00:00:00: But I wake up every single time in the morning, profoundly inspired by doing the work that we do.

00:00:06: And that I wish everybody on earth to feel that and have that.

00:00:11: And that is a journey that as you move forward and as you find your mission and you're delivering it,

00:00:17: that gives you such incredible strength and energy.

00:00:21: Welcome to the special English edition of "De Gauze Neustadt", a German podcast series by Zabille Barre,

00:00:28: in which she talks to pioneering leaders who, inspired by the World Economic Forum's great reset initiative,

00:00:35: create revolutionary projects that actually do make our world smarter, greener and fairer.

00:00:42: With us today is Florent Kaiser, the CEO of Global Forest Generation,

00:00:51: a visionary leader honoured with the prestigious EarthShot Prize.

00:00:55: Florent is at the forefront of transformative environmental initiatives,

00:01:00: notably through the groundbreaking work of Axion Andina.

00:01:04: Axion Andina has emerged as a beacon of hope, planting almost 10 million native trees since 2018,

00:01:12: revitalising over 4,000 hectares of Andean forests

00:01:17: and safeguarding more than 11,000 hectares of native forest across five countries.

00:01:24: Florent's environmental leadership extends to being a member of the advisory board of the World Economic Forum's

00:01:30: "One Trillion Tree" campaign and the board of the Global Partnership for Landscape Restoration.

00:01:38: With a wealth of experience in over 200 forest and land use projects worldwide,

00:01:44: Florent is not just a seasoned conservationist, but a passionate advocate for large-scale ecosystem restoration.

00:01:53: Good morning, Florent in Peru.

00:01:56: Congratulations on winning the EarthShot Prize.

00:02:00: Can you tell us more about it and what winning this award means for Axion Andina?

00:02:08: Thank you so much, Sibyli, of course.

00:02:11: Well, first of all, we are absolutely thrilled to be in that position now.

00:02:16: We've just won the EarthShot Prize, which was a big important moment in our lifetime.

00:02:22: We started this massive project five years ago, really as a dream, as a hope.

00:02:28: It grew from a dream to a project across two countries, then it grew over the last five years into a programme.

00:02:35: It is now becoming a movement and winning the EarthShot Prize shows that we're doing some things right,

00:02:42: and it especially opens up tremendous potential, not only in the Andes, but to replicate our work globally.

00:02:51: Global Forest Generation Axion Andina.

00:02:55: I'll come back to Global Forest Generation, but Axion Andina is one of these initiatives or efforts worldwide where we and all the co-founders included,

00:03:06: we're just thinking we need to do grant work.

00:03:09: It is time now on the planet to really get down to action, and we need to do so with a profound working model for communities

00:03:18: and the local people and culture, but at the same time reach scale.

00:03:22: Axion Andina are now spreading five countries, soon seven countries, crossing an entire continent of South America.

00:03:31: It's our first initiative that really gets up to the scale we need in the world.

00:03:38: So that's our big work.

00:03:40: Wonderful.

00:03:42: For our listeners who may not be familiar with the EarthShot Prize,

00:03:47: could you provide just a brief overview of what it is and its broader goals in addressing all the environmental challenges globally?

00:03:58: Instead of just going into the institutional aspect of the EarthShot Prize,

00:04:04: I'll tell you my opinion of what it is and why this is so important at this time in the world.

00:04:12: So, you know, Prince William has a record of ecological care and leadership,

00:04:23: and he thought that we really need to recognize extraordinary efforts.

00:04:30: As I said before, beacon of hope, right?

00:04:34: The types of initiatives that can bring back hope to humanity,

00:04:39: that with all the doom and gloom that is happening worldwide around climate change and the planet is ending,

00:04:45: and it's a lot of despair, and I'm not saying at all this is not real,

00:04:49: but we need to showcase that there's also the other side happening.

00:04:53: Humans are mostly driven by hope and dreams and potential, not only by despair and being sort of at the end of the journey.

00:05:03: And the EarthShot Prize recognizes that it seeks to find amazing leaders, amazing projects, amazing efforts around the world

00:05:12: that have that component of showing, proving to the world both a working model,

00:05:18: but at the same time that there is a huge potential and this is the type of initiatives that are recognized globally.

00:05:25: Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned the community.

00:05:29: So how do I have to imagine the community support and contribution of that whole EarthShot Prize community?

00:05:40: To my read, maybe I don't want to compare too much to others, but what stood out in this community for me,

00:05:50: A, is the commitment. Is the commitment to real action.

00:05:54: And the community of powerful people, experts and organizations out there that really hone into immediate action and big potential.

00:06:07: We have all sorts of other forums where there's a lot of talk, talk, talk, and this is not a time where we really need action.

00:06:16: And I think that every organization in this community is really deeply committed to that.

00:06:23: And in that aspect, I think through the EarthShot magic, which is an intent to really prove to the world that we have a collective challenge

00:06:36: and we need to resolve this together.

00:06:38: So it's bringing together the community of this amazing people and organization that are dedicated to that.

00:06:44: And what stood out for me is that not only are you winning the EarthShot or being a finalist,

00:06:50: but you're accessing a huge network of amazing change makers and you have financiers, you have strategic partners,

00:06:59: you have amazing people, you have mentors, you have all sorts of really specialized organization in that.

00:07:05: And to us, always use the term supercharging.

00:07:08: There, this community is there to supercharge the solutions that we're bringing forward.

00:07:14: So it's really becoming a sort of a club of amazing potential that we're part of.

00:07:19: And this is really, really important.

