Investing in Climate Resilience – San Francisco 2025

Hello everyone. I am Terza from Funding the Commons. Super excited to be here today. Um, so the team of funding the common San Francisco is actually building infrastructures of resilience. And what I want to talk about today in this conversation is about how we can do it in climate funding and how capital flows, market structures, technological innovation can help us build climate resilience.

And maybe to show how urgent that is, I wanted to quote one statistic that said that in 2023, uh, climate disasters cost $380 billion. And that's just a piece of the puzzle, right? So I think right now we are at this interesting point of time where uh blockchain technology entered the climate funding space around four years ago with different use cases like tokenized common credits, biodiversity markets, regenerative finance models. So I really want to talk about where we are today and how we can really use these tools not just to financialize climate action but also to really uh strengthen ecosystems. and I'm here joined by uh three speakers that actually built on scaling solutions or work on scaling solutions in this space.

Uh so I would like to start by introductions. So if you can all introduce yourself and maybe share a little bit about the work that uh has happened in the past four years. Maybe we can do a little retro on also what hasn't uh gone so well. So maybe let's start from that side. Gregory, would you would you mind starting?

Sure. Uh can everybody hear me? All right. Hi everyone. I'm Gregory Landway.

It's nice to see so many uh familiar faces. I'm really honored to be here at the Internet Archive uh and just grateful for this beautiful event and all these great people. So, I'm one of the founders of Regen Network. Um we launched our mainet uh in 2021, although we'd been working on it for quite some time before then. Um I think you Teresa is asking for sort of uh what went wrong and I think that's a that's a nice way to start things.

So what went wrong? Um well I think I think I'll I'll answer that in two layers. The the first thing is that many of the actors and even us to some degree [Music] um adopted deeply flawed models [Music] of markets um in this sort of the tail end of the first generation of carbon markets. And I think although many of us understood the flaws and even would speak to each other about the flaws, we got caught up into the horse race of everything in which and and just like side note, I I see similar dynamics taking place in the AI race right now where many of the actors we all might know that there's a deeply a deep set of problems in the case of carbon markets. Carbon isn't a commodity.

Markets around carbon shouldn't be commodity markets. That should be blindingly obvious. There may be attributes that are commodity like but it is not a commodity. A commodity it is not. So the to the degree to which we embrace market mechanisms and institutions and verification systems in which that's the dominant logic, we all knew that it was going to fail.

But we all raced ahead anyway because of market dynamics and the need to fund raise and the need to prove product market fit and the the drive to do good things like see money deployed onto the ground to you know land stewards and preserve forests. So that's the first failure point I'd say um that that I learned from because we also although we had a deep critique and had a completely different vision for how these mechanisms should work, we joined the charge in order to stay relevant and to sort of like participate and see things happen. So that would be failure mode number one. The second failure mode I think is deeply connected but it is is that um the market participants didn't establish some sort of precompetitive commons in which we could do things that we all also knew were important like having some data trust like separating um deep the precision around prec precision accuracy and research around the science that might back claims from the primary business model. Um, so we set up these levels of competitive dynamics with ourselves that actually ended up decoupling the the quality of the impact from the monetary compensation.

And so we created a bunch of business models that at the end of the day were misaligned with what we all I think or most actors in the market really deeply wanted. And so I think that there's a beautiful poetry of having this as a bit of a retro and having this conversation nested in the idea of funding the commons. And so I'm really excited about this moment when we can like look back at what's happened and sort of diagnose some of the challenges that we faced and perhaps we can do the hard work to common in the right places so that the market mechanisms that come next are deeply aligned and can flow um resources and maybe even transform capital entirely to mean something different. Thank you. Troy, would you like to go ahead?

Sure. So, we're kind of doing the same thing as Gregory and Regen, but you're maybe thinking 10 years in the future. And I kind of wish I could also think in the future and sort of develop the systems that reflect our values more accurately. Um, so Earthshot Labs, I'm one of the founders and we essentially develop and finance carbon projects and uh I never thought I would end up in carbon markets. You know the we actually started as an open scientific institution.

Actually probably many people in this room were part of that group contributing to models and it was more from a practical decision point like hey last year we financed you know $65 million of carbon deals hundreds of thousands of hectares of conservation you know tens of thousands of hectares of reforestation like it's working on a small scale I don't think it's a solution to planetary restor restoration which is our goal and it's better than nothing and the problem for maybe the failure point that I identify um is not about better data or better science or sort of I don't know any of the sort of technical systems to go and implement reforestation. It's just sort of like the will like why are there not why is there not political and sort of humanity's consensus that we should just do conservation across 50% of the planet or do regenerative agriculture like I don't know exactly why that's not the case but it's not right now and so there's just a demand side problem which is you can go create the credits you can go do the projects and if there's no one to buy them the project doesn't happen and there are just very tricky forces Like we tried to do a project in Madre Dios reforestation and conservation and it turns out gold mining is just a lot more profitable than conservation and there's no way to get around that tricky reality. Gold mining is going to happen because there's gold under the forest and so people pull it up. Um, I don't know what to do about that, but at least we can do what we can at the moment and commit some hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into conservation. But I've got a lot of failure stories about projects that didn't work and a lot of success stories about projects that did work.

