 I think perhaps we're gonna start with John, John D. Liu's introduction that he has prepared for us today. Welcome John, I'm very excited to have John here. John has been doing a bit of much needed rest and relaxation travel in time with his family lately and he is joining us today from Beijing. So it's always good to connect with John and have him here. I really just wanted to welcome everyone to the spy side chat. We have taken a break over the summer or depending on which part of the world you're in, perhaps it's winter, it was winter for you, it was certainly winter for me, but fortunately the earth has turned and it's now time for us to go into summer down south which is much appreciated and welcomed after very long and cold winter. My name is Kath, for those of you who haven't met me before, I'm the communications coordinator at Ecosystem Restoration Communities. I'm usually in the back end, but this evening or today I have the pleasure of joining you in the driving seat alongside John and Barb and it's good to be here. You can probably tell from my accent that I am not from the north, I am from Cape Town actually in South Africa. And if you find my accent difficult to follow, feel free to ask questions in the chat, but rest assured I won't be doing most of the talking today, so all is not lost. And we're really happy this evening to be sharing some good news with you and some stories of hope really, especially at a time when there's just so much devastation and despair in the world. So really lovely to have you all here and I think that I'm going to kick off the John's video. So just give me one second while I get that up and running. Just returned to Beijing yesterday in the evening and tonight it's a fireside chat. We're excited about the opportunity to learn about the camp in Kenya and soon we'll be hearing about that. But I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who's listening out there and especially to all the people in the different camps and communities all around the world who are working to restore ecological function in their localities. Personally, I'm very thankful to the Common Land Foundation and the Mustard Seed Trust who allow me to continue to do this work. And I'm very grateful to you for coming because more and more people need to learn about and to participate in large scale ecological restoration on a planetary scale. We are facing as I guess if you're here, you understand quite serious challenges from climate change, from disruptions to the hydrology, to massive changes in desertification around the world. And we know a lot about this and we know how to change it and it takes everybody's understanding and everybody's effort to do this work. So you've come to the right place and we're also seeing that at this time we need to consider peace. One of the things that I think about a lot and especially in these last few days with the situation in Israel and Palestine and before that in Ukraine and Russia and throughout the time in Libya and in Afghanistan and in the Sudan and in Lebanon and all around the world really, there's historical inequities and there are conflicts that remain unresolved for a very long time. And I think that ecosystem rests in camps and communities can be very helpful in addressing what's happening and only can we restore soils and restore hydrology and restore biodiversity, but I think we can restore peace. If we get everybody involved and engaged in restoration then there's more value and more kindness and more fun in doing that than having disruptions to the society, having classes, entire masses of people who are left out of the society and can't survive and are driven to extremes. So we need to take care of everyone so that everyone can live a joyous and abundant life on the earth. I look forward to learning about the camp in Kenya now and to get to know and to work with all of you around the world in restoring the earth and the human spirit. Thanks so much for listening. Okay, thank you so much, John, for that message. We look forward to being able to engage further with you after the fireside chat. Just a reminder to those folk who are new to the format, once we've had the presentation by the restoration community, there's a wonderful open Q&A session. We'll start with the questions that are more focused on the actual presentation so that Bob can have a chance to respond and if he doesn't know the answers because none of us profess to know everything, then somebody else from the floor, possibly John, probably John will be able to respond. And they're up to we delve into a more general Q&A just around. Anything that might be on your heart and mind about ecosystem restoration, questions you may have, concerns, exciting things you'd like to share with us. So the format will be quite open after the formal chat-based Q&A. But before we start talking to Bob, which is I know the reason why all of you signed in today to actually be with us, I just have a few exciting announcements that I'd like to share from the movement. And so I'm going to get to those now. If I'd be good to ask everyone to mute once more because I can still hear a few people. Thank you for that, John. Yes. You will see my screen. Yeah, fabulous. Okay, so a couple of other things in addition to muting, if you could hold your questions until after the presentation, you can certainly put your questions so long in the chat. They will be noted. My colleague Melissa Lacoste is sitting in the back end, sitting in Paris, but she's sitting in the back end of this conversation. And she will be taking down all your questions. During the actual Q&A session, you're welcome to stick up your hand and by using the hand emoji and ask your questions in person. If you're shy like me, you can just pop them into the chat and we'll pick them up that way. And then I've mentioned the session goes on schedule for one hour, but we're here. We're welcome and happy to stay afterwards to chat about anything else that you'd like to. I really want to start with some opportunities, really, for you, our supporters and our followers. The first one is taking place on Saturday, the 11th of November, and that is the EARTHT event. EARTHT is a Jewish organization, and they are going to be holding their first ever EARTHT summit at London's iconic Barbican. And this event will bring together over 30 global experts and practitioners around regenerative living, ecosystem restoration restorers, public figures, media partners, aligned organizations. There's an incredible lineup, and as an official impact partner to the event, ecosystem restoration communities will also be there. So really, if you are going to be in London over that time, we invite you to come through, sign up for the event. Melissa will be sharing shortly the link to sign up for this EARTHT event, the summit, and our very own John Liu and Ashley will be there speaking about the movement on the day, so please come over and say hi at our store. Then the next event, I wanted to draw your attention to, if you're an island or more specifically in County Monaghan, there is a regenerative agriculture taking place in November. All the dates mentioned there are Tuesdays, and it's taking place in one site at, sorry, Chilter Creek, the ecosystem restoration community in Ireland. And the particular agriculture post is going to be focusing on regenerative agriculture, things like income inequality, if I can ask, I think Christopher, just to mute because we're hearing you in the background. But it's all about, how do we create a nutrient rich food for the community and a fair wage for the farmer? And this course is really designed to give participants an overview of knowledge of key aspects regarding regenerative agriculture. Then, excitingly, they're all exciting, but I'm particularly excited about this one, and that's that our very own director, Peter van der Hoa, who is present here. You can actually ask some questions, I'm sure, afterwards about this. He is going to be presenting at a TEDx event at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and that is on Saturday, the 18th of November. I'm not sure exactly what time of the day Peter's presentation is, perhaps you could pop that in the chat for us, but the whole event kicks off at 10.30 in the morning and runs until 6 p.m. You do need to pre-book for this event, and as you know with TEDx talks, they are high in demand, they are limited seats available, so if you happen to be finding yourself in the Netherlands in November, see if you can stick around for the 18th and get to Wageningen for that presentation. Peter will be speaking particularly on the theme of this year's event, which is tradition and transition, and the event, the whole theme is going to be broaching the topic of how to continue living on this planet with responsibility and with agency, with all places and ideas around us, and the world in general. Peter's going to be unpacking particularly the topic of can we make our room to live on this planet larger? Can we make our room larger, our living room on this planet? So that's an interesting topic, and I think one worth hearing. Of course it's going to be recorded, and of course we'll share with you afterwards, but if you can get to the live event all the better. Then on the 22nd of November, this is one field diary. I have very few details. This has just been confirmed. We're going to be hosting an ecosystem restoration design course webinar. Many of you will be already familiar. We've been running the very popular ecosystem restoration design course for a couple of years now. The next one kicks off on the 10th of February 2024. So it's one to bear in mind just keep missing the start date. That's the module one out of five modules for this year long course. There's lots of space and time in between to relax and enjoy life. There's a lot of content in the course, but it's very evenly spread over a very