 Hi everybody, I think we're going to get started. So good evening and welcome to GBH. I'm John Bredar. I'm the vice president for national programming here. And we're so pleased to host you this evening, along with our partners, the conversation, the Associated Press, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge one very important person who's joining us for the very first time tonight at GBH, our new president and CEO, Susan Goldberg. My new boss, no pressure or anything like that. Welcome, Susan. First of many, I'm sure. The health and well-being of everyone across the globe depends on mitigating the deadly effects of climate change. But so many challenges remain, which is why GBH is committed to engaging Americans on this issue. As a leader in public media, we're working to generate awareness and discourse to inspire us all to be caretakers of our planet. For nearly 40 years, we've reported on climate change through the lens of science, investigative journalism, history, children's programming, and local and international news. In 1983, NOVA was the first series to air a national documentary on global warming. I actually went back and checked this out earlier today. And that film featured some guy named Al, who apparently had some concerns about the issue. Since then, maybe taking his lead, NOVA has produced 30 more films addressing climate change, more than half of those in the last five years. Today, our local and international news and radio teams publish in this space routinely, whether it's GBH News, Capon Islands Radio, or The World, our global program with PRX. We're exploring how individuals, communities, and institutions are tackling climate change. And our national programs can look at the issue from multiple angles. Frontline's The Power of Big Oil investigates the unprecedented legal effort by states and cities across America to hold the oil industry to account for climate change. This series reveals the 50-year story of how fossil fuel companies learned from their own scientific research in the 1970s and 1980s that CO2 emissions would change the climate with potentially catastrophic consequences. And yet, they set out on a decades-long campaign to hide or distort the science. Fittingly, Frontline will next look at how climate change is driving migration. In April, American Experience, our history series, will premiere The Sun Queen, which tells the story of Maria Telkis, a pioneering scientist at MIT who, in the 1940s and 1950s, developed the first technologies using solar power, laying groundwork for today's booming solar industry. But Telkis wasn't taken seriously by the male establishment, and early gains were ignored, costing precious time in our ongoing climate challenge. Also this April, NOVA will launch Climate Across America, a multi-platform project for PBS that will showcase inspiring climate solutions being implemented in local communities across the country, from clever ways of cooling cities to using Native American knowledge to control wildfires out west, to no-till farming to make our cropland more resilient in the face of extreme weather. This initiative will also help train local media makers and students in effective climate storytelling. We're also working on Sea Change, a new three-part documentary series from GBH that tells the story of the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99% of global oceans. The series equates ocean health with human health, and not just along the coasts. As one of our directors put it, the air that folks breathe in Nebraska is made in the Gulf of Maine. To support GBH's efforts around climate reporting and storytelling, we have established the Planet Future Fund, which will help to support and advance the climate-focused work of many of our programs. The need for trusted, fact-based reporting is essential to the future of the Earth. And is that enough? I guess that's what we're here to discuss. It's now my pleasure to bring to the stage Beth Daly, Executive Editor and General Manager of the Conversation US. Welcome, Beth. Thank you so much, John. I thought I'd take a quick second to explain about the conversation, because who doesn't know about us? A quite a number of people. But the conversation is a nonprofit, national, independent news outlet. Part of our team is based here at GBH in the world, and GBH News. And our mission is to, in the loftiest term, democratize knowledge for the public good. And the way we do that is we want to get trusted advice, trusted advice, trusted expert evidence-based research out to the public and have experts comment on timely news events with truth. And we do that with an amazing collaboration with our 22 editors who work with academics. And every day we publish 10 stories. We're publishing about 1,000 news outlets a month now. And 20 million people read us a month, which is really a great testament to our eight-year-old model. But I wanted to tell you who we were first, because the next part is really something more magnificent. About three years ago, Bruce Wilson, if you want to wave a hand, Bruce Wilson, of the conversation, who's been here since the start, convened a group of news outlets. The Associated Press, represented today by Ron Nixon. Ron, if you want to give a quick hi. And the conversation, of course, and the Chronicle Philanthropy, which we have Stacey Palmer here today, if you want to raise your hand or stand up real quick, the editor. And we pursued a vision about something no one had tried to do collaboratively with news outlets. And that is to inform America about something that's such an important part of American culture that we don't really talk a lot about around the edges. It's about giving. It's about donating. It's about philanthropy. It's about volunteerism. It's about running nonprofits. And how do nonprofits make an impact? How does anyone make an impact? American have such a culture of giving. And we came together and had a vision that we would each take a part in this. Luckily, we have a foundation, the Lillian Downwind, who saw value in what we proposed to do. And we've been at this for three years now and hope to be at it for many more. This is actually our first live event. COVID crashed all the others that we had planned, although we did some virtually. And tonight, we're talking about one most important issues on the planet, climate. Now, I used to be a climate reporter at the Boston Globe for many, many years, like too many to count. And back then, climate philanthropy was, wow, it was minuscule. It still is minuscule compared to all philanthropy. But back then, it was very, very tiny. And what the money came from, it was largely from big foundations. Today, the landscape has dramatically changed. There is still large foundations really pouring a lot of money in, thank goodness, to solve what we all know now as the climate crisis. But what we also have are our wealthy individual, millionaires, and sometimes billionaires, contributing to this really important cause. Lauren Powell, Jeff Bezos, and many others are really trying to help the planet and save the planet. But what is the impact of these wealthy individuals? How are they working with people on the ground? How are they dealing with environmental justice issues? What is their impact? How do they measure success? Those are some of the questions you're gonna be delving into tonight, which I'm totally excited for because they're really important questions. I can't think of a better person to moderate this other than Caitlyn Sacks from NOVA, producer at NOVA. You may not know Caitlyn, but you've certainly seen some of her amazing work. Decoding climate polar extremes and she plays a significant role in the upcoming series that John had mentioned, climate across America, looking at solutions from communities that are often unheard from. So without further ado, oh, I do have one more thing to say before Caitlyn walks across the stage. We really wanna engage with the audience tonight, and the way we're doing that is hopefully you grabbed an index card when you walked in a pencil. If you have a question, comes to you, write it down, raise your hand, and our archers will come and grab it, and we'll be doing questions and answers of the panelists at the end. If you did not grab index card, still raise your hand, and usher will bring you a card and repeat. So without further ado, Caitlyn, welcome. Thank you so much, Beth. Thank you for having me. I am absolutely flattered to be here tonight, moderating this panel. As Beth mentioned, I work for NOVA. I've