welcome to the westminster town hall forum where for thirty two years we have invited voices of conscience to explore the key issues of our day from an ethical perspective learn more about the forum online at westminster forum dot org you can like us on facebook and follow us on twitter as well my name is jim hart anderson i'm the senior minister at westminster presbyterian church located on nicollet mall in beautiful downtown minneapolis and i'm the moderator of the forum it's my pleasure to introduce today's guest speaker marked or sick as president and c e o of the nature conservancy the world's leading conservation organization committed to quote conserving critical lands restoring the world's oceans securing fresh water and reducing the impact of climate change quote before joining the nature conservancy marked or sick was a managing director at goldman sachs heading the firm's environmental strategy group and center for environmental markets which promoted market based solutions to environmental challenges he serves on numerous boards and councils including resources for the future but nicholas institute for environmental policy solutions and the commission on climate and tropical forests a graduate of williams college and harvard university he's the author of the new book nature's fortune how business and society thrive by investing in nature in his presentation today why saving nature is the smartest investment we can make he will argue that viewing nature as our green infrastructure allows for breakthroughs not only in conservation but in economic progress ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming to the westminster tunnel forum mark  thank you very much jim for that nice introduction and thank you everyone for being here it's an honor to be your speaker today in this especially beautiful setting i'm here to talk about my my new book and i opened the book with a reflection on my background when i was appointed c e o of the nature conservancy of course i was very excited but a lot of people including my colleagues at the nature conservancy seem to think my background as an investment banker from wall street was a strange background to bring to the world of nature conservation and to be honest when i got started i began to wonder myself i remember one episode in particular and i open the book with this i was at a fancy reception in washington it's the early days in the job for me and it was a who's who really the environmental movement people from capitol hill where there prominent people environmental organization leaders were all there important funders were there and i really was feeling like i asked my background was a little bit at odds with the background everyone else brought to this occasion and i was feeling a little bit nervous and then one individual in particular caught my attention an elderly gentleman fit and settled it in his ninety's and he just kind of had an aura about him of authority and expertise and respect and it dawned on me it must have been russell train now you may not all know who russell train is but russell trade was a giant in our field and mr train passed away about one year ago but mr train was the first chairman of the president's council on environmental quality he was the second it minister of the environmental protection agency he was a founder of the world the world wildlife fund he was a giant in our field so i thought i better go over in order introduce myself so i went over said hello and when he understood who i was and what my background was he took a look at may and he said rather gruffly but not unkindly how the hell did you get from wall street to leading t n c i kind of good answer to be honest at the time i just wasn't very fast on my feet but that's what i address in the book and that's what i want to talk about with you a little bit today because in fact i think the environmental movement can benefit from folks with different backgrounds and different perspective and different approaches going forward and that's what i'd like to talk to you about now i come to this speech today and i come to my job at the nature conservancy rather humbly with regard to the environmental movement i promise you i couldn't have more respect for the great environmental organizations that are so important to our life today and i have great respect for the great champions of these organizations take the nature conservancy for example but just one example the nature conservancy you know it's extraordinary it now has more than sixty years of experience it has four thousand people on its team we operate in every state in the u s and an additional thirty five countries we have real global reach we have financial we have a million members we have extraordinarily passionate and generous supporters and volunteer leaders and we're just one of many great environmental organizations you could talk about a lot of our peer organizations in the same very respectful way great organizations with great histories well led and championed by wonderful generous supporters but it t n c we like to think of ourselves as a science based organization and being a science based organization means really looking very ruthlessly at the facts and the facts tell us that as a movement not withstanding all the good work we're doing the environmental movement has some room for improvement we're not fully getting the job done for example imagine you had my job you lead t n c what do you think the kinds of things you'd be concerned about would be mean there'd be some things that you would like to see more of healthy forests robust fisheries healthy coral reefs biodiversity itself i could go on and on what we measure we measure these matters and sadly they're all in decline or if you had my job you might be focused on things we'd like to have of one would be greenhouse gas emissions which we now know causes dangerous climate change well not withstanding the effort of so many great organizations we're one of them we're not really getting the job done there either we have emissions record new levels of greenhouse gas emissions every year and by the way when we look ahead it's not going to get any easier if you all know that the global population will likely grow from about today's seven billion to something like nine billion people more significantly more significantly from an environmental perspective the