00:07:21: Yeah, yeah, really fascinating, which makes me think actually about all the others.

00:07:26: I mean, there are millions of projects in the world and you manage to walk through the door, which is really fantastic.

00:07:34: Clearly, you work very hard and it opened a lot of doors.

00:07:37: But yeah, we should have more of that.

00:07:40: We should have more of those supercharges.

00:07:43: We now need to dive into your organization, the Global Forest Generation and of course your Action Antina.

00:07:52: Let's start with the Global Forest Generation, the organization where you are CEO.

00:07:59: Can you tell me about your mission and your role in a large scale ecosystem restoration?

00:08:07: Global Forest Generation's mission is really make a different and immediate and scalable difference in large scale ecosystem restoration.

00:08:17: We are at a state on the planet where we not only need to drastically and immediately conserve every forest and every ecosystem that is left.

00:08:28: But we also are in a place where we need to actually restore a lot of the natural ecological capital that there is in the world,

00:08:37: along with all the social benefits that come with it in a lot of the regions of the earth.

00:08:43: This is really the way to make our planet future safe for humanity and biodiversity and many more.

00:08:53: And so Global Forest Generation seeing everything that is going on in the world was saying,

00:08:58: "Okay, we need to find a model that allows us to not only do the really right thing with the right people on the ground,

00:09:07: with the right leaders, with the communities that are already showing potential in action, but we need to do so at scale."

00:09:15: And just quickly on the birth history of Global Forest Generation, an extraordinary...

00:09:26: So first of all, it started with our extraordinary leader, Konstantino Auca, who was recognized last year as a champion of the earth by the UN.

00:09:37: He is an indigenous leader from the high Andes of Peru, and he had recognized two crucial things in life.

00:09:46: One, we need to bring forests back, mainly for water security.

00:09:50: And all the communities that he is a part of are motivated to do that.

00:09:54: That's the glaciers vanishing, water security is becoming a huge problem in the Andes and in South America.

00:10:00: The only natural substitute to the glaciers holding the water are natural forest and ecosystems.

00:10:09: Native must add to that, native forest and ecosystem.

00:10:12: There's many other exotic trees that are planted that are disastrous for water and so on.

00:10:18: So I'm really talking about native ecosystems.

00:10:21: And the second thing he recognized is his culture.

00:10:25: His culture has a unique ancestral set of principles called Aini and Minka, indigenous principles that allowed the Inka Empire, for example,

00:10:40: to bring hundreds of thousands of people together to do conduct great work,

00:10:45: whether it's building fortresses, holding the empire together and so on.

00:10:50: And Tino recognized the potential of that for natural restoration.

00:10:55: So what he did is really starting to revive his ancestral culture and be able to mobilize thousands and thousands of people to conduct reforestation, forest protection work and many more things.

00:11:09: So in 2018, when Tino invites myself and the co-founders of Global Forest Generation to see one of his projects live in Peru, it really changed our life.

00:11:23: We had a thousand people coming together and I think over the course of a week and we planted over 100,000 trees, native trees with the communities.

00:11:31: And I remember asking him at the end of the day, Tino, you've done amazing work.

00:11:36: There's over the last 20, 30 years, but the potential that we see here is enormous.

00:11:42: What is next for you, Tino?

00:11:44: And Tino opened up, I would like to replicate what I have done here in the Andes, here in Peru, and spread it across the entire Andean mountain range.

00:11:54: That is a seven-country, 7,000-kilometer long stretch of mountains and roughly with similar challenges.

00:12:03: And both the co-founders and I, we were blown away by the grand vision, by the commitment, but also knew two things.

00:12:13: The model was unique, but we knew Tino couldn't do it alone.

00:12:17: He needed a support system, a support system that helps him plan this out, design this out, seed financing, grow the initiative in a sustainable way,

00:12:28: communicate the impact, track the impact, build all the systems that you need to really make such a movement stable and scalable.

00:12:38: And so the mission of Global Forest Generation is exactly that.

00:12:42: We are co-founder of Axionandina, which is a program together with his organization, EcoAN.

00:12:49: And while Tino's organization takes care of all the implementation and reforestation, he finds the amazing local partners, local leaders,

00:12:58: with the communities and his partners across the Andes, Global Forest Generation's role is really that main strategic partners.

00:13:06: We are helping build the infrastructure.

00:13:08: We are helping, well, not the donor of Axionandina, but we are the strategic partner to mobilize sustainable finance for the initiative.

00:13:15: So there is a lot of fundraising. There's a lot of partnership building.

00:13:18: There's a lot of helping local groups to fundraise themselves with the idea to really have access to the type of funding that we need to have in place.

00:13:26: And there is a big part also from us to strategically position the work that we do internationally and in the region,

00:13:36: working with governments, working with amazing international forums, spreading and sharing the voices of our local leaders.

00:13:44: And just ending on that thought, Global Forest Generation really 100% recognizes one of our most important values,

00:13:54: the local leadership of amazing leaders like Tino and many others that have been doing work for 20, 30 years,

00:14:01: but would never be able to grow beyond their own realm.

00:14:04: And so Global Forest Generation seeks out to identify those partners,

00:14:08: unite them across an entire ecosystem range or region or continent and helps kickstarting a massive initiative.

00:14:17: And so we started in the Andes, but our ultimate goal is really to replicate this in other areas of the world as well.

00:14:25: Sounds really incredible.

00:14:29: And I find the way you describe it that he is focusing on the implementation and your organization makes sure that the whole strategy works.

00:14:41: But when you set up this company, how did you know where and how to access finances for this kind of project?

