 And welcome. Welcome to this webinar on nature-based solutions, how to implement them, how to not implement them and what they mean and how we're going to take them forward. So, my name's Elliot Whittington. I am Chief System Change Officer at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. We are an institution as part of the University of Cambridge, but we work with leaders from business, government and finance to accelerate and support the transition towards a more sustainable economy. We've done a number of bits of work with our stakeholders, with our different audiences on this issue of addressing the impacts on nature and working to secure some of the opportunities that can come with working with nature to create better ways of doing things. So, what I think is often called nature-based solutions. For those of you who are interested in any of that work and want to refer to it either during this call, but hopefully afterwards because we've got some really interesting discussion and dialogue going on, you can check out our website and we have a nature-positive hub, which includes our recent piece of work with decision-making in a nature-positive world, which talks about some of the practicalities of introducing nature-based solutions. We're obviously working and doing this work in the context of a dramatic and challenging world with new stories about biodiversity loss and the impacts on nature, how we're damaging vital natural ecosystems like our fresh water, like our oceans, like our soils, and particular ecosystems, our woodlands, our wildlife, our paper peatlands. Unfortunately, we fill our news media more and more. At the same time, we're seeing the worsening impacts of climate change and challenging popularization and inequality rising around social compensation. But there is this opportunity that can very much come. Working with nature, we can unlock things that can deliver not just restoration and expansion of a degraded natural environment, but also economic benefits, social benefits, health benefits, benefits in the fight against climate change. That's where nature-based solutions often come in. At CSL, we've worked with a number of stakeholders who have engaged in this, supported this, and we wanted to hold this webinar to take this conversation to the next level. It feels like there's quite a lot of conversation that's going on right now about nature-based solutions, about what they are and what they mean, but less so about how to do them, when to do them, when not to do them, what some of the practicalities are in terms of implementing them. That's what we're hoping to explore in this conversation. We're also very much looking to one of the strengths of CSL. I think we like to look at things from a point of view how different actors and different organizations can come together about these kind of things, and how we can explore where the potential to ladder our individual solutions into change at scale, into systemic change that can transform different approaches. I'm very pleased that we are joined by an informed and expert set of panellists, and I think it will be a hugely wonderful and informative conversation. We have Owen Bethel, who is the Environmental Impact Lead for Nestle. He works on climate, biodiversity and water issues within the Global Public Affairs Team at Nestle, and is very much kind of an expert on some of the implications around these questions. We have Melissa Minas, who spent a decade at Unilever, also in a similar kind of role, working on the public policy and advocacy issues around biodiversity, nature, climate, and many other things. She was often told in that role not to use the phrase nature-based solutions, but worked on some of the same ways that we're talking about in terms of engaging in how nature can unlock positive changes. She's also a trustee at the National Park Cities Organization, so with huge relevance there. I think a lot of the things that we talk about come back to how nature can be shifted and nature is very much about particular places and particular locations. Finally, we have Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts and a director and associate in many organizations, including CISL, so indeed a former colleague in that sense, but a long-standing expert in environmental issues, a campaigner, advocate, and movement builder around biodiversity protection, climate issues, and many other things. So hopefully you'll all agree this is going to be a really interesting conversation. For those of you who have questions, so we are currently broadcasting on GoToWebinar, but we're also being streamed on LinkedIn and YouTube. If you have questions, if you want to put them in the comments section of either LinkedIn or YouTube, we've got people kind of watching those and we will make Hoover up all the best questions and we'll start with a bit of conversation with our panelists and then move on to a session where we're able to take questions and we'll see how many questions we can get through. We've already had some, so it looks like it's a lot of interest and we'll move through that and try and deal with any questions we're getting from the audience. But other than that, we hope you stick with us for what promises to be an interesting and engaging hour of discussion and dialogue. Now, without too much further ado, you've heard a lot from me. I'm going to hand over to our panelists and get them to give us their thoughts on this topic, on this challenge, and what they see as some of the kind of key issues and key questions are. And in fact, Owen, if I start with you and just over to you from your perspective, particularly from the Nestle world. Sure. Thank you, Elliot. And thanks very much to CISL for the opportunity to speak today at this event. I think forests have been something that have been high on the agenda for Nestle for a long time. It's not just a recent discovery, if you like, in terms of the impact that our company has through our supply chains. It's been a decades long journey of discovery around understanding that impact, addressing that impact, and now looking to the future, seeing what positive effect we can have through our climate journey to net zero and the actions we're taking on nature. So I think it really kind of kicked off around 2009, 2010, when we started to gain a lot more visibility on the supply chains that we rely on, particularly around palm oil, where there have been long running concerns around forest loss. And the company took the approach of focusing on ending the risk of deforestation in key at-risk commodity chains to begin with. And that included palm oil and four others, which were based on a materiality assessment of where our key risks were. The way that we've addressed that risk is through improving traceability, understanding where are the ingredients that we source coming from and how do we ensure that they're not coming from areas which are at risk. We've also introduced things like satellite monitoring and on-the-ground verification working with partners to make sure that the traceability data is actually backed up by real-world experience and the use of technology as well. And I'm very pleased to say that by the end of 2022, we'd reached around 99% verified deforestation free for those five main commodities and are working hard towards reaching that number for