 Hello everybody and thank you so much for joining us. We have an audience from around the world and we're really delighted to welcome you to this session of the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit focused on the wildfires in the United States and its impact on reforestation efforts. My name is Justin Adams. I'm the co-director of Nature-Based Solutions here at the World Economic Forum and I was involved in the launch of our 1T.org initiative back in January and Davos earlier this year and that was an effort really to inspire a global movement to bring businesses together, governments, communities and individuals around how we could conserve, restore and grow trillion trees. At the same time as we launched that effort, if you think back to January, we had the record fires burning in Australia. A total, a staggering total of 45 million acres eventually burned in Australia this year and it's become increasingly clear that as we've launched this effort around the trillion trees that we're also in an era of mega fires and right now we have had and continue to see the devastating impacts both environmental and human of the fires burning across the western United States and it's really been sad to see those impacts and the predictions of continued mega fires not just in the United States Australia but really all around the world record fires in the Arctic this year as well. So we're going to focus on this issue of fire and restoration. The first half of the session is a panel discussion. We've got a fabulous panel here. We'll be looking at the impacts and the effects of these fires as well as looking at some of the solutions and some of the reasons that we still have for hope. The second half we're going to open up for questions. If you look now at the slide there's a you can scan that QR code that will take you to Slido or go to slido.com and enter the hashtag SDIS and there you can post questions that will be screened for the panel so that we can answer those questions. For those of you joined through top link you can also use the chat function on zoom but without further ado I want to introduce to you this fabulous panelist this fabulous set of panelists that we have. So firstly I'm delighted to welcome Jack Daly the president and CEO of American Forest the US the based nonprofit founded in 1875 and a partner for the World Economic Forum in launching the US chapter of 1T.org just in a month or so ago. Then we have Hillary France the commissioner of public lands in Washington state where she manages nearly 6 million acres of public lands covering the coastal waters through the working forest and into agricultural and recreational lands. And then lastly we have Jennifer Morris the CEO of the Nature Conservancy the largest conservation organization in the United States and working in more than 70 countries worldwide and with more than a million members. We've got a great panel it's going to be a great discussion so let's start this discussion off. So firstly a question to you Hillary as someone who's living in a state been so severely impacted by fires and working to manage these burns could you give us some understanding of what it's been like to live with them this summer and how you're looking to contain them. Thanks for being here. I've been one of the most destructive horrific set of weeks in Washington state's history frankly. To date in Washington our mom we've nearly had a million acres burn out a total of 1460 fires and literally 72 hours we had over 600,000 acres burn in 72 hours that's five times the amount of acres that burned all of last year in 2019 more than half in what was our worst wildfire season in 2015. And that completely destroyed and demolished one entire town the town of Malden where it looked like literally a bomb had gone off and just an hour or two that complete town that's decimated tragically lost lives here in Washington state as we know across the coast. The reality is we continue to see ever-increasing wildfires year after year. We're not only seeing more fires we're seeing a larger spread of the geographical area of our state on fire as well as our west coast states and we're also seeing a longer period. Our fire season used to be about two months of the year just 15 years ago and it is now nine months of the year and I know that California experience is at 365 and the reality is we're spending an enormous amount of money in responding to these fires. The average cost of the federal government to suppress these fires is $1.8 billion a year. For us our state spends on average $153 million a year we have a fire alone that has cost over $80 million one fire and the reality is we're going to continue to be paying for it. The question is whether we're going to pay to react in the face of smoke and flames or we're going to be proactive and make our force and our communities more resilient to these fires and invest in the wildfire fighting resources that we need to get on this fire specifically. So this conversation is perfectly timed. I'm great to be here. Thank you Hillary and just a sense of just the impacts at so many levels in the state. So Jad a question to you could you give us some understanding of how we've arrived here in the United States at this time with these mega fires now burning? Yeah thanks so much Justin actually before I jump in I just want to say thank you to Hillary and her team and all the folks around the front lines keeping us safe from these events. I think a lot of times these folks work out of the public eye and they do incredibly dangerous work and I think we just all really owe a debt of gratitude to the public servants that are dealing with this wildfire crisis that we have. There are multiple causes at work here but I want to laser in on three that I think are the key drivers that we need to address and the first is climate change