So let me start by welcoming everybody. Thanks a lot for joining for this webinar today, which we entitled challenges and opportunities for forest-based industries, engagement and ecosystem restoration. My name is Sven Walther. I'm the Senior Forestry Officer at FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. And I'm the Secretary of FAO's Advisory Committee on Sustainable Based Industries. The so-called ACSFI. Last Saturday or last weekend, we celebrated the International Day of Forests under the theme forest restoration, the path to recovery and well-being. And you may have attended the celebrations organized by FAO, by the UNFF and by many other partners. So today we somehow continue these celebrations from the last weekend by looking into the contributions of the private sector to ecosystem restoration. And more precisely to the contribution of the private sector to the decade on ecosystem restoration. And it's a great pleasure and indeed an honor for us and for me to invite and to see all these recognized speakers we have today for the event and the representatives from the two UN leading agencies on who are steering the decade, namely UNF and FAO. Before leaving the floor to all our panelists, let me just share with you some housekeeping messages and just start quickly introducing who are the hosts of this event today. We have on the one side the ACSFI. Again, it's the Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest Based Industry of FAO. It consists of some 20 leading private sector experts representing Forest Products, Forest Industry and Pop and Paper Association from all around the world. They provide guidance to us, to FAO on concept approaches and initiatives in the field of sustainable production and consumption of forest products. And the ACSFI members and their members bring together some 2,000 organizations, millions of employees, highlighting the relevance of the forest business to contribute to green growth, green recovery to address the COVID pandemic, livelihoods, but also ecosystem restoration. And the committee just recently adopted its strategic framework for the next 10 years and ecosystem restoration as one cornerstone of their work. On the other side, we have the Forest Technical Network and that includes FAO colleagues from headquarters, the sub-regional officers, and from the country officers who are all interested in forest related issues. And so it's great to bring these people together and I would really like to welcome warmly everybody for FAO colleagues, ACSFI members and their members and all other colleagues who joined today. Let me just tell you that we will record the event and that the report, the recording and all the presentations will be uploaded on the website of the ACSFI and you will get the link in the chat function. We will use the webinar function of Zoom. So please use either the Q&A or the chat function to ask questions or to make comments. Having said this and giving a little bit of frame, let's move to the real opening and the welcome and it's a great pleasure to have with us Meta, Meti Wilke, who is the director of FAO's Forestry Division. She has more than 30 years of experience providing scientific evidence, policy advice, governments, partners, international conventions. Most of you know her very well and it's great to have you with us Meta and I give you the floor to set the scene and provide the framework about this topic of private sector engagement and ecosystem restoration. Meta, please. Thank you, Sven, and good morning, good afternoon, good evening to wherever you're joining from. And a very warm welcome to this webinar from a very cold room. Temperatures came down below zero last night but very pleased to be here with you and to take this opportunity to look at what are these challenges and opportunities for the private sector to engage in ecosystem restoration. As Sven mentioned, this is organized by the advisory committee on sustainable forest-based industries and the FAO Forest Technical Network. As he also mentioned, 2021 is the first year of the UN decade on ecosystem restoration which FAO together with our sister organizations the United Nations Environment Program are leading the implementation of. And that's so important because we know that we have more than two billion hectares of degraded forest and land worldwide and that we're losing more than 10% of GDP in lost ecosystem services due to that degradation. So the need for ecosystem restoration is pressing but we can only do that if we work together. We want all stakeholders to be involved all people from age three to 103 to be involved in ecosystem restoration. And the private sector with its capacity to raise capital develop innovative financing instruments. Its access to a wide range of skills and its vast area of land that it has under management is a crucial partner and stakeholder in the long-term restoration conservation sustainable use of our natural resources. In recognition of this important role that the private sector plays in not just forestry but also in agriculture and fisheries FAO has recently endorsed a new strategy for private sector engagement. And we're very pleased that the ACSFI have actually contributed to that. And when we talk about the private sector we talk about everyone from the individual and small scale medium scale enterprises to large firms and multinational companies. All of those are important stakeholders as we work to realize both the goals of the UN decade on ecosystem restoration but more broadly of course the sustainable development goals and the 2030 agenda. So I'd like to congratulate ACSFI for their new strategy and of course in particular for the decision to include ecosystem restoration as one of the priority areas of interest. I think this will help benefit FAO through the insights and the advice that you'll be providing to us. It will benefit the members of the ACSFI the forest-based industries themselves but most importantly it will help the forest ecosystems around the world and the people who depend on them. So I would very strongly invite all the forest-based industries and all of those listening in here today to join the UN decade on ecosystem restoration to be part of the generation restoration and to help make that vision that we have for 2030 of a place where we are in balance with nature where we have more areas under restoration and fewer areas being degraded a real solution. We know that we can do this we know that if we do it right we can help restore the economy we can help combat climate change and we can help reduce the loss of biodiversity. So I hope that we will hear good examples today particularly of the opportunities and how we overcome the challenges that might be to engage the private sector in ecosystem restoration and I wish you a very fruitful discussion. I'd now like to hand over to the moderator of this event Mr. Jose Carlos de Fonseca Jr. who is the executive director of the Brazilian tree industry and the incoming vice chair of the ACSFI. Jose Carlos, over to you. Thank you very much, Mette. Good morning, you all. It's a great privilege to be here today representing IBA, the Brazilian tree industry. I thank Sven Walter and the whole ACSFI team and congratulate FAO itself on a job well done. We have a terrible, terrific lineup of speakers today and so I'll be very short. The Brazilian tree industry represents the whole production chain of planted forest up to the forest until the different segments of our industry in Brazil. We generate millions of jobs. We change lives in different places around Brazil, places that were previously low in economic dynamism, places that were degraded and so we are very happy to contribute with our own experience or our own perspective to the ACSFI. The choice of engaging very strongly on this amazing initiative of the UN decade on ecosystem restoration is a very strategic one and of course we cannot start any activity these days without remembering the moment we are undergoing the whole world. Just to give you an idea, yesterday in Brazil, we had terrible figures of deaths for one single period of 24 hours, over 3,000 people lost their lives. So the pandemic is teaching us very painful lessons and of course what we do here today, what we discuss here today, what we get engaged in such initiatives as the decade of restoration is all part of a single moment where we realize that we are all members of the same species, riders in the same boat and we need to preserve and to save our planet. So this is an amazing opportunity for us to discuss this as we look ahead and see the end of this terrible crisis we are still undergoing. So without much delay, in order to get started with our great discussion today, I'd like to introduce Mr. Ludwig Liegge. Ludwig is an international consultant and he will be our first analyst and a specialist in sustainable land use finance. Between 2009, 2014, Ludwig operated as forest policy and finance advisor for the German Development Corporation, DIZ in Middle East, North Africa and Latin America. Later, Ludwig worked with UN agencies and DFI such as UNDP, FAO, UNCCD and EID. He holds a master's degree in agricultural science, environmental economics from Agro Paris Tech, France and an MBA from Le Collège and the engineer at France, Germany. He is currently enrolled as PhD candidate on national forest and funds, forest funds at the University of Padova, Italy. So Ludwig, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Jose Carlos, for this introduction. Hello, dear colleagues. That's a fantastic pleasure to be with you today to be able to share some food for thought on the work we are currently doing on the challenges and opportunities for forest-based industries engagement in ecosystem restoration. As you will see, there are already a lot going on from the forest-based industries and probably a need to publicize more but that's of course gonna be part of our discussion. Maybe as a reminder to start with, what is ecosystem restoration? Ecosystem restoration is several things. In fact, it means assisting in the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded or destroyed but it also means conserving these ecosystems that are still intact. It addresses a diversity of natural ecosystems including forests of course, but also freshwater, mountains, pitlands, oceans and coasts among others. In fact, other types of ecosystems that all have a connection to forests and benefit from forest goods and services. And very importantly, we are entering the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration as Meta reminded us and that we will discuss more in the following of this event as a very important framework potentially where in which the forest-based industries could engage further. A bit of context and rational on our work. The forest-based industries globally they create millions of jobs. So very important sector for employment