been working for NOVA for about eight years now. I've changed over the last eight years, just in the last eight years, about what we can do about it. And now, NOVA's a science technology series, and certainly science and technology can play a role, but in a lot of ways it does come down. How much money are we talking about here? How much will it take to fix this? There have been analyses on this. A recent analysis by Climate Works says it will take between four and nine trillion dollars per year to solve climate change. This is an estimate. So that has 12 zeros on it. How are we possibly going to play a role? How can individuals campaign for nature, which is leading the effort to support, this organization is leading the effort to support the 30 by 30 campaign to protect 30% of the lands, of the world's land and ocean by 2030. Nick Tilson is the president and CEO of the NDN Collective, an indigenous-led activist and advocacy organization. And Andrew Steer is the president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, which has committed to contributing $10 billion to the cause over 10 years. So thank you all for joining us. Again, I am totally flattered to be moderating a panel with you all. And I'm gonna ask you to tell me a little bit more about your work, your organization, and your organization's philosophy on climate philanthropy. How can philanthropy get us to 12 zeros? So Ash, why don't we start with you? Okay, sounds good. So I'll be speaking more from my perspective and the perspective of my research team and the research we do then my organization per se. But I've been working as part of a research team for the last five years. We have one more year to go researching how big donors, specifically private foundations, how they can affect conservation and climate. And the way we've done this is we've talked to both donors themselves in working in different contexts and local people, local communities, local organizations, indigenous peoples that are working on the issues as well. So we've gotten both perspectives. We've done hundreds of interviews with I think about 100 folks over the last five years. And it's been very interesting. And I think these donors are in a very unique position. They're highly autonomous. They can be nimble. They can be responsive. They can be innovative. They can do things that other huge donors like government aid cannot do because of their independence. But it really depends on how they work. And so that's something that my work seeks to speak to. So to understand and answer questions like how can these big donors work in a way that's more just, that's more effective, that's more equitable and enduring and provide solutions that we really hope that they can. So for example, one of the things we've really, I think the thing that stood out the most to me is how important it is for these efforts to be aligned with the local context. And so it's important for donors to really get to know the people, the geographies and the issues that they're funding. For example, one thing they could do is including indigenous and local communities and organizations and the funding decisions they make, for example. And I could speak more about that, but I'll stop there. We'll get to it. Brian, tell us a little bit more about Campaign for Nature. Sure. So Campaign for Nature is a global effort. And as the name implies, we work on the nature part of the equation. Most often when people are thinking about climate change in the United States, they often think about solar panels or electric vehicles or coal fire power plants. But globally, we need to make sure that we are protecting and conserving nature if we are going to solve this crisis. It is up to a third of the solution of the climate crisis. And that really comes down to making sure that the lungs of the earth, the Amazon, the Congo Basin are functioning that the oceans and the kelp beds that are so critical for the carbon cycle are healthy. That we're protecting mangroves and we're protecting peatlands, which are also really critically important for absorbing carbon. And we don't turn our best allies in the fight against climate change, our natural systems, into part of the problem. The more we degrade lands, the more that becomes part of the carbon emitters rather than carbon sinks. So Campaign for Nature is working on a global effort to try to get a target of protecting at least 30% of the world's lands and oceans by 2030. And that would be a global goal that would be adopted in the convention on biological diversity. So many of you have heard of the climate convention. They had a big cop in Egypt just a couple of weeks ago. There's a sister convention on biodiversity, the sort of the nature convention that'll be meeting up in Montreal starting on the 7th of December, so just in another week. And they'll be setting targets for what is the world's nature goals for the next decade. The way we work is we wanna make sure that that target is agreed to by countries in the world. We've got a high ambition coalition of more than 112 nations that have endorsed it. We're also trying to make sure that it's done in a rights-based way that indigenous peoples in local communities, rights and respect is built in. Historically, conservation hasn't done a good job on that. We've seen in the past evictions and displacements of indigenous peoples and not respect for their approaches and leadership. And so we're trying to make that change in the policy. And the final effort we do is funding. We wanna make sure that countries commit that they don't just set bold policy targets, that they're also putting money towards this so that these policies can be implemented. So we're trying to hold the wealthy nations accountable to get some money to developing nations, to frontline communities to develop this. Very quickly on your question about philosophy for philanthropy, I am a really big supporter of grassroots organizations and advocacy. I think that we've done a lot of studying, we've done a lot of analysis, we've got a lot of white papers. Time right now is for people who are making change, grassroots leaders who are holding governments, corporations and others accountable to drive this change. Thank you, Brian. Nick. I'm a doctor, Nick Tilson. I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor. I teach in my Lakota language. And what we do here at Indian Collective is if you look at where the biodiversity in the world is, 85% of the biodiversity that exists in the world, one of the reasons why it exists there is because the role of indigenous people protecting those places. But then you look at philanthropy, historically is under invested. So like in America, like less than a half of 1% of American philanthropy goes to Native American people. And so Indian Collective is a movement infrastructure organization that both has a grant making arm, a lending arm, an activism arm, and a social enterprise arm that focuses on moving resources and closing that gap and making sure that we're investing into indigenous self-determination. And we're doing it at a scale that nobody ever has in the history of philanthropy because of the moment that we're in. And so Indian Collective does that because if you invest into the indigenous self-determination of indigenous people that are defending, developing, and decolonizing its contributions to addressing climate and addressing racial inequality, we work in those cross intersection of those areas. And so Indian Collective does that both through grant making, but also does it through social enterprising. And our whole philosophy is defend, develop, and decolonize. Defend, develop, and decolonize because we got to keep going after the corporations that are polluting while we're also creating new solutions from the ground up. Thank you, Nick. Andrew. Well, thank you, Caitlin. I'm Andrew Stier, Basos Earth Fund. Thanks to WGBH. Thanks to the conversation. Thanks to Chronicle of Philanthropy, AP. These are great and important conversations. So we're really grateful to be here. Look, we're in the battle of our lives, quite frankly. So it's wonderful that affluent people like Jack Basos would put $10 billion. And he says, I don't want you to start a foundation that will last for 100 years. Let's spend it down in this decisive decade. And the question is, how do you do that? Because whilst it sounds like a lot, as you've already explained, it's actually not very much. So every single grant we make needs to do two things. It needs to deliver what the grantee is very