Open Conversations: Bridging Nature, Data, and Human Opportunity (David Dao)

we need to act urgently about nature about climate and about our planet because this is not about bad weather this is about the largest humanitarian crisis that we are going to face in the next decades and I feel people are not understanding that and I would love to see people understand that the only way we can solve this is to give people opportunities back when you take them away from the planet right and that's the only way we can solve that and web free is one beautiful example how we can do this by banking the unbanked by providing opportunities across borders but there needs to be just so much more I just wish people would know this and would work on this because it's it's urgent but it's also so fulfilling to work on this and I think this is the most important thing you can work on I'm David da I'm the co-founder and chief scientist of game Forest Earth which is a d nonprofit at the space working at the intersection of U web free in the environment so what we do is we work with communities on the ground especially in the global majority communities that work with nature live in rainforests and we Empower them to collect data about the rainforest to learn more about the environment to also provide that data to decision makers and ultimately to get paid for the data they collect and that helps the communities to create the sustainable income source that we call consummation data income that is an alternative towards destructive incentives that would naturally um maybe push the community towards like a destructive use of nature building a new economic system something that is urgently needed because um market failures have been such a big part of the reason why B nature is getting destroyed and thinking about the alternative of building something alternative like a whole new kind of economic thinking that wouldn't be able to come from any other space in our space I've been engaging with funding the commment in quite many ways The Residency itself is I think a wonderful example of showing what happens if you bring the right people into the right space in the right time I often joke with my team that we have never been more productive than during these residencies right like we get stuff done that took us not years but like definitely a long long period of time 6 seven months where we're talking about this but we never get it done and then in the ccy we meet the right people we have the right ideas we have the right concentration with the right space and that's why I really appreciate the funding the common space and this is something deeply needed in our community to really drive forward their thinking of regenerative ideas regenerative finance and also public goods funding that otherwise I think wouldn't have the right space to be discussed at except for funding comments oh