologist and anthropologist, the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, a UN messenger for peace, and also the founder of Roots and Shoots for young people who are keen to get involved in the restoration agenda. Jane is both a forest advocate and a speaker of the trees. And Jane, we're very thrilled to have you with us today. I'd also like to welcome Alfonso Escobar Gonzalez, who is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper from the hub in Bogota. He's a conservation specialist and working at the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much, Jill. And finally, Tom Craver, the Professor of Global Ecosystem Ecology at ETH Zurich, the head of the Craver Lab, which is looking at interdisciplinary research to support restoration. And the founder of Restore, which is a geospatial system, which allows anybody to be able to understand what is the geology and the landscape that they're keen to restore and all the data that they may need to inform them in that process. He's also the co-chair of the advisory board of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Welcome, Tom. Thanks so much. So I'm going to start with you, Tom, if that's okay. Forests and climate. You have been working with 200 different scientists, recently published a paper, which shows the potential of forests to capture 226 gigatons of carbon. Now, I don't know really what a gigaton means, but when I did a bit of research on this, it turns out that that's about 50 years of US emissions just from the conservation restoration of forests. So could you give us a little bit more of a sense of how this research is important now? Yeah, so it's about four years since that scientific study that exploded the environmental movement, showing that we need to increase the scale of global forests by about 30% to achieve about a third of our climate goals. The estimate then was about 200 gigatons of carbon that could be achieved. Now, this was incredibly, it was an incredibly incredible moment for momentum in the environmental movement, bringing lots of attention. Wante.org was launched four years ago today, which was fantastic. But there was often, as with every scientific discovery, considerations around the scale and the scope and the potential of that. What's been, we are now in an incredibly exciting moment, a sort of landmark moment for the scientific conversation, because in the last couple of months, it's been the first study, the integrated global forest assessment, which has brought together over 250 scientists from across the planet, published in the journal Nature. And yes, it shows that our forests, we might in fact have even been slightly not bold enough a few years ago, because our forests can capture around 226 billion tons of carbon, that's 226 gigatons of carbon, making it about a third of our climate change needs. But more importantly, the study showed that forests are even more critical for food security on our planet. We lose the Amazon rainforest, we lose the integrity of food production in North and South America. We need these forests for climate adaptation, particularly as more and more people are facing heat stress in a warming climate. And we need it for the livelihoods of billions of people across the planet. Wef suggested that nature underpins, directly underpins about 50% of our global economy, but the rest is indirectly underpinned by nature. We fundamentally need these ecosystems to survive. But what was I think the most important thing in this study beyond this global consensus among all the scientists in this field, is to show what restoration really means. What do we mean by restoration? Restoration is ending deforestation in company supply chains, the biggest footprint that we have to date, and it's also equitable development. And what I mean by that is it's identifying the indigenous populations, the local communities, the local farmers, who are the stewards of biodiversity on our planet. It's finding those people and empowering them economically so that nature can become the economic choice. That is what is ultimately gonna drive the equitable distribution on our planet that drives ecological recovery. That is what global restoration is ultimately about. Thanks, Tom. How do we help to ensure that those 226 gigatons are actually achieved? So I think we are now in a unique spot, a unique moment in the environmental movement because for the first time we really have the tools to translate those incredible pledges that we're seeing across the wanty.org platform and across other platforms too, like the UN Decade and the 30 by 30 initiative. These initiatives are gaining incredible momentum, fantastic pledges of commitment, but now we have the technology to track those pledges. On the restore.eco network, you can zoom in and see over 140,000 local farmers and indigenous populations, and collectively they are actively working on over 155 million hectares across the planet. Now this is just the start and obviously we need massive more engagement into nature to scale this, but now that we have the technology and the momentum and the science backing all of this information, we have the know-how about how to do it. We now need to scale our investments into nature by somewhere between 10 and 30 times if we're gonna achieve these goals. That sounds like a lot, but it's less than 0.1% of our GDP and it's for the sustainability of humanity and biodiversity on our planet. So it's definitely something that we need. Four years ago when 1.2 was launched and the trillion trees movement really got going, the thinking there was we had six trillion trees on the planet 10,000 years ago, we've lost three trillion, so let's build back another trillion by 2030. Are you optimistic of the world's ability to conserve, restore and grow