good at delivering. And it needs to be part of a movement to change an entire system. Because it's no longer good enough to have projects that deliver nice things, good results, dollar in, very good dollar out. Dollar in, we need many multiples. And that can come from lots of different ways, including policy change, new inventions, more private investment, radical changes in the way we think about justice. Those are the kinds of leverages. So the way we sort of analyze before we spend, we look at the 50 transitions that need to happen urgently this decade. And whether there's 40 or 70, you can cut and slice it in many ways. But if you saw the 50 we look at, they would sound sensible to you. It sounds like a lot of transitions, but they're actually all of them pretty big. One of them is getting rid of the internal combustion engine, for example. That's just one. And there are 50 about as big as that. So then the question is, how do you allocate your money? Well, each of those is on a path that will, in time, cross a positive tipping point. The problem is, will that tipping point come soon enough? And so what our job is to ask the question, where is it along that path so that we can nudge it towards that tipping point? Where are the barriers? Where are the intervention points that we can make a difference, so to speak? So that's what we try to do. We try to make change irresistible and unstoppable. And as I think we're all totally aligned on this panel, absolutely central part of this needs to be environmental and social justice. Thanks so much, Nick. So I'm going to ask my first question to, I'm sorry. Thanks so much, Andrew. I'm going to ask my first question to Nick. Nick, imagine you had $10 billion. Where would you be investing it to make the most impact? Well, I mean, I would be invested into the leadership of indigenous communities. Because if you look at the front lines of the climate movement or environmental justice movement, indigenous people are risking their lives and their freedoms, protesting these when there's no resources, that when philanthropy hasn't showed up to those spaces. And you look at the movement in Standing Rock or any of these movements led by indigenous people, there's direct market impacts. They make it expensive for the polluters to keep polluting, because we're going to war against them. So that's one area. At the same time, you look like in the US, much of the public lands in the US is currently mismanaged. But some of the best managed land in the United States, about 56 million acres of it, is managed by tribal nations. And those are the places that have the best grasses that are contributing to the biodiversity of the planet. So there's these places and making investments into indigenous people who both who are fighting and developing solutions is a part of the equation. It's an important part of the equation. It also happens to be part of the original place of injustice in this country, too. So mixed into this issue of climate is this embedded issue of white supremacy, systematic racism, colonization, and the impact that has had. And climate change is a byproduct of that unsustainable model, unsustainable system. And so by making investments into indigenous communities, you're bringing indigenous knowledge and philosophy and unlocking that. And so it's not the only part of the equation, but it's a very, very important one. So because that's my job and it's what I'm all about, that's where I would make the investments. Brian, your focus is on land conservation. And I'm hearing from you, Nick, that indigenous communities can play a large role in that. From your perspective on, you just need, you're looking to basically conserve as much land as possible. How are you working with or enabling indigenous communities to do that? What is that relationship there? Yeah, it's one of the most important things that needs to happen if we're to meet the 30 by 30 goal or any large conservation goals internationally. I work mostly internationally, I used to work domestically, but if you look at it internationally, as Nick properly said, about 80% of the world's biodiversity is concentrated on lands that are stewarded by indigenous peoples. Many of those indigenous communities don't have official land title, they're not recognized by the states. And so, but when we look at studies, it has shown that their management practices have far surpassed any other management system to maintain biodiversity, to keep these natural systems intact. So one of the most important investments we can make to meet the 30 by 30 goal is to secure land tenure rights for indigenous peoples in local communities. So there's a few entities, a thing called the tenure facility that's set up. We've worked with the rights resources initiative, the setup initiative called Clarify that is working to get grants to make those system changes. Some of it's like legal changes in countries to be able to get these tenure rights recognized, money to the communities themselves to map and advocate for their territories. But I think that is fundamental to make this work. We work closely with an entity called the Global Alliance for Territorial Communities. I think we've seen a really significant global organization of indigenous peoples in the last few years, recognizing that they need to band together globally to be at these climate conventions, to be at the biodiversity conventions to make their voices heard. And they're just starting to be heard not enough by countries, but it is essential if we're going to solve the climate crisis or the biodiversity crisis. And I just wanna make sure I heard that stack correctly. You said 80% of the world's biodiversity is concentrated on lands that are stewarded by indigenous peoples. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So Ash, I'm hearing a theme here around the extreme importance of land conservation as an individual when I often think of how climate change, I think, oh, well we need more solar panels and wind turbines and maybe some sea walls. Can you help put us and put into perspective a little bit from your research, what you're finding are the key areas of investment for most impact. Where does conservation fit into that and where do some of these other solutions? You know, I would say that instead of answering your question directly, I'm gonna kind of take a roundabout way of answering that. I think going back to what I said before, it's a matter of being a donor, being in touch with the issues, being in touch with the communities, being in touch with the geographies, where they wanna work or where they plan to work. I think that it's also a matter of how they work. So not just what are you giving funding to, who are you giving funding to, but also how is that funding decision made? I mentioned earlier, including people on the ground in the conversations that inform funding decisions. Additionally, how else are you funding? So is there flexibility? The environment doesn't work in a linear fashion. And so to give a very inflexible grant or an inflexible way of funding, that's not necessarily the way that we're gonna be able to affect environmental change. Things happen with the environment on a very long-term scale. So you can't make change happen in a one-year grant cycle or even a three-year grant cycle, right? So long-term funding can really make a difference. Keeping administrative burden low so that people are able to focus on the issues that work, that matter instead of spending a lot of time writing grants and reporting and things like that, thinking about how you're gonna exit from an issue or from a geography. So I think there's a lot of different ways that donors can work regardless of what exactly they're, because there's certainly a lot of, as Andrew mentioned, the 50 different pathways that we need to be looking at. There's certainly a lot of different things to be focused on here. And can you just clarify a little bit what you mean by a flexible versus an inflexible grant? Yeah, absolutely. So you can imagine what things might be like if somebody says, okay, we're gonna be working on establishing a marine protected area in a country that's already facing the effects of climate change and then a category five hurricane hits. And they need to be focusing, instead of focusing on establishing a marine protected area, first they need to make sure that people are safe and fed and have clean water and those things so that they're not having as, so they're okay, but also so they're not having as much impact on the