manageable period of time. It really does equip you with everything you need to have to become a fully-fledged Earth Restorer, and we're going to be sending out the notification of that webinar really soon. In boxes, if you're not on our mailing list go to our website right now and subscribe to make sure you don't miss any of our news. Then, excitingly, we have six different opportunities right now for you to get involved on the ground, whether you're in Kenya or in Brazil. We've also got a new one in Elsie Plano in Spain which is with the EU Solidarity Corp. There are six amazing opportunities to really get involved and get your hands dirty and do that work that all of us dream of doing. There are short-term opportunities, longer-term opportunities, learning opportunities. Don't forget also the one at the end there, the last slide image is of Cocavada, which is in Costa Rica. Pop on to our website. Our website is erc.Earth. How easy is that website to remember to use. Pop on there and have a look at the click on the participate page and find all the details you need of those volunteers for you. I'm going to share just a couple of news items for you. Firstly, you can read but I'll just tell you the highlights in partnership with Ratio Viva and those of you who came to our last fireside chat before the four-month break will know all about Piero and Ratio Viva. It's quite exciting because we manage to secure fundings through the EU Erasmus program to build our monitoring and evaluation infrastructures. That's everything. Without monitoring and evaluation we can't prove the power of ecosystem restoration. Everyone here in this room knows about the power of ecosystem restoration and is convinced of it but we need scientific evidence to really not to argue that this is really a big step and we're very excited about this funding. Sino de Valle which is the ecosystem restoration community located to Southside. On a strip of the Atlantic rainforest, they have received recognition from their government for the work that they do with jackfruits. There's an amazing blog on our website that you can read all around jackfruits and nutrition and all sorts of benefits and that's well worth reading but we commend them for that recognition. And then a smaller one but still a great one for contour lines in Guatemala they've just received a grant of a thousand euros and that's similarly towards their post harvest value adding and processing projects. So they're also working with products that the local community are harvesting through the project story that they've been building there all these villages for a couple of years now and this fund is going to help them develop that product line and that whole sort of valley chain to help them and the communities to start to benefit from making income from selling their purchase. Last I just want to highlight we have two amazing new blog posts if you read the newsletter that went out last week you would have seen the one is around how wild horses are helping to repair reclaimed mine lands in Kentucky in USA and that's a lovely story and also you can be inspired by the story of a Basilicata local Piero Franco who returned to Matera in Italy after 13 years of studying and travel abroad. You would have met Piero at the last fireside chat but now we've really worked with a volunteer blog to tell of how he has set up Russia Viva ecosystem restoration community in southern Italy with a group of friends really to help restore his community in a region which has been largely abandoned particularly by youth and by farmers. We have an opportunity for you to join us for you to volunteer for us and by us I'm referring to the ecosystem restoration foundation which is the very small group of people who support all the restoration communities around the world and this is an opportunity really to help with our tree scheme program so that's working with funders like Plan for the Planet to provide money for the ecosystem restoration communities to plant trees on site and we just need some administrative help with that initiative it is a position that can be held anywhere in the world we're all digital nomads here at the foundation and the time investment is five to eight hours a week for the minimum period of three months so that's a commitment that you're currently shouting yes to I can't hear you because you're over mute or perhaps you know of someone else who would be perfect for this role we'd love to hear from you and shortly if not already Melissa we'll be sharing the link to that position in the chat for you to lastly but really importantly I just want to bring your attention to the fact that we are raising funds with our global fund raising partner Global Giving and this is to help around 300 families in Chakaya which is an ecosystem restoration community in Bolivia and the way we're doing this is by introducing agroforestry and building water reservoirs which is really going to help with increasing food security and help them get their agroforestry projects off the ground and importantly provide year-long access to this life-giving water each reservoir that we're planning a building and we're hoping to will raise enough money to build six of these concrete reservoirs each one can harvest 30,000 litres of water to help irrigate around 200 agroforestry plots and provide drinking water at schools we also want to provide another six water infiltration lakes and this is all taking place in the Potosia Highlands in the Bolivian Andes so if you're in a position to help with this and donate to this project and help us really create a sustainable source of water for this community please consider making a donation to this project it's a small project it's only running for three months and we're a month in and we really need your support to reach our fundraising goals with that one finally and this really is funny I know I said finally previously but now I mean it we really do need your help to grow so please tell your friends and your friends friends and their friends all about the mighty movement and of course remember to tell them to donate to our work and remember that you can catch daily almost daily updates particularly on our Instagram and our LinkedIn feeds so make sure that you are following us on these channels okay so that's that's it from me and without delay I really really want to bring Bob in Barbara van der Beyl is the Restoration Community Leader at Ecosystem Restoration Community Karomi River in Malindi in in Kenya Bob I see we are losing a bit of light there now Bob is an hour ahead of Central European time now so I think he's going to pop a light on before he disappears completely from our screens and Bob really welcome thanks for joining us tonight I know you've had a long day out on the land already the rest of us who sit behind laptops all day look forward now to travelling vicariously through your towns of what it's like to be actually working the land and to really tell us more about what's happening at Karomi River so if you'd like to share your presentation and kick off that would be fantastic yeah thanks I'll try to go here I'll say share how does that look well thanks so much and also I'm happy that many of you have joined quite a feat for me that I'm able to discuss a little bit of what I've been doing here in Kenya my English is certainly much worse than our moderator since I'm from the Netherlands so if you don't get something put it in the chat and somebody will pick it up hopefully I'm talking to you not from but from Malindi a small town in coastal Kenya in fact the journey that I made you could say started here in Malindi when it comes to planting trees and ecosystem restoration I'm an economist myself I worked a lot in trade and investment promotion between the Netherlands and Africa I went a lot with consortia in different fields know a lot of companies that are working in Africa and when I moved to Kenya I was focusing on consulting in agribusiness and through a consultancy for the World Bank which was about greening of value chains I got more let's say alarmed you could say by the state of affairs of nature and at the same time being a grandson of farmers in the Netherlands in the Netherlands in the north I also had always that feeling just writing reports let's say working with intangible results I would like to do some more concrete things and in that case I'm almost like the average canyon because I think only three weeks before I turned 50 is when we actually planted the first three in the Karomi river camp and you could say that it was really late but I believe it's better late than ever when it comes to really doing something and maybe point you a little bit I'm still not definitely not all the time in the Shamba because I several land holdings here in the Malini area and it is and let's say I visit Karomi on average I think once twice per week I have other farm which I will also discuss this evening it is in a bit nearby in Malini so at the same time there's also other things to do like administration and looking running after funding so it is a bit I'm a bit on the move but I think at a certain scale you can also not do only the manual work maybe it would be more healthy for me but anyway let's see I have prepared a few slides and this is the first one that you see in front of you this is from the high we have land holding at Karomi river which is 500 acres so 200 hectares and you see below forest revive you see in the distance something that looks a little bit different there is where we have planted Malia Volcansi trees a very drought resistant tree and basically if I can summarize it as I said as I put there below a biodiverse reforestation and agroforestry but when we started in making our plants in 2018 we were really more thinking of agroforestry so that means in our case we had identified this drought resistant tree but also moringa olivera and our idea from the