a trillion trees by 2030? I often get this question about how can you be an environmental scientist and see that amount of degradation on our planet and still be optimistic, but I have to tell you, when you learn, when you hear some of the stories that you're gonna be hearing later about people that make nature the economic solution, that is when it thrives across landscapes and you can't stop it from growing. This is what the challenge is. It's not about how much land can you buy and how many trees can you bang in there, it's about how can we make nature the economic preference for local communities across the planet. When that happens, it thrives and it spreads and you cannot help gain optimism when you experience these indigenous populations and farmers and livelihoods thriving. In every ecosystem across our planet, a degraded ecosystem is less valuable to people than a thriving one. We need to lean into nature, whether it's in our agricultural systems or conservation and everything in between. It's hundreds of thousands of solutions together. Now, life on our planet has never been easy. But we always have the opportunity to strive towards a better future. And I think it's initiatives like this that really can build the momentum and the optimism that can lead to a world when people in nature can thrive together. Thanks, Tom. Livelyhoods then becomes the next priority for us in terms of thinking about forests. And so we're looking at climate and livelihoods. Alfonso, you come from a country in Colombia that is very blessed with biodiversity and you have also been working with local communities and indigenous peoples on the ground. And I'd love you to speak a little bit about how this virtuous cycle can work between forests and livelihoods. Thank you very much, Gio. The relationship between livelihoods and forests is direct. There's no need for communities and populations to use the forest destructively if they are and they can develop sustainable livelihoods. I will give three examples but I would like to make the point that every sustainable livelihood has to be done on a participatory way using communities indigenous as partners, not as beneficiaries. And they have to be done in accordance to their life plans for it to be long-term and sustainable. So I'd like to bring three examples. The first one is Nature Tourism, as we all may know. There's a great example of this in Colombia in a natural park called La Sierra Nevada Santa Marta, where together with the four communities living in there, they have been able to develop a plan for tourists to be able to go, communities to be able to be part of the benefits and every certain time the park closes to give nature a time to recover. The second example is the payment for ecosystem services. As Tom mentioned, forests are very responsible for a lot of the cycles on Earth and one of them is water. The payment for water regulation is another livelihood. Since, for example, through flying rivers, the Amazon rainforest is responsible for giving water to cities as Bogota, Lima, La Paz. And a third livelihood, and it's personally my favorite, it's bioeconomy. Bioeconomy is the sustainable use of biodiversity and innovation to be able to sustainably use. And I want to bring you a very inspiring example of a community-led organization called Corpo Campo. They harvest and transform the asai berry, which is, you haven't heard of it, it's a delicious super fruit with one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants, and it's delicious and healthy. And what is so interesting about this company is that they have brought the indigenous communities, the Afro-Colombian communities, and also the ex-combatants together to be able to wildly harvest the asai berry. It's also a great example of peace-building, which is a very important enabling condition for any sustainable. Lifelihood. Thank you so much for that. Very inspiring to see the work that's being done there. In October this year, UNCPD, the Convention on Biodiversity is being hosted by Columbia. At COP28, we also heard that Columbia plans to phase out fossil fuels, which is another step in a very good direction. How do you see Columbia leading the way and being the change we're looking to see in the world when it comes to the forest agenda? So I think this space is going to be very important for Columbia and for the region. All eyes are put on the Amazon. There's quite an alignment of the Amazon countries. And this is the platform to abort these topics as one Amazon. And I think there is especially two very important topics that should be discussed and that Columbia is leading, and the first one is to design benefit sharing schemes that truly benefit the communities. And the second one, as I mentioned before, is this cause about how to cooperate on a regional way to be able to prevent nature, transnational environmental crimes, which sustainable livelihoods cannot compete to illegal economies on the same area, because the margins are always very different and very difficult. So without being able to enforce and guarantee peace and security, the examples I gave cannot be well implemented. Thank you Alfonso. Jane, coming to you. As an ambassador for this agenda and a champion of the movement, where do you see the greatest strengths and potential? Well, I think for one thing, there's a lot of attention right now on technology for solving climate change. And of course we need to follow every single path because we are in a critical state around the world, socially, politically and especially environmentally. And so it's very clear that protecting forests and planting trees is one of the very, very important ways that we can begin to slow down climate change. I think it's very important to stress that protecting the existing forest, particularly