environment around them. So things change very quickly. There's, in places where there's a lot of stress on the environment from climate change, we see things come in like diseases in that are affecting coral, that are affecting animals and trees and things like that. And so that might be something that happens very quickly that somebody who's a practitioner of conservation or climate needs to respond to. And for a donor to be open to that kind of innovation and that kind of responsiveness is incredibly important. And so Andrew, you probably have the largest pot of money being distributed among the people on this panel. And you identified that. Maybe, maybe. I don't know, you're doing well. So, how does the Bezos Earth Fund decide where those points, where you help make the change irresistible? How do you identify where those are? And also just to build on what Ash is saying, how do you make sure that you're maintaining flexibility as the situation changes? Well, what Ash says is absolutely right, that it's terribly important to be flexible. We actually don't know the path ahead. Anybody who knows exactly how you're gonna decarbonize for this decade or the next is not really serious. We are on an adventure, so we need to be able to adjust quickly. And that's why we complement government spending so well, because government spending is not flexible. It's actually, especially in the United States, it's actually very, very specific. And even international aid on the part of, say, USAID, very good quality, but it certainly isn't flexible for the most part. So what we can do is we can come in much quicker, and we can be bolder. We can take risks that others can't. So for example, the Department of Energy has had a truly brilliant program, but there's just one bad result in Cylindra, the whole thing blew up. In other words, they can't take the risks that we can. And so we need to make sure that we bring in a very humble way the sort of the complementarity that we have. And we can't be so demanding of so many metrics that we just tie people up in knots. On the contrary, it is a partnership. So for example, last year the climate cop in Glasgow, together with Brian and others, we, the Basel's Earth Fund, committed $120 million to support Congo Basin conservation. All 120 was dispersed by February, three months later. But that didn't mean we knew exactly what was gonna happen to the money, quite frankly. We are a partner with them. So what we did is we said, look, this is incredibly difficult. The Congo Basin is very, very difficult place. We obviously talked to all the governments. We talked to all the local groups and so on. But then we said, look, I tell you what, rather than you competing against each other, because most NGOs compete against each other, would you be interested in all being grantees and becoming part of a team whereby together we can have engagement with the head of state and so on? And so this summer we went to Gabon, actually, Jeff Bezos and his partner, Lauren, came as well. We convened those NGOs. And so we're massaging as we go. We are precisely having to be flexible. And so I think that's really important. Now, as Nick and I were talking earlier, we also need to empower local groups. So as Nick says, there's something going on now in a really wonderful way. And he's playing a very important role. And we were privileged to put $300 million into United States environmental justice groups over the last 24 months. And the whole point of that is to try and build a capacity, which is exactly what Nick is doing. And we need to sort of change that. How do we choose what to do? We're in the business not of focusing on targets or issues or themes. We're in the business of supporting ideas. So I'll give you one, for example. So there are 480,000 school buses in this country, as you may know. Because education is run at the county level, if you are a child in a poor county, you are going to school on an old bus that has not been very well maintained and you are breathing air, the equivalent of standing on the street in New Delhi. So why do we finance replacing school buses that are diesel with electric buses? Well, it's partly mainly because of health, but actually it also prevents carbon emissions. By the way, you also create a generation of children who actually learn about this. You link it to the curriculum development. They talk to their parents. And then, by the way, at the moment, 96% of all the electric buses in the world are made in China. Wouldn't it be great to have an industry here? That's another benefit. And finally, what about those long summers where a school bus does nothing? That's when it really earns its income because 480 giant batteries taking electricity off the grid when it's cheap and not needed, putting it back on the grid, you can save maybe 100 power plants as a result. That's the sort of idea that has that, aha, that would be interesting. We can't finance 480,000, but what we can do is finance those who are lobbying Congress, helping to write the legislation which is now in the infrastructure bill. It's in the Inflation Reduction Act. There's money going in, and then we work with New York and several other states to demonstrate we work with the manufacturers, we work with the financiers, and we demonstrate that actually the utilities are willing to pay $20,000 a year for a bus because of its battery storage capability in the summer. It's putting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. And suddenly, wow, that's an idea worth fighting for. Thank you. And that really makes tangible that sort of impact multiplying effect. Now you touched on something, the Inflation Reduction Act, and I wanna talk a little bit about that because I think a lot of people don't really know what's in that and how that money will be accessed. And you mentioned something else about how philanthropy can help make federal money more accessible. And so I'm gonna put this to any one of you to answer. Can you explain a little bit about the Inflation Reduction Act and the Justice 40 Initiative? It's obviously trying to get, so the Inflation Reduction Act is going to get more money into the hands of disadvantaged communities, but philanthropy needs to help with that. Why does philanthropy need to help with that? And how, what does that look like? I could think of the first stab at it. There was a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act which people have been fighting for a long time, but it's around solar and it's about the, it's the tax credit that exists. How solar historically has been financed is through tax, investors that have tax equity appetite that need an appetite for investing into tax equity to get a 30% right off that attracts the capital to be able to invest into solar. But historically non-taxable entities like they couldn't utilize it because they were non-taxable entities. Tribal governments, there's 573 federally recognized tribes and those are non-taxable entities, but they're still investors into trying to combat climate change by investing the solar into native communities. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Inflation Act, they're now eligible. And so are nonprofits. And what this means is that nonprofits and tribes are gonna be in a position to be investors into solar projects. The difference is this. Instead of receiving a tax benefit, they're actually gonna be able to do a cash grant. But in order for it to work, the tribes and the nonprofits gotta have money upfront. Just like a lot, many federal grants are, many federal grants are reimbursement basis. So what's gonna happen is this product or this particular provision in the act will actually work where other investments haven't as long as tribes and nonprofits in those communities can get the cash upfront in order to make the project happen and then get that 30% reimbursement. So that's one really, really tangible. That was a, I'm passionate about that when I was in D.C. just a couple of weeks ago talking with the Congress Department and Treasurer about specifically about that specific provision in the act. And maybe just to sort of add to that. The U.S. federal spend has a very interesting characteristic that not all countries have, which is the government, the federal government, the Congress can pass a law which is absolutely wonderful, motivated perfectly. Actually, there aren't, the lever is sitting in Washington to get the money to go exactly where you want. It's sort of like, you know, this game you put the ball in and it goes