coffee and cocoa as well, which will be achieved by the end of 2025. So by that point, I think we'll have done a good job on addressing most of the do-no-harm element of nature-based solutions. So first of all, we've got to stop the harm happening, particularly in at-risk areas, before then kind of really ramping up our efforts on reforestation. Well, firstly, forest conservation, beyond no deforestation, and then restoration and regeneration as well. The way we're looking at that is unsurprisingly very connected to the climate journey, but I think not just limited to that. And I think that that's one topic to explore in today's webinar is moving beyond just a sort of carbon mindset when it comes to forest planting and growing and also thinking about how we monitor these things over the long term and ensure the correct species are planted in the right places, that communities are involved very closely in those efforts, and that we ensure carbon sequestration over the long term and address some concerns that have been legitimately raised around that by various stakeholders more recently. So we have an objective now of planting the equivalent of 200 billion trees by 2030. That's the carbon removals element of our net zero plan for this decade. And that is happening within the value chains where we source from. So again, there's kind of an opportunity for co-benefits there, where we link forest positive project that we're investing into a sourcing region where we may be transitioning to more regenerative forms of agriculture as well. And quite often the things are actually directly combined through an agroforestry system or through improving the biodiversity of field strips and other adjacent areas to where we're actually buying our ingredients from. So I think there's great opportunity there for bringing it all together on a landscape basis. We've got examples in cocoa, coffee, some other commodities as well. And sourcing our ingredients in a way which actually creates a positive impact on nature, a more of a restorative effect on nature. Bearing in mind that it's not about restoring ecosystems to their pristine state, but it's about reducing the negative impacts of agricultural landscape management and starting to put something back in terms of our business impact. So happy to explore a few examples today on the webinar and looking forward to this, to the discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Rowan. And over to Melissa to give us your perspective. Thank you. And everything Rowan said resonates a lot with me because in some supply chains, Unilever and Nestle are in very similar positions. I should say at the start just to reiterate your introduction, I have now left Unilever. I've chosen to leave and do some consulting to spend some more time with my kids while they're very little. But I have spent the last 10 years there, so I can reference examples. And I think you mentioned before, I often don't like the term nature based solutions because it comes with so much controversy. It makes sense as a phrase, but in certain countries in which we operate, it can be very contentious. There's always that phrase that I love, our nature is not your solution. And it doesn't mean that companies aren't committed to investment in nature and nature-positive supply chains, but it's often a tricky term. And that's a wider point on how you deploy some of this at a huge scale when you're operating in 190 plus countries. What do your operations on nature and what does your measurement on nature look like in very different areas? And I really liked what Owen said. I was going to say something similar, but he said it in a much better way about moving beyond the carbon mindset. Because again, that's kind of one of the controversies with nature based solutions is it's the assumption that you're going to buy carbon credits. But I think we're talking about the word a UN definition of nature based solutions, which is an investment in nature. I've got the definition in front of me, but I won't read it out. So I'm very encouraged by the Global Biodiversity Framework. I mean, moving beyond the actual words that are in the policy, but the whole movement that's happening around the Global Biodiversity Framework in terms of investor interest, company action, grassroots movement. I feel like in terms of kind of people talked about trying to create the Paris moment for nature around the coming Montreal Declaration. For me, that feels very live at the moment. Having looked at this stuff for the last 10 years, I'm feeling very excited about the momentum and the campaign behind that. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. And it's a really important kind of call out being made. So for those of you and our audience who don't know, as part of the kind of UN process around biodiversity, there was a meeting in Montreal co-hosted by the Chinese government, which agreed a new global framework for biodiversity. It was the COP 15 of that framework, the 15th conference of that framework. CSL had a presence there, along with many of the other organizations involved, but it was a really important breakthrough moment for the world. Craig, maybe if I could hand over to you to give us your perspectives on this conversation. Thank you, Elliot. And great to be joining you all. Be joining Owen and Melissa on this very important discussion. A couple of things, first of all, about the Wildlife Trust. We're actually one of the largest nature NGOs here in the UK and actually in the world when you put it together. We're a federation of locally run wildlife trusts across the UK, 46 in total, but collectively our scale is quite extraordinary. We're actually the, we have almost a million members in the UK. We have more nature reserves than McDonald's has got restaurants in the UK. In fact, a thousand more. And we estimate that 60% of the British population live within three miles of one of our reserves. And in total, we are the seventh largest landholder in the UK and actually have almost 3,000 staff. So it gives you an idea of our kind of scale working across a huge range of natural habitats and working very closely with people and communities in doing that as well. Before I was at the Wildlife Trust, I have a long career in working in NGOs, including internationally. I was at Fensi Earth and on the board of Fensi Earth International for many years. And I've worked closely with business as well, not least at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and worked with business on many, many initiatives. And I say all that, not just to give you my biography, but to say that, you know, I do kind of look at these issues from all of those perspectives from a business perspective, from an NGO perspective, from a community perspective. And also I've had periods of my career when I focused on nature and periods of my career when I focused on climate, if you like. One of the things that's driven me mad over many decades is just how for too long in the sustainability community, we've treated the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they're quite separate things. And it's often a different group of people that work on them. We have different UN conventions working on them. And there might be logic in that focus at times, but even people in the sustainability community often don't realise that