creation. If you look at the management under the supervision of business entities in terms of forest areas, we've got more than 420 million hectares that are directly managed by business entities. So it's more or less 10% of the global forest areas. So you see a massive impact of the forest-based industries but when we look at how these forest-based companies are now engaging in ecosystem restoration, declaration or commitments, we observe that almost none of them or very few of them surprisingly are committing or signing any declaration of that sort. So that's really a question mark. Why is that so? And oh, maybe that could be changed in the near future. And so our background paper really seeks to uncover the possible holes that the forest-based industries could play for ecosystem restoration from the operational point of view but also from the financial side. And today I'm gonna present you a few results about all the financing options are already an important driver from the forest-based industries for ecosystem restoration. I'm just showing you now a few of the case studies that we've been looking at. So it's not exhaustive, but it shows you that we've looked at case studies from all continents with very interesting companies. And I won't say much because many of those, several of those will be our distinguished panelists later on in the program. Something we observe is that the forest-based industries are quite key to public goods generation. First, because many of them adopt already the so-called mosaic restoration approach that combines production with conservation and restoration. And we have to recognize that in some cases, if these approaches were not conducted, then probably there would not be any forests anymore because of all the pressures, livestock grazing, and so on. Many of these companies also start to look at ecosystem services valuation and valorization, which at the end enhance the provision of ecosystem services at the benefit of our societies. And finally, many already embed sustainability in their value chains, all along the value chains, including the small holders. And so that's also part of sustainability, of course, and public goods generation that part on value chains that ultimately contributes also to create a number of jobs as we already saw before in the figures. Some elements of rational for forest-based industries engagement in ecosystem restoration, they are really clear, already a clear rational and very important aspects of a virtuous circle for why these companies engage in ecosystem restoration. And the benefits are in terms of boosting the supply of forest products because forests become more healthy, more resilient, but also increasing products value through sustainable certifications, mitigating risks. We're gonna see that a bit later, but also diversifying income stream building on the variety of forest goods and services. Promoting sustainability in value chains, we saw it, but also strategically mobilizing sustainable finance. And we're gonna see examples today in the panel of companies who already use this virtual circle and mobilize sustainable finance, partly for ecosystem restoration. But the end of the day, it's a kind of investor rational underlying the engagement of forest-based industries in ecosystem restoration, at least for those which are already engaged in ecosystem restoration. There is a clear balance, of course, between the returns and benefits one side around all the forest goods and services, but also on the avoided risks and costs on the other side, which really builds an interesting investor risks and risk returns rational underlying engagement of forest-based industries. Also, we observe this diversity in terms of financing solutions that are already implemented and developed by forest-based industries to engage in ecosystem restoration. One of the tools that is quite commonly used is green bones. And we're gonna have a great example with Glabine today on how green bones proceeds can be used for ecosystem conservation and restoration. We also observe payments for ecosystem services are quite critical. The company Global Campbell, for example, in Arizona is already using some payments from water utilities to co-finance plantations in return, in recognition of the water services provided by the plantations. Similarly, we've got great examples of impact phones and blended finance models. We will have also a good example today with new forests and the Tropical Asian forestry facility, but there are also other models like the Landscape Fund by the company Arroco in Chile. So many innovations on that front that all contribute to ecosystem restoration. So some of the key messages we'd like to share today is that the forest-based industries, they clearly do a lot, at least the pioneers, because, of course, we can't, for the time being, draw two quick conclusions, and that will be important also to look at the whole sector, the whole value chain, and to embark, possibly, the companies that are less advanced to adopt some of the good practices of the companies more advanced. But we observe, still, there is a lot going on in terms of operations and in terms of innovative financing. I've talked already about some of the multiple options that have been used and that are developed by forest-based industries for ecosystem restoration, but clearly, we see the need to move forward with mainstreaming of good practices in the industry and share the lessons learned on what works, what doesn't work, both on the operational side and on the financing side. Of course, building the investor rational towards maybe the less convinced companies may be important to catalyze commitments and engagement for ecosystem restoration. And we could, again, ask the question, why not joining more proactively restoration alliances and initiatives that could benefit, of course, forest-based industries, but as we saw, forest-based industries in return could really benefit ecosystem restoration and our societies. So some elements now on the way forward. What could we do next? What could the forest-based industries maybe engage in or do next, including with the support of technical partners like FAO? One aspect could be about reinforcing partnerships. We have met and we know there are strong partnerships existing that may deserve to be reinforced, aggregate more partners, such as the ACS-FI itself, but also the World Economic Forum Tropical Forest Alliance, the new generation plantation platform or the WBCSD Forest Solutions Group. One maybe idea to discuss is to create a new forest-based industries of working group on sustainable finance for ecosystem restoration and restoration-friendly forest products that may be something relevant, either attached to one of the existing partnerships or maybe another group to be created, if that makes sense, but it seems to us that something that is a little bit lacking at the time being, so we would be really happy to have your views and ideas about what could be done further on Dutch and ID. Also, we observe there are a lot of initiatives going on on the economics of ecosystems and it may be relevant to continue supporting valuation and valorization of ecosystem services through the work of forest-based industries and potentially taking stock of the most recent developments on the UN sustainability accounting frameworks on the economics of ecosystem restoration that some of our colleagues are working on currently that could really benefit forest-based industries to better analyze what ecosystem services they produce and further down the road to valorize them. Of course, we saw the importance of the value chains in the forest-based industries, including the small-holders engagement and we would recommend more work to be done, including small-holders in the near future and we're gonna have today a great model called Maza that shows us how to engage with small-holders which could maybe be also one of the way forward for some of the forest-based industries. Of course, developing guidelines on good practices for ecosystem restoration financing involving forest-based industries could be important as well as leveraging all the technical expertise on forest finance that FAU and other partners here today in the room with us have that could be provided to forest-based industries but also government and other business partners to make ecosystem restoration really happen on the ground. And with that, I'd like to thank you and I wish us really a good discussion today. Jose Carlos, back to you. Thank you so much, Ludwig. Great presentation, very promising aspects. I don't know if you see me, I don't see me, yes. And amazing when you mentioned this mosaic approach that is one of the highlights of our sector in Brazil and in many other countries where we combine production and conservation with restoration. This is an amazing development. Also some very interesting remarks on innovative economic financial instruments that are very promising as we will see as we proceed with the webinar and all the potential for positive impact funds that we have. So with having said that, it is my privilege now to introduce a fellow Brazilian, my friend Francisco Hazolini, who is the Executive Director of Clabin, a Brazilian company of which we are very proud. Hazolini is a chemical engineer who graduated from Federal University of Paraná in Brazil, a master in paper engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña in Spain. He has joined the Clabin 36 years ago, working on several areas as pulp and paper production engineer, corporate planning, economical studies, M&A, joint ventures, project development and implementation, procurement and purchasing. COO of pulp business. He has been leading Clabin's major project expansions in the last 15 years and is also Clabin's CTO leading R&D, automation, technology, innovation and sustainability. My friend Francisco, you have the floor now. Thank you, José Carlos. Good morning, good afternoon, maybe good evening for all the attendees that are here. It's an honor to be with you today and I'll try to share some of the things Clabin has been doing especially in ecosystem restoration and involvement of the small land owners that are key suppliers to our system today. So Clabin is a Brazilian company and we are some present in Brazil. We are located in the southern part of Brazil where we grow our forests and today we will speak briefly about the mosaic planting patterns, forest restoration at our supply chain, wood supply chain, our greening sustainability linker bonds and also some views from why, how FAO and private sector can engage to this system. Clabin is a centenary company in Brazil, quite unique from our standards here in this part of the world. 