there and hits and you're never really sure where it's gonna go. In a good way, it's basically it's democracy that is sent down to the state and the city and the county level, so to speak. And the problem is, of course, that there is, the funds are put in, but then what you really have to do is pull the money in to your local community. You have to apply for the money in many instances. And remember when we talk about Justice 40, Justice 40 is a wonderful initiative with the Biden administration, 40% of everything, all these hundreds of billions that we spent on green has to have to go to communities that are disadvantaged, especially the BIPOC, black, indigenous, brown communities, so to speak. So you don't only want the money to go to those places to benefit them, you actually want black, brown, and indigenous contractors to win those contracts as well. So in a way, what the role we can play is empowering that pull factor, if you like, empowering those on the cold face, the bad words, but that can actually build the capacity themselves to do the applications that can support the local contractors. In addition to the point that Nick's making, which is often the need cash upfront as well. But for not to be constrained to positionality though, right? So, you know, like it's not actually just, it's actually not about the cash, right? Cash changes the positionality to be able to move projects forward, because in the past, I think that what happens to a lot of native communities in the green energy industry is the same thing that's happened to the extractive energy industry. This is a certain point where there's, when there's an injection of capital, Indian people or indigenous people have no power. And so it's important for that injection of capital to happen early on, so that indigenous communities are not held economic hostage and not having to make decisions being held economic hostage. It changes the positionality and the power structure too. As well as the end result, so. We'll take the cash too, so. Can I add one? To take a, when you look at the Inflation Reduction Act, there are a lot of brilliant things in there. Heat pumps, a lot of investments to get the markets to really change and make renewable energy and efficiency really speed up and ramp up with the markets. What's not in there though is accountability for the polluters. It's all carrot and no stick, right? Because that's what could get through Congress. And that can get through Congress because that's where we are politically. But ultimately, if we are truly to solve this problem, we can't just be building heat pumps and solar panels why the oil industry continues to expand. They had their biggest quarter ever recently. We're still seeing massive expansion. They have a huge proposal in the Arctic, in the Willow Project they want to do in the Arctic, which will have massive implications. So this is where philanthropy, why they did an incredible job of helping grassroots organizations lobby and advocate for the IRA. We also need philanthropy to support those organizations that are holding industry accountable, that are holding elected officials accountable. So we need a little bit of stick in here as well. We need those industries that are driving our whole globe into a crisis mode to not just be off the hook while we go the long way around it by getting electric cars. We've got to bring that part into it too. And that's an area where philanthropy sometimes gets a little weary of because it's a lot easier. And Democrats as well, right? When Joe Biden says, when I think of climate change, I think of jobs, that's the easy part, right? It's a very positive pro-market part. But we need to think about some of the more parts that are gonna hold these industries that are caused the problem accountable. And that's where I think philanthropy and NGOs have to put equal effort into that side as well. So I'm hearing a very big theme of funding grassroots campaigns. And also philanthropy with environmental justice as a primary or a forefront objective. I'm wondering maybe Ash, as someone who's been researching this community, is that move to support environmental justice recent in the last few years? Have we seen evidence born out that that works? Is this a recent shift or? Well, I think actually there is a history of philanthropy supporting environmental justice, but over the last decades, I think there was a different maybe type of philanthropy happening than what we're seeing movements towards now. So a lot of what was happening was what we might call strategic philanthropy. And so a lot of donors were coming at things from how can we treat this like a business? Where's the bottom line? How are we gonna get measurable results and outcomes? And approaching things from a very, okay, we've got some ideas, this is what we wanna see happen. And then approaching it from that strategic or business-like standpoint. And I think, as everyone has mentioned, we are seeing a huge increase in the amount of giving and the amount of attention to this urgently needed issue. But there's also been attention to these donors. So scrutiny calls for more just philanthropy for these donors to work in different ways. And so I do think that donors in general are responding to those calls and are being incredibly reflective. And I think and I hope that they'll continue to be reflexive in the way they work in the future. So seeing what works, seeing, listening to what they're hearing from people on the ground and then integrating that and incorporating that into the way that they're working. So I think we are at a moment of change now. Nick and Brian, are you seeing more funding flowing to your organizations? First? Yeah, I mean, I think we're beginning to see that. I mean, I think we were dealing, indigenous communities are dealing from a place where there was like pretty much almost no investment. I mean, like the statistic I was talking about before was a half of 1% of philanthropy was going to indigenous people. We might be like barely above a half of 1% right now, but like indigenous people in the US are 2% of the population. So let's get philanthropy to at least parody in population and you'll talk about a substantial increase of investment to native communities. So I think you're beginning to see it. The question is though, you're seeing it across the board increases across the board and one of my worries is that philanthropy wants to just use their existing old infrastructure, meaning that, okay, instead of funding indigenous communities directly and believing in the capacity that indigenous communities have, let's fund all of the big green organizations and have them do trickle down philanthropy down to indigenous communities. We're seeing that happening. So all these big green organizations are creating indigenous programs, but it's trickle down philanthropy and that's not working. It's not working for indigenous communities. So there is an increase of investment and we're seeing that, but we're also an organization that's built out infrastructure to do that too. So we're seeing kind of both things happening. I would say that I think there has been a huge influx on the nature side of the equation. A few years ago, Hans-Jorge Wies, who's a Swiss American billionaire, made a $1 billion pledge for nature, which at the time was the largest ever contribution for nature. And then recently joined by Jeff Bezos, the Moore Foundation, a few others into a new thing called the Protecting Our Planet Challenge, which made a $5 billion commitment for nature, which was the largest ever philanthropic gift for nature and that isn't just a one organization, that's going to community organizations, indigenous groups, some big groups, some small groups, all different parts of the world, but it's fantastic to see this level. It's this type of philanthropy we need to see. And what's also great about it is that these philanthropists are not just, a lot of the money that was generated in this country for billionaires came from the tech sector. And I think there was a feeling from some of those new rich people that technology's gonna save us. So if that's how I made my money in technology, I'm gonna save the world by inventing some new thing for that's gonna solve everything. And I think some of these people, Hans-Jerg Wies, Jeff Bezos are saying, I don't know all the intricacies of climate change or biodiversity conservation. I'm gonna go listen to grassroots activists. I'm gonna go to Gabon. I'm gonna go to Columbia and meet the people and