world's middle class is growing the middle class will grow by several billion people over the next decade now or next decades i happen to think that's a very good thing the emergence of a bigger middle class that means people are being lifted out of poverty that means they'll have better life for their families better housing situations better health care better nutrition more access to energy and electricity these are good things but as this middle bigger middle class emerges that consumption is going to translate to demand for food energy space and water and a lot of infrastructure is going to go with that and that's going to be a threat to the objectives of the nature conservancy and if that's not enough on top of all that we have to throw climate change into the mix again we're science based organization climates already changing it's going to exacerbate the environmental challenges we face so somehow in my view  environmental movement has to take its game up to another level that's what we want to do with the nature conservancy i think that's my job and you know there's a lot there's room for lots of opinions about how best to do this but one of the concerns i have is sometimes as environmentalist we make mistakes environmental movement is is staffed by and supported by people who love nature i love nature i think i owe my kids and god willing if i have them granted some days i  owe them the natural world as robust and as healthy as the one we've enjoyed but when we talk about nature as something that we love we talk about nature on a kind of isn't nature wonderful basis i think we sometimes turn off big segments of society we make nature almost sound like a luxury good something to invest in when you've taken care of everything else something for wealthy people or wealthy societies to care about in fact though i think that's fundamentally wrong i think economic progress human well being depends vitally nature in fact it's poor people who most depend on nature and so rather than talk about nature exclusively as it isn't nature wonderful i think we need to talk sometimes more about isn't nature valuable and that's the argument i make in my book i think we should think about nature as capital natural capitals a phrase we use or as green infrastructure so you're all familiar with manmade infrastructure well i think we should view nature as green infrastructure why because i think this approach will do at least three things for the environmental movement one it will allow us to broaden support for protecting nature  support for the environmental movement we need more people on our side second it will lead to more financial resources for the environmental movement protecting nature gets very expensive heretofore environmental organizations like the nature conservancy have mostly relied on philanthropy god bless our generous supporters but we need resources beyond beyond their capacity and i'll argue that a natural capital approach can provide us more financial resources and finally and maybe most importantly and i'm only beginning to fully understand this now five years into the job talking about nature and this kind of basis changes the dialogue between environmentalists and the rest of society sometimes we environmentalists make the mistake of kind of lecturing people hectoring them even telling them you should do this you should do that people don't always want to hear that from us but on the basis of natural capital i think will shift into a mode of problem solving of collaboratively figuring out how to make progress and get important things done but rather than wax on and on let me give you a couple of concrete examples so i want to give you three quick examples the first one takes place in quito ecuador the capital city of ecuador if you should ever visit the galapagos you probably fly into quito it's a booming city it's a city that's concerned about how it will secure enough clean water for the citizens of quito so a few years ago the municipal water company of quito was contemplating investing more in plant in equipment to clean water so they could be sure the citizens and businesses of quito would have ample access to clean water the local nature conservancy team showed up and made a very i think important and smart argument my colleagues argued to the water company there is a cheaper way a less expensive way to secure the clean water you need they did not make an environmental argument they said you can save money the following way instead of building plant macwhich meant to clean water that has become dirty instead invest in upstream conservation of the watershed and in that way for a lower cost you can keep that beautiful water clean and pure and safe for drinking so the water company said we'll give that a try and so for almost an embarrassingly small amount of money t n c coughed up some money the water company provided some money we went upstream to change some ranching and farming practices the intervention was very simple it actually was in the farmers and ranchers best interest that we help them keep their cattle away from the river we put plannings along the river side to keep  soil and dirt from falling into the river sedimentation and we improved ditching so fertiliser didn't inadvertently run into the river these kinds of interventions the nature conservancy knows how to do that and it worked so then we recruited the coca cola franchise or in the beer company to join forces and then ultimately the rules were changed so that every user of water in quito paid a small fee for upstream conservation now they would have paid a higher fee if the plant and equipment had been built because that would have been more expensive but instead they're paying a fee for upstream conservation by the way the watershed upstream it's the condo or bio reserve of ecuador we would have wanted to protect it just for conservation say for a we love nature perspective but this time instead we were investing in that watershed because that was the infrastructure that kept water clean so we brought it was around this time that i showed up at the nature conservancy again i have a financial background the economy was we we had the financial crisis i was concerned about where will the nature conservancy raise all the money it needs and i learned about this project and i said well this is almost too good to be true number one it's