these issues are inextricably linked. You know, just to put it really clearly, we have absolutely no hope whatsoever of solving the climate crisis, unless we can put nature in recovery. And we have no hope of solving the ecological crisis unless we can tackle climate change. The clue for that should be staring us right in the face. It's really obvious. We often talk about fossil fuels. How often do we stop to think that fossil fuels are actually dead biodiversity? And it's biodiversity that captured carbon millions of years ago, locked it up in what we now call fossil fuels. And when we burn fossil fuels, we're really releasing the carbon that was captured by nature millions of years before. So that's just as a preface on this. And I mean, because of that, I'm incredibly enthusiastic broadly about nature-based solutions. But there are things we do need to be really careful about. And it's really careful that particularly people working in the nature space, and I say this just to people just as much as NGOs as I do in business, that we've got to be careful not to overstate the role that nature-based solutions can play while also being very enthusiastic about them. The reality is that nature-based solutions have a real but limited role that they can play in tackling, for example, the climate crisis. And I say that because all too often people will hold them up as the answer, the silver bullet. You will probably find hardly anyone more enthusiastic about nature-based solutions than me. But that's all the more reason we've got to be careful about how the role they can play is very real, but it is limited. Now, why is it limited? Well, it's partly because there's a limited amount of space for nature-based solutions. There's only so much area that we can have, sadly, for restoring nature on a fairly crowded world now in many ways. There's also only a limited amount of time. If we're talking about, say, trying to halve global emissions, which is still the plan by 2030, nature can play a big role in that. But all of that has to be in addition to cutting carbonate salts to stop burning fossil fuels. Sometimes it's almost presented as a convenient way out to carry on with business as usual. And that is the way of madness. If we do that, then we will make the whole concept of nature-based solutions toxic in many people's eyes. And rightly so if we did that. So every time we talk about nature-based solutions, we have to talk how it's an addition to stopping the bad stuff happening, stopping burning fossil fuels, stopping allowing pollutants into rivers or whatever. And crucially, this is also important because climate change is the biggest threat to nature now, probably for the rest of this century. Extraordinarily, if we don't stop burning fossil fuels, climate change becomes a threat to nature-based solutions. So at the precise moment that we need nature at its best state possible to help us out of the climate crisis, if we're not careful, we're reducing the ability for nature to do that. And this is really important, particularly in the offsets debate. I'm very skeptical about offsets, very cautious about them. I don't rule them out entirely. But actually, we say in the NGO community, all of us have to be very careful to make sure that none of this just allows business to carry on with business as usual. We need to see transformational change in the way business goes around business over the next decade or so. And we need to see that in addition to investing in nature-based solutions, not in nature-based solutions as an alternative to that deep system change that we need. Having said all that, we should celebrate the very real role that nature-based solutions can play. On the climate debate alone, Natalie Seddon, Professor Natalie Seddon at the University of Oxford, if I can dare to mention the other place at the University of Cambridge seminar, she and her team have estimated that if we really put effort into it, nature-based solutions could help for around 0.3 degrees of climate mitigation. Well, I take that. We need everything at the moment. And actually, given that we're around 1.1 degree and we want to try and keep global temperatures to less than 1.5 degrees, 0.3 degrees is not something to be sniffed at. But it's not going to be really more than that. So we need to be going hard on stopping burning fossil fuels as well as nature-based solutions. Secondly, we need to recognize that although we often talk about net zero, actually, you know what? Net zero is not the destination. We often forget that. It's a very, very important milestone. But really where we need to get to, certainly by the second half of this century, is net negative. We need to be taking carbon out of the air. And much as some people love to talk about these machines as yet uninvented to take carbon out of the air for us, we have trillions of machines that do that brilliantly for us for free. They're called trees and they're called wetlands and they're called blue carbon in the oceans as well. Even fish, even biodiversity, even the abundance of species is brilliant at locking up carbon in the biosphere as opposed to the atmosphere as well. So actually, let's focus on the storing the abundance of nature and getting nature working in to really suck carbon out of the air. So absolutely there's a role of nature-based solutions in climate mitigation, but we shouldn't overstate it. However, there's also a phenomenally brilliant role that nature-based solutions can play in climate adaptation. And there we almost can't possibly overstate how effective they can be because nature-based solutions actually can provide the buffer zones. They can provide support for flood alleviation. They can hold water back in the landscape. They can call our urban centres. They can absolutely call our rivers and also clean up our rivers as well. And this isn't just about planting trees by the way, much is that's important. Sometimes we don't see the wood for the trees or more to the point, the wooden habitat and just how important if you go beyond trees actually the carbon that can be stored in the soil, not least through fungal networks in forests if we really create whole forest habitats as well. And it's not just about forest. It's about those wetlands. It's about the abundance of nature. It's about blue carbon. It's about sea grasses, salt marshes and so on. A huge range of nature-based solutions can do it. You know, if we really think about it, I defy anyone to think of another climate solution that can do both mitigation, adaptation and deliver all those co-benefits like recreation, flood alleviation, health and well being and so on as well. So nature-based solutions are absolutely brilliant, but there's no excuse for holding back on doing what needs to be done and stopping the bad stuff happening as well. