The Big Idea Funding Forest Conservation | Andika Putraditama | TED

In places like Indonesia, the biggest source of carbon emissions are actually coming from the loss of our forest and the burning of the peatland that is this really carbon-rich ecosystem that is made up of dead organic matter accumulated over thousands of years. Globally, the agriculture, the forest and the land use sectors actually contribute to around a fifth of the global emissions, which is significant, right? So there's no viable pathway for us to really mitigate climate change without really stopping the loss of our forests and without actually starting to protect this massive natural carbon sink that is our peatland, our mangroves. But what's causing the loss of this critical ecosystem? Well, it's actually the productions of commodities that we use every day. Things like timber or palm oil that is so ubiquitous that there's a good chance when you walk to your local supermarket stores, almost all products in the shelves have something to do with palm oil one way or another. But it also tells you that this product, this commodity, is so prevalent, it's so embedded in our daily life, in our daily economy, that completely taking out the production and the consumption of it might not be realistic at all. And so companies have recognized this dilemma, and they've introduced policies such as the no-deforestation policy. And what it does is that it dictates them to really make sure that the palm oil that they're buying is not contributing to forest loss. Which is a good start. But that's only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that if you really want to have a nature-positive outcome out of this, is that you have to start proactively protecting the existing forest and restoring those we have lost. And here's the bad news. Forest conservation financing is massively underfunded. The mitigation actions under the agriculture, forest and land use is severely underfunded that it only receives around less than four percent of the total global climate financing. And this is the problem that we're trying to solve with a mechanism called the Rimba Collective. So I have a political science background as well as forest science background, and I've spent a majority of my career working with the governments, companies in Southeast Asia and civil society to reduce the impact of commodity supply chain. And what Rimba Collective mechanism allows us to do is it lets the company to contribute funds to protect and restore the natural ecosystem proportionate to their raw material impact. And in this case, the more they use palm oil, the more they have to contribute to this Rimba Collective fund. And it allows us to have this scalable, large-scale, long-term financing. But it also introduces this sense of shared responsibility and proportionate responsibility across the supply chain. And our aim is to be able to deliver the conservations of around half a million hectares of forest in Southeast Asia over the next 25 years, while also providing local livelihood for the communities that depend on it, and preserving the habitats of critically endangered species in the forest area. And Rimba Collective is not just a concept. So we've been doing this for three years now, and we're now actively financing around 220,000 hectares of forest in Southeast Asia. But it is not without its challenge. Finding a good investible forest conservation project is challenging. The first thing that you need to do is to identify forests that already have land management rights at least over the next 20 years, because we want to ensure that any kind of interventions, any kind of investments that we made to protect the forests can be sustained over the long term. Second challenge is that some of these forests are located in a really remote location. I happened to visit one of our projects that is considered as accessible in the western coast of Sumatra, and it took me a two-hour flight to get to the province from the capital of Jakarta, and then another 12 hours car ride just to arrive to the village, and then another full day's hike just to reach the border of the projects. Other projects might require us to get on a boat

a full day's boat ride, just to arrive to the village. Imagine finding good local organizations or local company who can deliver robust conservation, who knows the landscape, but also able to navigate a complex international certification system. Not many organizations can do that. And so we have to build an ecosystem of capable organizations that can deliver these conservations. Second challenge is on the demand side. So when we're talking to companies to invest in funds like Rimba Collective, some of them are still thinking that maybe protections and the restorations of nature [are] not our responsibility. Or maybe they think that conservation is cheap. Putting five dollars per hectare on the table is enough to call it conservation. Some of them might think that -- "I'm in it for the next three years and then I'm out." All of those are wildly, wildly unrealistic. Some of these projects, they have to buy motorbikes. They have to buy cars to patrol the area. Some even have to build watchtowers in the middle of nowhere. Multiple watchtowers. And some of our projects, they need to build dams to start regulating the water table when they're restoring the peatland ecosystem. And of course, all of that requires significant amount of investment. And so what's the ideal way forward for us? Well, first thing is that we need to change the perception that the protections and the restorations of our natural ecosystem should just be a charity project. It shouldn't be. The products that you use every day, maybe the shampoo that you used this morning, might not reflect the true environmental cost behind them. The forests that were lost to grow the ingredients that go in it, or the carbon that was lost and will not be absorbed in the future because the trees are no longer there. And so by linking these metrics of procurement of raw commodities directly to the conservation financing, we should be able to recapture that externality costs and redirect that to the conservation of our natural ecosystem. And our goal is big. Conserving and restoring 500,000 hectares of forest is ambitious. But that's just a fraction of what we need to do right now. Just to put things into perspective, the World Resources Institute, they estimated that the amount of forest loss that can be linked to palm oil productions globally is already at around six million hectares of forest loss. Cattle industry, that's at a staggering 45 million hectares. So again, 500,000 hectares sounds a lot. And it is a lot, it is ambitious given the amount of resources that we need to mobilize, but it should be seen as a starting point of what is possible if actors across the supply chain work collectively, and agree to finance the conservations and the restorations of our natural ecosystem proportionate to their footprint. The climate-regulating function of a forest is called an ecosystem services, and I'm sure other services that you have in your life, you must be paying for that, right? So our money, your money should not just be paying for the raw ingredients that we use every day. Our money should be able to pay for the preservation of the natural ecosystem that we all depend on. And what we want to do is to replicate this across other supply chains. So maybe we have Fashion Collective or Rubber Collective. And maybe only then we might have a chance to close that financing gap and have a real fighting chance to address the climate crisis. Thank you. (Applause)