starting point was the trees are growing while the trees are growing we will harvest the seeds from moringa olivera and we will make that into an oil for cosmetics so we really started as a commercial venture doing activities let's say slightly close to the ecosystem restoration but definitely was not completely the starting point and that is a bit I think the journey to discover how you have to do things and not to do things but also how to yeah I have also I think personally evolved in this project we started with some two other shareholders one is no longer there the other one is still there but I will also discuss a little bit those dynamics with you in my presentation so I'll go to the next slide I think most of you will know where Kenya is but maybe not all of you know is that well over 80% of Kenya is arid and semi arid basically in the blue circle you could see here Malindi on the right side down where it is yeah it's clear from the Google maps that the coastal zone is less dry but the more you go inland the drier it gets and let's say to a large extent that is caused by deforestation the coastal zone used to be maybe 100 years ago one big forest and now there's only one small forest left and that forest is I think about 450 km it's called and the smallest the small farm that I have and my nursery is located there it's 4 hectares 15 km from Malindi let's say straight to the west and then Karomi River project as I said 200 hectares it is about let's say depending on which route you take about 70-65 km inland so in a much drier in a much drier area so now what is the currently after let's say how things evolved basically I could say our mission is ecosystem restoration through bio-diverse reforestation and agroforestry and basically my idea would be maybe it's because I was trained as an economist I want to incentivize people to invest their time and money and energy on all levels investors, local landowners local communities in following our example but as I said we are still also developing our concepts more and more but at the end of the day let's say if you talk about a dream I would like to have a lot of people following the example where they can generate revenues generate incomes on the one hand but on the other hand they really make a strong impact on the ecosystem so this is one picture of our let's say a big agroforestry project you still see it's maybe not that easy to see there is still some moringa in between the trees that we planted we are talking about an area that is in general I think receiving about 500, 600 millimeters of rain per year but when we started the rains were really excellent and I thought like wow this is this fantastic things will go fast but in 2020, 2021, 2022 almost three years we had very little rain so it was actually very challenging and I could say that definitely not all things went the way I had hoped they would go and basically this year we hope to catch up basically to get with the El Nino rains to get a lot and also look at several other things the tree you see mostly here is Melea Volcansi what I already mentioned it's a termite resistant and highly drought tolerant tree we found out that watering a little bit in between the planting rain season and the next rainy season will give you a very high survival rate we have also done an agroforestry trial there and there we found that really for fruit production the rainfall is not enough and they will survive but you won't get any production and there that's why I put now non timber forest products there and TFP because we now look more towards local fruits that are highly let's say tolerant to drought and also to products like honey maybe some medicinal products that we can produce from trees one thing that we come to speak of is how to get water on your land without water you're basically stuck you will not get high survival rates in such a dry climate and we have made some tests in our small farm on rain water harvesting which we now want to roll out also on this bigger project where we can on the one hand pump water from the seasonal river when it's flowing and on the other hand we capture the runoff water from the hillside and our idea would eventually be that we could stock those rain water basins with catfish African catfish so that's why I call it aqua forestry by next year we will get sufficient funding to scale our first pilot up on this location go to the next slide well achievements it is very everybody who was planting trees in dry areas knows even counting is not so easy I've seen last year for instance we planted 40,000 trees I think only 5,000 survived because we really had almost no water resources so that was tough but I think if we count from let's say May 2019 we are now about at 40,000 trees and with the whole team of staff and interns volunteers we are now basically getting ready in the coming weeks and maybe months to plant another 20,000 trees this year probably before the end of the year the agroforestry pilot I mentioned already it's 2 hectares with many different crops we have tried basically conclusion was that it was too optimistic to grow fruit trees there and that's why I already explained to you we want to change our focus a little bit we have a local tree expert that has 40 years of experience in the let's say the identification and use of natural trees and shrubs and he did a survey in only part of the 200 hectares and he found already over 300 indigenous trees and shrubs and we are seeing that because we have a permanent presence there that really also it's not only the tree planting on areas where not much is growing but it's also definitely adding to the conservation of the area on both farms I have I think around 20 permanent temporary people working we did also a bit of training on tree planting on other aspects around 100 one thing I would like to discuss with you is like even joining ecosystem restoration camp communities I should say actually sorry Melissa but joining such a movement is really great because in general it is still a little bit solitary and investors can get a bit grumpy it's taking so long and are you moving fast enough that they don't have let's say a good insight in your challenges the money is revenues are limited so you have very few staff members and I think it helps a lot to be in a network with people that are doing similar things and I think in terms of other partnerships that will also help to work more effectively and we are working together with the Kenya Forestry Research Institute with Nature Kenya GrowPact which is a horticultural group that has provided me with let's say free advice on a very regular basis the same for Acacia water from the Netherlands which are experts in groundwater and then integrated water resource management and lastly we now have a contract with a company called Would You Care and they are actually the first ones that are paying me an amount in euros for every tree that I have planted so it goes in smaller numbers but we hope to increase that and also together with Christina we are also talking to a company in Italy that is interested in doing the same so the technical aspects will not go too deeply into it but what I did in 2019 was to make a it was more a focus on the tree we said we want to do this tree you see on your left hand side but now our question was at that time which crops are we going to put in between the trees so we made a big study with a few students on which crops are suitable and also on the market aspects of those crops now in the meantime since we had this very tough period of drought our attention shifted more towards selecting other trees and shrubs to now plant in between in between the trees and I think if you look a bit close by you can see for instance some wild kappok trees now that we planted last year some of them are already well over a meter high and our idea is now that we create much more biodiversity in terms of trees so together with a group of interns and especially one intern that I actually of that found me through the ESD website we are who is called Matilde we are now really let's say updating our concept towards much more biodiverse reforestation where we will get one third of the trees with the objective to harvest timber and two thirds plants that we can harvest something from or simply that are good to improve the soil or to improve the ecosystem so that is currently the let's say the exercise that we are doing planting density we are also making trials this one you see on this picture is quite dense for canyon standards is two and a half by two and a half meters in general for natural trees we would go for five by five meters pruning also interesting some trees require a lot of pruning others don't well this one on the picture here definitely requires a lot and from the branches we intend to make biochar that we use again with planting of additional trees which we found out is working really well and also on the picture well it is a bit small I have to admit but you see three seeds for instance also there so obviously if you don't prune you get also three seeds that you could harvest this maybe something just for you to take a look at this land is actually quite interesting because there are many seasonal rivers in Kenya and we actually bought this land because we found that well after the rainy season was over and there was still water in the riverbed and we were really thinking that that would be a lot and even help us with the production of crops however all our attempts of putting in small dams it failed completely so we have removed them again and now along the river but not inside the riverbed we now want to put rainwater harvesting basins so that's totally different and what is interesting in terms of ecosystem restoration is that we will actually demarcate a zone that is maybe on average let's say 80 meters along the river on both sides where we will not do anything but just