and make no mistake climate change is driving this dramatic increase in wildfires and future wildfire risk that Commissioner Franz just described an authoritative study published by National Academy of Sciences back in 2016 that found a doubling of the extent of wildfire since the mid 1980s directly tied to climate change so we can't solve our wildfire crisis without addressing climate change but that's a longer term solution because there's already a lot of climate change in motion and we need to deal with it here and now and that ties to the other part of the equation which is is forestry we need more active forestry and more active utilization of wood products to get our forest back into balance with climate change there simply isn't as much water available hotter and drier conditions and so we need to fundamentally adjust the structure and composition of our forests to bring them back in balance with climate change and so that gets to my third point which is it can't just be more of the same forestry we need a new kind of forestry instead of thinking about restoring our forests to what they were we need to think about pre-storing our forest for a changing climate and using science as a crystal ball to help us understand what those conditions will be and what kind of structure and composition of forests we need to have in order for those forests to survive and thrive in a changing climate thank you Jad so this isn't a dichotomy between climate change and management of forest this is both Anne and a great concept of pre-storing not just restoring forest so Jen across to you your your team's work in every state impacted every state across the United States and you work around the world what what does what are you seeing and what what does this mean yeah thanks so much Justin I'd like to just reiterate my deep consult condolences and appreciation for all the communities and the firefighters that are out there on the front lines dealing with this tragedy right now the reality is that every year if you take the california fires from 2017 it was the worst year now we're in the worst year in 2020 and it's just continuing and for the reasons that that jad said so so the nature conservancy as you said is in every single state we are working on the front lines with the wonderful people like hillary's teams on the ground in Washington state as well as really partnering deeply with local communities indigenous people to try to address first the crisis but then ultimately how do we prevent this from happening again you know this is a similar situation we're dealing with COVID where we're so focused on the cure right now which we have to do but ultimately how do we prevent this from happening again and so one of the great things that the jad and the nature conservancy have been working on is how do we fund prevention as opposed to always dealing with the next worst year and so making sure that our firefighters our forest teams our public lands have the resources and the training that they need to actually address bringing value to those forests to making sure that communities are citing their properties and their lands in a way that is conducive to the new normal which is a world with more and more fire so we're actively involved in helping to fund that prevention which is going to be so so critical to addressing the next years of fire risk that we're going to see going forward that's great so again a focus on the prevention rather than just having to fight the fires as we have them so hillary if we turn back to you what's the future of you know the beautiful state of washington and your forest what's the future for the forest and where are the both the challenges but also the opportunities you see and the solutions you see moving forward we're called the evergreen state where the evergreen state for a reason and my statement is right now we're watching the evergreen state turn brown and then charcoal black and it's our responsibility to reverse that trend uh first thing it is about identifying the problem and where the investments need to go so we can reverse the course we're on and actually change the trajectory of these catastrophic fires i focus on three things on that and and our panels are all doing the same thing but first is actually wildfire protection resources we throughout this country and in our state have underinvested in actually the resources to fight these fires it starts with air resources and initial attack i have now 11 helicopters that all fought in the vietnam war every single one of them and that's my air arsenal um getting on these fires quickly and keeping them small um at the federal level we borrow a number of resources from other states and federal governments but when we have to california's orgin's colorado's montan's miami's all on fire at the same time we don't have any more resources to be able to borrow and so i currently have skeleton crews that have been fighting these fires heroically and i say every one of our state has to get more dependent on ourselves to fighting those fires and away when we do that we can actually also increase economic opportunities we're looking at some of the most significant economic crises and given covid the second problem our leg of the stool is forest health we've developed a plan for eastern washington that has us we have about 2.7 million acres of forest alone that are already dead and dying they're literally a tender box all it takes is one spark and we have hundreds of thousands of acres burning like that in 72 hours we developed a plan that has us restoring the health of those forests over the next 20 years about 70,000 acres a year we are being agnostic to property lines to fire and disease um that's an anthology of radical attacks we partnered with the federal government so we are doing the work on federal land so we can get there quicker