A solution for biodiversity

Willie Smits has a solution to regenerate biodiversity at scale in the places where it is most damaged. But there's a catch, and he needs help. Please follow me to Sulawesi in Indonesia, as I tell you the story of a man who started restoring half a million hectares of damaged land.

One of my common threads while meeting social entrepreneurs in the last few years was assessing potential solutions for nature preservation. Is there a revenue stream that could empower local populations to become biodiversity guardians? Or will we have to rely on philanthropy and public subsidies? I’ve been meeting some of the most established conservation organisations in Latin America, and remained curious about solutions that can scale beyond ecotourism and handicraft. Until I met Willie.?

Willie is a microbiologist, with a PHD in tropical forestry. He started by studying the symbiosis between mushrooms and the roots of giant trees in the rainforest. His life changed when a smuggled Orangutan looked him in the eyes from a cage in a market in Borneo.? He took the animal with him, was given another sick orangutan to look after, and created the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation to rehabilitate primates and return them to a safe place in the wild. But we were in 2001, and Borneo had just suffered from the most severe episode of deforestation in its history, losing 56% of tree cover in just 15 years. As a result, orangutans were craving for space. Willie was a microbiologist, he knew a few things about ecosystems, and started replanting rainforests.?

I have seen his work in Sulawesi. He is rewilding an area of grassland, which used to be primary rainforest, and is now covered with a single species called Pogon grass. This grass can survive fire, and will be the only one left after a few years of slash-and-burn agriculture. It is incredibly dense, to the extent that nothing else can compete, and you can't even see the soil between its leaves. Green hills sinking into the sea and feeding the beautiful coral reefs of Temboan Beach shouldn’t fool you: this landscape is sick. Leaves are razors, you can’t touch them without bleeding. Willie is using balsa trees, Gliricidia, Calliandra, or other species (depending on soils), in combination with lemongrass, to combat the Pogon grass and regenerate soils. This is step 1. After 3 to 5 years, the soil is ready, it is time to gradually replace the first generation of trees, and re-plant a larger diversity of species: endemic rainforest trees, fruit, nuts - 150 species overall.

Within these 150 species, sugar palms have a special role. They provide nutrients, energy, and revenue to local populations. If you cut and daily slice the male flower stem of this multipurpose palm, the tree starts producing a sugary juice, 19 litres per day on average in this location, which can be transformed into sugar or ethanol. This syrup yields an exceptionally tasty sugar that is diabetic-friendly. It encloses a fibre called inulin, which helps digestion and mineral absorption, includes more potassium and antioxidants than other sugars, and has anti-inflammatory properties. Some say switching from cane to palm sugar can extend your life by several years. Anecdotally, my 14 years old daughter is intolerant to fodmaps (look it up, it is more common than you think), and palm sugar as a replacement for cane or beet root sugar is reducing her belly pains. But sugar palm is also a productive source of bioethanol. From an external audit published in World Agroforestry, 10,000 ha produce 3,435 litres of ethanol, which is 209 € / month for 6,285 tappers, with just 7 productive palm trees per hectare, leaving ample room for biodiversity. 209€ per month doesn't look so high, but matches the median salary in Indonesia, with only 4 hours of work per day, and without any damage to the environment - no fertiliser, no pesticide, added water, CO2 emission, only environmental benefits. Maybe you’ve read about magic tricks before, and you’re suspecting another monoculture dead-end. Your scepticism would be well placed. But sugar palm is the opposite of palm oil: they only thrive within a diverse ecosystem. Their deep roots stabilise the soil and draw nutrients at a level that doesn’t compete with other flora, and making it a monoculture would be counterproductive.?

A few years ago, McKinsey, financed by the Norwegian government, came up to test and validate the key economic assumptions behind Willie's concept, which they called "Rebuild". They sent a team of 6 people, who spent 6 weeks on the field, reviewed the data, and interviewed industry experts to validate the science, as well as the economic feasibility. Their conclusion was quite simple : the rebuild concept can provide revenue for locals, profits for investors, while regenerating the planet. "Roll-out in pilot sites could lead to more than 60,000 jobs, the protection of 50,000 ha of primary forest, the restoration of an additional 16,000 ha in wildlife corridors, ~5 Mt/year in CO2 emission reduction mainly through the replacement of gasoline by ethanol.? (...) The project has overall a NPV close to $800 million at 15% discount rate, which makes a case for attracting external investors" Another section of the McKinsey report is evaluating the potential to 10 million ha in Indonesia only, within 15-20 years, which would reduce man made emissions of CO2 by 1.5% globally.?

So what's the catch? Willie is detail oriented, with an extraordinary capability to build interconnected systems. His team of 80 owned the trust of local populations and officials. But he needs a General Manager, and his whole team need help, so they can leverage best practices from larger organisations and focus on science. The “Rebuild” plan would require training 30,000 tappers, building hundreds of cooperatives, finding industrial customers, stabilising supply chains, and creating a blueprint anyone can replicate. This requires a few skills. If you know of someone experienced enough, and bold enough - individual or organisation - to compliment the skills his current organisation already has, please reach out. A good profile will include operational and funding skills, people management experience, and an appetite to build mechanisms. I forgot: you might have to relocate to one of the most beautiful locations on the planet. If you have suggestions that can help Willie's team, please reach out to him directly - you can go through me as well. Millions of hectares of ruined land in Indonesia need his solution, and Indonesia is just the beginning.

Willie Smits is a 2009 Ashoka fellow