conserving what is there and in the other parts of the land we always have our principle that anything over 5 meters high we should keep it we only remove basically trees and shrubs after let's say our tree expert has identified that it is okay to do and I'll come back I'll come back to that later on and also lastly when it comes to this zoning we definitely we are fine also with investors or companies that want to invest in purely putting natural forest reforestation that is what we hope to do with the Italian company and we have already identified let's say a bit more than 20 hectares to do that so now challenges I think I've mentioned a few but I think it would be interesting for me to share some thoughts on that during the Q&A we have the first one you heard already droughts you can see on the picture that it is really this was let's say definitely after having some rain still you see the grass but in the beginning it was really in many places there was nothing much left on the soil to cover and it was also difficult for me to initially to explain how I wanted it with mulching so this was a bit let's say the beginning steps I think what resources I discussed them talking about limited short-term revenue streams that is maybe the biggest challenge for anyone who wants to do a project that includes forestry I can only say that it even you have to really invest a lot of money if you want to do it at scale basically I have taken the personal risk of just selling my apartments in the Netherlands and actually I did and that is I think something we can maybe discuss on the basis of one of the next slides where I have listed some revenue streams and potential revenue streams another let's say point is the typical local challenges you might think that camels are only in the desert but surely not in Kenya there are millions of camels basically the owners hire herdsmen to basically walk around with them in very big areas so these camels can be 800 kilometers from their original base camp so to speak and besides camels and definitely also a lot of goats so for us for instance the tree planting you are really scared they will trample on all the trees or eat them so far the biggest damage that I had was on mango trees which I had tried but generally speaking it is it is not it has not been disastrous but on the other hand it is also you always have that feeling it is very tricky if you plant on high densities and 50 camels pass by and the trees are still small definitely you will have damage the other thing that is happening is a lot in this area where we are working is charcoal production so the most valuable hardwood trees are cut down in the local communities I think it is one of their main sources of income is to produce charcoal but it is very painful the most expensive hardwood trees are used to make charcoal with they sell them for a very low amount maybe 2 euro for a big bag and I would say it is definitely a challenge what can you offer the local communities to generate revenues apart from producing charcoal or cutting down trees for poles etc so that is also for me interesting to discuss with all of you and lastly what is a challenge is that for instance what I said about milking or about how to plant you really have to invest in your team not all people are equally motivated but I can say after now more than 4 years really working at the project I now have very good very reliable staff and also good expertise however for the scaling up of this work to the local communities it is actually quite I think it is quite difficult and we hope to learn a lot from organizations such as Nature Kenya on how to do that because people have a low income they are in general I think not aware that deforestation is also causing the accessibation of already existing climate change effects so that is how to convince them and secondly the people who are walking with the cattle basically they they are not from that area they have zero compassion with nature in general so that is for me really a tough not to crack so community management community engagement and we have asked around the local communities what do they really prefer the most a bit to our surprise all of them almost preferred moringa because they can eat the moringa leaves in the dry season so that was interesting for the local communities but the actual tree planting was much less interesting for people so that still requires a lot of awareness raising obviously besides our direct employment we also have a lot of indirect employment like carpenters cycle drivers etc etc next one gelenas I think you've heard already a few of them but maybe not all and maybe good for our discussion this tree that we have started planting the most is indigenous to Kenya but not specifically to the coastal zone some people say yes only plant what was originally there whereas of course your commercial angle would sometimes make it attractive to be a bit less orthodox on that but I like to hear your views on that definitely since I got more and more bad feeling myself when I saw now let's say almost a pure stand of one tree that I already the initiative to now put in many more different varieties still we see in commercial forestry of course much more of a monoculture so we have decided to go to the biodiversity way and I'm also very interested to hear your perspective on how to do that inter-planting the only thing I can say interesting to note is that whenever we have to cut down a tree because for instance it was growing totally bent or it fell over I think in 99% of the cases there was a regrowth so that makes me quite confident that it is actually okay to harvest some of the trees for timber because we know almost 100% sure that it will grow back then even maybe a bigger dilemma bush clearing to clear everything is of course no go so I already said we want to leave the bigger trees there but we are still now a bit considering if we leave more and more intact then let's say the management aspect becomes more difficult you can no longer plant rows which tree is where can be a bit more difficult so what we want to try out this season is let's say to clear a lot less and plant a lot less straight but I'd also like to hear your perspective on that later on and then last but not least nature Kenya which is the biggest nature conservation organization they are buying land other organizations are buying land many it seems to be let's say the easy solution to for nature conservation is to to buy land and try to prevent deforestation and deforestation etc etc the longer term probably better model is to work with out growers but then you really have to find a solution on the incentives you want to work for them so for now I'm doing a bit of both we will the moment we have more water resources we'll buy the adjacent land most land in this region is not owned by the local population but has been sold already to others so it's quite easy to expand on the other hand I also don't think it is a good thing to have these UFO type of projects where you land from outside and you don't take the local communities along with your your way of thinking or with your the concepts you are developing next slide to close off because I think I've already finished my time a few pictures of the other farm the one closer to Malindi so I've put a training center research hospitality and the last but not least there is of course our tree nursery when we had no rain we had to do something so I had already bought this land where we had planted fruit trees mainly so basically we moved our natural tree nursery also here and as you can see on the picture I think this building we built it last year and we only have done a few trainings there for now we have just basically started the promotion of it as a farm to fork restaurant and event location but it's not only fruit trees also here we have planted natural trees we are selling natural tree seedlings so there is still let's say this is a very light agroforestry type and I already said in the WhatsApp group that here we now we have experimented here with fish farming we have the ponds so everything we want to do in large scale we first test on this smaller farm here you see the seedlings so sometimes we can get seedlings somewhere sometimes we promote them ourselves sometimes we buy them etc etc and we do part of it in shade and part of it we do just under trees I put their arboretum just for awareness raising we are next to the forest but let's say there are elephants in the forest you cannot walk there so important local trees together with our tree expert Mashiuri we want to make arboretum there maybe one hectare or something like that also people from the town can easily come and learn more about trees this is what it looks like the same building in the background and you can see many different crops we have I think to the right is where we test jackfruit we have different types of mangoes bananas, plantains, passion guava etc so for all of them we want to find out how drought resistant are they how difficult or easy to manage they are basically I would say this is one of the first let's say a bit that's a modern plant fruit farms here at the coast this is one of the trainings you can see that people have a beautiful view and you can see also in the background one of the rainwater harvesting basins there basically we hope that with partnerships which I just mentioned that we can also do more workshops here or meetings or farmer markets things like that now ecosystem restoration communities has really in a friendly way forced me to upgrade the facilities so this is again a kromi farm I think before joining we have expanded the outdoor space we have put very simple showers and toilets and we are still upgrading the place thanks to the interns that are helping me today I hope they can listen but the internet is not always that great but they are now helping me a lot and we hope that this