conservation that pays for itself a small amount of philanthropic capital up front of got the flywheel turning and if we don't mess this up this conservation program ought to continue in perpetuity users of water paying to protect nature in order to secure clean water to getting a whole bunch of co benefits that come from and protecting nature that's the first breakthrough or second breakthrough it's kind of an aha moment for for the citizens of quito remember i started my premise is we need more people on the side of environmentalists when all the citizens of quito everyone business and individuals paying for water came to understand that this was a lower cost practical way to secure their clean water third it changed our dialogue noticed the environment the t n c in this case we didn't show up and criticize anyone we didn't show up and find fault with their practices we didn't criticize anyone's ideas ideology rather we rolled up our sleeves and said let's solve the problem in a practical cost effective way really change the dynamic between the environmental community and everybody else in quito and then finally we said if this is such a good idea we ought to be able to replicate it right and so we raised a little bit more money from the coca cola bottling company that covers latin america and from the inner american development bank and from t n c we raised a rather small amount of money and that's leaving we'll soon have twenty five of these water funds across latin america each a variation of the same thing downstream users of water paying to protect nature to secure clean water for example in another instance it's a group of colombian sugar cane growers i've met these sugar cane growers they're nobody's idea of tree huggers or environmentalists they would not have received well a lecture by me about how they shouldn't change their environmental practices they were to laugh this out of the room but they were interested in securing the clean water vein they needed at the lowest cost so they the water funds are rather small but now we're taking it we're going to take it to a bigger scale the booming city of brazil depends on the atlantic forest for its water the atlantic  forest was once one of the hemispheres great forests sadly degraded we're now are arguing to the water authority and sol pollo if we just shift some of the money they already invest in plant macwhich to secure the clean water they'll need for their booming population if we just shift some of that to protecting the watershed they'll save money and we'll have an opportunity to restore this great ecosystem that's what i mean about natural capital a new way to talk to people a new way to broaden support for conservation a new way to raise funds to take our work to scale but you might say well fine that's a nice latin american example what about something closer to home here's my second example now i'm going to go back in time not so long to two thousand and eight were in the grips of the financial crisis you'll remember president obama executed the stimulus plan that was first planned by president bush's administration you remember the administration was looking for shovel ready jobs that's the phrase they use  demonstrate very very fully very persuasively with all the analytics and evidence you need is that for one million dollars we can build a one mile of oyster if now the gulf needs seawalls to reduce erosion and to provide protection against storms there's nobody disputes that the gulf need seawalls what we were able to demonstrate is you can build a sea wall to a simply put you can build an old fashioned manmade sea wall it cost about the same amount of money a million dollars for a mile or you can build an oyster is seawall now let's compare them the man made seawall gets the job done but like all manmade gray infrastructure it depreciates over time it's not anybody's fault that's just the nature of man made things now take my oyster if my oyster reef will at least hold its value it might even appreciate over time so it has an economic advantage right off the bat but of course the oyster reefs just doesn't provide protection from storms oyster if it brings back wasters oysters are prized by the gulf communities for all the economic benefits that the oyster business provides plus oysters clean water plus oyster shells ultimately crumble and those shells are washed into the shore and they nourish the beach plus those oyster reefs provide habitat for birds and fish another boom to the local economy and you might say well that's an interesting anecdotal example but now now fast forward to today one of the great environmental wins last year was passage of the restore act the nature conservancy is very proud of its role but again we did this in concert with all the important u s based environmental organizations we argued to the congress fines should largely be reinvested those monies should be reinvested in restoring the gulf ecosystem and we prevailed that's where the money's going to go and now is the government officials think about where that money will be invested and they think about the need for protection for against storms and beach erosion we've got great evidence that you can invest in oyster reefs not manmade sea walls and get this win win win outcome that's what i mean about natural capital and then one final example and this is close to home in very recent hurricane sandy you know an environmentalist like me i should be very careful i don't want to be glib about saying there's a silver lining sometimes in this bad news or hurricane sandy was devastating i'm a new yorker it was it was very very difficult and continues to be difficult for new york communities especially coastal communities but it did wake people up it did get at least the attention of new yorkers and new yorkers attention can go a long way but what's very interesting about hurricane sandy is there's a coastal community some of you may know it in new jersey called cape may it's a somewhat well to do coastal community beautiful victorian homes quite close to the shore so the residents of cape may were already concerned pre standard about risk from storms and sea level rise and so together with the nature conservancy we restored some dunes and some wetlands in cape may the idea was to protect against storms and floods now we weren't thinking so much of a hurricane sandy level storm