00:14:54: So that's where, and that's actually quite a nice story.

00:14:59: The co-founders of Axionandina and myself as CEO, I was hired as executive director and we were quite a multi-generational group.

00:15:09: So we had two or three co-founders that are really at the end of, let's say, they're very successful conservation carriers

00:15:17: and we brought a lot of wisdom, big networks and also a lot of knowledge on how to access funding specifically for conservation.

00:15:25: I, as a young person, as an ecopreneur, I brought myself a huge global network in different areas, mostly at the UN, the multilateral sector, the forest sectors.

00:15:35: But really the mad, and I and the stuff we started hiring are bringing a lot of this youthful, passionate, entrepreneurial energy.

00:15:46: So it was really a mix of that.

00:15:48: And I can say that some of the co-founders has put personal money because we believed in that mission.

00:15:54: I'm not talking huge sums here.

00:15:56: I think we started with a 50 or 100,000 dollar grant personally from one of some of the co-founders.

00:16:04: But that allows us to get going.

00:16:06: And I think one of the reasons we have been successful is that from day one, the story has been absolutely authentic with Axion and Dina.

00:16:17: We've shared very transparently the work that we're doing, the challenges that we are facing, a vision that is not one, two years.

00:16:26: We're not planting trees.

00:16:28: It's really a long-term vision of potential and action that will.

00:16:34: And that captured a lot of people's immediate support, but also allowed us to early on set off major partnerships.

00:16:46: For example, with Salesforce being a tech company that was absolutely inspired by the long-term vision and the type of work we're doing in a very remote place in the Andes.

00:16:57: And they have stuck with us from day one and have really helped us to grow.

00:17:02: And I can name a few other.

00:17:04: One tree planted was tremendous.

00:17:06: We started with a 50,000 dollar grant and really rapidly grew to several million dollars that could come in because we were really showing that the model works on the ground.

00:17:18: Trees are getting planted.

00:17:19: Survivor rate is high.

00:17:21: We have the right set of leaders.

00:17:23: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:26: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:29: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:32: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:35: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:38: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:41: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:44: We were very much in the middle of the field.

00:17:47: Axion and Dina, we had a few hundred people involved in the communities.

00:17:52: Nowadays, I think we're reaching 30,000 people actively involved.

00:17:56: We're not talking about benefits.

00:17:58: People benefited.

00:17:59: This number is much higher, but actively involves more 30,000 people from the community.

00:18:04: So it's really growing.

00:18:06: But in most countries, especially Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, where the Inca Empire was such an important role.

00:18:15: And the Inca Empire reached almost to Patagonia, Argentina and Chile,

00:18:19: and to Venezuela up in the north of the continent.

00:18:24: But in those three countries, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru,

00:18:29: still to date, most of the land in the high end is owned by local and indigenous communities.

00:18:35: It's community land.

00:18:36: So it's private land, but it's community land.

00:18:39: It's managed collectively by the local communities.

00:18:42: And the important aspect here is that the communities are the ones seeking to restore the land.

00:18:50: So more often than not, the communities are reaching out to us.

00:18:54: Can you help me reforest my land or protect the forest?

00:18:58: Can you help me bring back these forests that have been deforested over the last 500 years?

00:19:03: And I can talk more about that a bit later.

00:19:06: And what that gives you is a fundamentally different starting point.

00:19:11: Axión and Nina is not going out okay and trying to convince people of doing the work.

00:19:18: Most of the communities are coming to us and saying, can you help us?

00:19:23: And so there is already a commitment from their side.

00:19:27: And the other aspect I want to mention is particularly indigenous communities

00:19:33: have such a strong governance structure.

00:19:36: When they decide, so decisions in the community are taken quite often as a community as a whole.

00:19:45: Even more often by group of women that are sort of representing the communities.

00:19:51: And when there is a decision made, for example, to bring back those forests or set aside certain pieces of land,

00:19:58: then all the communities, literally every person in the community is following through and is participating in those efforts.

00:20:07: That is very, very different in other parts of the world where you don't have that indigenous,

00:20:12: magical power of a central community with a strong identity and governance system.

00:20:19: In Argentina, Chile, unfortunately and really sadly, a lot of the community land,

00:20:26: a lot of the communities have been displaced or even worse over the last few hundred years.

00:20:33: And today there's a lot of private lands.

00:20:37: So part of the efforts that we're doing is helping communities title their lands to really make sure they're in control of their lands.

00:20:45: But also in Argentina and Chile, some areas are either led by the government or private landholders.

00:20:53: So in the future, we'll also need to look at do we need to buy back land to bring to set it aside for conservation, restoration purposes.

00:21:01: But that's a future story.

00:21:04: Very encouraging, Florent, that you say that the indigenous community owns their own land.

00:21:11: Because earlier this year, I spoke to the Sami who live in the north of Europe and they face pretty much the same problems as, let's say, the Argentinians, because they don't own their land.

00:21:25: Anyway, that's a topic for another time.

00:21:30: Let's come back to your Inca principles, which I find very moving.

00:21:39: How do they guide the initiative?

00:21:44: Yes, so I obviously would rather have my co-founder Tino explaining that, but because that is his life's work and he was the one recognizing the potential of these principles.

00:21:59: So Aini and Minka, two words in the local Quechua language, Aini means as much as we would call it maybe reciprocity.

00:22:10: So whatever is good is done to me, I will bring back to you, right?

00:22:16: And Minka is what comes down to communal service, collective communal service.