can be a place where almost all the time we have some volunteers I don't know if potential volunteers are listening but you can see it's a nice place and you have a nice sunset this evening and of course our motorcycle that we use for transport to and fro the village and these are the current interns one of them is not on the picture but I have no less than five actually Matilda on the left is maybe I hope she is in the call because then maybe later on she can say something say something also to you about her experience I think that's that's all from my end one slide I somehow have left out or maybe a technical issue but I think I'll go back stop I'll stop the screen sharing now basically on the revenues I think that we are currently besides Timber looking at Honey we are looking at let's say eco tourism we hope to get more companies that will pay us for planting trees but we are also let's say we are a small project carbon credit community is always asking for let's say 1000 hectares, 2000 hectares huge numbers and I think that the incentives are not always the best ones many companies like that they are planting eucalyptus which I think is not in general not very beneficial so we are also very curious what we should do to work more towards biodiversity credits I think I didn't look at the time but I hope it was not extremely long but I think this was about it thank you Bob so much we have run a little bit over time but I actually just didn't want to interrupt you because I was just enjoying listening so much to everything you were sharing with us and I think what you have really successfully done as well is you've highlighted the truly multifaceted approach that it actually takes to successfully run an ecosystem restoration project in a way that it really does benefit stakeholders and importantly that it remains sustainable because as you explained earlier there's a very slow return initially for investors there's a slow return on trees that you plant nature takes its time but there's no sort of quick fix and one needs to have this holistic approach and to consider this before setting up and think about how I can keep myself sustained during the process and I think you've your business acumen clearly comes through because you've thought about this from all angles but I think what you've proven overall is that one has to be adaptable you just constantly have to just meet the challenges as they arise and adapt to take them head on and there are quite a little questions that have come through understandably in the chat I was really hoping and you also had questions that you posed that I was hoping we could discuss I know that it's really just almost going on 10 past the hour and that some people may need to leave but I was hoping that we could hear if the connectivity is good just for two minutes maybe from Matilda or one of the volunteers that is constantly with you because you may not all be aware that we have two amazing volunteer opportunities available right now at Paromi River farm and at the main Karomi farm Matilda read about these and she's travelled there to work now with Bob so I'm hoping that I thought it would be fun if we could hear sort of a first-hand account on what it's actually like to be immersed there and to experience being a volunteer so Matilda I don't know if you are if you are there could you maybe unmute yourself and just say hi then I can find you and bring you into the chat I'm just looking for you where you I'm going through or just start speaking and then I can I'll bring in your video too if you are still with us and maybe Melissa can also just let me know if Matilda is online or if that that bad connection is winning alright I think in the interest of moving on I'm going to suggest that we start answering some of these questions and then Matilda if you are there I'll bring you in afterwards Bob I'm just going to I'm I'm also going to suggest that we maybe don't take more questions in the chat but if you have got a question after we've worked through these ones that came through during the presentation you can maybe be brave and stick your hand up and answer them so right where do I begin there's a message from from from Iso2 who says thank you so much for the presentation their project Reforest the Future of Gambia have got similar models and we want to know sorry he'd like to know how can you connect so that you can share ideas and learn from each other so maybe Bob what you want to do is just pop your email address if you happen to do that in the chat and Iso2 can pick it up that way otherwise Iso2 just bang an email to erse.earth I'll pick it up and I will connect to you with Bob but we love collaboration on that level so that's brilliant another question or another statement from John he says good luck and he believes it would be beneficial for actually ecosystem restoration communities to form a working group to discuss and focus on the economic and investment opportunities regarding ecological function and I completely agree and I'm sure that if Ash is listening I know she is listening and that would be of interest to her to maybe look at sitting up a group or having even a separate webinar where we can all bring our ideas to the table and discuss that our ZenDisk knowledge platform would be another great platform for that so I've made a note to that and thank you I'll take that forward then Kent Wagoner would like to know are you preparing compost with a focus on microbial content but that's for you that's a good one we have let's say in 2019 we have used a lot of dried manure on the small farm we are using and producing compost the challenge in the larger forestry our agroforestry project at Koroomi was that we had very little because of the drought undoubtedly and also because of the unplanned grazing we had very little organic matter to collect so that is a bit what held us back in producing compost at the same time I think adding a little bit of biochar and a little bit of dried manure preferably from goats and cows ruminants it already helps a lot we also tried a very expensive mycorrhiza gel basically we found that if it's really very dry even the mycorrhiza is not surviving so we didn't see any effect of that however we are trying to do it as much as possible always when we plant and also one other thing in the same chapter is weeding any people here in Kenya have the habit of where they say weeding spot weeding the tree equals making a big circle around the tree where there is nothing growing so it has been quite some let's say work for me to convince people that really grass is not going to prevent the tree from growing so now you see slowly by slowly a better cover of the soil thanks for that Kent I hope that answered your question another one here from Brian Hamel saying he thinks that doing contour beaver mimicry brush berms with some of the cut branches would really help you slow spread sink soak and also help to store more of your rain water runoff into the land to help provide deeper infiltration which will help your tree survive the dry months planting the trees on perfect contour or on key line instead of perfectly straight rows will also help with the water so I'm not sure but those are some of the things you've already addressed or you can take no it is a very valid point we have let's say dug some trenches and let's say to a large extent the land is quite flat but we have seen when it really starts raining we have to plug the gullies as they say but also definitely there you know if you are talking about more than one square kilometer it's also on a very small scale it's possible on a bigger scale I would say and that is also what we want to look into is maybe some more mechanized solutions would be interesting where you really make small little dikes maybe half a meter high to really everywhere to keep the water more in place but definitely it also depends on the topography sometimes when it's flat you see that almost everything infiltrates it's mainly now on the steeper on the steeper ends but definitely we can make further improvements on that so thank you for that Brian here's another comment from Jürgen Adam saying any chance to work with the pastoralists and their animals to grant land access for holistic grazing management it could boost biodiversity and would teach a different kind of animal management being not a problem but being part of the solution yeah I think it's a very good point and it is let's say if we would have areas where trees were four years or older all of them then it would be no problem to have Francis Cowes graze in there it's only now that we are let's say adding more smaller trees that is it's still a bit tricky also what you would not expect maybe the people walking around with the cattle they are from nowhere near and so the local communities are fairly irritated by them basically they they are outsiders and let's say in the long run I think if more people were actually also doing something with the land we had the only ones probably there who ever planted something in the whole maybe in 20 kilometers circle the rest is just leaving it like that and wait for the price of the land to increase but if there were more people following our example then definitely we would have better bargaining power to speak to those pestilist communities but it's a tricky topic across Africa I think this conflict between people that want to grow something and people that are pestilist and to make matters even more complicated most of the cattle is owned by politicians on the background or other big weeks so it is it is not easy if they were from the local communities it would have been easier okay yeah I know you certainly had a challenge that's been there for time in memorial with the hunter gatherers versus the pestilist I think also the development now of your education centre or training centre is really going to help as you get more farmers