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. That's brilliant and has given us like, I think between all three of you, there's huge meat for the conversation. So I think we can probably, it would be good to come to some specific examples, but before we do that, I think it'd be really good if I could go to go in Melissa just to kind of respond to the challenge, I think, that Craig put in the room in terms of like this clear need to have this very kind of strong thinking about how you bring climate and nature together and how you do the decision-making about it in a way that delivers the environmental integrity, the ongoing benefits that Craig talked about and makes that happen. Maybe if I could start with Melissa and just sort of say, you know, you've obviously been involved in this in previous, and hopefully we'll be advising more companies as you kind of get pulled. What do you see as sort of some of the opportunities and challenges of having to kind of make that conversation happen and having to have decision-makers grapple with this? Yeah, well, I completely agree with Craig Bennett about the kind of fear of nature-based solutions being seen as this silver bullet, and that was partly of what I was saying around the controversy of the term in itself. Unilever, my most recent example, focuses on deep decarbonisation, the company doesn't seek to reach its submission to reductions through carbon offset, so therefore, again, which is why nature-based solutions is controversial, but I think there are many in terms of bringing the nature and climate crisis together. There are many company actions such as forest restoration, regenerative agriculture, which have metrics which look at carbon, which look at biodiversity, which look at soil. So I do see from a corporate perspective, this is coming together, and a lot of this work is coming together through the great work that the coalitions are doing, such as WBCSD and One Planet Business for Biodiversity. They divide out their work streams to look at things like the Science-Based Targets Initiative for Climate and the Science-Based Targets Network for Nature, and they look at company feedback on two emerging methodologies, and they look at where the similarities are as well. So I think in my experience, the work that's happened with the coalitions for the last 10 years has really come on. They're really helping companies now. It used to be 10 years ago, we'd be involved in a press release at a big event and that was the work through the coalitions, but now they're really looking at the detail of this and doing a lot of the heavy lifting and looking at those synergies and where we can bring this work together. Owen, maybe you could reflect on how easy it is for companies to balance all these different challenges and benefits, and maybe if you could particularly take that down if you can, not just the general decision-making case, but into some specific examples. You talked very clearly about palm oil, coffee and cocoa earlier, but you might have some more. Yeah, sure. So I think first of all, I'd say we're in almost a bit of a privileged position in the food and beverage industry whereby our supply chains are very clearly natural resources. It's land and the way that we manage that land is something that can be addressed relatively quickly in terms of the approach, the strategy and the objectives and targets, etc. And then the transformation itself will take, of course, time and it will rely very much on the local context, which is why we have teams working all around the world with farmers and landowners and communities as well to understand specific needs and specific places. So we don't invest in the wrong project in the wrong place. That's really important to avoid. On the reductions and removals discussion there, I think, again, it's sort of like it's quite an integrated approach for food and beverage companies because we can reduce emissions through our operations and through switching to more regenerative forms of agriculture, but there's also this big opportunity to remove carbon through nature-based solutions, which are almost kind of part of the same plan. And I think that's preferable because it allows a greater level of oversight, longevity in terms of the approach. And also, I think the realization of co-benefits, which factor in quite a lot of economic perspectives as well. So you can safeguard a landscape, but if the community there, there's a negative economic impact from that action, it's unlikely to be successful and it's unlikely to last for the long term. So I think diving into a bit more detail on what that means for us. We've been involved in efforts in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana on preserving forests, the remaining forests that are left in those countries, which have come under quite a lot of pressure from cocoa cultivation. And a lot of the people cultivating cocoa are small holders, people who are very much kind of on the lower end of the income spectrum and are affected by poverty. And the approach taken there really is to try to understand the needs of the community, as well as understand the ecological impact of those activities and to devise solutions in partnership with local government and other partners, which don't result in those negative social outcomes. They actually address that first and foremost. And one thing we did was launch an income accelerator program where cocoa farmers are rewarded for carrying out certain practices. And some of those practices are around improving their efficiency. So there's less pressure on land to expand. Some of those practices are around addressing some of the social issues that are occurring locally. And the whole idea being to improve their economic model and to reduce pressure on surrounding areas. And in those surrounding areas, we can also then fund restoration projects, which are likely to last for the long term because of that kind of holistic integrated approach across both the economic and the ecological spheres. So I think that's just one example. But really, I think our approach is to try and take that into different contexts based on local considerations, whether that's a coffee farmer in Vietnam who is looking to improve their income through growing something else alongside their coffee plants on the same area of land, or it's a cocoa farmer in Côte d'Ivoire who needs to have a more secure economic model to avoid some of those risks of deforestation. So really kind of looking at it as an integrated reductions and removals approach and an integrated social and environmental approach as well. It'd be interesting to hear if your experience echoes Owens and I think, you know, some some really strong themes there about firstly about kind of what you're managing, secondly about the importance of place and locality, and thirdly about like the local stakeholder engagement. So just interested in your thoughts and any on any of those themes in your experience or anything that's a little bit different to that? Yeah, I mean, it is similar because these are big, huge, complicated supply chains. I think some of the work that I've been encouraged about is the work around the palm oil supply chain, so the kind of the evolution into production landscapes that Unilever has. So and the people part is so important, you know, before you can go into these landscapes and even kind of train the farmers, measure the nature, etc, you have to aggregate the farmers, you have to make sure that they've got the the right land rights, you have to kind of make sure they're even aggregated into these groups to be able to train them. And the people part is so critical. Unilever's got its kind of supply chain policy for this, which is called the people and nature policy. And all of the people work comes first. And the idea of these landscapes is that you can kind of increase