hear what they say and invite some of those proposals. And also an openness to funding, as I've said a few times tonight, to funding that activism and that grassroots engagement that a lot of philanthropists shy away from. I think that's a critical component to the change that we're seeing. And to one of your earlier points, we are funding the carrot, but not the stick. A lot of philanthropy seems to be going towards grassroots at this point and environmental justice. But there is this other aspect which is how do we really move markets, change the economy, finance. And Andrew, I know one of the program areas for the Bezos Earth Fund is the economy, finance, and markets. So as someone who I'm not particularly familiar with economics, don't really understand it. Explain that. How can philanthropy change the economy? Well, that would be a long conversation. But let me just say this, that economic models today still don't really get it yet. For example, if the United States announced that by 2032, there would be no internal combustion engines sold in the United States for automobiles. All of the economic models, those that are run by the treasury, those that are run by the university, they'd run the model and 99% of them would conclude, well, well done, that will have a good effect on climate change, but it will cost your economy. Because they're basically a whole set of simultaneous equations. They fail to understand the new dynamism in the economy. So for example, if you actually do that, you drive new technologies, which models actually don't capture. You lower risk, you reduce uncertainty because at the moment automobile producers don't know where to invest, so to speak. And very importantly, you fundamentally shift expectations. And so for example, when Prime Minister Modi became Prime Minister, he inherited a target for solar energy that was 20 gigawatts. And everybody said, well, he's not gonna do that because he doesn't really care that much about the environment. He came in and he said, let's not do 20, let's do 100 gigawatts. And we'll do it in the same length of time. He understood disruptive change because what he understood is if you say 100 gigawatts, entrepreneurs will know, my goodness me, something's going on here. There are new industries, there are gonna be new technology centers, there's gonna be all kinds of opportunities. That's when they invest. You know, and since my boss used to work at Amazon, he wrote each year a letter to his shareholders at the time of the annual. And most of them ended with one sentence, which was, it's still day one. What did he mean by that? He meant, even if we are huge, let's not lose that day one feeling that we're here to change things. What's that got to do with it? What can philanthropy do? Philanthropy can help reform economics, which is what we're trying to do. And there's a whole new school of economics that understands this. But much more than that, philanthropy can help us do what economics has known they ought to be doing since 1925 when Professor Pigu wrote his Economics at Welfare, which basically said, when you have pollution, you should tax it. And you should not tax good things like work and profits, although I'm in favor of taxing both of those, but you should certainly tax bad things like pollution and congestion. So what we can do, we can both do analytical work, but then we can do what's called the C4 work, which is the political advocacy work we're working at the moment. For example, on what's called CBAN, which is border adjustment measures so that if you want to import into this country highly carbon intensive, you ought to pay a tax on it. We should be doing a deal with Europe on that. That's an example of the kinds of things that we can be doing. We need to shift the way our economy prices things. And my last question before we move on to some Q&A here is we've been talking this whole time really about big philanthropy, but I think a lot of us are wondering for those of us who maybe have a little bit of disposable income, but not nearly the amount that we're talking about, how can we make our dollars or efforts most impactful? And I'm interested in hearing from each of you on this. How can we say the ordinary citizen make the biggest impact with their contributions? Who wants to go first? I'll let whoever. Sure. I think that's a very tough question. I struggle with this myself as somebody with two young children who, as someone who's very conscious about the environment, every decision I make feels like it's weighted, the purchases I make. And so I think that it goes down to, for me, am I making choices that I can sleep well at night knowing that I put my money in places that are going to support the things that are important to me? And am I voting and am I engaged in local politics? Am I making a change where I can do so in addition to the research I do and the teaching I do, which I think are very important? So I think it's a really tough question and I sometimes get frustrated when we put the onus on individuals, especially when we see so much systemic and structural stuff going on. Who's been mentioned here? This isn't just a matter of one person who's very wealthy making a difference or one organization or one issue. There are systemic issues here that need to change. So I think it's very complicated. Well, Ash made a much better answer than I was gonna say so. I tend to, when I think of, and I don't have a lot of money for it, but what I do give to organizations, and I guess what I try to do is, rather than I used to try to spread around and send $100 here and $40 here. And now I've tried to say, let me see if I can get the majority of what I give to one organization or my wife and I each decide one each and we try to make a really meaningful gift to those organizations. And it's usually very small organizations, local organizations that we know the people. And the reason we do that is having worked in a nonprofit, there's a lot of care and feeding that goes into donors. Even a $25 donor just sending out the newsletter and you start to, you sometimes lose money on some small dollar donors. And I thought, let's try to consolidate that and not dabble and recognize that my small gifts aren't gonna save the world, but they may make a real difference to that one organization on one particular program that I'm comfortable with. So that's what I tend to do and encourage on the smaller level donors to do. Yeah, and I would say, investing in the structural change. Prioritize investing in the structural change. It doesn't matter if it's $10 a month or $5 a month or whatever your ability is because a lot of times there's a difference between charity and change. A lot of times the charity has to do with the person giving and how it makes them feel. And change has to do with addressing root causes. And so I think that we have to recognize that giving at this moment in history, given what is before humanity, it needs to be less about how we individually feel about how we're giving. And it needs to be addressing societal structural problems and recognizing that's one of the ways that we can actually do it. And then I think giving consistently too. I think that like being somebody who's run grassroots organizations $25 a month for a year, that's a big deal. You start collecting those all of a sudden. And you start to stabilize our grassroots community efforts where you can actually seal it and feel the impact of that too. So you said it doesn't matter how we feel. I was actually gonna say follow your heart, which I guess sounds like it's the opposite. But I think especially if you've got kids, it's very important to pick something that really warms your heart and will help them to understand. If you're, I mean, a small example perhaps we were privileged to take our kids to Africa and we did what you can do. You spend a day on a farm and you talk about actually how wonderful it is to bring these molecules of carbon dioxide up there down to earth in the form of trees and bushes and crops and soils where they bring life and vitality. And now financing restoration in Africa is a very exciting thing for us. Why? Because it not only solves climate change. That's actually not why you do it, even though it's fantastic. It only costs like $3 a ton of carbon. So it's a fantastic deal of a climate. You actually do it because it makes local communities more resilient. It gives them better food security. It increases the income of the farmers and so on. So if you can bring it to life like that, and I agree