and get it done faster as well as partnering with american forest and nature conservancy for small forest members we're now finishing the west side plan and it obviously this takes resources but it also means economic opportunity putting people back into the woods to restore the health of the forest and it's cheaper than fighting those fires the third one i just had to say is community resilience after visiting the town of maldon which is the town that was completely destroyed in the last two weeks due to the fire it was very apparent that we do have the ability to make these communities more resilient to fire literally as you look down the street and you saw every single home completely destroyed you saw one or two homes sitting amongst that destruction completely intact now ember had touched that home right and many of the homes were unsure they're completely unprotected and you have standing chimneys and foundation but then you have untouched home amongst all that rubble and it's because they took the steps to make those homes more resilient to fire they removed all they kept their lawns water like it's so we have to take a three-prong effort invest in wildfire protection resources invest in restoring the health of our forest thousands of acres of production immediately and we have to do community resilience thank you helary really powerful call to action so jack we launched the u.s chapter of one t.org to think about conserving restoring america's forest what does all this mean how do people find hope in the midst of all this destruction yeah thanks justin it's been an amazing partnership with world economic forum and all the organizations that have come together for one t.org globally and here in the u.s through the new u.s chapter of one t.org to advance this goal the trillion trees and look i you know i want to actually shift shift to thinking about what happens after fire because how do we keep the evergreen state evergreen in terms of repairing some of these damaged landscapes we have now millions of acres of land across the west that are going to need reforestation and and what we've been doing isn't close to keeping up now let alone keeping up with this increased need that we now have to reforest fire damage landscapes that only way we're going to get that right isn't all hands on deck collaboration it's government agencies like the great folks in washington state it's ngo's like the nature conservancy in american forests it's uh companies that uh like sales force and others that are stepping up to provide resources to help fund these reforestation projects and civil society organizations from girl scouts and other youth groups to to churches and and other kinds of civil society organizations that want in on this work as well who see this work of reforestation as a great way to care for our environment and so i think one t.org gives us a mechanism now a tent big enough for all those folks to come in and understand this work and then and then do it together and i think really importantly tying back to my earlier point not just sticking trees in the ground but understanding that if we're actually going to be pre-storing our forest for changing climate the work of reforestation needs to kick to an whole different order of magnitude in terms of the precision the species selection and genetics that we're using and identifying what trees to plant the techniques that we're using uh to to reforest for resilience and then ultimately the adaptive management structures that we put in place so we can adjust those for us for the unexpected changes that climate is going to throw us throw us in the future and i'll just capstone by saying you know the federal government and and policymakers across the country have a big role to play here as well and you know just for example there's bipartisan legislation right now in congress the replant act that would provide almost a billion dollars per decade to reforest some of these damaged landscapes in this case particularly on our national forests and plant 1.2 billion trees and generate almost 49,000 jobs that's i call that building back better so those are the kinds of ways in which everyone can do their part but that also includes the role of public policy and resourcing in this work thank you thank you Jen so Jen uh uh last question for the panel to you yep i mean where does all this fit globally and what are some of the next steps the nature conservancy is seeing yeah so um this is sort of a microcosm of what's happening around the world in places like australia and brazil if we all remember back to before covid hit we were all focused on the australian wildfires which just absolutely devastated parts of that country i mean an area the size of the entire state of washington burned in one fire season and now australia is starting its next fire season as it as it rolls into summer there so it's absolutely devastating everywhere you know but of course there is hope of course there's on the ground action that the nature conservancy many many many partners both government and non-profit and corporates are taking in places like australia and brazil really digging in with indigenous communities really again focusing on how do we make sure that forests are able to realize their total benefits through reforestation how do we get farmers and forest owners from the us to brazil and australia to actually receive income for protecting their forests for the carbon that it provides for the water storage services that forests all over the world provide so this is an all-in effort um i really love to see the efforts of one tree dot org and all of the partners there i think it's a fantastic initiative to make sure that we're all in on replanting and reforesting and doing it in a science-based way i think jad what you just mentioned is really critical that we're ensuring that