the old-growth forest with their rich biodiversity is really important. But we need to think long term so that planting trees is equally important. It'll take them time to grow to the stage where they can sequester the amount of tree, the amount of carbon of a full-grown tree. But we need to start now. And so you mentioned our Roots and Chutes program. Young people, kindergarten through university. We're in 70 countries now and we have hundreds of thousands of groups. And almost all of them are actually planting trees wherever they are. And we hear all the time big numbers, like I think Ethiopia planted a million trees in a week or something like that, which is commendable. But are they planting the right kind of tree? Are they planting indigenous trees? And most important, are they monitoring their success? And until recently it hasn't really been possible. And we were just talking about that recently. Now you have these mini drones that can actually follow the progress of trees even in open ground and under forest cover. So the people are always saying do you actually think it's possible to plant this number of trees in this shorter time? Oh, we don't know exactly. Tom, you would agree it's not a trillion, it isn't an exact number. But then people say, well, is there other space? There are huge amounts of degraded land that used to be forest and they need to be reforested and they need to be reforested now. But they need to be reforested in the right way with the right monitoring of their progress. And if all this happens, yes, it can be done. What are the obstacles? Well, there are certain people saying, well, we shouldn't rely on trees. That's really silly. We should rely on technology that can capture carbon from the air and put it under the ground and so on and so forth. And that is one obstacle because there's a lot of fake news out there. Social media can be wonderful but it can also put out a lot of misinformation. So that is one problem. And now of course some communities need financial support in order to protect their forest. And I think Costa Rica was an incredible example that 75% deforested brought the trees back because they found a way of paying the people to protect their forest rather than sell it for timber. Very inspiring example, Jane. We see a rising global conflict in the world today. Lots of headlines talking about war. Do you feel that the action on climate and nature is being sidelined in that context? Well, you know this, it ties in with everything. When we talk about mitigating climate change we need to talk about planting trees protecting forest, restoring forests developing alternative energy. We need to talk about all the different ways that we can capture carbon and slow down climate change. And it's the same now of course people are concerned about these terrible wars. I mean the suffering, children and limbs amputated without anesthetic in Gaza. It's horrible. And of course we need to be concerned about that. But the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity because the two are linked like that they are threats to the future. So they must not be ignored. We have enough capacity enough people, enough groups to do both. We must not be relegated and overshadowed by the need to do something about the suffering that war is creating. We also have to realize that war itself is creating huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere increasing the greenhouse gases. I don't know by how many times I'm not this kind of scientist. I can't talk about percentages and things like Tom can. And forestry isn't a very topic like it is yours. I became interested in the forest because I studied chimpanzees and chimpanzees live in forests. And so when I first arrived at Gombe in 1960 Gombe was part of a forest that stretched right across Africa, the equatorial forest belt. And then that was 1960. The late 1980s I flew over and was shocked to see Gombe was a tiny patch of forest surrounded by bare hills. And it was clear there were too many people living there for the land to support. They were struggling to survive. They were cutting down the trees in order to make money from charcoal or timber or to make more land to grow food for their growing families. And that's when it hit me if we don't find ways for these people to make a living without destroying the forest then we can't save chimpanzees forests or anything else. So we began a program and this is like one of your stories at home. We began a program Take Care or Takari as it's known and we began it in the 12 villages around Gombe National Park and it was totally holistic. It was right from the beginning a group of local people talking to the villagers no bunch of arrogant white people but you know their own people, seven of them going into the 12 villages around Gombe sitting down asking them what can the Jane Goodall Institute do to make your lives better. They wanted more land to grow food because their own farmland was degraded so it meant restoring the farmland without chemicals and they wanted better health and education. We worked with the local Tanzanian government who should have been improving those two things and kind of just gave them a little push and then gradually as people began to understand this was the first example of true community-led conservation and so we managed to get grants to give girls a chance of going to secondary school. They didn't have that chance back in 1960 and water management programs protecting the water sheds and various other things like family planning which was received with open arms because they could no longer afford to support the 8 to 10 children they were having they couldn't educate them and they know education is way out of poverty. So with all these different things and this