00:22:24: These two things together have quite a magic and that is that when communities, so you need a lot of people to reforest large areas in massive amounts of trees, to plant 100,000 trees in a day, you need roughly, you know, 700 to 1000 people,

00:22:42: because it's just hard work, it's remote areas and it's done by hand.

00:22:47: And when a community doesn't necessarily have 1000 people in their community, so the Aini principle allows the communities to say, okay, guys, in a specific landscape, I choose to reforest this area this year.

00:23:07: When you come with your Aini commitment, can you come to help us to reforest their land?

00:23:13: And what happens is that all nearby communities are bringing in the Minka, which is then a huge communal service, all their people, but also all their saplings in a single day or on a couple of days.

00:23:26: And really you have then large amounts of people doing that collective Minka work together.

00:23:32: And the Aini principle tells you, hey, the next year or the next few months, we're going to come and bring our people and, you know, our saplings and everything else to help you reforest your land.

00:23:44: So it's really crafting out that community aspect and that collective aspect.

00:23:49: And to me, that is the number one engine of the success of Aksin and Dina in really uniting large amounts of people.

00:24:01: As I said, we are now at roughly 30,000 people involved.

00:24:06: If we look at the goal of restoring and conserving a million hectares, this will need to grow substantially.

00:24:13: Right, we have right now 15 local, we started with two partners in 2018 with now roughly 15, 16 partners with over 25 landscapes level projects in five countries.

00:24:25: In order to reach the goal, we'll need to go to hundreds of partners.

00:24:31: We'll need to go from currently, I think, 150 local communities to thousands of communities.

00:24:37: And that means a lot, a lot of people will need hundreds of thousands of people involved in the initiative to really make a difference on water security biodiversity conservation.

00:24:48: We're speaking really a continental effort with seven countries.

00:24:52: And Ayni and Minka allows you to get the amount of people in the commitment to it.

00:25:00: It's really that non-economic fueling power, right?

00:25:05: We're not paying the people to show up and so on.

00:25:09: There is a working system economically that helps build the nurseries, produce the saplings, and that has economic incentives for the communities.

00:25:20: But most important, it's the Ayni and Minka commitment, where it allows them to really bring their communities as a whole, the neighboring communities,

00:25:30: but also fortune identity of Aksin and Nina from all the Andean countries in the region.

00:25:37: And each and every project feels their brothers and sisters of similar projects and communities in the other countries.

00:25:44: And that is really something magical.

00:25:47: And you were briefly going into the benefits of all the new trees being planted.

00:25:56: We are not just talking, "Oh, now we have more trees. How lovely."

00:26:00: What are the benefits of having a proper forest again?

00:26:07: So, as I said in the beginning, water security is a huge issue.

00:26:11: And sadly, with all the projections, the glaciers will melt in the next few decades.

00:26:21: And I think Peru holds 70% of the world's tropical glaciers, and most of them will disappear in the next 30, 40 years.

00:26:32: And what that does is it will really put a big toll on water security for the continent.

00:26:39: These are the headwaters, not only of the Amazon rainforest, providing a lot of water for that,

00:26:45: but also for every major city and community on the mostly arid coast of South America.

00:26:53: And so, we're speaking of hundreds of millions of people being affected potentially by the lack of water.

00:27:02: Lima, being one of the driest desert cities in the world, will be one of the first ones heavily affected.

00:27:10: And so, at first, there's an ecological benefit.

00:27:15: The communities recognize that they see community A without forests has a long draft period.

00:27:24: Community B, where there is a forest still up there, they have three, four months longer water for agriculture

00:27:33: and does food security and just makes life easier, let's say.

00:27:39: And the other ecological benefits, obviously biodiversity, soil and so on.

00:27:45: But the really crucial aspects of why the communities beyond the central aspect for water is the social benefits.

00:27:58: So, by bringing everybody together with Aine and Minka and the reforestation activities,

00:28:04: the community as a whole has a renewed commitment to their future.

00:28:08: And that allows them to do so many things.

00:28:11: As part of the income generated from building nurseries and producing the saplings,

00:28:17: so the projects bias at the end of the production period symbolically the saplings,

00:28:23: which brings income to the communities, which is then also that the income from the community to the communities

00:28:30: is put in a community fund, a communal fund, and they use for whatever the biggest priority as a community level.

00:28:38: It could be the local school, it could be the local access road, it could be solar panels for communities that are really remote.

00:28:45: Anything that they prioritize more and more, they invest in more nurseries,

00:28:50: so they can actually double the production every year, and that's something quite magic.

00:28:56: So, that is a central aspect.

00:28:58: I want to remind you or inform you that we're speaking about areas that are very remote,

00:29:04: and a lot of those communities have, according to international standards, are in the extreme poverty range.

00:29:15: We have done a local partnership, one did, I think, eight years ago, a study that looked at the access to finance,

00:29:24: let's say, or the access to economic means of communities.

00:29:29: And the average community in remote high-end in Peru has, the average family in a community has access to 70 to 100 US dollar per family per year.

00:29:46: And I always say, remember when you're going for dinner the next time, or when you take your phone out,

00:29:54: we're speaking of a one-year 70 to 80 for a family.

00:29:59: And so, every financial additional benefit that comes from it is really transformative for the communities.

00:30:07: So, yeah.

00:30:09: In the time you have been there, how much change did you observe? How much change did you see?

00:30:19: We've planned it just in the process of finishing the 10 million native trees,

00:30:25: as you know, across the five countries we're obviously going to be.

00:30:30: Honestly, it sounds great and it sounds big, but it's a drop in the ocean.