And you know, so we essentially build the bridge so that very normcore investors, investment banks, large mining companies can participate in projects sort of regardless of where their ideology is at either to comply with laws or as voluntary projects. So I'll just leave it there. Great. Hey everybody, I'm Tito from Air Miners. We are a ecosystem and a community for reversing climate change particularly through carbon removal which is the piece of the equation around actually pulling carbon dioxide that's already in the air pulling it out.

And the reason that's important and became important was a a report from the United Nations IPCC which really said it is no longer enough to simply reduce uh the emissions that we're that we're making. We have to still reduce. We also have to take stuff out that we've already put into the air. And so air is really focused on that. We started in 2017 and so kind of reflecting on uh you know what's worked, what hasn't.

I really see us at we're kind of in a phase two and I'll tell you a bit about about phase one, but um I really see like here's some things that's worked, here's some things that haven't. And now there's a next phase. Uh since we started a accelerator program four years ago now, we've had 200 startup companies go through the program. They've they've raised $200 million all for how do you suck carbon dioxide from the sky. Really cool.

Uh they've also sold $und00 million of carbon removal credits. We just had Carbon Run one of our graduates on the front cover of the on the front page of the New York Times during during New York Climate Week. And so what has worked, we were talking about this out on on the stairs right before this this panel, but what has worked are are incentives. Stripe uh software company came in and put a basically a million-dollar bounty on can you suck carbon from the sky and can you do it efficiently and that really was the spark for literally hundreds of entrepreneurs coming out and and and and working on how do we build these build these solutions. That initiative grew into a billion dollar commitment for purchasing carbon removal credits.

So phase one really has worked in in terms of closing closing the innovation gap or at least starting to say hey we can close this innovation gap. Now phase two is phase two is more of a uh it's more about scaling. So it's more about all right so we had these early entrance from an innovation perspective from a purchasing and participation perspective. Phase two needs to look like more participants on the on the purchasing side, on the on the participation side, which really comes down to this question of who wants to who wants to buy some invisible gas. And so, it's how do we answer that question in a way that that gets us to the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that we need to remove in addition to all the decarbonization, all the electrification and wind and solar that we need to do to to reduce emissions.

How do we get to billions of tons of of carbon sucked from the sky too? And so that's that's what uh that's what worked in phase one, what didn't work in phase one, and uh here's happening for phase two. Thank you. Yeah. Let's talk about the the phase two some more then and maybe to set the foundation a little stronger.

Gregory, I would like to ask you to also feel like we have moved beyond the the Wild West. Um because I also feel like you were talking about you know some failure perhaps in coordination and narratives. So what do you think has the journey been like and are we ready for this phase two in demand? Yeah I mean it's a great question. think I'll see how to land this idea.

But I think fundamentally this we need to find we need to move from these projects and assets and funding flows from being doing less harm. and sort of incrementalism and reframe them as the source of all health and wealth that humans and every other part of our economy relies on for every second of our life and everything else that we go about. The the the foundation of our entire existence is the health of our ecosystems. And one part of the health of our ecosystems that's measurable is the carbon cycle. And of course there's the water cycle, there's the nitrogen cycle.

It's holistic. So two key reframings need to take place. One is this isn't sort of this shouldn't be seen as just attacks on economic activity. It should be seen as the foundation of economic activity. So in so far as we're creating successful land regeneration, it should be understood as an asset and the in fact the most foundation of all assets and that needs to be viewed through a holistic and regenerative lens.

We can't sort of be overly reductionistic. We can use our um science and our ability to reduce and quantify. These are powerful tools. We can we can make these assets and these projects legible and computable and we can plug markets and other coordination mechanisms into them. But we need to you know understand the field and the focus and the so in so far as we're focusing on the the quantity or the computability or the mechanisms we need to just understand that the field that that is within is the fact which is that all economic activity is derived from biosphere health and therefore these are economic assets.

the most basic of all economic assets. So that'd be the shift in phase two that I believe is is necessary. Thank you for that. Um Troy, I wonder what is your take on the on the narrative side and what is perhaps one thing that's missing right now in the climate financing narrative? I think maybe maybe I have a I don't have any general ideas on like but but what's very relevant to me or what's very relevant to us is I care a lot more about nature than I do about the climate.