the production of palm oil without converting any extra land and you protect the surrounding areas, so riparian reserve, a wildlife corridor. And then you go in with partners and partners is key because the partners are NGOs such as WWF or the subnational governments. And you go in and you measure this and you invest for the long term. And, you know, and I very much see other companies taking this type of approach and scaling up this type of work. I mean, Craig, Melissa just talked about the importance of partnership. I don't know if there's something from your perspective as an NGO or heading up an NGO, how you would see that and what some of the things that you would be asking companies to bear in mind when they're deciding whether to do these projects or what would make the success or failure in these projects. I think partnership is absolutely crucial in this, both for companies and both for NGOs and community groups to be able to deliver on any of this because it does need that kind of special blend of people coming from different perspectives and bringing different things to the party to kind of make it happen. It's important, I think, for everyone to understand what's crucial and all of that, every party in that, whether you're a company or whether you're an NGO, community group, will want to make sure that they can defend, if you like, their partnership with others in the face of their own sort of groupings really, had their own supporters. And so, from our point of view, say, as the wildlife trusts, we are very enthusiastic about working with companies on the rollout of nature-based solutions. But in doing that, we want to, we'll only do that with companies that we feel confident are doing everything they can to, in the case of carbon, stop burning fossil fuels at source. And then we can have a conversation about what's to do with the residual emissions if we're really, really sure that the company's done everything it can investing in new technology for energy efficiency and transitioning out of fossil fuels. Then we're clear to have a really good conversation about what to do with that residual emissions or even historic emissions and so on. But we don't want to be accused by our supporters or by other stakeholders of facilitating business to carry on with business as usual. So it's kind of really important that we're working with the companies that can do that. But when we do get that kind of agreement, where we do think that we can see eye to eye and a company and sort of look at shares a agenda and a perspective on, say, nature-based solutions similar to ours, then we're really excited about what can be delivered. And just in January, we announced a huge partnership, a 100-year partnership with Aviva Insurance, which sees them investing 38 million pounds in the Wildlife Trust helping to restore Temperate Rainforest to the UK, to the west coast of the UK. And that's perhaps one of the biggest corporate partnerships in the history of the UK, really. And we're hugely excited about that. That will result in a habitat, which is only tiny fragmented parts of it left at the moment, restoring that up the west coast of the UK. And it's only through a partnership like that, we can dare to dream that we can do such a thing. So there's an awful lot of potential here, but all the parties need to understand what's the sort of rules of the game, if you'd like, to be able to enable that partnership to happen. Do you think business needs to, in order to make some of these projects happen? I mean, Owen talked about planting the right trees in the right place and understanding that. Do you think business needs to be able to invest in just greater environmental understanding to understand these landscapes and these localities? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so worth saying, of course, I support, I like trees, I want to see trees, right trees planted in the right place and so on. But I think there's been a bit too much of a focus just on trees over the last few years. I said, I hinted at before what I was saying before is I kind of get a bit exhausted, the number of people think the answer to everything is planting trees. That's not to say we shouldn't plant trees, there's some real benefits of that. But surely what we're about is trying to create forest habitat with all the benefits that come from that rather than create a crop, which is actually just no more than an oversized grown wheat field, essentially. This is not about a new form of agriculture, it's about nature. And therefore trying to create a forest ecosystem with all the sort of undergrowth in the soil communities, the soil carbon and the fungal networks that go with that and so on. It takes a bit longer, but the price you get at the end is so much bigger. And obviously you also want to do it absolutely with cooperation and involvement of local communities, so that local communities, whether we're talking in the global north or particularly in the global south, this feels like this is something done with and for local communities and empowering local communities to be part of this, rather than something that is done to local communities and then that won't last and endure. And it will be seen as a, you know, again, big business or even big NGOs trying to force their agenda on others. So yes, a lot of this is complicated. A lot of that means that you need business and NGOs to make sure they fully understand all the different dimensions of this before engaging in it and understand all these kind of different perspectives. It's about constantly learning and not thinking there's every moment when you know it all and recognising that it's like lifelong learning that's required around all of these. But my goodness, the prize when you can get it right is phenomenal. To the other two, because I think there is something really interesting here, which is that the specificity, the engagement, the upfront investment needed to unlock value in these projects, obviously to a certain extent the tension between some of the things that are often business decision-making and looking for efficiency, scale, you know, replicability that you can do some of this stuff. How easy is it, have you found it, to make the case for these kind of projects within a business structure? Maybe if I could start with you Melissa, is that okay? Yeah, well, you know, Unilever has the long history of doing this, particularly in the Palmwell supply chain. In terms of kind of making the case, it's very much kind of linked to the broad ambitions. There used to be a separate sustainability target and a kind of global business target and now they're the same thing. So there's not much kind of need for making the cases integral to the business strategy. But I think it's kind of a key piece to this as well as the kind of the skills within a business to be able to do it and the kind of the need to upskill people and hire the right people in the future. And I think that that is a real gap at the moment just generally people understanding this enough in terms of kind of what a business needs and the technicalities of what's needed through SBTI and SBTN and how do you navigate this huge sea of coalitions and partners and supply chains. And I think a big increase over the next few years is kind of filling that skills gap, you know, making sure enough