looking at fire ecosystems that we're replanting better and so that we can ensure more fire resilience going forward as climate change accelerates the pace of transition of our entire planet so love to see this effort and we need to scale it up and we're looking forward to participating thank you gen so we've got some great questions from the audience that that i'm going to move to and one of them is around indigenous people and a few of you have mentioned a few of you have mentioned indigenous people one of my some of my best experiences have actually been out in the field with indigenous peoples doing early season burning i wonder if one of you could say a little bit about how indigenous peoples manage land and and if there's anything that that that that can teach us in terms of where we are well just and i'll maybe just jump in say a quick comment there to kick us off i'm sure everyone might have different thoughts about this but uh but here in the united states um you know the the forests that uh the first european settlers found here in the united states were were heavily managed um and i think that's not always been well understood and including managed with fire and so there's actually intensive work going on in uh states across the west to to learn from uh traditional environmental knowledge and to understand some of those patterns in some cases the way to pre-store forests uh you know for a new a new future is actually by looking back to the past and the way that we've managed uh a forest in in some cases in very very different past and in very different structures and composition than what we've become accustomed to in recent decades of forestry so yeah i think that plays a critical role and and you know our organization definitely is engaging with with tribal partners here in the u.s and and trying to bring those practices into our thinking and our advocacy yeah i might jump in with um with an international example so i mean in australia for example indigenous people have rights to over 70 percent of the land in northern australia they know how to manage the land um we need to learn from them so we're working directly with the australian government as well as these indigenous organizations to really help them have the resources to ensure that they can return the land management back to the indigenous people and use those traditional practices in a in a more robust way um and that includes burning that includes burning in cooler months um as opposed to so to prevent fires in the hot and dry months so it's a whole regime that indigenous people have done for for millennia that that we need to learn from yeah that's a great go ahead hillary well i just add i'm gonna so we are a big supporter of the burning and prescribed fire and doing it at the right time of the year not when it's hot and dry and everything is on fire i will be frank that our biggest challenge and struggle is there is too many layers of government review and bureaucracy because there was this tamping down of prescribed fire of using fire for the health of the forest because they were working on equality the problem is it's made it really really difficult to do that at the state and the federal level um and we end up with the worst air quality in the world like we have this year and again in 2018 because we're not able to do it when the off season we gotta break through the state and federal we gotta be more efficient and speed up that because we're we become our worst enemy frankly in getting the right tools on the ground in the health of these forests that's great so that's a nice segue to uh to the next question which is yeah yeah in a world where we're seeing so much polarization in politics uh not just in the united states but but in many countries is there a political consensus around what needs to be done around what we need to do with forests and fires uh and is there a way that we can really move some of the political and the policy action forward faster so Hilary it might come straight back to you i'm going to jump in here um especially you know my statement is because we've seen these horrific tragic fires and i'll say i've gotten many women some of the agents this time who are playing their lines on my line every single day and when they are fighting fires it's not in their mind they know exactly why they're seeing more catastrophic catastrophic fires we got hotter drier temperatures we got way more fuel on that force and they know what the solution is so they don't have to keep coming back here after year to do it the problem is we're now politicized a true crisis and a life threatening crisis um and as i say hot air has never ever put out of fire it frankly just infuriates it and makes it larger and what we need now is less of that hot air less of the finger pointing and getting people to say there are two things we've got to actually do or three things one is we've got to realize yes climate is having a significant impact on our landscapes and on the health of these forests but we are not having to just assume that is our reality we've got to get in and start managing these forests that recognizes a change in climate and recognizes how we've got to this place over the last 50 years through fire suppression and lack of management and we have to give our communities a fighting chance by saying we are going to make every community that is in these by sort of volatile fire zones more safe so they have a fighting chance against those fires and people need to stop talking and actually get to work like our firefighter justin can i just put please two quick things number one the number of pieces of bipartisan legislation that we have in congress right now to take action on on these issues is too long for me to mention i mentioned the replant act but actually there are a number of other bipartisan bicameral bills that