Stories of Impact Game-Changers: Innovations for Regeneration in SEA and beyond - Bangkok 2024

[Music] hi everyone my name is Crystal um a few years ago I had the pleasure to be living and working in Thailand and very uh specifically actually on this building um back then I was leading an um and stewarding an incubation team within an exchange um where we tried to onboard uh the users from Southeast Asia to three and today um I also want to share that I actually also live a parallel lives where um on one hand I was um working on funding space for billions of dollars in the private sector on the other hand at night or in the weekends what I be doing is doing grassroot initiatives um supporting micro Finance for the smallest micro entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia um so today I want to share with you innovations that I find highly relevant for Thailand and Southeast Asia um and we start with the first thing rice so I have an Asian stomach um apart from how I look um I feel a very Global citizen but my stomach is very Asian but rice is not only important for an Asian from a food and culture Heritage perspective rice actually Powers billions of lives and when it come to when people ask for support let's say when I was supporting an orphanage in Cambodia when they're having fund flow issues the first thing they ask for donation is actually rice at the same time the thing is rice is not the most um Planet friendly thing um in fact actually the rice traditional way of cultivating rice involves like continuous flooding process that nurtures like methane producing bacteria and contributes to 11% in the global carbon emissions um sorry Global methane emissions and methane is 80 times more um harmful in the environment when it comes to a climate global warming perspective so um this is not the most uh um carbon friendly uh climate friendly thing and um Thailand and uh Vietnam in this case are actually uh one of the biggest leading rice exporters in globally so there is actually ways to be changing things um and that is to move from the traditional continuous flooding um cultivation to a way where it's alternating between wetting and drying it really is that you would introduce like uh times where there is actually drying drainage throughout the rice growing um season and this is able to reduce the water consumption by 30% uh which I forgot to mention is basically that it's also rice growing is also very water uh intensive the other part is that it also reduce methane emissions by 70% and that is without reducing the yields so there's hope and possibilities when it comes to being innovative even just by a farming method but the challenge comes from actually scaling it so when it's scaling it uh there is very labor intensive it requires a lot of field work for months and months um to collect all these kind of data the possibilities is that for example in this case is an 18 hectare Vietnam rice fields where mental labs and AI remote sensing company try to use Earth observations data and couple with um rice mapping algorithms to see if they can actually scope the whole rice patties that is actually suitable for the transition to AWD farming and the results actually show that they've been able to identify very accurately with these remote sensing tools and these data sets with an accuracy of pretty much on the right hand side where on the left side is the validation data where the turquo voice color is the rice um and on the right side is the AI prediction it's a bit small so probably even the 1% difference you you are not able to identify but the results is basically showing that it's very possible and with high accuracy without months of on the site by often carbon project developers to do this manual process to actually automate it uh with high degree of accuracy with machine learning it's also possible to improve this prediction data so that's one angle is identify where to do these type of um farming the other elements is actually how do you know that you're actually reducing methane emissions then the challenge is comes with mrv which is monitoring reporting verification and in the space previous speakers already talk about it this is a very um labor intensive and costly in terms of resources and where there's possibility again is when it comes to using a remote sensing data on side factors that will impact methane production traditionally they will be involved actually collecting using gas Chambers on the methane production but with remote sensing you're collecting information about the um growth of the crops or a side factor that is impacting methane production and in that with a predictive analysis you're able to predict how much methane it's able to reduce so with these um Technologies there's applications where it's means that there's possibility of scaling without a huge cost impact the second case study I want to share that is highly relevant for this region is seaweed um not just because I I love rice and eating seaweed but now you can tell that I'm um foodie trying to combat on climate change because I I'm worried about my food supply chain um um I want to ask actually like I don't know whether you have ordered things in Thailand uh from a takeaway perspective uh but I spent time here during covid where I cannot not order grab because I'm not allowed on the street and I felt super painful um the painful is that it comes with very very delicious five six sauces package but each of them actually comes with a plastic bag um I wasn't able to avoid it at that point in time whereas when I was in other countries I was able to avoid it so there's uh two things I want to share here one is the seaweed farming and two is biomaterial innovation this company is not in um uh southeast Asia it's founded in London and maybe some of you have already heard about it it's called not pla um they spent 10 years doing biomaterial innovation uh from whether it's this Blobs of that holds