people understand about this and are trained in the right way. And I think that that's a big gap at the moment. So then sort of same question to you about, you know, how you make the case internally. But then I'm also interested to build off of Melissa's point. Melissa's talked about things you need to build internally in terms of the skills, the ability to navigate this landscape. We've talked about the hardship. Also interested to think to hear from you in terms of other things that need to shift in the landscape to enable progress. Yeah, sure. So I think, you know, as I mentioned before, we kind of went from a no deforestation approach through to a forest preservation approach and now into more of what we call the forest positive approach. And so over time, I think the case has made itself, you know, based on the progress that we've made in improving traceability and using some of these innovative tools that I mentioned before about monitoring progress. And making the cases is more straightforward when it's connected to a big objective like the net zero plan that we have. And the fact that we are not focused on the offset to market, but focused on projects within our value chains. And I think that's slightly easier to make the case for because it forms a part of our relationships with our suppliers as well. And quite often, those are long term relationships that obviously they're commercial relationships. And so if we can introduce another element into those relationships of safeguarding natural resources and then looking for, you know, those win-wins on restoring landscapes, which benefit the supplier and benefit the end user, which is Nestle in this instance. And of course, our customers, right? So, you know, we're purchasing, we're often in the middle. So we purchase what we call war materials, you know, food ingredients from suppliers, we manufacture those into products, we sell them to customers, which are often retailers. And then they sell them to consumers who are the general public buying products on a day-to-day basis. So all of these parts of the chain have a role to play. And I think the suppliers side is really, really important for the projects, make sure the project's happening in the right places that they are monitored for the long term, that they have a sound financial basis. I think our role is really to set ourselves tough targets and commitments and to listen carefully to the outside world and adjust our strategy according to how things evolve. And they certainly are evolving quickly, you know, this understanding of the integrated nature of nature and climate, of the role of water resources within that, and obviously communities, as I mentioned before, is evolving rapidly in a good direction. And then we need to sort of fit that into how we deal with our customers, you know, there's obviously a commercial element there too, you know. And if our actions meet our customers' requirements, that's a good thing for Nestle, right? And then, of course, if we're meeting consumer demand, the consumer expectations, then that makes the business case even stronger. So, you know, really, I think it's about linking it to doing the right thing, you know, having strong commitments which meets societal expectations, but also to frame it within a business, a set of business relationships that are already there. I'm going to start introducing questions from the audience because we've had a bundle and there's some very good ones. And it's a difficult question for all of us because we've got a representative of food and consumer goods company and then a former representative of food and consumer goods company, and then Joe. The question is basically, is this just an issue that certain sectors engage with, you know, that there are some very exposed question sectors, you know, self-commodity consumer goods companies mining, you know, potentially water utilities, they're very exposed to these things, but other companies just treat as a side issue. And if you think that is the case, how do we convince business more broadly, beyond sort of these key sectors like agriculture and mining, with a very strong land footprint, about the value of biodiversity as a strategic concern? It's not just a nice to have, but it's a strategic interest. I'm going to start opening. So, I do try and catch my eye virtually if you want to say this, but maybe I will start with Craig, because I know he's never knowingly lost for things to say. Thank you. Well, particularly on this topic, look, I mean, the first thing I would say, this is something that society needs to get its head around. Never mind, you know, just one business sector or another, the whole society needs to understand and learn, and our politics, our economy, we need to learn and celebrate just how essential nature-based solutions are for human progress. You know, we're not going to progress very much as humanity unless we learn to live fairly within environmental limits and actually to reconnect, but restore nature and restore the connection between people and nature in the process of that. And, you know, to think more widely, I mean, I know we'll have people joining us from around the world here, but in the UK at the moment, well, it's pretty much always been the case, but there's been a big debate at the moment about the crisis in our national health service, and our national health service is really under strain in the UK at the moment as well, our publicly funded health service, of which we're very proud, which turned 70 years old this summer. I mean, I would say there will always be a crisis in the NHS in the UK for as long as nature is in decline. There will always be a crisis until we can actually start to restore nature because there's a very, very clear role, there's a very clear nature-based solutions to a lot of health problems, which is nature, nature on our doorstep. My goodness, we learned during the lockdowns of COVID just how important a daily dose of nature was for people's health and well-being. There is very clear scientific evidence of the role that nature can play in and around our towns or cities of improving air quality, for example, or indeed even water quality, and actually shifting from a concept of not so much a national health service to a national wellness service will actually be a much more sustainable and effective approach longer term. But for that, we need to see that there's an extraordinary role that nature can play in trying to keep society healthy. So even on a topic like that, we need to think this is not just an issue for business alone or indeed a particular sector of business or some parts of it. Everyone needs to be playing their part in looking at how we can try and make sure that nature is there to provide these huge benefits, these nature-based solutions, as well as obviously stopping all bad stuff, everything I said before goes the same as well before. And then we can start to live life more sustainably on this planet. So it's really wrapped up into that wider system change debate that I think is so important. Melissa, Owen talked about the various components of building the business case and Greg talked about the need to shift. You've talked about things like the global biodiversity framework and the big growth of new coalitions, new partnerships around this. I wondered if you had me