but that's what came and guess what happened the community of of cape may suffered much less damage and much less flooding flooding the neighboring communities so we think we now have great evidence again of investing in nature getting very tangible things that people really want as outcomes now we've got some more studying to do because we've got to make that case an ironclad basis now i could go on and on with example after example in fisheries in agriculture in urban settings and that's exactly what i do in my book so if you're interested i hope you'll take a look but what's common in each of these cases are a couple of things first of all  we're broadening support for the environmental movement we're talking to folks about solving problems that they don't think of themselves as environmentalists but they do want to solve problems in a practical way second we're raising additional financial resources resources that we really need to take the environment up to an environmental movement up to another level so that we can have a bigger impact an impact that will really be important to achieve and then very importantly and i didn't know this i didn't really think about this until recently but i think it changes the nature of the dialogue between environmentalists and the rest of society and i think that's very important you see this all over society in modern times i now live in d c i moved to d c for this job and you know it kind of saddens me when you watch the political discourse everybody is so quick to find fault with the other side and vilify the other side and sometimes we environmentalists make that mistake and i think we're losing a lot of society therefore they don't want to be part of a food fight they don't want to it doesn't look at tract if but when we think and talk in these terms of natural capital we get out of finding blame we spend less time criticizing and rather we think about how to build alliances to solve important problems to make humans lives better these are the kinds of things that i get excited about natural capital now there's one last example i want to put on the table in the spirit of kind of full disclosure of course my background is in the private sector you know you might wonder how the heck did you become an environmentalist i also grew up in the city of cleveland right in the middle of the city so i don't have a very representative environmentalist background i didn't grow up in the great outdoors and i did professionally grow up as a business person but as a parent i became very interested in getting probably to compensate for my own  childhood my wife and i made a real effort to get our kids outdoors and that's when i really began to appreciate the wonders of nature and i became familiar with the challenges to nature and at the time i was a business person and some people might think this is naive but i really don't think so  i believe that i still believe properly harnessed and properly regulated business can be a powerful force for good you know willing i mean let's face it what we have we only have so many things going for us you know in modern times capitalism has been pretty successful if we can harness capitalism to be good i think it's really important we try to do that and so as a leader of t n c i'm very interested in finding alliances with the private sector can make a very big difference so one of those alliances that we're pursuing and i wrote a whole chapter about this in the book is with dow chemical now when we first began to work with dow chemical i can't tell you how many people would come up to me shaking their head and say marge come on why would you ever work with dow chemical and they said that for  reasonable considerations they were aware that dow chemicals environmental track record has always not been so stellar and they were aware of it of dow chemicals enormous environmental footprint but i always responded the same way i always said that's exactly to work with dow chemical if we can change if we can show the business community that we can change the behavior of companies like dow chemical so that their environmental impact is reduced in the end do it in a way that is better for their business bottom line that's something that we can really scale up so andrew liveris is the c e o of dow chemical he's someone i know very well and i respect very much i think he's a great business leader and he understands these arguments that i'm making and he heard me talk about natural capital and so he challenged me he said mark if you're right if you're right about this then dow chemical must be dependent on natural capital or green infrastructure why don't we do a project together why don't your scientists in my engineers figure out precisely how a natural capital whether that natural capital is vulnerable and by the way it always is and if so then what down might do about it so that's how our project arose and then it's very interesting how it's moved forward so i put together a team of our best scientists we get that there's a lot of risk here we get that we have to execute really well so i took some of our my best scientists andrew took some of his best engine errors we sent them the freeport texas were dows biggest facility is their biggest  whole world they went down to brainstorm about how this project might work again guess what happened my scientists came back and they said you know mark we don't want to work on this project we don't like those down engineers they don't speak our language they don't see the world the way we do they don't care about the things that we care about and andrew liveris called it goes hey mark my my engineers don't want to work with you guys they don't see the world the way you do they don't care about the same things and we both sort of said exactly you know you some people say about this natural capital idea that i'm talking about don't now they say mark that's not a new idea they're exactly right it's not new as an idea or as a theory but what is exciting to me is we're taking it now from theory and we're we're making it action so a couple of examples from the dow project and then i will wrap up one of the concerns dow has it's again storms in extreme weather the freeport facility is right on the coast and of course therefore they're very worried about sea level rise and storms again and so you can be sure the dow engineers were