121 years making history here in Brazil. We manage today almost 500,000 hectares of land and that's including almost 200 and 56,000 hectares of planted pine and eucalyptus forest. This is converted today in about three and a half million tons of fibers and also converting great part of that. Some will integrate into almost two million tons of paper and we do also supply both to the market. Clabin is integrated from forest to paper products. One important thing about the Clabin and our forest management system is that there is a very big part of our forest that this are preserved. More than 40% today of our forest lands are preserved. And in our forest management system in our main land, let's say, we adopt the system beginning, the mosaic management, forest management system, the mosaic handling. And this is quite unique and it forms a very interesting ecological corridors that preserves a lot the biodiversity that found on the Florida and the river springs. So that helps us a lot enhancing production and also increasing the biodiversity. So, due to our forest management model, Clabin was the first company in the poop and paper industry in the south hemisphere to receive the FSC certification. And this was back to 1998, our first certification. We've been renewing and expanding this since then. So what are these mosaic planting patterns? Well, these are, let's say, smaller planting fields intermingled with the native vegetation. This brings us high environmental quality forest, ecological corridors to promote the population, the wildlife population dynamics. And also fosters a lot of our forest productivity. And for us, this is clearly true now that this high forest productivity that we are reaching in our part of Brazil in our plantations, and it's quite high today, we are something like 25% above the average of the Brazilian industry that's quite high compared to other places in the world that this sustainable and complex environmental that we developed there is helping a lot, helping the productivity keeps very high and maintain the ecosystem quality and also improving then restoration and preservation and also today looking into this economical services. Oh, another topic is the forest restoration in our forest chain. We've been fostering a lot of plantations with our neighbors, with small medium sized landowners aiming to diversify their properties, economical activities and also then fostering a big chain. So we have this strengthening this ties with our wood partners, with supply partners in order to provide a positive impact on the landscape, increasing then conservation and productivity and our multitask holder approach to that restoration model led to already 21,000 hectares restore and preserved in this partner's producers areas. It's more than 1,700 properties that were already impacted and we do have two special programs in the company that in Portuguese it's called Matas Legais and Matas Sociais. These programs provide technical support in native forest seedings to support the development and conservation of the areas there. Matas means this native forest or bush and Legais means legal mostly, but Legais here in Brazil too means that is very nice, very good or cool. And Matas Sociais is a program much more to diversify the production of the small forest holders, small landowners to diversify and then also to develop organic agriculture. That's today we are also closing this loop in a circularity way approaching this producers also to the consumers in the market in the regions including supplying clothing with their production. So another interesting topic that we could develop was the financing of all this ecosystem restoration developments and also all the green bones and sustained ability bones that were able to launch that are supporting also the development of the other activities in the company. So today we launched two green bones on 2017 another one in 2019 and most recently now a sustainability linker bond. This is giving financing and most today we are using to develop our forest management system, sustainable forest management system, but you see that part of that is already being used for forest conservation and restoration. So almost 12 million dollars in native forest restoration and conservation has already been used. And we are using this capital market instrument to support the reversing of biodiversity laws and reinforce our natural forest quality through the ecosystem restoration and ecosystem services. So I think it's a very nice promotion of this webinar in all the efforts that FAO is handling together with the private sector and this is very important that our activities goes hand-in-hand and required then a lot of integration also about very mind that the required integration with the social, cultural and economical frameworks of the regions that this programs will be development. This broader framework for identifying nation and global restoration priorities for leading regional cooperation efforts promoted integrated result-based management and forest interventions. And then the economical opportunity attached to the well-functioning ecosystem and the species within it. So just with this brief introduction, it's a call for you all to join us in this journey to make a better model with this forest-based products. That's what I had for this introduction. So thank you and thank you all for being with me in this quick presentation. Thank you very much, Francisco. So everybody now know and understand why we Brazilians are so proud of Clabin and of your work. Very brilliant presentation. He didn't even go as far as mentioning that Clabin is also top of its class in terms of commitments and engagements in terms of climate change mitigation, abiding by this SBTI, the Science-Based Target Initiative, the Race to Zero Initiative. So it does to give you an idea of size after seeing the numbers of plantations in landscape handling by Clabin. In Brazil, our sector currently plants an overall area of 9 million hectares. And at the same time, our sector preserves in native forest almost 6 million hectares, 5.9 million hectares, which is quite a lot. And this represents barely 1% of the country's territory. So this is... And we have lots of areas, degraded areas to engage with restoration efforts. So we now... Let's move on. Thank you, Francisco, once again. Our next speaker is Mr. Tomo Kumahira, Vice President, Corporate Finance of Strategy Komaza Kenya. Komaza Kenya. This is Africa's leading smallholder forestry start-up. Planting 40% of Kenya's commercial forestry with 25,000 farmers as partners. Managed the company's financial strategies directly under the CEO, raising around 20 million US dollars, Series B, with leading investors such as AXA Investment Managers, NovaStar Ventures, FMO, a Dutch DFI, and LDN Fund. The round was recognized as Impact Investment, Project of the Year by Environmental Finance Magazine. 10 plus year track record in delivering social impact through hands-on entrepreneurship, as well as strategic advisory with a mission to make social enterprise scalable and investable. So please, you have the floor, Tomo Kumahira. Thank you very much for the introduction and thank you very much for inviting us to this session. We're really honored to present Komaza today in this panel. And as introduction was made already, Komaza is a social enterprise based in Kenya. And we have been working since 2008 to provide sustainable forestry projects without relying on the conventional plantation style to accelerate a forestation in the communities while promoting sustainable forestry businesses to create livelihoods and support livelihoods in those areas. And we call ourselves often Airbnb or Forestry because we do not require land ownership as the basis of operations. We use small-holder farmer forestry model, which involves a lot of former partnership for forestation projects. So I'd like to jump into the presentation today with a very quick figure, a quick math that we can think about. The reason why we are here today is because Africa as a whole continent and of course Kenya and East Africa are facing significant forest deficit. As the population is growing and economies growing faster, we are having a significant pressure from urbanization and land use that is causing significant forest deficit, which now is taken mostly by the combination of import from other regions and illegal forestation, so illegal logging. And that's the reason why we're seeing such a high speed of deforestation in the region. Well, at the same time, it's undeniable Africa is the only continent that is still growing a population at 2050 when China, India would stop growing its population in the mid-2020s. We are projecting that $30 billion of forest deficit will be reached by 2030, while plantation in Africa has been historically difficult because of several reasons. Community relationship, it's always hard to secure a large land all the time and manage the expectation with community. Land acquisition, legal structures and governance by law is always a challenge. Long-term financing, it's also hard for many financiers to support project over 10 years, which is pretty shorter in forestry terms while it's pretty long in general investors timeline. So all in all, it's been very difficult for African continent to scale radically a forestation by conventional commercial forestry. And as I said at the very top, the best time for us to prepare for this $30 billion with deficit by 2030 is either today or even ideally 10 years ago, but we cannot go back to 10 years ago. So we are working really hard now today to help solve this problem. And the solution we are proposing here is small-holder farmers. Small-holder farmers actually are supplying already 30% of Africa's wood supply and which are oftentimes energy source as well as a smaller diner logs to support their constructions instead of industrial wood products that you would imagine like 2x4 plywood. And as a result, we believe farmers are actually mostly available and very powerful solution for large scale forestry issues in Africa. And we are building a partnership that is mutually beneficial from KOMASA's perspective as a forestry business and farmer as a wood producers. So the mutual partnership grows like this. KOMASA and farmers are essentially giving things for free to each other. So KOMASA will provide seedlings, inputs, technical expertise, farmer trainings, all the things that we can supply to them so that we can set farmers tree farming project as success. Well, in return, farmers will provide land, labor and security for free. Again, this is sweat equity, but this is all they can provide. And as a result, for KOMASA's perspective, we can have a lot of trees planted on the ground in very timely manner every year with many, many farmers securing long-term wood supply. Well, from farmer's side, they do not need to contribute any cash upfront. Typically, farmers rely on microfinance or their credit within the villages to access planting resources but we don't require any money upfront, so that's also plus for them. And we will offer them a fair