with what you're all saying, I mean, be consistent. Don't spread it all over. I would personally say don't be so, we tend to be so analytical, don't we? And I shouldn't be saying this in my current job. But actually, go where your heart is here and go and look at it. And maybe you'll invite us out of the Dakotas where we can come and see what you, the fantastic what you're doing, but go and see what's happening. Thank you all. I'm gonna take some questions from the audience now. And Andrew, this actually is a good question falling on what you said. That seems like fantastic advice for individuals giving small donations. But how do philanthropic organizations shield themselves from the broader priorities and whims of individual wealthy donors? Well, I mean, you build a world-class team that has a lot of experience and you have really great conversations. And quite honestly, if somebody very wealthy chooses to put their money apart, their heart's probably in the right place. And generally, they are very up for the right conversations. And I mean, I can speak truthfully about just the fantastic conversations that we're having with the Basel's Earth Fund. So I haven't had a problem in that regard whatsoever. I got something just to piggyback on that a little bit too. Something, you know, with institutional, I mean, I think institutional philanthropy can take some notes to be honest from some of the bigger funders who've decided we're not starting an endowment. The problems are now. The things that need to be solved are now. So we're not gonna start some endowment to hoard wealth and keep perpetual philanthropy. And so like, I mean, I think that institutional philanthropy should push them. I wasn't thinking about like, do what are we investing into? And if it's not good and it historically hasn't been good, should there be conversations about institutional philanthropy sunsetting their foundations? And thinking about not just getting out that money out onto the street in the short term, but radically investing into change right here and right now. Instead of investing into the institution of philanthropy to perpetuate it to oneself. And so, you know, and so I think that's, I think that's, there's an opportunity to engage in those conversations. And I know some people are like, what the hell? That's crazy. But I mean, we have big problems, really, really big problems. And so I think there's some notes that institutional philanthropy can take from, you know, to take from this moment in history. Nick, this question is specifically for you, but then I do wanna hear from any of others if you have thoughts on this. How do you actually measure the success of philanthropic dollars? I think for, how does philanthropy do that? Or how do we? Well, how do you, we'll start with you. How do you do it? So we like, we have a pretty, I was, we were actually talking about this before this panel. Indian Collective has like a pretty extensive 141 metric system that we created that actually supersedes most foundations that are trying to invest into us because we're interested in investing into the changing of the landscape. Right, so if you can change the conditions in which indigenous people are organizing and building power, then you can, then it can be sustained over time. And so creating these metrics that are based on real life things. And I think that because we're, you know, we're talking about the most under-invested poorest communities in the western hemisphere that we're investing into, there's all these indicators that have the ability to change. But make sure those indicators are coming from the community. Coming, they're not coming from government, they're not coming from philanthropy saying, well, this is what we think your indicators of change and impact should be. And if you meet these indicators, we'll invest into you. We've sort of taken the charge on that, we've grabbed the bull by the horns and saying, we wanna see biodiversity increased, we wanna see jobs increased, we wanna see the life expectancy of indigenous people go from the lowest in the western hemisphere to on the upward ends. Like we wanna create these things that have direct impacts on lives. So I think that's one of the most important things is that like those impacted being a part of creating what those actual metrics are, because I mean, those are our families, you know, those are our people, those are the people in our communities. And then translating that to philanthropy to get them to understand why we chose those metrics and have some healthy dialogue about that. Other thoughts on that? How we measure success of the philanthropic dollars? Yeah, I think that a couple of things, I think it's really important what Nick said about the number of metrics, I think is critical that organizations need to be accountable to their missions and to really have those metrics. I think there's a, we're forgiving a lot in the environmental community because people care passionately about forests or animals or other things. And so we forgive people who are really passionate who maybe aren't always effective at their efforts and in a way in a business where people would just say, you're not meeting your quarterly quota, you're out. And so we tolerate sometimes perpetual just, you know, passion without results. And so given the scale of the climate crisis, we need to have some results. We just don't have a time to just kind of care without moving the needle on policy. So we try to have very specific, tangible metrics on, are we gonna achieve this policy in the Convention on Biological Diversity? How many hectares of indigenous land has been tenured and secured? How many dollars are we getting the German government to put into climate change that they didn't put in last year? So we have metrics in each of those areas. But having said that and needing these metrics, there also needs to be some patience with philanthropy that it takes a little time to build up grassroots capacity. So you need to have those metrics, but you need to give a little bit of time to do that. So for instance, if I wanted to create a million acre marine protected area, it may take 10 years to work with the community to get that organized. It doesn't mean I get 100,000 acres in year one and some philanthropists wanna have 100, where's my 100,000 acres? You said you get a million acres in 10 years. Should I have 100,000 acres by now? And it could be zero acres for nine years and a million in year 10. So that kind of, yes, accountability, but also recognize what the organizations need to meet that goal. I just wanna add to both what Nick and Brian just said. And I think it's really important to balance that interest and accountability with not placing too much administrative burden on organizations that are doing the really hard work on the ground. I know from my research that long-term post-project evaluation independently done by foundations is very rare. So it's something that I sort of wonder if maybe foundations or large donors could take on themselves and finding a way to do that so that there's not a huge burden placed on the organizations themselves because we have to find a tension between that kind of accountability that you're talking about with also making sure that people are able to focus on the work that really needs to be done. And so this is a really good point is that too many philanthropists are very demanding in terms of not only annual reports, quarterly reports and all kinds of results frameworks and so on. We're really trying very, very hard to have the best of both worlds whereby you do wanna be precise but maybe we could help do some of the accountability. So for example, some of the things you could be quite precise. So we put $50 million into a system which using satellites and then ground truth with drones and so on. We'll be able to see land use change everywhere on the earth's surface every week. And increasingly now we're able to see on our restoration projects what kinds of trees you can see that from space. You can actually now very soon be able to know how much carbon is embedded in that. So actually our new project that we just launched in Chamo Shake will have a thousand different shapefiles which we put into this system. The farmer or whoever's doing it doesn't need to do a thing. We can actually measure like that. So that's one way but what you do not want to do is just burden the grantee excessively. Here's an interesting question. In October, the Chronicle of Philanthropy published an op-ed entitled