00:30:34: We're speaking about potentially millions of hectares and billions and billions of trees

00:30:40: that need to go in there to make a huge difference.

00:30:42: However, from the communities that have been involved the longest, their lands have seen

00:30:50: several hundred thousands of trees coming back.

00:30:53: And that does two things.

00:30:55: One, we're seeing after five years really starting to have micro-habitants forming,

00:31:01: soil being stabilized.

00:31:03: And I'll share two anecdotes with you.

00:31:08: In Peru, just in August, I was happy I could bring my family to see some of the projects.

00:31:13: And we went, we're filming for the offshore price, actually, because they wanted to put a video.

00:31:18: And all of a sudden we stop it on the hillside and our local partner said,

00:31:24: "Well, this area we reforested 12 years ago and it was like three and a half, four meters."

00:31:29: We're really speaking about, I think, four and a half thousand meters in altitude.

00:31:33: It's really high lands.

00:31:34: It's slow growth.

00:31:35: So the trees were like three and a half, four meters high.

00:31:39: And we were walking the forest seeing how it was really beautifully regenerated.

00:31:45: The soil was healthy and a lot of moss.

00:31:48: And as we were walking back to the cars, being really happy at what we saw,

00:31:52: we saw in the midst of the dry season, we saw a little waterfall coming out of that forest.

00:31:59: And the communities that were present there were like positively shocked and saying,

00:32:06: "Well, water is coming back."

00:32:08: So that was a small area of just a few hectares, right?

00:32:12: We calculated roughly 200,000 trees.

00:32:15: But that made a huge difference.

00:32:17: And what it provided to the community is the conviction we can do it.

00:32:22: We are doing the right thing.

00:32:24: And to us, it said, "If that works here and there and there and there,

00:32:29: we can really tackle a large-scale effort and show critical results across the continent."

00:32:35: And needless to say, we need to go from a few areas to thousands and thousands of areas

00:32:43: and replicate that.

00:32:44: You don't do great works all at once, right?

00:32:47: It is really a step-wise and incremental approach.

00:32:51: But we're conceptualizing Axiol Ndina on purpose as a 100-year project.

00:32:57: It is not a few years' effort, right?

00:32:59: It has to be a century-long effort.

00:33:02: And we believe that as we are learning and as we are growing,

00:33:06: we really will reach impact that will have a profound positive impact on the continent.

00:33:14: When you say replicating the model worldwide,

00:33:20: you said early on you are already in five countries.

00:33:24: What are the challenges in the other countries?

00:33:28: So there's two really visions there.

00:33:33: One, I just said, 100-year vision for the Andes only.

00:33:36: And we're in five countries now.

00:33:39: And there's Colombia and Venezuela, the team that have those for it,

00:33:44: the same ecosystems and we'll replicate to that.

00:33:47: Let's not get caught up too much on the countries.

00:33:51: A country is a huge area of land.

00:33:54: What matters is the millions of hectares within those countries

00:33:59: and the thousands and thousands of watersheds and communities

00:34:03: that need to conduct that kind of work within their countries and regions.

00:34:09: And so the journey of Axiol Ndina and continuing to scale it within the continent

00:34:16: is almost an endless one.

00:34:19: A global force generation wanted to stay just in the Andes.

00:34:22: We would be busy for the next 100 years without any doubt and problem, right?

00:34:27: However, our vision, as I said at the beginning, is a strategic one.

00:34:32: We are helping local leaders achieve their dreams

00:34:36: and really conduct the work that we find is profoundly relevant and impactful.

00:34:41: But we're also learning in the last five years in building Axiol Ndina,

00:34:46: we've learned so much from techniques, governance, the right types of relationships.

00:34:52: How do we not over bureaucratize the work that we do

00:34:56: and really, really have a strongest commitment to impact

00:35:01: while still having the teams in place and the systems in place to coordinate

00:35:07: to almost 30,000 people.

00:35:09: So it's really a step-wise.

00:35:11: All this experience is what we want to bring and offer to other areas

00:35:18: where there is equally threatened ecosystems,

00:35:21: where there is a big restoration and conservation potential,

00:35:24: and most fundamentally, where there are leaders and communities

00:35:28: readily motivated and available to do these kinds of great work.

00:35:32: I want to be really, really make a really important point

00:35:37: because a lot of that is going wrong in the world, I find,

00:35:40: especially in the conservation world.

00:35:42: Global force generation will never try to copy and paste

00:35:46: an approach that worked in the Andes somewhere else.

00:35:50: You have to build your projects by deeply understanding

00:35:56: and deeply building from within the culture with the local people

00:36:01: of that specific area, with the local culture of that specific area,

00:36:05: with the specific mindset and set of challenges.

00:36:08: That's where you need to take the time to understand

00:36:11: and slowly craft out your project and the thing, your identity there.

00:36:17: There is no use to say Axion and Dina will work in the Himalayan mountain range

00:36:21: as just like that, we really need to take the time to fight the right leaders.

00:36:26: And Tino is extraordinary in the Andes, right?

00:36:30: Who is the Tino we will find and help get going?

00:36:34: Or the many Tinos that we will find and help get going in the Himalayan mountain range,

00:36:38: in the central dry corridors in Central America or the African continent.

00:36:43: We really need to find the local groups that have that potential and motivation

00:36:49: and want to embark on the long, long term story.

00:36:52: And global force generation's role, again, is a strategic one.

00:36:56: We've learned not only from the culture, but all the aspects that I mentioned before,

00:37:01: the strategic angles that we can support those leaders.