share of the profit we will generate from our forestry program. So this is a win-win strategy where if farmers fail, then KOMASA also fail because we lose the trees and lose the investment. So in this way, we are ensuring a good commercial relationship with aligned incentives. And in using these ways, we have been planting a lot of trees and last year alone, we planted 1.3 million trees across Kenya with over 5,000 farmers and this means that it's not really a big number if you're from Latin America, but in Kenya, this is actually pretty significant because it basically means that we single-handedly planted 40% of Kenya's national commercial afforestation per year. So this is a commercial planting in Kenya every year. We are about 40% share. And this is also a negligible number from East Africa or in Africa all over. So we are a really strong hope and plan also is to go across Africa using the learning and model that we established over the past decade through trials and errors in coastal Kenya. And the scale itself is not only the benefit of small-holder partnership model, the biggest difference between plantation forestry and small-holder forestry is cost-effectiveness. And when you're thinking about asset management as an investor, you typically want to look at the valley of land. In the meantime, in the context of afforestation or carbon sequestration or a small-holder farmer employment, it is more important actually to spend less money on the land or something that is already fixed as an asset so that you can plant more trees with the same dollar. And typically, plantations require land purchases or leasing or development of roads and other enabling infrastructure while we are only requiring planting for seedlings and a little bit of money to hire the team to do it. So as a result, we are 80% cheaper per hectare of establishment costs, which is making it significantly more valuable for a lot of farmers, a lot of forestry investors, especially if they're interested in carbon impact. And I just want to give a quick run-through of some photos just to give you a sense of the field as I know everyone is locked down and not really moving around. This is our nursery. This is a typical small-holder farmer that we are working with. From the drone picture, you can see the land is pretty available and you see some forestry on the top. This is Kamala's trees. Another example. And we harvest those logs like these size probably like 7 inches to 10 inches poles. And we process them in a factory and we sell as fencing posts and we do have several other product lines but these are major products that we've been developing right now as of today. And the key thing to answer the question how can we scale this small-holder model and what's been the difference between Masa and other typical nonprofits or NGOs who are working in a more local context with less numbers of farmers is the availability of tech. So this is what we use for every one of the over 300 field officers who are supplied with smartphones and that is how we manage each one of these 25,000 farms that we planted. This is a picture from our farmer field officer training. So field officers are typically hired from the villages that we are recruiting farmers so that they can understand their language including dialogues as well as local context as well. And they are trained to use these mobile apps so that they can accurately manage farms process and making sure that data input is accurate. And we are having three major development works so these applications for the field enrollment and we have a cloud-based platform where we can analyze and manage these large sums of data. And finally we are also working on several pilots to use AI and machine learning to identify opportunities in new farmer enrollments. By doing so we have been attracting significant amount of capital from all top industry partners from nonprofits to institutional investors and the reason why we have been shifting our narrative for a long time is first phase was pretty much six, seven years as an NGO trying on the model itself by relying mostly on major NGOs and donor financing. The focus was much more on the social at the very beginning and we have now becoming as a venture company in East Africa where financial investors also come into us while those investors also appreciate social and environmental impact and we are now looking at ourselves as also an interesting urban solution for Africa and the world. Just to wrap up my section I would just want to give you a quick presentation why it matters to work with small farmers. These are the areas out of the land where it is pretty good for forestry or any agricultural production and these are the areas where typically plantation would be while you don't really use the rest of the 90% savanna and semi-arid areas these are not really great for plantation forestry because the growth rate is not that great but there are many many farmers who are there and KOMASA is really availing ourselves to these regions so that farmers in those regions can actually without competing against subsistence farming plant trees to make use of the land they thought is not really useful. So these are the poor land and we are allowed to go into these orange sections these are the areas that we can add most value because farmers do not really have a lot of good means to work other than farming. So if you apply this to Africa these are the core areas that's already forested or forestry suitable or agricultural suitable in general but we are missing these places and these are the also areas that we can also work and that gap is very significant because you have less competition and we have more farmers and we have larger climate impact. So all in all farmers have a future of African forestry and we're really looking forward to working with everyone of you here today. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Tomo Kumahira, brilliant presentation congratulations on an amazing job and the passion you leave to all of us is how to scale up these incredible experiences and turn smallholder farmers into true ambassadors of best practices around Africa so this is quite nice to see and it came to my mind that we could joke by saying that all roads live to Rome there are many different ways of contributing to the decade of restoration and what you are doing in Africa is certainly an amazing way forward. Let's hope this can be replicated throughout the continent and I'm sure our audience here is quite impressed by your presentation. Thank you so much. So now let's move on. Our next panelist is Ms. Radha Kupali she's the managing director investor service New Forest company Australia. Radha Kupali leads New Forest investor services business unit. Her oversight includes integration of responsible investments and ESG innovations into investment strategy and product development client relations and fund marketing and research and thought leadership to support New Forest as a leading investment manager in the forestry sector. She is the director of the board of New Forest the company itself member of the company's executive committee and a member of various investments committees. Radha has been with New Forest since 2006 she is also a non executive director of Timberlink Australia of Greening Australia. Radha's 20 year career has been focused on driving and investing in climate change solutions and sustainable development. Radha has a Bachelor of Arts in international studies and economic theory from American University in Washington DC and an MBA and master's degree in environmental management from Yale University School of Management and School of Forestry environmental studies. She is on the advisory board of New Forest and is an associate of the Yale World Fellows Program. You have the floor. Thank you, Jose. I wish someone had abbreviated that bio before you were forced to read all of it. Thank you for that very kind introduction.  Francesca, if you could slide three, that would be great. Next slide. I'll just give a quick overview of New Forest and then give a little bit of a case study and then a roadmap of maybe where to from here. New Forest was founded in 2005, so we'll actually be celebrating our 16th birthday later this year. Similar to many of the other organizations that I've spoken earlier today, we are an investment manager and forestry investment manager. And similar to others, the philosophy that we've brought to land management is that we do want to embed conservation, restoration into productive landscapes. So we're ultimately investing to create productive and sustainable landscapes to benefit our investment clients as well as the communities where we operate. So this is very much an approach that resonates with the community that we do business as well. Next slide. We are a specialist investment manager offering strategy for institutional clients. So most of our investors are public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, development finance institutions, a very large investor really creating universal portfolio of assets who are interested in forestry for the specific investment characteristics of sustainable timber production. So we have about 6 billion Aussie dollars under management so it's roughly about 5 billion US and about 1 million hectares across Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and the US. We are, I think, pretty unique amongst forestry investment managers for having a large footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. So we have significant pine and eucalyptus plantations in Australia and New Zealand. We're a dedicated investment manager for Southeast Asia and currently manage assets across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Laos. I'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation. And also managing assets in the United States. And so we're managing large land areas, about a million hectares worldwide of forest plantations, conservation areas, and also integrating infrastructure processing in carbon markets as well. And we also have a very strong focus on driving impact through our investments and innovating in environmental markets. Next slide. So in talking about our approach to conservation and restoration, I thought it was important to talk a little bit about how we think about managing the landscapes in which we invest. And so the framework that we've been using for the last several years is what we call sustainable landscape investment. And it's an integrated approach to manage what we think are the material, environmental, social governance issues in forestry investment. So we have about 80 performance indicators across productivity, land use planning, ecosystem services, risk management, shared prosperity with communities and good governance. And so that is really the management framework across these environmental social governance issues that we bring to bear on our