conservatives care about climate too. Philanthropy should stop ignoring them. Given what's required for decarbonization it seems bipartisan commitment will be required. So do you work on climate action with people coming at it from right of center? How can philanthropy build the eco right field? And what questions would you need to answer to support right of center work? So. So the answer is absolutely yes, we must do that. And maybe it's not something that the environmental movement has traditionally understood. Although some have. Important to remember I'm sure you've seen surveys of the most environmental presidents in US history. I mean actually number one Teddy Roosevelt. Number two, although he didn't deserve it, Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon oversaw the creation of the EPA and so on. But it's really the Teddy Roosevelt school that is the school that now is very, very interested in nature. Last week we spent the day on Capitol Hill with Republican senators and Congress people and some Democrats as well talking about to the possibility of a new US program for international conservation. So absolutely we need to do it. And indeed we need to be just a lot more thoughtful. So for example, you think about rural areas generally the view is they're less interested in climate change. But actually it's the farmers that are the managers of carbon. We need more, people say we need to decarbonize, we don't. We need to recarbonize rural areas. And we need to have a narrative that is just much more attractive for those in different contexts. I think one thing about it is it's also like we do need to define what we're fighting for though. Because if we stay on this whole left and right conservative, liberal thing, it's not gonna work. Like we need to participate in a just transition. In a just transition away from a fossil fuel based economy. But there's things that we can be changing in that. And so there's a little bit of like honestly responsibility that like the conservative folks that are fighting for these things they're still thinking about the environment as a silo thing. They're still thinking about climate as a silo thing as opposed that it's not integrated into a just society. It's not integrated into economics. And I think that like in the climate justice movement what we're often talking about is a just transition away from fossil fuels but into a regenerative economy that has regenerative and that means regenerative politics too. That means regenerative, that means approaches that are helping to achieve justice and equity. Not just fighting climate but improving quality of life tearing down some of these systems. So there's some, I would push back and say that there's some political education that used to happen in order for this to be done effectively. And in my observation, I think most of the, on the right, the money that goes into the spaces is in opposition to action on climate change. We see it funding kind of phony grassroots groups. We see it funding business associations that will say something positive and then lobby to kill progressive bills in Congress. And so the Koch brothers are an example of funding these kind of pop-up groups that had blocked. I've gone against them in oil and gas proposals and other progressive conservation efforts around the Western United States. So yeah, I'm sure that there are some outliers on the right that will fund climate philanthropy but I have to say currently it's the exception. The vast majority of money from the right is going to fund a continuation of the status quo more advocacy for keeping oil and gas industry going and fighting progress on climate and nature in my view. So we're almost out of time. I wanna have asked one last final question and this will kind of bring us full circle back to where we started. So if it's gonna cost four to nine trillion dollars, where is the rest of the money gonna come from? How much is realistic to think will come from philanthropy and what is the thinking behind how we could potentially get to where we need to be? I'll take a crack at this. I think that that money is gonna have to come largely from governments and the way governments are gonna get it are just from businesses. I mean, the oil and gas companies had a massive windfall just in the last quarter. They should be paying for a lot of the damage that they've caused on climate. We don't tax oil and gas companies for the damage they've done, for the massive windfall profits that they're making. So governments say we don't have money for climate change. Well, if you had some political will to hold those responsible for causing climate change, you would have a whole lot of money and then you could start to fund this. You could also fund innovations and incentives for businesses that are doing positive things. Solar manufacturers, electric vehicle manufacturers, efficiency, heat pumps, this sort of thing. Nature conservation itself isn't a money making scheme. It costs money. It's just like paying for roads or others. We need natural infrastructure and so governments are gonna have to pay that. So in my mind, it has to be a big role of government. What can philanthropy do? Philanthropy can fund advocacy organizations that are holding government people accountable to put more money into this. They can partner with governments. The Bezos Earth Fund and the Wies Foundation partnered with the German government to do a big thing called the Legacy Landscapes Fund where they're endowing national parks throughout the world and the private philanthropy is putting up some of that upfront money and the public donors, the government donors are putting in the endowment money for these places so they can be managed in perpetuity. So I don't, philanthropy can't close that gap for its individual dollars, but it can close the gap through its funding of advocacy and my mind is the best way to close it. At the risk of everyone disagreeing with me, there's plenty of money. The money is out. Easy for you to say. The money is out there. The economy is a hundred trillion dollar economy. We're investing what, $20 trillion a year. We shouldn't think of this when we say, oh, we need six trillion. We shouldn't think of it as a cost. It is an investment in the future. So the issue is not where's the money. The issue is we need to move the money from what it's doing now. It's now investing in bad things and it needs to investing good things and we need to demonstrate that actually investing in good things will lead to a more sustainable economy as well as a more sustainable society as well as a more just society. So in a way, we have to comes back to sort of where do you intervene to get these tipping points crossed. It's all about leverage. I mean, Archimedes said, you give me a lever long enough than a fulcrum that is firm and I'll move the world. We all need to know where our fulcrum is and where our lever is. And that's how we should be looking at it. So there's plenty of money but we are gonna have to do all kinds of tweaks. But the most important thing is to shift the way that decisions are made. And that includes the financial system where as you know a year ago, $130 trillion were committed to net zero and over the last year it's been unraveling a little bit. We need to hold that accountable so that that entire portfolio gradually sort of shifts towards the right direction. In climate science, we talk a lot about feedback loops. Usually they're negative feedback loops leading to further warming. But it sounds like what we're talking about here is that philanthropy can catalyze a positive feedback loop to help move us, move that money to where it needs to be. That's absolutely right. One tiny example we just talked about yesterday, we are working on steel and cement which is really, really polluting. Very hard to obey it. The trick is actually to know that 50% of all the cement in this country is purchased by the government and 20% of all the steel is purchased by the government. So we have a program to work with different states to have procurement rules changed. That's a way that you gradually get the steel companies to start thinking actually it makes more sense to do it differently and you gradually move it around. That's just one of a thousand examples. Thank you. I think we are out of time. I think we could continue talking for another four trillion hours. But we should take it out to the reception outside. So thank you all again so much for joining us. Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you.