thinking about the balance between where business can be trusted or allowed to act and where we need to see stronger policy frameworks enabling and driving action and what you think business should be doing in terms of engaging in those policy conversations. Yeah, so I mean my head was also in the question that came through the panel. So just to kind of start with that and then what businesses can do. I think there's so many, the activist NGOs are doing such a great job at the moment that it almost feels like that if a company wasn't doing whatever, there's no room to hide. And the coalitions are doing a great job in terms of kind of proving the economic case for investing in nature with real life examples. And the coalitions, as I said before, seem to me more helpful than they ever have in the last 10 years. So and in terms of what business can actually do, I think if you're operating seeing a global scale, you need kind of good internal policies for what is a quality nature based solution, what's a quality nature intervention. So Unilever has got its Sustainable Agriculture Code and it's returned to Agriculture Principles, which it implements with farmers at scale and they're kind of created in development with lots of different partners and NGOs. And I spoke before about kind of the focus on people, so like looking at where your material impact is, aggregating kind of local people there and connecting those relationships so you know what matters on the ground in a particular area, upscaling your own people. And again, I think this is where coalitions can be so helpful. And I will go back to the kind of the example of SBTI and SBTN, but some of the coalitions are looking at kind of these emerging methodologies and what actually works in a very complicated supply chain where rural materials are brought in directly and you know, you kind of have a supply shared approach where you don't, you go into a landscape, you don't have kind of direct site at the moment of where that comes from. So you have to look at the wider landscapes and what the implications are there. And the coalitions are doing a good job kind of making these methodologies make sense for businesses. So there's many opportunities for businesses to go in, have those initial conversations and work out where they can start. And again, the kind of the importance of assessing your material impact means that you don't have to start big, you know, you can kind of look at where your material focus is for your business and you can go in and get that help in that particular area. There's so much advice available. Thank you, Melissa. Maybe, and I think that's exactly right by the way. I think as we're, you know, more and more questions entering into the mix. So as I kind of go around you all, feel free to pick up threads that I haven't directly asked you about and keep the conversation going. Owen, maybe if I could move to you and just, you know, your own perspective on some of these things, but also I think we're getting a thread of questions around how do you, how do you assure the quality? You've talked about the technologies, what technologies are important. Melissa's talked about kind of like the coalitions in the accounting framework. So like what accounting framework is natural capital accounting useful? You know, what are the things that we need to do to ensure that when we're doing an HBA solution project or something that loosely falls into that camp? It's a good one. It's worth doing. Yeah. So maybe just to answer the first question initially, I think that it's right that all companies should look at how they can contribute. You know, nature is a shared resource. It's everything, really. And there will be an entry point, you know, for almost any organization into their impact on nature and that can be assessed and addressed in some way. It may be very minimal. It may be very existential. I think having said that, food and land use companies do have a particular role to play, because slightly differently to the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis is strongly influenced by agriculture, you know, because that's where the land use element comes in. And so for us not to address that as big food or land use companies is we're not going to get anywhere. You know, we're not going to solve the problem if I think large food and beverage companies don't do something about it. You know, similarly to on the climate crisis, we need to have all sectors pulling hard, but really the energy system is crucial, at least initially, making progress. So, you know, I think there is a special role for food and beverage companies. And then in terms of like, you know, ensuring you get it right. Well, first thing says that we definitely don't have a perfect solution right now. We are learning as we go, you know, what looked correct in 2020, when we launched on Xero Roadmap is rapidly looking out of date. And we need to sort of think about that. And that's where the stakeholder engagement comes in. That's where the community engagement comes in to figure out what's working, what isn't working, and how to tailor and focus your strategy going forward. And I think the things that are successful involve partners in it for the long term. So that could be, for example, we're working on something called the RIMBA Collective in palm oil sourcing regions. I think Unilever might be a member of that one as well. Yep. And that's around using a third party financing partner who's supporting collective actions, which then the individual companies can benefit from by being part of that collective arrangement. And, you know, the sums of money involved are very significant. And the timeframes are out to the 25, 30 year period. You know, so that kind of long term approach, I think is a good way of ensuring progress because there's a level of buy-in, which means you don't, you know, you need to evolve over time, make it work, and figure out which partners to really go in with. And then in terms of figuring out, figuring out what works, it's again, just coming back to this point on local networks, people with local knowledge, whether that's inside the company or outside the company, it's absolutely critical. And we have, at Nestle, we have a network, for example, of 2000 economists who are based in many different countries. Most of those are in the global south. They have very strong connections with local people and farmers in particular. And they can really understand where the challenges are and where maybe the solution should be targeted. So we're not deciding things from here in Switzerland that take place in, you know, rural areas of West Africa or Brazil. We're doing those decisions much more on a local basis based on that local knowledge. So I think longevity, the right partners and local understanding are key factors. Okay. I think what we're going to do now is we're going to go around and ask you for your kind of like final thoughts each of the panel. But as I do that, I think we've talked a lot about what makes success, what you need to consider, all of those kind of questions. And we've talked, I think, a little bit about where nature based solutions aren't appropriate and the limits to them. But if we take all of that as red and take the point of view that nature based solutions are a valuable piece of the puzzle and we need