portfolio of assets. And so it's a way to help us reduce risk, create value, and really support our beneficial environmental and social outcomes. So in the context of that sustainable landscape investment approach we do engage in land and species conservation programs, habitat improvement restoration and species-focused research across our global portfolio. So we also have significant conservation areas. So across that sort of million hectares that I was referring to we have about 250,000 hectares of conservation areas of which there are very significant numbers of over 200 threatened or vulnerable plant and animal species on or near the asset. And we have a lot of conservation programs in place. But really one of the things that we are focused on and concerned about in the context of thinking about the decade on ecosystem restoration is how do we actually build scale in the conservation and restoration activities. And ultimately that is going to require us to price nature and to create some economic incentives for restoration and broader scale conservation activities. And essentially the two mechanisms that we are trying to push forward are really around two areas. So first is carbon pricing and where we are actually creating an economic incentive for the restoration value, the conservation value of the forest ecosystems. And the second thing is how can we actually create innovative investment models that embed ecosystem restoration in the investment mandate. So we actually have an investment mandate or an economic investment mandate to invest in ecosystem restoration. So that is one of the things that I wanted to talk about next is how might we approach that. Next slide. So as I mentioned earlier New Forest has been an investor in Asia in Southeast Asia and we have been operating in Asia for about 12 or 13 years now and invested in the first fund across the three countries that I showed to you earlier, Malaysia, Indonesia and Laos. And I'm starting to raise our second investment fund. One of the, we reflected on the lessons learned and certainly embedding high quality ESG performance into our assets in Asia is a critical factor in the commercial success of those assets and managing those assets. So we asked ourselves, you know, how can we actually do more around biodiversity outcomes, community outcomes, climate outcomes in a way that's going to benefit the assets that we're managing and align with our investors' incentives. So in raising our new fund, which is currently in development, we've integrated both a carbon finance element as well as a blended finance element. So this is a target $300 million fund and we're bringing together a group of institutional investors, development finance institutions, endowments, corporate investors. And the underlying investment thesis of the fund is to invest in sustainable FSC certified plantation forestry in Asia. So we've introduced a blended finance structure that we co-created with a U.S. foundation and about 10 to 15% of the fund will come from concessional equity and by blending mainstream institutional capital with concessional equity and slightly changing the cost of capital of the fund we will actually be able to invest in kind of beyond BAU climate, community and biodiversity impact activities that will be integrated into the portfolio companies into which we invest. So this can include impact activities like environmental plantings, habitat restoration, peatland re-wedding and community out-prover schemes. So ultimately, depending on the size of the fund, the investment impact activities could be in the order of $15 million. And ultimately what we want to be doing is going beyond BAU in terms of environmental and social impact and promoting the development of an investable universe of forestry assets in Southeast Asia. And the other really fascinating thing that I think has emerged in the past couple of years is the interest in forestry as a climate solution and the continued growth of the carbon market in alignment with net zero commitments. So we fully expect as well that we'll embed long-term carbon off-take contracts and long-term credit projects that may be developed and integrated into the portfolio investments of the fund. Next slide. So that's one example of a fund and a potential structure. But as Ludwig talked about at the beginning of this presentation and Mate as well, I mean ultimately we need hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into restoration activities by 2030 to meet our climate and biodiversity targets. How do we get there? How do we harness institutional capital in alignment with this objective? So we've talked to investors extensively about this, particularly in the context of climate change mitigation and there's a few key points that come out in terms of challenges and opportunities. So the investors who are leading in net zero ambition and recognize that nature-based solutions are critical to a sustainable future, but they need to better understand the business case and how to allocate capital and resources. They recognize that carbon pricing can transform the investment opportunity in nature, but there is still a lack of clarity around pricing, there's regulatory uncertainty and also lack of clarity as standards and all of those are barriers to investment. Investors know that they can use their influence with companies and governments to engage and advocate for ending deforestation and implementing stronger climate policies and also to require transparency and disclosure from companies and investment managers with respect to emissions and nature. So if you think of all of that then what could potentially be the path forward to get more institutional capital flowing into ecosystem restoration? So certainly there's more methodological and analytical work that can be done to embed nature-based solutions into portfolio decarbonization strategies. We need a critical mass of investors, companies, NGOs, governments to coalesce around standards for forestry and land use and carbon pricing and particularly to drive the price of carbon up so that we can get a recognition of the value for biodiversity, so it's not just about carbon but also the important value of biodiversity. And ultimately investors and governments can work together to progress the agenda on deforestation free commodities and integrating financial reporting on natural capital and ensuring that nature is on the agenda as we head into COP26 later this year. Next slide. So finally I was asked to kind of reflect on what this could mean for the FAO and I'm certainly not an expert but some of the things that we reflected on is that there's certainly information and outlook studies. Investors need information and insights to design appropriate investment strategies so questions that could be asked are how can investment and plantations and ecosystem restoration be scaled in various countries? What is the country's approach and regulatory framework with respect to carbon markets? So by asking these kinds of questions we should be able to support developing countries and thinking about nature-based solutions led growth and encouraging sustainable landscape and community development. And I think the rising interest in natural capital accounting the emergence of the task force for nature-related financial disclosures are all opportunities for FAO really to work with countries to promote regulation and disclosure frameworks at the asset and the company level and to really start mandating that as part of doing business in country. So we know at the high level what is the huge transformation that we need to see in landscapes so really now we need to think about the bottom-up strategy. How are we going to get there? So that's it for me and looking forward to the discussion following the presentations. Thank you. Thank you, Radha. Very interesting very instigating presentation. Thanks a lot and I made some notes in the question and I still go back to the thinking that different roads may lead us to Rome and you are absolutely right in pointing out how to build scale and how to turn this economic potential this attractiveness for institutional investors something more concrete and more promising and more rewarding. I think this is a pretty important important challenge for all of us and it gives lots of food for thought for ACSFI and you are absolutely right in mentioning the carbon pricing agenda which is key and so let's go back to some of these issues when we have a few minutes to discuss the panels later on. So let's move on my friends our next speaker is Mr. Martin Berg he's the head of natural capital impact strategy HSBC pollination climate asset management UK. Martin has nearly two decades experience in conceptualizing and leading low carbon environmental investments in the private and public sector currently Martin is the head of natural capital impact strategy at HSBC pollination climate asset management and asset management company dedicated to natural capital prior to this role, Martin was a partner at pollination and part of the team finalizing the joint venture between HSBC global asset management and pollination. Previously Martin worked at the European Investment Bank EIB based in Luxembourg where he was the head of the environmental funds and climate finance policy unit served on the board of directors for the green for growth fund in Luxembourg and was a vice president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London responsible for the carbon finance activities of Merrill Lynch Martin was also a carbon finance specialist at the New York based environmental investment firm R&K Capital LLC worked at the OECD climate change unit in Paris and started his career at the UN FCC in Bonn. So Mr. Berg, Martin Berg you have the floor sir. Thank you very much for saying that I wish you would have shown this a little bit but I'm really pleased to be here very difficult to follow three excellent speakers and the really good introduction by Ludwig earlier today. Before we start perhaps I can just introduce the company as you mentioned will say HSBC pollination climate asset management we are a joint venture between HSBC and pollination HSBC is probably well known to everybody pollination is an advisory an investment firm based in Australia and the UK and in the US with a real clear goal to go to what's net zero so it's really developing strategies for companies and investment products and the joint venture with HSBC is one of the first products that came out we are a very young company pollination is a little bit older than a year and the joint venture which we just abbreviate as calm climate asset management it's only been founded in September last year what are we we are actually building out an asset management firm that is neither focusing on let's say just forestry or just agriculture we're really focusing on natural capital we do believe this is a big trend