Um I like there's really nothing to love up there. It's sort of it it's hard to relate to the air. Um it's very easy to relate to animals, to plants, to forests. And um if you talk about a narrative shift, it's about falling in love again, realizing there's sort of a sacred imperative to be in relationship with all these other beings. Um I don't really feel that reflected among sort of any narrative involving carbon markets or um you know, corporate social responsibility.

Like it that's just not the level or that's just not the frequency of conversation. Um so but that's also not enough to have a business like you don't like okay yes we are representing um that we have a sacred imperative and relationship with all these other species so go give me a bunch of money to go build data systems to make that happen like that's not a business plan and so the business is what meets reality today the way we do it and the way we have relationships with our peers competitor competitors as an like the way we do it is the cultural statement of what we believe. And so because we're here, we're maybe sort of have a similar perspective. And so the I just think that the way we do it is very important. Um, and I I don't I can't quite put a pin on like what exactly that is, but it is a shared understanding, you know, that we are part of the one great being of Earth and that we are building organizations that are on the same team, that we are on the same team as our customers.

We're on the same team as the mining companies. We're on the same team as the oil companies. they are our us um like they're literally us in other bodies working on the same problems and doing it for the sake of love even if it looks super different and destroying the planet at the same time. So, it's it's kind of a paradox what we're doing. Um, it's kind of a paradox that we're working in carbon markets, which I totally agree is a very it's it's like the least bad mechanism we have at the moment to address conservation.

Like, yeah, why don't why don't we just do conservation? Why don't we do regenerative agriculture? Well, we need to pay people. And this is the mechanism that governments and corporations have decided on. So, that's what we need to do.

Provide services, make that efficient. And in a decade, you know, we'll do quite a bit of work. But in hopefully in a decade, the narrative, how human beings think of themselves, maybe that will have shifted a bit and um you know, kumbaya, but it's not yet. And so this is why we raise things like technical assistance facilities to get projects started. Why we build, you know, financing decks for Goldman Sachs with things that look like infrastructure investments like translating it so that people can just say yes in a very easy way because it looks like something that they're familiar with and they don't have to believe what we believe about the world.

Absolutely. And hopefully we can even accelerate this this shift in narrative. So today I want to know maybe what's your strategy when engaging institutional actors um because it's well known that in the in the blockchain space some projects have struggled with you know bridging to institutional actors and policy makers. So what's your strategy and how are you perhaps pushing some of these um aspects of the narrative? Yeah, totally.

So if if phase one was about a start then phase two is about leadership. And I was just talking also with somebody else outside on the steps before this about uh the the missing narrative in in carbon removal and maybe in in climate more broadly. But I think there's already leadership happening, but it's sort of we're missing in the narrative. And I think that what phase two looks like are more companies and more participants jumping on board uh a train that is leaving the station in a sense like there is this there's this window now to be to be a part of this to lead this and as that train starts to pull out of the station more people hopping on. So I think if we if we cast forward you know 10 years 20 years and we look back at what's happened now I think what will be obvious is in in carbon removal we'll say well look companies like Stripe and Shopify we're building payment platforms for the future and to some degree they said well look we think carbon is going to be part of having a good payment platform for the future so we should build this carbon stuff into our into our process because that's just what you do when you're building the payment platform of the future.

We can also look at companies like Mitsubishi that are big participants in carbon removal. Mitsubishi is a a a Japanese uh conglomerate and one of the big things they do is is project development. They're building big projects for uh for all sorts of different industries and they're seeing an opportunity to lead in carbon removal because it's an opportunity to to to help with scale and roll out and and investment and infrastructure in these things. And so when I think about the role that that Stripe and Shopify and Mitsubishi have started to play in carbon removal, that's what I see as really as phase two is it's it's that leadership in a sense of kind of seizing the opportunity and saying, "Look, we want to be the leaders on this. That's why we're that's why we're hopping into this.

We see it from a from a business opportunity. We see this from this is the thing that we already are doing. We're already doing project development. We're already doing payment platforms. good ones in the future integrate carbon and we want to be a part of that and so we're gonna that's the direction that we're going.

Perfect. So we have now looked up we could say um but let's not forget about the roots. Troy, maybe I would like to ask you um what are better ways that climate uh funding can uh touch and reach uh for example indigenous communities because I remember uh with my co-host on the rei podcast Mayi had a conversation with Anna Learner from the climate collective who was sharing an interesting statistic about how uh indigenous communities steward around 25% of land but only get uh less than 1% of climate funding. So, what can we do to to bridge this gap? It's it's kind of tricky, honestly.

Like, we've been advocates for whatever indigenous communities in Southeast Asia and throughout Africa and throughout the Amazon, and it's hard to get a project started to be honest. Um, there's many, many people that need to come to agreement. um indigenous communities are not usually a counterparty that an investor can sue to, you know, get the credits that they want, right? It's it doesn't fit a sort of modern financing, you know, infrastructure investment. Um, so one thing that we're working on this year and really right now is essentially a catalytic finance facility.