ready to go when it comes to see a loss you know engineers they like that kind of infrastructure they understand it fully they know exactly what they'll get if they invest in a manmade seawall they know the pros and cons a lifetimes they know what it will do and what it won't do so we environmentalists we like to we like to really preach we like to preach about the wonders of investing in green infrastructure but that's insufficient for an engineer and investment engineer can't make a big important investment on the basis of theory he needs concrete evidence so that's what's happening in that dow project our scientists their engineers are trying to translate our environmental ideas into cash flow statements business plans risk profiles so that that engineer can know as much about the green alternative as the great one i think that's really an important breakthrough some folks scratch their head they say oh it's such like a boring kind of project well it might be boring and it might not be headline grabbing but in my view this is a fundamental breakthrough for the environmental movement to make our dialogue that much further so again i think you'll see natural capital more more financial resources different kinds of supporters engineers from tao and a different way of speaking about our business there's one more thing that came out a doubt we definitely didn't anticipate this observed hey you might be able to achieve the same local pollution reduction benefit by planting trees and so the e p a we have a little bit more work to do with regulators but the e p a is indicating they'll approve this so rather than invest in new scrubbers doubt we'll invest in new trees they'll be trees up and down the brazos river really important the brazos river as all water sources in texas are under great threat and true planning is only helping local pollution they'll improve the health of the river it might also be possible we're doing the work now due to wind patterns it might be possible to achieve some of that benefit by planting trees in houston this really excites me because i want i want to show urban residents of conservation matters in cities too i wrote a chapter about that but i don't know some of you will be familiar with houston it's a perfectly fine city but we can all agree it could use some more trees that's going to be especially true in the future because climate is changing it's going to get warmer and warmer in houston and so these are the kind of breakthroughs were happening that were cheating ok now let me wrap up so back to russell train if i had been a little quicker on my feet that's the way i would have answered him i would have said you know mr train with all due respect it's not such a bad thing in my view to have an investment banker leading an environmental organization and therefore in a position to advocate for investments in nature it's not to say that it's the only strategy it's not we're very humble about that it's just one important strategy but it's important because again it can bring us more supporters it can bring us more financial resources and it can  improve the dialogue between environmentalists and everyone else but i would also hasten to say to mr train and i will say to you i know that it's all it's not all about dollars and cents either environmentalist love nature we want to or we want to  turn over to our kids and our grandkids ecosystem that's as healthy as the one we've enjoyed that's our moral obligation and that of course trumps all other motives some people sometimes say to me well what can i do about it well there's so much you can do let's just think about who you are and what you can do first of all you're all citizens and voters well i get excited about our volunteer initiatives with the private sector but what's much more necessary alternately is that in light and government that does the right thing in a practical way to be sure in a way that provides society what it needs and the cost of it effective basis to be sure but your voters and citizens so please to the fullest extent engage if you care about nature and protecting nature for your descendants your also many of your business leaders or investors or shareholders please use your clout therefore to encourage and push and motivate the private sector to do what it can because there's so much you can do i think we've just begun to scratch the surface and of course your family members some of your parents some of you might even be grandparents do what you can to in call kate in your family's profound respect and love and appreciation of nature and support environmental organizations  whichever ones you prefer support the environmental strategies that you think are best i'm not saying ours are the best i think ours are worthy ones but there are many worthy once but we really owe it to our children and grandchildren the natural world as one is as healthy as the one we've inherited a t n c we say our job is to save the lands and water that life depends on it's hard to be against that i hope you'll join us in that work thank you very much for your attention touristic you're listening to the westminster to foreign broadcast from westminster presbyterian church on nicollet mall in downtown minneapolis and learn more about the forum online at westminster forum dot org you can like us on facebook and follow us on as well i'm tim hart anderson senior minister of westminster presbyterian church in moderator of the forum our speaker today is marked or sick president and c e o of the nature conservancy and author of the new book nature's fortune how business and society thrive by investing in nature will be taking questions from our speaker for our speaker from the radio audience through twitter and facebook or twitter handle is westminster t h f and you can find us on facebook at westminster town hall forum while the ushers collect questions from the n house audience i like to invite the radio audience to join us for our next town hall forum on thursday evening june twenty seventh at seven pm when it  i think just taking a domestic perspective the economic challenges our country faces are great ones i think there's almost no sattar plight than unemployment i know some unemployed people great people and it's know it's sad to see people not fully engaged and and sometimes losing confidence that cetera so from my perspective as as an environmentalist