that nature related investments will become more prominent and that investors will actually look through this type of investments much more through this lens rather than a traditional let's say asset allocation to timber or agriculture and that in a way the new way the new revenue opportunities that Rata just described in regard to biodiversity but also into carbon really maybe the glue that combines these so we are working the two organizations working together on new investment products I said we are building out our the asset management firm the regular term requirements and I will talk later a little bit about what type of ideas we are having but maybe just to step back and it's actually much more to support what Rata is saying I think in our view the way investors are looking at these type of new opportunities is really changing and for us it's really important what we try to communicate is that it's necessary to actually change the narrative it's no longer just to look at forestry investments or these are agriculture investments it's actually you have to look at nature and from two sides on the one hand side really as a solution to address climate change but also as a standalone to really make sure that environmental degradation, biodiversity loss is not further advancing that's equally as important but also at the same time it really offers a new opportunity to have a fresh look at some of the asset classes such as forestry or agriculture because by looking at it from this nature side and from looking at some of the underlying trends there are some changes happening now the population growth one of the key macro trends we all know this it's been something that we have been discussing also in the FAO for a long time that there will be more pressure on food which also means that there's an opportunity for investment in this side but also what we really see is now that the regulatory changes in regard to how nature is being integrated is really about to change similar to climate nature is now being looked at in a different way Covid I think has amplified some of the the risks that are related to nature and how it actually can also have an impact on financial firms, on portfolios and supply trends and this is really changing how companies are looking at this what I mentioned there are regulatory new ideas, drivers that are upcoming such as the task force on nature-related financial disclosures and most importantly I think it's the consumers that are putting a lot of pressure on companies on financial firms that they actually demand now to understand how their products are produced how their investments entail and I think that is really on the heart of the way we look at this and that really as I said provides some new value drivers to look at more let's say traditional asset classes such as forestry and agriculture in a completely different way so what are we trying to do and come so we are having two products there we're looking at the one hand side really as natural capital and I think where we may be slightly different than what I think we share many of the values that Rata just described or we are great at Mario of new forest the way they are pushing it probably where we are slightly different is that we are looking at it more holistically from the natural capital perspective and that we are also including the agriculture component as a key component to basically address the need for more nature-related investors what we are doing is we are looking at it from two aspects on the one hand side we are offering large scale institution investors an opportunity to invest into long term projects that provide an impact the return and the scale and this is really important I think the move to scale is really something that is absolutely required in order to be successful to address the climate and also the nature problem that we are having is really what we are trying to put in a very large scale product that allows an institution investor in insurance companies to invest large sums in the strategy that really also has the approach to change landscapes and that is really at the heart of our natural capital strategy that we are actually only going into projects if we can quantify that we are leaving the project or the land that we are working with in a better place than we found it but by putting this into an economic or profit seeking strategy we also see that it actually works in that sense that by putting more impact or by focusing more on impact and having allowing for a longer time frame it is really possible also to actually have more sustainable or long term returns and the interesting part of what we are seeing on the investors is really that the ability to have also carbon credits or new opportunities in biodiversity is really something that makes this product interesting and different to what they have invested before and this is really how we try to position it and at the same time we are also focusing on a carbon solution which is really allowing companies that have net zero targets and that would like to acquire carbon credits that they can actually do that now what I wanted to talk about a bit is really to go really beyond carbon because I think that's one of the key issues we are seeing at the moment when we are talking about how ecosystems can be restored or how we actually can talk about natural capital with investors. Carbon returns are very well understood but actually trying to now go to the next step and really finance ecosystem restoration this is obviously still a challenge because and it's been mentioned before from the speakers that one can buy land and can restore it but then what is actually what are the revenue drivers for that in order to do that and we can only in our view at least advance this if we are developing more projects and mechanisms that allow actually to invest in these type projects and seek a return. What I wanted to talk about is maybe an opportunity in a developed country in the UK so we are seeing interesting opportunities in ecosystem restorations related to biodiversity and the one concept we hope will be really promising is the so-called net gain offset mechanism that the UK government is developing which allows to which requires someone who would like to do economic activities such as a project or power plant or a shopping mall on a piece of land where biodiversity is destroyed that actually it has to be ensured that more biodiversity is restored on an adjacent or related site and this really drives a lot of new ideas how actually biodiversity or the increase of biodiversity can be financed because it creates a revenue driver because the companies that want to do this economic activity have to then make sure that the net gain biodiversity activity has been taking place and the potential for these type of projects is restoring wetlands and habitats and biodiversity has a big potential for forest and soil sequestration in the UK in particular there's a big flooding component in there because by actually doing it in the right way it also reduces the rest of flooding and interesting enough many of these projects actually in areas where flooding is a big issue and then said the underlying in order to finance these projects what needs to be done is normally a project developer would buy the land structure and net gain transaction that is linked to a new development and would get paid for that to actually restore or increase the biodiversity on that area and that would then be paid through in a corporate offset arrangement and in the UK has a woodland carbon code where also it's possible to also get some additional carbon credit so it can be a combination out of biodiversity offsets and carbon so from I wanted to present this here because really this is a neat example how and maybe also the recommendation for FAO how actually opportunities can be created in related to biodiversity which is real in our view one of the missing links and and maybe this could be actually transformed into other areas and I think the biggest issue at the moment we are seeing is that even in the UK those projects are relatively small so there has to be some aggregation while aggregation is required and the pricing signals are probably more still on the voluntary on the speculative side so and obviously with more regulation or more pressure that the next more voluntary action is happening would be very welcome but I leave it here maybe this is some food for thought for the discussion thank you very much Martin brilliant presentation your call to actions we need to change the narrative nature is a part of the solution to address climate change it's sharply to the point and we have to a lot of work to go on with that so wow it's been an amazing series of panels very impressive all the presentations but now we will breathe a little bit and have sometime not a lot of time though for discussion we have many many questions in the on the chat the audience is really following closely I would say this is blockbuster almost and with the help of lindall we have tried to organize some of the questions and so we have a few minutes now to do it so I would ask from all those replying to be very brief because time is very short unfortunately so good question for instance to get started for Francisco can you specify a bit Francisco what it means that 40% of forests are preserved do they have an official protection status or is this part of the law to protect some forests on a concession or is this a voluntary commitment if so how long term is the commitment Francisco has a little piece thank you thank you for the question it's a good question well that is a regulatory mandatory protected areas in Brazil to the our forest cold and environmental laws so that this is about 20% of our so on top of that these are voluntary preserved areas and the term will be long because we are not touching that area any longer today in Brazil for cutting native areas in our area of operation requires a huge compensation that's 10 times the area as you cut usually so that area will be there forever ok thank you Francisco now a question posted on the chat to Tomo person says a great presentation but not clear to me what the restoration benefits are in terms of ecosystem services and biodiversity this looks like a classical outgrower scheme like for instance existed many years in South Africa for eucalyptus what is the restoration benefit it's important not to equate afforestation with ecosystem restoration because they are not the same what would be your comments Tomo yeah thank you very much this is actually a very important point that I could not really explain in the short presentation but is exactly right the afforestation that does not directly mean that there's a landscape restoration and the way we approach this approach this issue is several so first we will or planting will be taking place in areas that are not used so typically