We're raising a $10 million facility right now essentially to represent groups that don't have the capacity to build to derisk a project themselves. So like how do you make the Shapibo a bankable project? Clearly there's a project there. They can do conservation across 2.4 million hectares of land.

seven federations get together, you know, but how do you actually get them a project that someone says, "Yes, here's millions of dollars for you to go and get that project registered and now here's a, you know, revenue stream for the next 50 years." Um, it takes a lot of money. you know, you got to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars and have and go, you know, days in and get all these leaders to take the boats and, you know, leave their communities and go meet up and run methologically compliant meetings. Um, it's a it's a complex process that you cannot automate. You can't put on a blockchain.

You can't do in a way that's any more efficient to actually get all this stakeholder buying and have accurate project design. But that's our responsibility to do all that work so that we can represent that to an external party that says, "Yeah, here's here's now $30 million." [Music] Um, so if you got $10 million and you want to get a 20% return on the money every year for the 18% revolving or 18month revolving fund, come talk to me. Could also be concessionary grant capital. Um, Gregory, I I would love for you to add to that.

Um, because one of my favorite thing about region network is how it's able to engage all the different actors. So, could you maybe quickly share a use case or a specific case study and share some of the learnings that you know others can be inspired by? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, we've been working for several years with um Patchamama Alliance and Fundion Patchamama and Quinka Sagaras, Amazon Sacred Headarters um to pilot this concept of a bioultural credit um which I think um answers a lot of the questions that Troy brought up in terms of complexity mostly by pushing a lot of the process uh and governance questions down into as far down into the indigenous um territory and um governance process that just exists as a part of their day-to-day.

Um and it's been a it's been a pretty um interesting both challenge and success. And so we successfully ran that that pilot last year and it's expanding to the neighboring four communities. And then um I was just down in Ecuador a couple of days ago and the the plan and the commitment with that the larger confederation of indigenous tribes which represents direct land ownership of over 35 million hectares in the Amazon basin um in collective ownership. And so it's it's most um project development, especially in the carbon space, is going to, as Troy was alluding to, demand uh private ownership because it um creates the counterparty conditions that finance wants. But what's interesting is we're actually finding that we can actually finance into collective ownership um through this bioultural crediting mechanism.

So this year we're actually working on scaling this up to have one community in each of the different 35 indigenous nations that are part of the Amazon Sacred Headarters. that's going to be a massive lift. And the the faith that I have that it's going to work is the sort of is relying on the interlocking complexity and trust that's been built over actually several generations of engagement and co-creation. Um, so there's an indigenousled school that can run technical processes to to increase their own capacity and capability to both govern standards and run their own monitoring and provide verification services. Um, each community and confederation of communities, they have very robust governance mechanisms um and organisms.

And so I think in some way we're sort of taking this approach that is trying to make the existing rightsbased um governance structures that the that these indigenous peoples and confederations have legible to the uh financial system instead of sort of forcing it the other direction. And I think that that certainly is a complex and um dynamic process, but it's also um in moments it's you sort of go slow to go fast. In moments it just shifts into focus and everything starts to align. And um I'm actually incredibly optimistic right now having just been down there work in the um recent bio regional finance facility bioi workshop which is uh designing and and bringing together a fund to to run these financial uh processes and facilities and um it feels like things are really moving with that indigenous leadership and with the group of allies that has coalesed in service to that. So it's incredibly exciting.

Thank you. I know unfortunately we are at time but I would like to keep the conversation going. So if each of you can just in 10 15 seconds share I don't know something exciting you're working on that you want to discuss with the audience a problem you're trying to solve or just any call of action that you might have. We are starting the rebel alliance for the next wave of carbon rubal purchasing. You're welcome to join that.

We meet every Thursday at 1 p.m. You can email me titominers.com. Uh also I do a weekly video on what's happening in carbon removal.

You can check me out on on LinkedIn or I've got uh on ammo.com you can sign up to the newsletter. So we'd love to would love to have you participating in in that. I like that it's a Rebel Alliance. Um our Rebel Alliance version is this catalytic technical assistance facility.

$10 million catalyzing another $200 million of private investment which will end up being millions let's say two three million hectares of conservation over the next few years. If you want to participate in that first category or know someone who does I would rather take uh people investing their own money versus investing other people's money and maybe some of you are in this room. Well, for the first time, region network uh and our broader community are actually making the open invitation to cocreate a unit of account and store of value based on deep regenerative and uh reciprocal values called regen. And we would love for people to engage directly with that transformative third horizon process so that we can create a truly regenerative and living form of capital. And so uh regen let's go.

Thank you. And uh thank you Gregory Troy and Tito. Thank you everyone for joining us for this Earth comments blog. Um because ultimately Earth is the is the greatest comments. So thank you [Music]