therefore i think it's very important for us environmentalist to be mindful of the needs for economic progress and most attracted to those kinds of environmental solutions that are consistent with economic progress the good news is i think there's ample opportunity to find those those kinds of opportunities there's a second part of the economic downturn that's troubling too we really do need a strong government and a well funded government a lot of what's needed in the environment in the u s but globally is really the purview of governments and so having financially we can government not in our best interest either but we somehow have to soldier through it and get past all of that i have a question is coming from twitter how do we reduce the large number of environmental organizations we have an increasing number of development folks who are asking about you know a united front on the environmental area we have a couple questions asking that ok you know lots of people say to me boy there are too many environmental organizations why don't you guys just consolidate or just cooperate more i'm not sure i agree with the premise of the question most of the of the bigger environmental organizations i know very very well now it might be we don't tell our story well and so it might look to outside observers like we all kind of do the same thing in fact there's kind of an ecosystem of environmental organizations there are a lot of roles to play the nature conservancy we're a big well resourced organization there are some things we are well positioned to do very very well but there are other important things that we don't do in other organizations are well positioned to do those things and let's face it our challenges are enormously big and difficult and so i think it's you know all hands on deck so i don't think there are too many organizations  now i won't comment about those development officers but treat them nicely they're doing god's work it's not that easy now another thing people say is you guys should collaborate more that's a worthy suggestion to environmental organizations i think we're not so bad at it better than you think so i mention the restore act that was really important legislation and i promise you all the key groups came together and it was a diverse group it included the you know of the sportsman's community the fishermen and  the hunters it included mountain bikers that included environmentalist like this us included more aggressive advocates but we all rallied together because we knew capitol hill need to hear from us in one voice and then there's other things that we do and maybe we just need to tell the story better some folks want us to collaborate all the time well that doesn't make sense because there's a cost to collaboration it's just like the private sector big businesses don't always collaborate more meetings that slows you down but when collaboration can pay off when one plus one will be more than two i think we're doing a pretty good job of getting out getting our act together and figure out how to collaborate so what i would ask i think we could tell our story better maybe we can use your time better if we really are bugging with our development officers but if you care about the environment i hope you'll pay attention to lots of environmental organizations i think most of them are pretty darn worthy they deserve your support and i think you'll appreciate that there are different roles for different organizations question about the philanthropic funds you receive this person presumes you receive corporate  funding how can you assure us that there are no unacceptable strings attached to that kind of funding we do except for some corporate funding i think it's about ten percent of our funding right now so it's actually not disproportionately large amount but it's material and so we have very stringent guidelines about who we will work with and who we won't work with and we've made some improvement here it's we've become aware that our supporters want to be assured we're being thoughtful about all that so on our website nature dot org you'll find i think very comprehensive company by company disclosure of what we do how the money is being used and we pay close attention to that in our board pays close attention to it i mention andrew liveris i mean it starts with we need the commitment and the engagement of the c e o because in our view and i really believe this it makes a lot of difference whether the c e o is totally engaged in committed or otherwise so we're very careful about who we work with number one and second we disclose everything we do along the way i told you we're doing that in doubt a lot of folks are saying i we don't like this dow project and i say fine pay attention we're going to disclose everything we do and if you see us making mistakes or missing something tell us because we'd like to know that we don't have any hidden motives we want to do our job as best we can the third thing i would say though is the exciting stuff that we want to do at the private sector isn't so dependent on funding we don't really think of the private sector as a source of funding for the nature conservancy rather what we want to do is help limit or stand doing the right thing environmentally can actually be consistent with getting the best outcome from a business perspective that's something we think can really scale up but about economic progress in places like china or in other areas of the developing world they have increasingly negative environmental impact what role is the nature conservancy or other organizations playing regarding these nations you know we're very engaged so the environmental movement as practiced by organizations like ours is especially in the developing world we're becoming an environmental slash economic development organization especially in poor countries so poorer than china if you go to see the head of state and sometimes i get to do that if you speak exclusively about protecting nature that head of state is likely to conclude i don't have time for this but if instead the dialogue can be more like here's how protecting nature can help you achieve your economic goals and your goals for lifting people out of poverty that kind of message resonates so that's the that's a central theme to a lot of our work all around the world in china china's very complicated on the one