00:37:04: This is what we aim to export.

00:37:06: Not necessarily how things are done on an implementation basis in the Andes.

00:37:11: We're really exporting our knowledge to bring people together

00:37:17: and build a support system that helps them grow and replicate

00:37:22: and make sustainable their local efforts.

00:37:25: Roland, if I look at your personal journey,

00:37:31: where does the deep understanding and the love for the forest

00:37:36: and the organizing and the openness come from?

00:37:40: It's a very good question.

00:37:45: I think, for me, forests have always had, even as a kid, had a magic.

00:37:58: It felt right. It felt beautiful.

00:38:02: This is the areas where my mother and grandmother took us to recharge

00:38:10: and feel connected to nature. That is one very strong aspect.

00:38:13: I always had a profound love for forests and nature.

00:38:19: And that I will never lose.

00:38:21: And that drives my work.

00:38:24: How I choose to study back in the time, over 16, 17 years ago,

00:38:30: forestry engineering is because I happened to be sent for civil service

00:38:36: for then the German government to Honduras.

00:38:40: And I was involved in a reforestation project.

00:38:42: And I wanted to continue going.

00:38:44: I was 19 by that time and I wanted to continue going with that study,

00:38:49: forest engineering, and it took me on the path.

00:38:52: The other aspect that I want to really mention,

00:38:56: it was not just the love, the profound love and appreciation for trees and forests.

00:39:01: It is a profound admiration and respect for cultures and people.

00:39:11: I profoundly believe and live in my everyday that we are one collective force on Earth.

00:39:18: Humanity in each and every country, in culture and religion,

00:39:22: whatever else, we are all the same, right?

00:39:25: On a collective challenge.

00:39:27: And that allows you, I ate it by heavy travelling and an incredible openness

00:39:35: that I got through, especially my mother.

00:39:38: I will talk about my mother for a second.

00:39:40: An incredible openness to cultures and people.

00:39:44: And a profound ability to understand them, learn their languages,

00:39:48: learn their ways of interacting and being fundamentally respectful of their ways of living, of life.

00:39:58: My mother had a big role in that.

00:40:00: She has been dedicating her life.

00:40:04: She was first a school teacher in France and then we switched to Germany.

00:40:07: She lost kind of her career.

00:40:09: It was really difficult in the 90s to take a French professor career into Germany.

00:40:17: And she started to make her hobby, which was storytelling as a profession.

00:40:26: And what she's done is since we were born with brothers and sisters,

00:40:31: we were exposed to every sort of culture we had.

00:40:35: We were from Africa, from Asia, from Eastern Europe coming and entering our house.

00:40:41: We were taken on spectacles and performances.

00:40:44: And my mother is not a performing storyteller in the sense that she's a good storyteller.

00:40:49: She is, right?

00:40:51: But more than that, she was always working with the culture and the people

00:40:56: via the tool of storytelling to bring those cultures together.

00:41:01: And she's done a lot of integration work with immigrants, for example.

00:41:06: And that, I think, has really shaped my own curiosity,

00:41:11: my own ability to really want to understand people and live with them.

00:41:17: I'm here, a lot of my friends here in Peru where I live,

00:41:23: I lived for the last 10 years almost, they said, "Well, you're more Peruvian than many of us."

00:41:28: And I think it has to do a lot with my ability to just be in the place,

00:41:34: understand the people and make them feel comfortable that I'm a part of that society

00:41:39: while not losing my own essence and my own global outlook, I would say.

00:41:45: Florian, I have a few numbers which I wanted to discuss with you,

00:41:51: which we mentioned at the beginning, basically,

00:41:55: that the Andes mountain range, constituting just 1% of Earth's land surface,

00:42:01: harbours 15% of all plant and wildlife species,

00:42:07: yet less than 10% of its native forests remain due to deforestation, animal grazing and mining.

00:42:19: All of that happens parallel to your work and the life of the indigenous people around you.

00:42:28: How do you deal with that?

00:42:30: So, let me get some numbers, they're correct, right?

00:42:38: But they refer as the Andes as a whole.

00:42:42: So, most of the unique biodiversity that you have in the Andes,

00:42:47: especially on the slopes going into the Amazon,

00:42:51: so most of the unique biodiversity, some of the most biodiversity areas,

00:42:56: are the ones that are still on the slope of the Andes going slowly into the Amazon basin,

00:43:02: and Peru, Colombia, Ecuador have amazing biodiversity heritage here.

00:43:09: In the high Andes, so we are focusing mostly on the very top of the Andes,

00:43:14: from heights from 3,500 to 5,500,

00:43:18: and obviously it goes even beyond those glaciers that you have,

00:43:22: are 6 to almost 7,000 meter high at times.

00:43:26: This area, while having unique and threatened biodiversity and wildlife,

00:43:32: especially birds, you have the conders and you have the Prumas and spectacle bears,

00:43:39: and a lot of unique amazing birds in the region,

00:43:43: largely also because of their deforestation and the altitudes,

00:43:50: the biodiversity is in terms of numbers, is limited nowadays.

00:43:58: And most scientists agree that deforestation has happened mostly over the last 500 years in the Andes,

00:44:08: and the two factors that have most contributed to it are,

00:44:14: one, the Spanish colonization,

00:44:19: because it basically was very effective at destroying or degrading

00:44:26: the local governance system of the Inca Empire.

00:44:31: They really were masters, the Inca were masters in managing their natural resources,

00:44:36: then they built aqueducts and understood the role of forests,

00:44:39: and you still have a lot of remains that proves that today.

