MAKE PEACE WITH NATURE.

A post script for World Economic Forum - Davos 2024.

I have spent the past week in Davos, Switzerland, a breathtakingly beautiful place set more than 1500 meters above sea level in the eastern part of the country. The air is pure, its energy embraces you, and the vistas feed the soul.

Since 1971, Davos has also been home to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Davos represents more than just a meeting place; it is a strategic battleground for ideas, power, and influence. The true power doesn't always manifest on the main stage but rather in more secluded settings: private dinners, casual sideline discussions, and spontaneous meet-ups. In these informal environments, deals are struck, agendas formed, and the groundwork for future business models and policies laid. The distinction between the main conference, or 'white zone,' and the rest of the gatherings in the valley is stark. Particularly this year, where inside, the (reported) focus seemed to be on how to use, control (or abuse) the power of AI, global security, trade, and war, while outside the talk was all about creating an economy in service of humanity and the natural world that sustains it.

Needless to say, my time was spent on the latter. My expectation was to listen, learn, contribute to the conversation, deepen my connections with people I would like to collaborate with, and meet new ones. This year, the energy for collaborative action for Nature was extraordinary.

The ideas were plentiful and pointing in one direction: to save, restore, and regenerate nature, we need to value it. Nature as an asset class, perhaps given the status of a currency like the 'HECTARE' of land or ocean, one that appreciates when enriched and depreciates when depleted. This could finance changes in agricultural practices, restoration, and conservation of biomes like reefs, coastal seas, mangroves, grasslands, and rainforests. Are we now seeing the creation of 'NATURE CAPITAL'? It would certainly mean a rebalancing of the world economic order, perhaps even the death of the extractive, western-dominated neo-colonialist reality of the world.

In fact, sustainable practices in food and land use systems could potentially create over 120 million new jobs and generate $4.5 trillion in new business opportunities by 2030. Additionally, the careful management and restoration of natural ecosystems can offer extensive economic benefits, especially for low-income countries where natural capital constitutes a large portion of wealth. It would enrich many of the poorest countries in the world, like Gabon, Papua New Guinea, and the DRC, which are home to some of the Earth's biodiversity hotspots. It could furthermore finally halt the destruction of the rainforests, in particular the Amazon, the Congo forests, and the Southeast Asian rainforests.

The need for value chain collaboration, innovation, and new financial models is key for this to happen. At Goals House Gail Gallie and Arlo Brady organised some fantastic gatherings, as did André Hoffmann at the SDG Tent.

Companies like The Landbanking Group , headed up by Dr. Sonja Stuchtey and Prof. Dr. Martin R. Stuchtey and Cultivo are building the infrastructure and models to realize this. In fact, we are a collective of organizations, including Savory Institute and Regenerate Asset Management , consultancies, farmers, banks, VC and PE Funds, family offices, brands, technology companies, and private foundations, together able to lift the task. What is needed is a coordinated effort to shift the initial capital and the implementation power. Hopefully, then, the market and last policy incentives will follow.

At the same time, we need to radically change the practices of the existing operating models and the companies behind them, particularly in agriculture. As an example, Yara International , the world's largest fertilizer company, and its backer, Norway, are showing courage and had us all in one room for a workshop dinner to help their initiative Varda - Foundation , gathering open source data needed to power the agricultural transformation. Represented at the dinner were all stakeholders, including regenerative farmers, technology providers, NGOs, commodity giants, CPG companies, finance, and governments. Interestingly, I found common interests in a session organized by the Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, where desertification and the expertise to tackle it is taken seriously. We heard from HE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Arabia Adel Al Jubeir just how committed the Kingdom, one of the world's top oil producers, is to decarbonizing and to facilitate and forge new nature-positive models for the common good. It's easy to point fingers at the oil producers, less easy to admit our own addiction to the petrol economy - something which I feel is necessary to help all nations find a pathway to a nature-positive and more empathic economy, one in which, as Susana Mohammad so eloquently put it, we "MAKE PEACE WITH NATURE.

A shout out to a few of the people who deeply inspired me this past week:

Eva Gladek , Gail Gallie , Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim , Sandrine Dixson-Declève , Svein Tore Holsether Meghan Sapp Eva Zabey Mills Prud'homme Patrick Holden (always), André Hoffmann Patrick Odier Puwe Puyanawa, Paul Polman , Naveed Tariq Jane Madgwick Xenia zu Hohenlohe Sam Kass HE Adel Al Jubeir, Susana Mohammad, Al Gore, Kirsten Dunlop Amber Nuttall Stephanie von Meiss Soren Stig Rasmus N?rgaard Arnold Puech d'Alissac Ralph Chami Dinah Nieburg Anastasiya Kulygin Marina Feffer Valentina Kristensen Gottfried Pessl

The Klosters Forum Regenerate Asset Management Regeneration.VC Savory Institute The Landbanking Group Project17 BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt The Club of Rome Metabolic Climate KIC 普华永道 TIME CO2 The Nature Conservancy Conservation International Seagrass Lombard Odier Group Global Commons Alliance Ethic betterSoil for a better world Sustainable Markets Initiative Business for Nature Federated Hermes Sustainable Food Trust The Klosters Forum Mubadala GIC Oliver Wyman ?????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ??????? ?????? 百事 World Farmers' Organisation Generation Pledge METOS by Pessl Instruments