hand they've done a brilliant job of growing the economy to lift people out of poverty and this lifting people out of poverty is significant sometimes i think environmentalists dismiss that it's taking folks who really lived in very difficult circumstances without good housing without good nutrition without educational alternatives for their children making progress on that front is pretty important in my view you know i'm for that but now china has the complicated challenge of dealing with the environmental consequences of that there's some reason for hope and there's some reason where u s citizens should be rather humble because china might soon be outpacing us one thing that's different about china and america is most of the chinese leaders have science backgrounds so they understand all these environmental issues there is no there is no threat in china of climate change denial isn't there's no such thing and by the way china also understands they're far more vulnerable to the bad impacts of climate change than we are and they're already hearing from concerned citizens who won't any longer tolerate the pollution that they face so they have the very difficult job of balancing the need for continued economic growth with better environmental outcomes they have some advantages that we don't have also we're kind of a capital short country right now i think we've had some you know unfortunately we've made some economic choices that make us a a debtor country awkward to say that about the u s china's a capital rich country it's led by scientists they understand the high stakes here they want their economy to mature and progress and there's a lots of evidence that they're ahead now in investing in the renewable energy space the u s to be sure has lots of advantages as well but i'm counting on china i think china is going to merge is a really important leader here i just hope the u s doesn't fall behind if i had a magic wand what i'd like to do is to take the senate and the congress to china and they could stop being a kind of bad mouth in china and see firsthand how things are changing well ron china let's talk a moment about population growth and overpopulation to what extent is a fundamental cause of environmental issues today are negative problems today a result of overpopulation and what are the political solutions of that we've seen some attempt of that to solve that in china what about closer to home so we're you know i always say this to my colleagues we can't do everything even though we were a big nonprofit organization we are big but we are also still very resource constrained that's true for all nonprofits and so i think you've got to stick to your knitting and stick to your focus so we're not directly in the population business i will observe though that many of our conservation projects in the developing world for example i'm thinking right now of work we're doing in kenya we've done work in kenya to improve water supply and to improve security it has a direct and immediate consequence of young girls aren't spending their time any longer fetching water but instead they're able to go to school and experts tell me there's probably no better intervention to address plant population so in our own way as conservationists we are addressing population yes population does matter for sure a bigger population puts more pressure on the environment for sure a bigger middle class does as well our hope is that we can use science to guide the blend of infrastructure that's needed for that economic growth to get to get what's needed for the thing people out of poverty without bad environmental outcomes we're cautiously optimistic we also hope that continued economic growth including conservation investments will allow for more educational opportunities for young women that seems to be the fastest way to address population and the evidence recently is very very encouraging most of the long term prognosticators and population are reducing their their estimates and so there's reason for encouragement i suspect you're aware that you're in an area where there's a lot of controversy about mining and particularly in northern minnesota the conflict between jobs and the environment any comments the way through that a win win solution perhaps yeah i mean again i don't want to come across as nave mining has huge environmental consequences but we do work in another the controversial companies we work with israel  tent i would say about the leading mining companies and one is rio tinto they understand of course that their minds have enormous economic environmental impact and there's no getting around that on the other hand though society needs what those mines produce and it's their job to provide those minerals for again the economy demands that stuff all of us have lifestyles and all of us are consumers of that require continued output from mining so it's a little bit hard to just be against money unless we really change our lifestyle so companies like rio tinto i think and they deserve to be encouraged and we're doing our best are trying to understand how you can first reduce the environmental impact of a mine offset that environmental impact and then upon the completion of the mining activity reclaim that land in an environmentally sound way there's ample evidence that that can be done provided upfront science is included so that you plan properly now there's bad actors in the sector too and there's sometimes is very insufficient regulatory oversight so this is not a black and white situation it's quite mixed we're working with rio tinto in mongolia one of the world's biggest mines in the gobi desert we believe the gobi desert is an important ecosystem to protect mongolia is a government that wants both economic growth and good environmental outcomes so real its commitment is to first of all work with our science to locate the mine in the infrastructure in a way that minimizes environmental harm and they have some degrees of freedom so our science can really allow the impact minimised the impact is still the very big and so then rio agrees to offset that impact they've already had those kinds of could but now they're using our science to optimize that offset so the most important parts of the gobi desert ecosystem are protected what we really hope happens though is our is twofold one we want to use the example of rio tinto and the