a bush or maybe it's just abundant land and in semi arid dry lands it's pretty common for farmers not to really make use of all the land that they have and that's where it's not used for production it's not really used for anything and originally those areas are actually forced so if you look at the pictures 50 years ago or 30 years ago those places had much more trees than what it is today so first note is that where we are operating the landscape itself is a result of deforestation already and what we are doing is finding out where things are not happening at all in terms of farming we plant trees that will allow soil recovery especially on the moisture side and we often promote intercropping that also make an interesting agricultural impact and finally promoting sustainable forestry practice in the area is really critical because the alternative for farmers to get firewood or any wood products is now mangroves so as you may know mangroves has much more environmental impact per hectare so in order for us to interfere it's not enough to just plant trees but also really continue to replace the the wrong mortade structure that's happening in the area so that's how we approach this issue of restoration instead of just planting trees and be happy with it Thank you Tomo now a question to Radha how can we further bring more transparency in Southeast Asia forest industries any recent call to action or guidelines for that region the person says I don't know who could answer this question but Radha perhaps could so we might take this on notice and get back to them and this would be the question Radha for you at this moment yeah I mean I guess there has been a history of you know unsustainable native forest logging by some of the large pulp and paper companies in Southeast Asia so I think there has been a big push to buy NGOs in the area in the region to engage with these companies ultimately we think third party certification FSC certification is hugely beneficial to ensuring that we are respecting local communities removing any risk of deforestation having much more a verified and transparent process and so from our perspective that has to be the foundation for operation in Southeast Asia and I think that's ultimately where one of the ways unsustainable practices need to be squashed out so maybe I'll just leave it there in the interest of time but happy to have a further discussion with whoever asks that question thank you Radha now a question for Martin reflecting on your early comments regarding the potential for a working group on the new forest based industries sustainable finance and ecosystem restoration and restoration friendly forest products what are your thoughts any insights about how that might have an impact what sort of impact that would have if we go on your thought regarding a working group on new forest based industries for sustainable finance and ecosystem restoration yeah but look I'm not sure I suggested that but I'm happy to give my thought on this I think generally speaking to have more discussion cooperation would be good I think my recommendation would be if you want to have a task then some of the key industry players should be on the table as well so I think it's really important to have to really allow to have the impact also from the private sector thank you for being brief Martin this is one for Radha and for yourself how do you go about identifying large projects that deliver financial returns and also environmental and social impacts how is the pipeline built that seems to be the real constraint what advice would you have would you guys have I mean we have investment teams we're very local so operating in all the regions where we are investing and so ultimately that's how we are spending time building relationships understanding what the investment opportunities are so we undertake a rigorous due diligence process and understanding the environmental and social risks as well as the opportunities are embedded into our investment program and so we're assessing all of that as we engage in due diligence and ultimately it becomes part of our strategic management going forward but you're certainly right developed versus developing countries there's different issues with finding assets but particularly finding investable assets or where you can manage the risk in places like in Asia or other emerging markets elsewhere is a critical part of the challenge particularly getting institutional investors engaged I would fully agree that obviously the scale is a challenge in general in this type of investments very similar approach to what Bart had just described we're building out-of-point systems we're actually scoring each project an excellent approach to then see how this actually ranks in regard to impact and there's a return composition in that as well and then to really see that we have an ability to increase that score over time so that's very important to have the impact piece obviously the return also has to be right that is a challenge with our first strategy focusing mostly on developed markets so that it's a little bit easier but even there aggregation is necessary the project I showed in the UK when you look at these type of opportunities there there's a lot of aggregation necessary so the way we are working with the approach we're taking is to work with partners that help us aggregating this and really starting small and then finding ways to increase those partnerships to get sizeable investments because that's the key obstacle at the moment for large-scale institution investors that the investments are scalable so far there has to be the impact piece has to be right but there also has to be towards scalability over time but it's probably needs innovation. Thank you Radha and Martin now a question for Tom Tomo, how to scale forest plantation up on drier areas with no forest ecosystem on the basis to have an impact if we consider that this activity competes for scarce water resources in those regions Tomo Yeah, that's another great question on the first civil forestry in rural Kenya or East Africa just to be clear I think what we are trying to do right now is still planting trees in areas that has minimum rainfalls enough to sustain trees so that's a very basic so we cannot plant trees in desert because it's just very hard and in those areas we should not use the water as the questionary address for planting trees they should use it for livelihoods so that being said the areas that we have been approaching at the very beginning was actually one of the driest areas in the country already in Kenya where droughts are pretty frequent and the rainfalls are minimum so as a result we are already forced to plant in areas that are kind of at the boundary of areas we should plant trees or not plant trees at all and the biggest learning from us is from our side of the past decade is actually utilize everything you have access to so for example we plant over a million trees but across three to four weeks period so it's a very big operations and it's really hard but the reason why we're doing it and not constantly enrolling farmers is because we are hitting operation with the rain season so we have one month of rain season in April or May and that's the time we plant trees so that we can maximize the rainfalls as a source of water when the seedlings needs most water to sit around and we also use other techniques for example growing seedlings to certain size before we plant trees is also one of the very important ways to increase the resilience of seedlings before being grounded so that the minimum water is needed after planting so there are several layers of these small hacks or techniques that are pretty common practice in forestry but must be really carefully integrated into the operations so that we can minimize the use of water and adapt to the most severe environment for trees thank you so much Tomo we are very much at the end of our time for this moment of Q&A and discussion we have many other questions I will ask our friends at the ACF team to organize them and send them over to all of our panelists so they can later on reply directly to those interested so continuing our program I would now invite Mr. Christoph Bezassier who is the forestry officer forest and landscape restoration mechanism at FAO Christoph is a forestry officer and currently coordinating the forest and landscape restoration mechanism FLRM at FAO where he is providing technical assistance in implementing restoration projects in more than 20 countries he mobilized resources to scale up restoration reaching a 40 million US dollar portfolio with multiple key financial partners he's involved in major international restoration initiatives such as the Bond Challenge the GPLFR GPFLR and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration from 2009 to 2014 he was in charge of Sylvain Mediterranean and from 2000 to 2009 he worked as regional advisor for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Sahel and the Congo Basin regions Christoph you have the floor Thank you very much Can you hear me Can you hear me? Yes Christoph Okay So briefly I have been asked to provide a brief update and to try to link what was presented by the panelists with several initiatives in the context of the UN Decade in particular activities done and led by FAO in the context of two task forces Can you see my screen or not? Yes we can Perfect So I will present to you briefly the activity of the two task forces one is on monitoring and one is on good practices and I think that based on what was presented today we have potential synergy to develop with the activity of those task forces Can you For the task force on monitoring I am talking on behalf of my colleague Julian Fox who is leading this task force The priority of this monitoring task force is to establish the framework for ecosystem restoration monitoring is a firm is to propose technical solutions with training material for monitoring several indicators both biophysical and of course also socioeconomic indicators and to prepare country pilots and K-studies on monitoring to disseminate geospatial data and building on the existing platforms Can you put your presentation on mode? We cannot see it it's only the first slide Okay, sorry for that I have to check this Is it better now? Yes, we see it at least Then this Sorry because I cannot see that This task force will launch the framework for the launch of the UN Decade to be held on early June 2021 and the firm geospatial platform will be presented as a beta version and there is some workshop to be organized next week on technology and innovation for restoration monitoring There is a strong interest from my perspective to have the private sector engage in this monitoring task force assuming that it seems that you have a lot of interesting data, particularly socioeconomic data on cost and benefits of ecosystem restoration in the initiatives you are