included microcredit and that was based on Mohammed Eunice's Grameen Bank and I could not be more upset because they had just been imprisoned for six months accused totally unjustly so microcredit to me is a very amazing way of working with local people because if you give them a grant they use it wisely yes and then they want another but if you give them a loan and they pay it back they're proud I did it I did this they choose their own small houses and they pay back and they are so proud and it's changed everything so now that program which began with 12 villagers is in 104 throughout Chimp Range in Tanzania and every village produces two volunteers I mean they get their expenses but they don't have a salary and they now can use smart phones and itablets and things like that and they monitor the health of their forest reserves they're along the mountain ridge along Lake Tanganyika and they all have little village forest reserves so they go in and they choose what to monitor an illegally cut tree an animal trap, a bullet and the positive side a chimpanzee or a pangolin and so that program is now in six other African countries where JGI works to protect and study chimpanzees thank you Jay and by the way the forests around Gombe has come back and the people understand that protecting the forest isn't just to save wildlife that was the big thing we did that other conservation groups were doing we didn't talk about the animals we talked about them and their children and now that they understand it for their own future they have become our partners in conservation very inspiring story Jane, thank you for that I'd like to open to the audience if there are one or two questions we'll perhaps group the questions together if you'd like to just raise your hand if you could just wait for a microphone thank you thank you, it's incredibly inspired I'm from Venezuela I'm a global shaper from Venezuela and I come from indigenous roots so I truly understand what you're all saying I was talking to Alfonso the other day and maybe this question is directed to you Tom because in Venezuela one of the greatest causes of deforestation is actually an indigenous community called Los Pemones in Spanish we call them Los Pemones which is fire setters because they have this cultural idea around fire and they have all these religious traditions so they're one of the main causes of deforestation and we've tried and by way I mean civil society like we've tried everything to try to really no change of behavior but it's deeply rooted into their culture and their religion so what would be like your expert advice because you talked about working with indigenous communities so what would be your expert advice to work with Los Pemones or Los Pemones that is a really good and challenging question but what I would say to start out is that this story about global forests becomes most clear when we look at the big data and so what I mean by that is if we look collectively across hundreds of thousands of indigenous communities indigenous populations rights are truly recognized on only 20% of our planet and yet they support 80% of our biodiversity so on average with every big data study you'll find examples above the line and examples below the line but on average we see a huge positive influence of indigenous populations on biodiversity and whenever they can be empowered to live the lives that they want to live that is when nature thrives and I feel like the challenge of trillion trees needs to be anytime anyone wants biodiversity to come back we need to help them become economically empowered to do so or find the resources to flow wealth towards them but in those particular examples I always find the individual conversations are often most beneficial around the immense other benefits that come with nature obviously the more we degrade like I said earlier every degraded ecosystem is less valuable to people or less capable of supporting human life than a thriving ecosystem and the more we can just use those examples to show how I spoke with just a couple of days ago an indigenous leader from somewhere in Kenya and his tribe has been experiencing extreme drought conditions and so the tribe has been depleted over the last couple of decades even and what he started doing is protecting tiny patches of forest and that allowed moisture to get captured and because the moisture gets captured then there's enough vegetation for their cattle to drink and eat and as a result they were able to generate enough food and then the biodiversity that comes back generates medicines so that people can thrive and then when other communities down the landscape identified that oh my goodness those trees are enabling people to survive, 17 other communities down the landscape all started protecting these they call them waterholes but they're patches of forests across this region and I always think examples like that when you see it, when you hear this guy and you realize that without nature we cannot have our livelihoods thriving, those examples hopefully can be the one but I would always recognize the rights and traditions of the people that live there we're just here to try to facilitate in their needs and there's no one fix all solution so I'm sure you know much more about how to address that challenge than me Alright everybody we have come to the end of this session I'd like to thank you for your time for those who are here with us in the audience if you do have further questions some of our panelists may be able to stay after because I see many hands thank you very much for joining us on this journey if you're keen to conserve, restore and grow trees you can find out how to do that online we've mentioned a number of the organizations that are involved in this movement thank you very much and goodbye