liquid or whether it's utensils or the um usual boxes all of them are essentially biodegradable within days um and all of them are actually made of seaweed um and sometimes they're even edible so on the left one is actually even edible so in that case seaweed is a powerful um materials that is very welcomed not just for bioplastic but then nowadays people know more about this superfood and also investigating on biofuel so this growth in seaweed demand is welcome because actually seaweed is a regenerative seaweed is regenerative by Nature because with seaweed there is more biodiversity introduced in that region of the Marine space um it uh it's able to help in terms of carbon sequestration uh on capturing carbon for the ocean so it's a super powerful crop and this project and this company is called Coast for SE Coast for SE is a earthshot earthshot finalist this year they didn't manage to get the 1 million Grant price but they're doing something really good they have been investigating about seaweed farmers and farmer struggles in Philippines and in this region for more than two decades and the latest model they have came up with is one which Bas uh integrates input financing give them um better tools to grow these seaweed um and also including working with governments in terms of permits and protective area for the Marine space so in their approach they are able to help farmers to increase their yields by four to six times and the point of having seaweed farming is that it helps them not just to rely on um farming fish it reduces Fisheries uh farming just relying on fish and which is still very susceptible for the climate issues in Philippines of the actual direct impact of the extreme climate so it gives them a reliable more reliable source of um uh of alternative income source and they also Bridge with uh companies like not all the way in terms of supply chain and how it is powerful is that they are mostly seaweed are grown um by uh small holder Farmers they have a lot of challenges in terms of just basic sustaining livelihoods it gives them a much more reliable um um stability for the livelihoods but at the same time also um regenerated the Earth because of seaweed so actually haven't thought of how I would wrap this up um because I feel like actually I've been working in the funding space for 15 years half of which involves emerging Technologies of which includes AI cloud computing blockchain all these kind of things the first project I involved in is actually a micro Finance initiative I think people see a lot of Challenge and and um that is like okay for example this one is Asia has enormous shortfall funding to adapt to climate change warrants ADB actually Asia has an enormous opportunity to fund and mitigate climate change um the opportunity lies in that there are problems that people are actually facing that is painful um the struggles for Reliable having reliable source of energy uh the means that a renew able company if a renewable energy comes in and solve their pain point in having reliable energy just like let's say for example Earth bond in subsaharan Africa they support they are able to supportes that have actually unstable electricity um giving them electricity stores so that their business will not keep on interrupting the same challenge actually is in Vietnam manufacturers or small business holders have struggle with energy reli reliability farmers are struggling with crops extreme Weathers in terms of reducing the use by more than by close to 30% and basic livelihoods opportunity lies where we are empowering lives and at the same time regenerating the Earth it doesn't have to be one thing or another so my question and my thought process for this forum is how do we Channel all these things to people who actually have the solutions I have worked with unicorn companies um and the most high-tech companies but the story I want to share with you of why rice and seaweed is Innovations come in places that is everywhere and a lot of times communities are very Innovative because they face the challenge themselves they're very creative with their problem solving Innovations do not just have to be the highest technology we have enough people working on the highest and the fastest most efficient technology um what we lack is Weavers um uh we we need more Weavers in between that we talk about during design Jam that's weaves in between the technology to to the human the communities that is needed and how does community principles where they have very Innovative technology they may have built their own biofuel generator that is perfectly sustainable how can we help them for example this project I talked about about seaweed farming they have more than 350 farmer sites they have found a model whereby you're improving livelihoods at the same time you're supporting a secure re uh regenerative seaweed Supply back to the corporates all these models lack something and a lot of times for now unfortunately it's still funding so I don't actually have the answers here um I think what I want to share is that Innovations are everywhere there are a lot of localized projects found the model that is a very holistic model and can be replicated and scaled scaling does not have to be that it's homogeneous in like billions of dollars it can be that we fund models by models in a very grassroot perspectives and I'm opening this forum to basically um connect with me um I'm inviting people who are interested in this challenge or have thoughts to connect with me I offer different Pathways for you to connect with me and best is probably grab me with um in the next 10 days or so around I also started this regen Nori um Twitter but because seaweed plus rice uh that's uh that's how it is right now um thank you everyone um um I'm not here to present Solutions but I'm telling you that there's lots of solutions and um we I'd love to explore Pathways of people who are wanting to jam on this thank you [Applause] oh