leading and it could be very useful to have you on board and to use the tools proposed and to test the tools proposed in the context of your project We have also a task force on best practices led by our team with a lot of organizations and in this context we are mainly working on several outputs with some activities that are ongoing the launch of the global survey on capacity for restoration I really think that the committee and its re-committee on sustainable forest industry its multiple members could be an interesting target audience for this survey we would like to have you on board and to have your answer to analyze the needs of the capacity development needs particularly from your perspective as private partners we are also working on the principle for ecosystem restoration we are preparing a document on key principle and criteria that will allow us to define and qualify more what is really ecosystem restoration and how to qualify a good practice I think it's important based on the discussion we had just before my presentation it seems that we have some activities that are some classic plantation afforestation activities what can be we'll make a difference and how to qualify ecosystem restoration how to consider the environmental benefits in the project the private sector is implementing it could be very useful for you maybe to use and be on board of this activity and this task force to apply the principles and criteria we will promote in the context of the decade and finally one activity that is ongoing in our task force is the collection of good practices and of course based on the multiple example you have in the advisory committee on sustainable food industry forestry industry and based on the field actions you have it could be very useful for us to have a commitment and an engagement of the private sector in the provision of good practices in the context of this year and decade again I would like to push you as a partner members of the advisory committee on sustainable forest industry to take the survey we have developed in the context of the task force on best practices to allow us to have a better understanding on the capacity needs from the private sectors and from your partners in the different countries where you are working and thank you for your attention thank you Christoph very clarifying presentation very important alerts can you hear me yes yes and so thank you so much so in order to save up time let's move on swiftly to our next and final speaker Mr. Tim Christopherson is the head of nature for climate branch at the UNEP UNEP and he is an experienced leader in transformational change agent for sustainable development with a demonstrated history of working in international policy arena public private partnership fundraising and team building strong vision and technical base in natural resources management biodiversity land restoration and climate change chair of a global partnership of 30 plus leading organizations including World Bank UN governments and private sector Tim you have the floor please thank you very much and also thank you to FAO for organizing the seminar and for inviting me together with Mette, Wilkie and Eduardo Mansour the focal point in UNEP for the UN decade on ecosystem restoration which is co-led by our two agencies it was very interesting to listen to all the presenters and reflect on what we heard and how the forest industry can contribute to the goals of the UN decade on ecosystem restoration which are the same goals as the Rio conventions and the SDGs we first of all should be very clear about the fact that ecosystem restoration is not necessarily the same as business as usual forestry or forestation in fact as we all know forestry can lead to further degradation as can forestation of lands in particular if they are grasslands areas of natural habitat so it is important that we ask ourselves and I heard a few things about that on this webinar what is the additionality of coming into this field with new investments and here it's good to know building on what Christoph said with the best practices task force that there is work on going to clarify that in norm and a threshold for the key performance indicators but also for the environmental and social safeguards and for the monitoring of the benefits of forest activities for restoration there is the task force of nature-related financial disclosure that Martin mentioned there is the EU taxonomy of what constitutes a green investment which will influence the money flowing into this field so more of a what I would call soft work for example at UNEP we are working on a number of key performance indicators for a new restoration seat capital facility that can incentivize the establishment of new private sector investment funds in forest and landscape restoration we are also aiming to bring down monitoring costs again which will be relevant to probably all the speakers and future investors in this space because with more strict KPIs and a clear need to demonstrate social and environmental benefits of investments comes a requirement of monitoring and the related cost so bringing down those costs by employing new technology standardizing what we need to monitor is also a key challenge for the sector the third point I took with me was the importance of creating win-wins and here I would like to mention one thing that I didn't hear on the seminar but that will hopefully become an area of investment and that is investing in the diversity of commercially used tree species both in agroforestry and in timber because at the moment as you're all aware the global timber market is dominated by quite by very few species especially at the high end of the spectrum and there are many more species where with some research and development a commercial market could be developed and that would take pressure away from some of the few remaining pockets of high value timber species so looking into biodiversity for commercial plantations is one thing that I didn't hear but maybe also a future area of investment one area that did come up especially in the two presentations about the investing landscape is the importance to bridge the link between forestry and food production so that we come out of this dichotomy of seeing them as contradictions and move to a possible option where forests are seen as a positive contribution to the environmental capacity of a landscape to produce food or in some cases even increase food production through agroforestry through nitrogen fixing trees and other techniques that work mostly in the tropics but also in other areas what I want to stress having heard from the speakers is that this field is attracting a lot of attention and we've heard some of that on this call but there's a lot more coming in the next months and years new investment funds resurging carbon markets a lot of interest in ecosystem services as a marketplace so we are seeing the emergence of a multi-billion dollar annual market for investments in nature and forests will be a main player of those investments what we don't see yet though is the army of ecopreneurs that we need to actually design and structure projects and projects that are not only small scale but that can be brought to large scale so we need to invest collectively also with public funds in the project pipeline and the creation of larger scale restoration projects and again the restoration seed capital facility we launched a few months ago can help but there are other public funds that can support this kind of project development finally as we move towards the public launch of the UN Decade on the 5th of June 2021 together with World Environment Day I encourage all of you on this webinar and all the speakers and panelists to start to see the activities that you are doing that are additional to business as usual in the context of the UN Decade and join the growing movement under generation restoration for participation at this moment restricted to the for non-commercial use but we are working on a private sector engagement strategy the last point I would like to make is that with COP26 in the UK coming up and the negotiations on article 6 and the carbon market there is also a good opportunity to send a clear market signal for a stable carbon market as one possible option for revenue streams in the overall diversified portfolio of incomes from forestry investments and we are going to launch there a green gigaton challenge to scale up forest based carbon to one gigaton per year by 2025 so this again is an opportunity coming up but the forest sector and the forest based industry need to be ready not only to deliver on those opportunities but to also clearly see that this is not business as usual what we are looking for is clearly additional benefits in terms of biodiversity of social benefits of ecosystem services from the forest that are managed or the forest landscapes that are restored with that back over to you and thank you once again to FAO for organizing this very timely webinar thank you Tim very important remarks closing a two hour marathon of very interesting and provoking presentations and discussions we would need many more hours to continue and deepen some aspects of this discussion but some of the points you raised are quite I like this expression of eco-preneurs this is what we need the the strength to be innovative to be creative to think out of the box this is very important and to consider that we need to pay attention to this connection or to this cross-dilemma between food production and forestry you are absolutely right and we have our hands full of challenges in the years to come as we face this terrible pandemic this unprecedented crisis in all aspects a dramatic turn of events that has somehow lots to do with climate change in many ways more ways than we can perhaps think of today so it is my honor to close this webinar and to thank I'm sure Svan and Lindo will recognize we did an effort to keep tab of the time here we about closing at the right moment and thank so much the ACSFI for arranging it for inviting such a wonderful lineup of speakers and let's hope this is just the beginning of many other opportunities for us to discuss and to debate and to study and to network on such an important such important agenda as we can see the private sector all over the world and the society in general have lots to contribute to this discussion, to these actions and to the way we move forward with our planet in these turbulent times of challenges but also of huge opportunities so keeping sharply the time allotted to us I thank you all and look forward to keeping this conversation going on the presentations will be shared to everybody and will be posted at the ACSFI web page and the questions that were not answered to will also be addressed in due time by our friends and presenters so thank you so much, have a great day from Brazil, goodbye to all of you thank you bye bye bye bye