00:44:42: When the Spanish came and destroyed, let's say, the Inca Empire,

00:44:47: a lot of the communities went back to take everything that was around,

00:44:53: and there was no central rule in governance system, that's a big part of it.

00:44:57: The second, in parallel, the second factor to that is the introduction of European cattle and sheep,

00:45:04: for example, that are totally unadapted to the native ecosystems of the Andes,

00:45:10: and have been basically eating and grazing away a lot of the natural regeneration of forests.

00:45:18: And also, if you look at the hooves, for example, of cows and sheep,

00:45:23: where the llamas and alpacas in the Andes really help bring air in the high-end ecosystem

00:45:33: and promote, for example, water retention, the wetlands creation,

00:45:38: and protect the local plants, the hooves of sheep and cows in the Altitudes

00:45:45: are really compacting the soils and grounds, which then loses its ability to hold water.

00:45:52: And so that's a big, big part, and it has to be a big strategy for Axialandina to look at that

00:45:58: and help also manage in the future, while not doing that yet.

00:46:03: Our local partners are starting to, but look at more holistic ways of managing grazing habits

00:46:10: of cattle and sheep that are now already a part of the community's income sources and livelihoods.

00:46:19: Bavance, you also lived in actually various parts of the world,

00:46:23: and I think you speak quite a few languages as well.

00:46:26: I noticed that you spent a lot of time in Asia.

00:46:30: How did Asia form your knowledge and experience in moving forward?

00:46:39: Very good question.

00:46:41: I think with what I said before, it helped me contribute to open up my own mindset

00:46:50: and heart to a global outlook and a global profound respect for culture and communities and people.

00:47:02: And yes, people in Asia speak different languages than here, and I would say particularly in Asia.

00:47:10: Let's face it, here in Peru, yes, it's a very different culture from the European culture,

00:47:15: but the colonization was very strong and a lot of the life living Lima have at least some patterns

00:47:21: from language to behaviors that has a lot to do, that is very similar.

00:47:27: Some elements are very similar to European approaches.

00:47:31: In Asia, that was very different starting with language.

00:47:34: It's a totally different way of conceptualizing language and culture.

00:47:39: There's different things they care about.

00:47:41: There's different ways of expressing emotions and thoughts and of building community.

00:47:47: And that was very, very forming for me to get rid of your own often in perceived prejudices

00:47:55: of approaching how you understand people and how you approach people.

00:47:59: And so your communication, your respect, your way of engaging, your way of making business

00:48:06: and building projects together is something that in Asia for me was really putting you

00:48:13: and discovering an entire different world.

00:48:16: And what it does with you is it shapes your openness and questions, your status quo

00:48:23: and your abilities that you were born and raised with.

00:48:26: That has been a profound part.

00:48:28: And then separately to that, which is the other side, it's more the professional career,

00:48:33: I started, so I got elected in my studies ironically for as the global president

00:48:43: of the International Forestry Students Association.

00:48:46: By that time representing all forestry students worldwide in a huge university networks

00:48:54: and student network with almost 80,000 students participating.

00:48:58: And much of that work happened to be focused on Asia.

00:49:04: And things led to others.

00:49:08: And I was hired at the UN and was based in Bangkok by that time

00:49:15: and spent the next, let's say, five, six years in the region.

00:49:20: I was in Vietnam, I was in Thailand and then later in Indonesia as well.

00:49:23: And how did Asia shape me through the work?

00:49:30: I would say the good news is I got a huge understanding of how global and multilateralism is functioning

00:49:39: at the UN networks and big international organizations.

00:49:42: What fabulous role and responsibility they have.

00:49:47: However, and that is really important,

00:49:50: as a young person with incredible drive and entrepreneurship,

00:49:55: I got so incredibly frustrated and bored by the big international bureaucracy.

00:50:02: And I saw a lot of inaction and I saw a lot of talk and I saw a lot of slow processes.

00:50:09: You wouldn't believe in order to get one proposal out of a great idea.

00:50:12: You had to wait six months and it's through legal and all of that.

00:50:16: You don't kill a 25 year old's energy with those things.

00:50:21: And so I happened to, in one of the students conferences,

00:50:25: then I was coming back as an alumni already in Madrid.

00:50:29: I met my today wife pretty much 10 years ago and she's Peruvian.

00:50:36: And I was living in Vietnam by that time and long story short, six months later,

00:50:41: I said, she said, I'm in Peru. I'm working in Peru and I'm a forest engineer

00:50:47: and I'm in the Amazon and that was enough for me.

00:50:50: Like her and the dream as a forester and a forest lover to come to work in the Amazon

00:50:59: was just too big to reject and I moved.

00:51:06: Lauren, can you share a few key points?

00:51:11: What it takes to build large scale ecosystems?

00:51:19: First of all, it takes a lot of dedication, patient entrepreneurship and a lot of energy.

00:51:25: And I won't lie, I have over the last five years,

00:51:29: we have at times gotten to our limit of energies and in building all those things.

00:51:35: And I think the results being for themselves and it's incredible to be where we are, right?

00:51:40: But it's not, you know, it's not necessarily easy work.

00:51:44: Working with local communities and the cultures, you know, finding the right balance

00:51:51: between local leadership and modern, let's say, business and organizational approaches.

00:52:00: And that's a big part of the challenges that we're facing and building that.

00:52:04: But I think we're doing pretty well despite those challenges because we're really committed to the mission.