them to grow and to be bigger than they currently are. So one of the kind of questions that comes through is what do we need to do from the audience is what do we need to do to scale nature based solutions? So if I can kind of collectively ask you as you go around, you know, because you're one or two things that you want to leave the audience as a takeaway, but particularly to respond to this question like what do we need to do to really scale this to get it to to deliver on its potential? And is that about and the particular example of is it something to do with should they be on the agenda or COP28 or do we need a further international thing? But there might be other kind of practical might have lost one of our speakers. So I'm going to start with Craig, if you like, and then go past Owen and Melissa, if we've got it. Thanks, Elliot. Well, I think one of one of things that's really important to take these to scale is to build the kind of trust and confidence of all players in the huge role that they can play. So, you know, something I was saying there, you know, I think it is it's really important that companies engage in this, do this with the right partners. The other organizations being a profit are not profit or community based that can can absolutely have the long term skills and knowledge about how to do this and can see the big picture. And that what's particularly important that are two things is one that actually we look at these issues holistically in terms of the problems they can solve. So not just look safe to a narrow carbon lens, but look at all those kind of wider co benefits. Actually how employing an H base solution, yeah, can be good on a carbon debate, but also good on the nature of debate on the soil debate on the front alleviation debate and so on. But crucially also, as I was saying that there's the local, they have links to local partners and in particular communities as well to make sure that there's the community buy and support for whatever's going to be taken to scale. And obviously, there's a big role for standards in this as well. But I mean, and there's various standards out there for how to undertake these nature based solutions. IUCN, World Conservation Union has a nature based solution standard. Of course, there's different standards for different carbon tools as well. And that's very important. But ultimately, it's about trying to look at these to a much more holistic lens, look at it from a system change point of view, rather than thinking that they can help in a very narrow, siloed way to live on one particular part of the corporate sustainability strategy, actually it should be there for the for the much wider, bigger story. But for companies that really want to get serious, want to be absolute serious players on sustainability, and to be recognized for the leadership role in five, 10, 15 years time, nature based solutions, I think have to be absolutely crucially a big part of the solution. Thank you, Craig. Unfortunately, we've lost Melissa to a fire alarm. So we're a we're a panelist down, but these things happen. Owen, over to you, you know, your thoughts, you want to leave people with also this question about how to get to scale. Yeah, thanks. I think, you know, in terms of getting to scale, there is a need to build confidence between different partners. And, you know, again, I'm coming from a fairly privileged position in terms of Nestle, because we've been working for over a decade on, you know, managing our impact on on nature on forest arguably much longer than that. And so we've we've learned quite a lot a lot along the way. But there are going to still be instances of negative reactions to what we're doing. And it's important to kind of lean into those discussions and listen and to learn and to figure out how you can, you know, even do even better, you know, by by understanding if it's a community that feels that we're doing that we could improve our approach, or if it's a stakeholder who thinks that our strategy might need a bit of tweaking or improvement, then it's important to kind of listen and learn along the way and not to sort of go out there and say, we've got this wonderful solution, it's called planting trees. And that's going to solve all of the issues that we've got, you know, we're certainly conscious not to do that. And I think that goes for everybody else too. At the same time, to not let any sort of pushback derail the intention and the ambition, you know, and to keep the ambition level high by working out what works in which location. And I mentioned a few examples today, you know, palm oil is an obvious one where rates of deforestation has significantly reduced in the palm oil sourcing regions of Indonesia and Malaysia through collective efforts over a long time involving companies, suppliers, governments and NGOs as well. And that was a pretty adversarial kind of type of relationship to begin with. Over time, you know, the sense of partnership is built, whether it's with our company or with other companies sourcing from those regions. And the end result is positive, you know, in terms of reducing those negative impacts and then moving into a restorative phase. So I think, you know, being it for the long term, don't let short-term pressures push you off course. But at the same time, listen and learn, that would be my conclusion. Thanks. Thanks, Lauren. Thank you, Craig. And thank you, Melissa, in her absence. I found that fascinating. Also, thank you to everybody who's joined us either directly in the webinar or on the live stream. I also have an apology for those of you who tried to join the live stream early. So I understand there was some early teething issues in terms of setting things up. So you may have missed the very start. Do not worry. If you keep an eye on CISL's Nature Positive Hub on our website, you will find the recording of this streaming. So you can catch up on the early sections of this that you've missed. I just thank you. So thank you for your attention. Thank you for your engagement. But also thank you for the excellent questions that are surprising. Sorry, we didn't manage to get to all of them. But I think we managed to engage with quite a few. I found that a fascinating and useful discussion. I think that I really appreciated the breadth and different levels of engagement. But I'm just going to pick up on maybe the very last thing that Owen said, because I thought that was a really important note to finish on. The example from Indonesia of actual practical impacts, the rates of deforestation falling, that's what we want to see. That's exactly so brilliant to hear that when this is done right, it can shift things. It can achieve those kind of impacts that we're all working towards. Obviously, really important that we then kind of think about how to expand and accelerate that and link it to other efforts so that we don't just reduce the rates of deforestation, but we turn that into ending and in fact restoring kind of levels of forestry so that we get some of the benefits, both economic, social, climate, climate impact, climate mitigation that Craig has talked about so eloquently. But without too much further ado, we are at time. So I'm going to again say, thank you to everyone who's involved and look forward to hearing from you and speaking to you at future events. Thank you very much.