interested in what you're doing and that's how you're going to scale out by showing the benefits of what you're doing and getting more people to come on board for the concept and there apparently there have been a lot of good suggestions coming through from Chris Nash who of course is the ecosystem restoration community leader at Pachamama here in South Africa so I think we are going to connect you directly Chris and Bob I'm going to connect you tomorrow via email and you can knock yourselves out with sharing some ideas that's great yeah no I think you probably have similar challenges and opportunities and is it to another question, well he just wanted to know about accepting international volunteers and absolutely I know that Bob does accept international volunteers so by all means pop on to ERC.Earth and have a look at that opportunity and apply and I know that Colin Richards is working in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and he was in Berlin in July but was trying to reach out to you and contact you but was not able to I think Bob you may have been away at the time but if you can I think Colin actually if you can scroll up Bob has popped his email address in the chat or else just pop an email to hello to ERC.Earth and I'll connect you to Bob so you can speak further there was also a question around to what extent have you found traditional farming or agricultural practices in this part of Kenya has directed your experiments so is there something that you've learned from existing traditional practices in the area that has guided your your own plan for the land not to be honest I think that but there are different ways of looking at it for instance if you look at near at the coastal strip you see that most mangoes that are now producing are already quite old and huge and I was more looking at it at that time when it comes to fruit on producing something that is very marketable which is difficult with of course huge trees so I was more looking at when it comes to fruit more to South Africa and especially also Australia for let's say the more the latest insights when I look at basically the on the whole the agricultural practices in Kenya is let's say the opposite of the ecosystem and there's a lot of the main staple crop is maize which is taking quite a lot of water many people also plant it and it fails whereas the pre-colonial staple crops like for instance millet is much more water efficient and even much more healthy and you see also a lot of let's say central Kenya buying land here they put pineapple which is also a crop that requires a lot of sun so erases and everything that grows so it's more I think the challenge is more to change the agricultural practices and contrary to for instance West Africa and the Sahel where farmers are actually planting a lot of trees in these let's say small circles around what they plant it's not I would say it's not that great and I think maybe it's also because of let's say a limited let's say agricultural tradition I would say probably 100 years ago 50 years ago it was more in the dry areas than agriculture so that's maybe one of the reasons thanks Bob I'm very aware that the two people who've had their hands raised for a while and I'm going to get to you now Susan Krings or Krings and to you John and there was someone just the last question that one of the last questions that came to you on the chat was just around they want to know your final opinion on traditional or sorry on native versus non-native species and packed that a bit and we have spoken about it about the value of natural versus bringing in other species that are maybe exotic but for other purposes so I think we'll hold that now but I really just want to get to Susan who's been incredibly patient, thank you Susan so that you can thank you and ask your question yeah well I don't really have a question I just had some comments on what Bob was talking about and what his needs are and it just sounds like he has a lot of pressure like not just from the past ruralist but from the people who have such great need there for firewood and things like that so I'm a permaculture designer and so we always start like close in and we take care of the people and the animals so I think as far as all the resources that you're having to dump onto your land if you could like start maybe smaller closer in so that you have a lot more success and then as you gather more resources including water and organic matter then you can continue to expand outward with that so you know just your time and energy and money will go a lot further so maybe start with things look at things that are already growing and use pioneers don't be so selective about choosing only natives or only things that are productive look at what's actually growing there so you can get the biodiversity more established and get it to take hold and create micro climates and situations nursing areas where you can grow things that are more valuable to people choose trees that might be really great for coppicing so that the people who are foraging for a firewood you can actually be growing their firewood for them and teach them rocket mass or rocket stove so that they need smaller sticks and smaller organic matter to burn and they're not going to be chopping down your trees I mean I could go on and on but I've left my email if you need to get in touch with me I'd be happy to talk more about that but I just really encourage you to stay smaller stay closer in so that you can manage what's going on instead of trying to go out very far very fast you're going to have to be like having your eyes on it and walking at all the time and having your volunteers and your interns out there actually taking care of it so you got to just bring it in that's my advice I find it's very interesting points and for sure there's also a lot of truth in this but I think maybe most of the camps in here see are more like NGOs or foundations or things like that and let's say even to make a reasonable income out of what you are doing let's say not the average canyon income but half of an average Dutch income so to speak you really need scale unless you are going to organize a lot of workshops I think like that so it is a bit of a I hear what you are saying that's why I have the other farm to develop things small scale to be able to know what can I do large scale so partly it's there the small scale and on the other hand with the exotic and the non exotic some people tell me no no no only indigenous you are going to ruin some things but for instance some of them I agree for instance in here in the coast neem trees is like a weed and it's full of neem anywhere it's just replacing the whole stock of trees in town gradually and Lucina is good for coppicing but let's say in contrast to maybe what you were thinking that the locals go into the forest for their own firewood it's basically not like that it's there they generate money by producing charcoal which is then going into the charcoal failure chain all the way up to the capital city so it's not their own needs it's their business their business is basically the opposite of what you would like to see since it leads to deforestation and with the goats it's the same thing their goats they say they eat for free but of course the the victim if you want is the ecosystem but it's not that they depend on that goat for eating directly their business is to fatten goats and then sell them at a higher price so it's more that I think business models and I think after 5 or 6 years we have there are so many trees that could be suitable so maybe we have only planted in larger numbers 20 but we are now making a huge long list and definitely follow your advice on try a few of them first see how they feel and then well good luck with everything Bob just reach out anytime thank you so much and thanks for that Susan I particularly am interested in your suggestion around rocket stoves I was introduced to this some years ago and they are brilliant maybe not helping with the biochar industry or the charcoal industry that Bob referred to that is a conflicting industry in the area but certainly to reduce the amount of fireworks needed for personal use you have your hand raised yes I just wanted to tell you that I put two links into the chat with videos from Valair Clark who has been working in the Sonoran desert and has done tremendous work at creating infiltration and retention and returning extreme flows to dry land areas extremely arid areas both in Arizona and New Mexico and Mexico and then also there was another great example really wonderful example of someone who has been working for since the 1960s in Mombasa named Rene Holler and if you go to the Holler park in the Bamburi cement companies area in Mombasa you can see the Holler park and it has really transformed the area that was mined for calcium carbonates for cement industry and basically destroyed the landscapes with zero soils and he's transformed that and he's shown that it's possible to bring back water, water becomes one of his most interesting development so there's a full range of activities that he's been has been leading since 1960s he's won numerous prizes and there is a film that I made called Forest of Hope which you might take a look at which is mainly about Rwanda but the Rwandans actually went to Kenya to Mombasa to meet Rene Holler and see what he had accomplished so those are things that I just wanted to mention thank you John so that's good the documentary cool thanks John I just think looking at the questions there somebody asked a question about is there a central database I think this is aimed maybe rather at ERC than to but is there a central database for the different sites where one can share or draw information from for reference we can tell you that there is Restore but without the E on the N so it's r-e-s-t-o-r.eco that is one and certainly it's one that we encourage all the ecosystem