00:52:10: I think the second point is really that taking, I can't tell you how incredibly energized, lucky

00:52:21: and gratifying that feels to have met a person like Tino and many other leaders

00:52:28: and co-founders that are profoundly dedicating to a mission that we live all together on a day-to-day basis.

00:52:41: I wake up in the morning, of course I'm stressed about the day to come and all the things I need to get done,

00:52:46: but I wake up every single time in the morning profoundly inspired by doing the work that we do.

00:52:52: And that, I wish everybody on earth to feel that and have that.

00:52:58: And that is a journey that as you move forward and as you find your mission and you're delivering it,

00:53:04: that gives you such incredible strength and energy.

00:53:08: Honestly, I don't feel, of course I feel I'm working because we're doing a lot of things,

00:53:13: but I don't feel we're working because it just feels like the mission and there's no alternative to it, right?

00:53:19: That's that. And then what I would call especially young people,

00:53:27: so finding deep down in themselves what is what they really want to do?

00:53:33: And then, and where is that?

00:53:36: Now that happens through inward looking, you can call in meditation or whatever,

00:53:40: your tool is, but really understanding what drives you in life.

00:53:45: And then becoming, I like to promote the entrepreneurial mindset,

00:53:54: never accepting status quo, never accepting, okay, I need to just apply for a job and enter the job market.

00:54:01: No, I need to find what I love in life and build whatever I can see in order to deliver on this mission.

00:54:11: And so that has been, you know, being your own entrepreneur is a mindset is a starting point is really something where you never accept the existing boundaries,

00:54:21: but you're building and finding the people who will help you build that.

00:54:26: And then the last point I wanted to really make,

00:54:32: Axionandina is not only a tree planting project.

00:54:37: It is a, it is a holistic effort to conserve and restore forests.

00:54:43: But my point being it is not just a tree planting project that has ecological benefits and so on.

00:54:49: That is, every tree has ecological benefits and every person involved, it has social benefits and so on.

00:54:56: But a huge part that I especially with my global outlook find profoundly important is what I said at the beginning,

00:55:06: the symbol of hope by feeling and living action and by showing action and results and then and potential people that are coming together in the tens of thousands,

00:55:20: have this magic power of it is doable.

00:55:24: And that to me that spirit is what we need to take globally.

00:55:29: And that can happen doing reforestation, restoration, conservation, but it can happen in any field.

00:55:36: The crucial part is that the hope and potential that we as a collective human story, we can now,

00:55:47: I profoundly believe we can fix this crisis because if we really come together and believe we can do that and start acting and bringing all the people

00:55:58: magically together to start acting, then we have a huge chance to not only fix the problem, but build a beautiful world that will be much closer together.

00:56:11: Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with you.

00:56:14: Before we coming slowly to the end, I am so that you also are included in the one trillion tree campaign of the World Economic Forum.

00:56:26: What is it you're doing there?

00:56:31: The World Economic Forum is a big network of world influencers and a lot of, it's a lot linked, let's say, to corporates and the private sector.

00:56:47: And we are currently in the, the UN has designated this decade as the decade of ecosystem restoration.

00:57:00: And the World Economic Forum's trillion tree campaign right at the start of the decade was born to help mobilize the private sector mostly to help deliver and play their role into this decade of restoration.

00:57:16: And so what it comes down to is a group of committed both, you know, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs as well as corporations as such that are looking at, you know, sustaining and scaling restoration,

00:57:32: committing whatever their business model in their sector is to helping.

00:57:37: And one example of that is one of our main partners is Salesforce, this tech company, Silicon Valley Tech Company, has become quite a big force and Mark Benioff, their leader, has been, you know, one of the really driving force of bringing the restoration world to the World Economic Forum

00:58:01: and helping mobilize and motivate other companies to really create meaningful actions, contribution.

00:58:10: And so one of the things that, yes, of course, there's funding that can be generated, which is a hugely important role of corporates that have financial means to support that.

00:58:20: But for example, Salesforce, a big part of what we're doing now is how can we apply technology because that's what they excel at in the Andes in, you know, tracking and managing and reporting and everything else that we need to coordinate this many amounts of people.

00:58:39: So there is, we need to stop thinking in sectors and silos, right?

00:58:46: There is a role for every company in global restoration and this quest to heal the planet and the amazing innovations that companies and the financial possibilities and mechanisms and the networks that they have access to, we better put them all to use.

00:59:03: And I want to end that part with a call, you know, if you understand, if you come to the Andes and understand what INE and Minka is, and how it mobilizes people, part of my personal mission is to take this INE and Minka and bring it to the corporate world and engage with corporates,

00:59:22: governments, business leaders in practicing INE and Minka and being able to collectively approach these huge challenges. And because that's what I believe we can do to save the planet.

00:59:34: And on this wonderful note, Flo, and I just can say thank you that you took us through your wonderful journey, not only a personal one, but also the establishing of the global forest generation and your great project action, Andina.

00:59:51: So thank you very much, all the best, lots of energies and a few more years to come.

00:59:59: Thank you so much for the opportunity to share our message and anybody that is listening still hopefully it was, you know, it was engaging over the last hour and something.

01:00:13: Please feel free to reach out LinkedIn, Instagram, I hope we can share my email somehow. If you're struggling to get going, we'll happily jump on the call and help with a few thoughts.

01:00:28: You've been listening to a special English edition of De Gorsa Neustadt, a German podcast series by Zabilla Barton, in which she talks to pioneering leaders who are committed to making our world smarter, greener and fairer.

01:00:43: For more information, please visit www.zabillabardon.com and the official site of the World Economic Forum.

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