government of mongolia's clout but it's a young government and it's under enormous stress we want to use that example to influence the other mining companies and other infrastructure players in mongolia to make similar commitments we're not there yet but we're on the case second we want rio tinto to do the same thing up across the world in all of their minds and i think we can probably count on rio tinto to do that but saying it and doing it are different things and then with rio tinto help an example and other leading companies we want to get the mining sector broadly to sign up for a compact if you will to do mining on this most enlightened basis and you might think well mark that's so naive but it's not really nave what's motivating these business leaders well some of them as you'd expect they're just good people who want to do the right thing they're not different than you or me but others of them are also making a different calculation they understand the world's a fast changing place there's great transparency in sharing of information they don't have a permanent to operate and then to support that it's going to be increasingly important for them to show in all parts of the world that you can mine with acceptable environmental outcomes so they want to get ahead of all that here's what i'm sure is an entirely hypothetical question if you work for a very large retailer who's headquarters may or may not be located very nearby what specific business case would you pitch to senior leadership to prioritize improving sustainability well you know the retailers deserve quite a bit of credit so the local company b it boggles the mind that some of the really famous dominant the large high growth retailers that have huge presence across america have been relievers in the environmental space mention a company that's not headquartered near by first just i don't know just a just a test to take a national perspective wal mart a company that's off criticize let's put that aside for a minute you know wal mart it's very interesting wal mart's history it went from being one of america's most respected companies and very quickly became one of america's least respected companies nothing's permanent in this space and by and business leaders get that so wal mart reputation suddenly fell it had the direct impact of meaning it was harder for wal mart to get the license to operate they were being constrained in opening new stores communities are saying we don't want you and of course that got wal mart executives attention and so with those kinds of votive maybe not necessarily environmental or green motives they decided they need to do something to better be a better citizen they looked into the environmental space and they quickly discovered enormous opportunities to pursue environmental progress in a way that improved their business so the first things they did was improve their use of energy across their stores and their transportation fleet and the more they did with great environmental outcomes the more money they save they realized so they loved it and these are the best kinds of initiatives i think they did need to do good motive they need a business motive boy they have that then they got into package reduction nope so much pat there's so much waste in packages and so wal mart's been very aggressive in getting suppliers to be more economical with packaging saving forests around the world i mean when companies like wal mart or other big retailers you might know very well when they do something like this it scales that fast then they got into supply chain management and so wal mart wal mart for example is a big purchaser the amazon is one of the ecosystems we really want to protect there are two big threats soy and beef we've made a lot of progress working with companies like cargo and there's a chapter about this in my book i should have mentioned it given where we are cargo has been a great ally of ours cargo was put under pressure by mcdonald's due to greenpeace protest in europe to soar so i sustain a bully they worked with us and we were able really to transform soy agriculture in brazil materially reducing the threat to the amazon now are a better deal they don't only have a better environmental outcome they cost less over the life of the light bulb however they're much more expensive up front and nobody in america was buying them wal mart became aware of that and wal mart said fine we're go change this they said some really lofty goal for compact fluorescent light bulbs cells everybody laughed and said it could never be achieved they made it very hard to buy old fashioned light bulbs and wal mart it made it very easy to buy c f l's and boom they achieved their target faster than they expected last thing i'll say about this and i it my last job at goldman sachs as a i was mostly a mainstream banker and then my last job was i was an environmental guy and so i used to give speeches sort of like this as a business leader saying you want to have an environmental strategy i promise you there's things you can do and a lot of them would react well sure you work in goldman sachs it's easy for goldman sachs to have an environmental strategy that would make business sense but what could i ever do and i bet all these companies i guarantee if we spend a few hours in brainstorm a little bit about how your business intersect nature will find ways for your business to become a better steward of the environment and in a way that improves your business i think it's not just retailers therefore it's everybody we have time for just one more brief question how do you move from environmental movement to societal norms are you hope for making that move yeah i am i mean it's really important it's kind of sad actually if you if you wanted to be kind of a tough critic of the environmental movement you could say well let's just see what kind of legislative breakthroughs you guys have achieved because at the end of the day we need good regulatory oversight in these environmental matters thank you ok well here's the answer the last big breakthroughs were things like the formation of the e p a the clean air act and the clean water act who was president when we did all that stuff president nixon it's a long time ago i was alive but i was pretty young we somehow have to restore broad bipartisan tone down friendly fact based discussion of these environmental issues