restoration communities to upload their data onto I believe that there may be another exciting project of foot with something similar developed within the ecosystem restoration community so my short answer is watch the space but in the meantime go on to Restore.eco and check that out right I'm just looking to see if there is there anyone else who has their hand raised yeah is there two thank you Isatria I'm going to go to you now give me a second to navigate hello everyone yes thank you Isatria I just have a contribution to congratulate everyone who is part of this platform today and for me it's just like today is a new day for me and I definitely value the day because I have been starting this project for a while being so lonely in the Gambia because you know some people they don't value what I'm doing but today learning a lot from you will give me a lot of encouragement based on the questions that I sent I think from here we can work together and collaborate and if we do that together we will definitely make a big change learning from each other especially my neighbor John we are so close, Bob we are so close from Kenya so I want to let you know that I am so proud about this network and you know it's a university for me and it give it build my confidence and it give me like you know way to move as a woman in development particularly working in the forest and trying to educate people so I definitely you know learn a lot and I value the day congratulations to all of you thank you Isatria and great to link up more between the the different projects for sure and what I want to add a little bit is that where you are working in terms of climate makes obviously all the difference to what you can do before I started here I went for instance to Namibia which is also fairly dry even drier than Kenya I went to Israel and look at what they are doing there in terms of potential trees and there are even I would say a lot of similarities even though the countries are in a totally different part of the world if you are in a fairly dry area you will see similarities in terms of challenges so John named the example that Mombasa has well over a thousand millimeters of rain and so you can do more but I would be very interested in those of you who are in let's say fairly dry areas we are now looking at for instance Ximena Americana now maybe there are people in Australia doing in Jojo Bar so even when it is about generating revenues from drought resistant crops it would be very interesting to share notes because basically those products can be grown in various parts of the world and many practices will also be the same how to establish trees successfully etc so it will be great to we can have a working group of things but also technically speaking also on the more drier areas very cold areas depending on where the camps are or where the projects are thank you thank you so much is it true for sharing for sharing that with us it really does highlight the connectedness of our movement we're global but we're very much connected we're like one giant living laboratory experimenting on the land figuring things out making mistakes we're very aware of that we only learn by making mistakes figuring things out often we find solutions that work in one part of the world and that even across sometimes shared solutions can be can be figured out well sorry solutions can be shared that can address a common problem and just off the top of my head I can think of at least two other restoration communities where they are harvesting for oil grown for oil production for the cosmetic and other industries medicinal as well so certainly we can make those connections and set up the group that you've suggested are there any other hands raised at the moment if I can't see you and if you have a question maybe just start talking Peter from the heart I see you here is there anything you'd like to share say there's a comment now that Ash is saying Ashley Brown of course is our education coordinator saying that she can connect to you with Max Max of course is from second which is near Cairo in Egypt and they're growing in Jejoba so they are there's lots of there's lots of opportunity there for sharing of interest and knowledge and John any final thoughts I'm very worried we've gone horribly over time this evening afternoon morning wherever the world you are but I'm really glad that everyone took the time to join us and to stay on Chris Smash I see you've got a question far away Chris just more general for the ERC would be the best person to contact to gain access to some ERC marketing material to share through personal networks or to help raise awareness and solidarity for our movement me thank you we've got a great team we're a tiny team it's Alejandra Melissa and I that handle all the comms and marketing and digital marketing but you've got my email address so for all means I'd be very happy to provide this to you awesome fantastic thank you thank you John any closing words of wisdom you want to share with us before we wrap up I I just think that it's crucial that more and more people become aware that everyone needs to collaborate on ecological restoration and that there is another possibility for economic thinking we've been thinking that the only way to increase the economy is to produce things to be bought and sold and I really don't think that that's true so the fact is that ecological function is more valuable than things especially when the things that we buy and sell degrade the ecosystems that we depend on for life so essentially it's that we've inverted the economy we've raised and inflated the derivatives and we've devalued the source so we need to revalue the source and then it's a little bit like that story of the goose that laid the golden egg so if you have a goose that lays the golden egg you want to protect that goose and if you kill the goose that's the end of the golden egg so that is kind of what humanity has been doing and all of the dryland areas I mean I've studied this in all continents now and basically many of the most desertified places were actually the most fertile places where agriculture began and I think the mistake that people made was imagining that we're more capable than nature and you could look at it from a religious point of view and say well we know better than God that we can handle this we can cut down what we want we can do what we want and this is just fundamentally wrong and when you start from the premise of something which is fundamentally wrong then there's a very high probability that there are going to be very serious feedback loops that increase from this and when we understand this what I think is most important about the things that I've seen in China's list plateau and elsewhere in the world including in Africa that if you value the ecological function and you work to increase it you have things which you don't really expect to start starting to happen for instance it was possible in China to increase the productivity of the land by reducing the area in cultivation now that's completely opposite of the idea that you need to expand the agricultural areas you have to reduce the agricultural areas in order to have natural ecological function in the majority of the landscape and then in the area that you're working on to be productive is more productive because productivity follows function so if you put productivity ahead of function you're going to kill the goose so let's not do that and then I think the other thing that we have to see is that we're in a very, very, very difficult moment in human history and it's not a small problem and so we're going to have tremendous amounts of courage and wisdom to get out of the situation that we're in because millions and potentially billions of people are disenfranchised because of the social and political systems which have grown up and so for many of those people they're unable to survive and their landscapes in some cases are collapsing and also they're threatened and they have been threatened and they have experienced this over centuries and millennia and if we don't understand these historical issues and have some kind of resolution to them then we're going to pay the consequences very clearly right now and if we do come together and say let's work together then we're in a position to stop the cycle of revenge and violence but if we don't have an alternative to this cycle of violence and revenge then it's going to continue but that in order for that to stop one generation has to say alright enough is enough what happened in the past happened and we understand it and we can never forget it but we're going to have to learn forgiveness and we're going to have to learn collaboration and we can't do that again we can't continue that behavior but you have to change and so where do we change and I think that's what ecological restoration is it's the ability to have an alternative that leads to the outcome that we want to have and if we don't have an alternative to what's going on now then we continue to do what's going on and those people who are thinking that well I'm in charge let's take you know we'll do what we're going to do and that's it and that's the way it's always happened and that's the way it's going to continue that's a very dangerous path and if we're going to change I mean it's not like this is new I think Buddha or Jesus or Martin Luther King or Dondie or Nelson Mandela they're all saying the same thing to us we better take a look at those people and say why are they saying that you know what is it about them that we need to listen to because if we don't change then I don't think we can afford it if you know what I mean the consequences to this are quite serious all of the cradles of civilization were desertified that should give us some pause and if we look at the facts it's not necessary to desertify these areas the principles which maintain the hydrology the soil