Job title: Director, Climate Adapt Limited and Chairman, Plant Your Future
What does your job role involve?
I started my career working at The Nature Conservancy in the US, which is the largest environmental non-profit organisation in the world. My career has been very varied and I’ve been fortunate to work on all sides of sustainability, from setting up Plant Your Future (www.plantyourfuture.org.uk) which works at grassroots level with small holders in Peru, to working for the World Bank as a carbon finance specialist on their jurisdictional programmes, as well as within Shell and BP within their carbon trading teams.
My specialism is carbon finance in forests and land-based systems. This involves getting certified carbon credits which can help provide an incentive to keep standing forest in place or to reforest because a value is being put on the forest itself. By doing this it can help reverse trends because clearly people deforest to get an income from the timber or to clear land to make space for agriculture. I mainly work in the tropics because that’s where the rainforest is and where you get most the highest amount of carbon stored in the biomass. In the UK the remaining forest is largely protected in national parks and other conservation areas, whereas in the Amazon, there’s large areas at risk and containing large amounts of carbon stored in them.
I’ve seen first-hand how backbreaking it is for Amazonians to have a slash and burn agriculture culture; it locks them in poverty and is a vicious cycle of degradation that just gets worse over time. And this is obviously a huge loss for the global climate because clearing those areas which have got the highest carbon stored in them of anywhere in the world, is terrible. I am working hard to reverse this by replanting the Amazon rainforest.
Where does your interest in sustainability come from?
I’ve always loved geography and its interdisciplinary element of bringing people and natural resources together with economics. I did my master’s degree at Brown University in America and spent time living in Iquitos – a huge city in the Peruvian Amazon – researching the potential for smallholders with degraded farmlands to access carbon finances through reforestation activities. This experience changed my life. I got to know the poverty-stricken, smallholder farmers who owned the deforested land surrounding Iquitos. Rapid population increase, combined with limited employment opportunities meant these farmers had no other way to survive than to cut down the rainforest, grow crops and feed themselves and their families — literally subsisting. But once the rainforest was gone, so was the source of nutrients required to grow arable crops. Without the canopy cover provided by the trees, these soils are washed away by heavy rains common in the jungle. So, they move on to clear the next hectare and it is just one pointless vicious cycle.
We know that it is important to protect the rainforest but there’s very little attention put on it. The Amazon has the highest biodiversity per hectare on the planet, and it’s currently just being cleared for this subsistence agriculture, which is locking the farmers in to poverty.
This led to me basing my whole career on putting a value on the rainforest and carbon trading. Since my initial research at Brown University, the carbon price has gone up significantly and there’s a lot of interest in it now.
The absolute driver of this for me has been trying to help small holders and local rural communities and this is how Plant Your Future was born. Plant Your Future works with smallholders on their existing deforested land and we teach reforestation and regenerative agriculture; it’s about bringing back the areas that have already been lost. We have developed a germination programme for native Amazonian tree species, including several rare and endangered species such as mahogany.
Our model combines agriculture with forestry. We plant a mixture of timber trees with fruit trees, which provide an income from orchard crops such as cocoa or lime. And in the early years, farmers can also grow short term crops such as banana, chilli peppers or peanuts in the lines between the trees where there is still light coming in. We plant more trees than you need because that’s standard practise in forestry reforestation, so they all grow up and they compete for the light. Once the canopy closes and then the farmer can start a thinning process and this timber can be used for fuel, construction, or can provide a short-term income from the thinning as it can be sold for posts and fencing. The model we have developed is therefore multiple revenue generating. The farmers are then bringing in a very diverse income stream which is critical to transform families and rural communities who have been living in poverty.
I feel a real sense of purpose in what I do, and I am pleased with the growth that we’ve seen in Plant Your Future in recent years. We’re helping more families. We are giving them hope and an education on sustainable agriculture; giving them the tools and knowledge to make a living in a sustainable way is very valuable.
Why do you think Malvern College’s Green giving Day is so important?
It must be top of the agenda so it’s great that Malvern is giving it the spotlight it deserves. It is appropriate that the College takes its share of responsibility for making sure its footprint is sustainable and carries this through its teaching model too. Being a role model to young people is key for the future, so if Malvern is looking at its buildings and campus, this is a valuable lesson. It’s not necessarily just teaching sustainability in a classroom, it is taking action. Malvernians will go on to have a lot of leadership positions and influence, so it is essential they are learning these core values on the importance of sustainability.
I realise my job is all about sustainability and the planet and many Malvernians will go into banking or law or business but what should be the result of a Malvern education is that they’re more conscious of the way money is being invested etc. so these things will all be considered alongside the bottom line.
Because of my education and because of my experiences and I’m now in the position where I can do something to make a difference.