are ready to move and so i do think that when it when it comes to these issues we are one nation under trees and we're seeing that politically but you have to also imagine how influential it is for these lawmakers to see through an effort like the us chapter of one t.org private sector organizations and non federal governmental agencies come together to pledge 855 million trees over the next decade and billions of dollars of supporting actions which is what we announced that launch on august 27th and that's kind of saying to our elected officials that you know at the federal level hey where's your part we need a partnership here to scale these actions you know to to meet the challenge that we're facing and so i think we do have this convergence just as hillary said of a bipartisan consensus that we need to get something done here and everyone needs to do more and they need to do it better yet anything you want to add to that um i mean just completely 100 agree we've got to focus on this again as a preventative effort going forward because we're just going to see this over and over again so if we have you know factions fighting against each other we need to listen to our ecologists and not our politicians on this um and the ecologists know how to manage these forests and how to bring value to the forest so increasingly we've got to just do that as opposed to um to as hillary greatly said listening to the hot air because it's not going to solve anything yeah so uh there's a there's a great sort of article yesterday in Yale e360 that talks about this is not a new normal right and so we're not in a new normal this is actually a completely different paradigm that we're now living in and and yet we still treat it as an environment issue you've talked about jobs and the job opportunities there you've talked about communities and the resilience of communities have yeah and you've talked about this is a bipartisan issue the politicians from both aisles can actually align around so how can we actually mobilize more action and the urgency that's required to break down some of the bureaucratic barriers you've touched on hillary what more is it going to take so i gotta say that progress has been made i mean since i started in this work and i know jad knows this again but so progress is being made and i think we are seeing more of that bite percentage in this um i think the first thing is i mean it's raining outside my window and literally five days ago i couldn't even go outside because the smoke was so big we've got to make sure that our leaders at all levels are not forgetting the tragedy of this fire season because too often what happens is by the time they're in session at the state or federal level it's raining it's cold they forgot um and we have the requirement we have the more responsibility not to forget that this is an ongoing annual issue across the country across this world we have to stay focused and we can't solve it in one year um we also have i think the key is being able to make that economic side of this right right now majority of the fight is it's an environment issue no it's a forest management economic issue really it is an environmental economic and social crisis and we have to see them as all together but that means the solutions are also going to the environmental solutions will be economic solutions will be social solutions and i think if we can start to show that case that here's how much you're already spending of 1.8 billion this isn't a choice between the housing and transportation and the other critical needs it is an investment in jobs it's an investment in communities and it's an investment in the environment and it will have far more returns in our quality of life but also in our job and economic opportunity and we've got to tell that story better and we got to stay with metrics and numbers yeah so just one minute yet and then quick last word to Jen yeah you bet 39.7 jobs per million dollars invested that's what the numbers tell us and uh we need to tell that story uh follow uh Hilary Franz and Jennifer Morris on twitter maybe me too if you're into it we all have to tell this story together we need to not go changing thanks Jen Jen yeah i mean my takeaway here is again for every dollar we invest in prevention we're gonna save six dollars just pure economics on dealing with the crises that are ahead of us so invest now everyone who's listening out there please talk to your political leaders make sure they understand the importance of managing for us sustainably make sure they understand that this is going to continue and we've got to invest now we've got to build back better thank you so much uh so i mean so much we can take from this panel but uh i loved how you phrased it earlier Hilary we have to invest in fighting the fires we have to invest in forest health we have to invest in community resilience and i think i would add a fourth which is we have to invest in changing the narrative and bringing people together around this critical issue and i think you've done a fabulous job all of you of highlighting this of highlighting both the impacts that we're seeing today but as well we know what can be done we know what the solutions are and so as we close i would invite everybody to just spare a thought to give some prayers to all those who are on the front line and that we cannot forget the moral responsibility that Hilary's just reminded of us that is the new cycle passes that these fires these communities are still here so we have to be working together to how do we do that i want to thank the panelists for a really fabulous high energy discussion i want to thank all of you for listening i'm sorry we couldn't get to all of your questions but please tune back in to more from the Sustainable Development Impact Summit and the final day tomorrow and please stay safe and thank you all