fertility and the biodiversity are the same now as they always have been it's human consciousness and understanding about this which changes it and it is hard it's not at all easy to do restoration because you have to learn to change behavior you have to have collective intelligence and so if we can work for collaborative inquiry for collective intelligence and we can build the social infrastructure necessary to make sure that all people are fed and all people have meaningful work and all people are taken care of instead of just saying well my only responsibility is to take care of myself then we get a different result and that result is the one we need because in fact we're only here for a few decades and then we pass away and so whatever we leave to the next generation is going to determine the quality of life for them and if we we leave the situation as it is now then it's not going to be very good for our children and our grandchildren so we have a responsibility and we know kind of what we need to do it's not like we know everything but we know enough to know that biodiversity, biomass and accumulated organic matter is how evolution moderated the surface temperatures and controlled the hydrology and created soil fertility so everybody focusing on learning more and more about this is very important understanding that as individuals we really can't do this on a planetary scale we have to do this and to understand that we have to act locally we have to work locally at this but we have to do it simultaneously on a planetary scale it has to happen now it can't happen you can't defer this for 20 or 100 years this is now and we are at 8 billion people and we are going to 10 billion or 11 billion before it starts to decline but the sooner we act to take care of everybody the sooner there is women's rights and access to contraception and family planning and in every place women's rights access to family planning and contraception the birth rates are flat are in decline you know so the population can go down will go down and so we need to understand that we can't push it to the breaking point we can't have wars at this time we have to have peace so we have a really big problem and we have a really big solution and the majority of people all around the world are good and this is the thing to hold on to because there are some pretty bad people but they are a tiny minority so let's all work together and make sure that we live in a peaceful prosperous flourishing abundant birth now that's what we have to do so if you want my thoughts to make that's what I would say around the fire and also play music and feed everybody and have a lot of fun with the fire thank you so much John it's hugely inspiring and very relevant at this time when I think we're all just battling so much with what's happening in the world right now and apart from the two raging wars I'm also referring to the earthquakes in Afghanistan and all the other climate change induced extreme weather events that we've seen over the last year we've almost gotten used to them I don't know if everyone's the same as me but anything, go ahead another earthquake another flood, gosh another flood another flood in India and you become almost I don't want to say that you become immune to them but it's becoming so commonplace it's just getting scarier and scarier and you're right I mean the time is now completely for those of us who know and who can share their knowledge with others and encourage others to join the movement and to take action really there's something that every single one of us can do in our personal capacity to put into action the words that you've spoken so really thank you so much I also want to thank Bob I don't know if I thanked you properly earlier Bob really for your amazing very inspiring presentation and for your honesty also coming from many different angles I mean we know that running an ecosystem restoration community is not all rainbows and unicorns and it's important to understand those challenges ahead but not to let that deter you but also to ask in open forums like this for the advice of others and I know there were quite a couple of questions that you posed I've got your presentation and I'm going to make sure that we ask the right people and then we get answers in some form forum or another two of those questions it is really getting late now guys I'm sure you've all got some place you need to go and be I thank you for your two hour attention span gosh you can tell they've got a lot of Gen Z's here with their Goldfish attention spans they would have checked out a long time ago but really thank you everyone if you've got any last questions you can pop them into the chat otherwise unless anyone has any burning issues or thoughts at last share any last thoughts from you Bob before we sign off yeah also I want first of all to thank everybody to listen to me and I want to apologize for that one person I think there was something wrong with one of the email addresses but I think for now we should be able to I think we have received everything in the past two months so it's all going well and I think on a positive note and I fully concur with John for me also very nice to hear it straight from the horse's mouth so to speak very encouraging and empowering that we are doing something that we should try to find a following and other people to do the same thing but one positive note is that I had put internship positions in the Netherlands for both the fruits and the reforestation project all of them wanted to go to the reforestation project and also now I'm getting the first Kenyan students but also very keen on that so let's hope that let's say the new the new generation that is now in university or on in primary school actually get the message much better and I'm sure by working better together between us and sharing ideas for sure we can strengthen each other as a community and make sure it grows so thanks everybody very much and looking forward to get in touch or stay in touch thank you would you mind if I added one thing thank you again Bob for that and I would just suggest that you try to reach out to Marissa Pulaski at dryland solutions and not no I'm sorry dryland agro ecology research in Colorado and this is one of the ecosystem restoration communities and they have something really quite special they have a kindergarten program basically they started calling it farm school and they were training and working with really the neighbors children I mean all the children in the region on the it's called the the range it's near Colorado and Longmont California and it's just extraordinary all the people love hiking biking rafting and skiing and the place was burning down I mean really they had this horrific they had fired tornadoes you know this kind of crazy outcome and they people were just not prepared for this it was being wiping out these very wealthy communities and homes and so on and so here's this little group doing agro ecology which they can see over a year two years three years five years that is having massive increases in biodiversity biomass and soil moisture soil fertility and productivity and they're working with the landscapes so they're doing their own lands and they're advising others how to do this and then then all the people started bringing their kids and then their kids are going there and so that brings all the parents so then all the parents are visiting are bringing the kids every day to the kindergarten staying outside all the time with these very compassionate young people who take care of the kids and they're moving that program now from kindergarten into elementary going all the way up to sixth grade and then they're talking about moving it up to middle school and to high school and so that the next generation and I watched them raise almost half a million dollars in two days from their community it was quite extraordinary and they did it just by saying and they had a big party and two big parties one big party I went to the first one I just couldn't imagine this was happening but they had the Native Americans speaking they had political leaders speaking they had the parents of the children they had all the people who are running farms and ranches who are saying like oh we have to do this and then all the people said well we have to support this and they just physically said okay we'll give five ten twenty thirty fifty thousand you know and it's just like they got on the first time a hundred and seventy thousand and on second time two hundred and fifty thousand in two days with parties from their communities so this is quite extraordinary and this is what needs to happen everywhere around the world and the communities and the people who are impacted they're the ones who understand and need to participate and they need more and more we need people who are conscious of this and understand it and we need them to lead because they're the ones who care they're the ones who are doing it and they're the ones we have to learn from and they're the ones that we have to follow we have to join with them and do what we all can so that's all I wanted to say talk to Marissa she's a really good contact for you and I see you have a gecko yeah I'll connect you with Marissa via email okay fantastic thank you okay guys we're going to call it a day last chance to say anything for thank you everyone who's participated it's been a great a great fireside chat and we look forward to seeing you next month in the next couple of weeks we'll send out our our date it's usually on the second Tuesday of the month and we will meet a week later this month for different reasons and we'll soon be sharing who the guest restoration community will be for our next session and for now I wish you all a wonderful morning afternoon evening whatever follows and thank you thanks for being here everyone thanks John thanks Bob alright thanks everyone bye thank you John