Tag: restoration

Ali Bin Shahid, one of the few who can model and calculate water cycle restoration

A conversation with Ali Bin Shahid, an engineer with a deep background in permaculture (and a military one too), a passion for modelling and one of the very few people using data and engineering approaches to tackle critical questions about regeneration. We explore how to put numbers to abstract ideas like slowing water down, spreading it, and soaking it. What does “slow” actually mean? How do we measure it—by kilometres per hour, or some other metric? How much regeneration is required to restore rivers or trigger rains in a given landscape? And, for example, where globally do we have the biggest potential? Where is the biggest gap between the forest and water potential and the current situation on the ground?

It’s definitely possible to manage a few acres or a few hectares through observation, if you’re there for many decades or even through different generations. But as soon as we start talking about regeneration at the landscape level, we need numbers. We need numbers and models. Surprisingly, a lot is already possible: we can calculate to a relatively detailed degree, what certain flows of air, water, and moisture will look like in a landscape. This means you can start to calculate and imagine, almost at a parcel level, where we need to regenerate in order to restore, for instance, summer rains and year-round rivers.

The surprising part is how few people are doing this work. Ali is trying to quantify these ideas: how much water to slow, where the global potential lies, and the vast gaps between current conditions and what’s achievable.

Willem Ferwerda – Kickstarted the restoration industry with Commonland 11 years ago, now finally big money shows interest, but we need billions 

A conversation with Willem Ferwerda, one of the founders of the regeneration space, which barely existed 11 years ago when he started Commonland. How and why is it so fundamental to take a landscape view and get all the stakeholders to look at a map- yes, a physically printed large map- together? Because chances are they never have done that. The farmers, the real estate developers, the nature conversation professionals, the local politicians spent most of their time in their own silos and if they talk to each other often it isn’t very friendly.

How do you get them to develop a shared vision of what they want their landscape to look like in 20 or 30 years? How do you trigger that kind of inspiration? Nobody likes to live in a dying landscape where biodiversity has left, where people have left or are leaving, schools are closing, and shops as well.

We are at the beginning of what was barely a space 11 years ago, of course holistic landscape management existed in indigenous circles and ecology silos, but barely outside of that. And now we see the financial space starting to dip its toe into this and we will need them, as we talk billions of real green infrastructures, not hard infrastructure made of concrete, but soft, healthy spongy soils, thriving ecosystems, beneficial keystone species including people coming back to the countryside and managing landscapes holistically.

What we learned in 2023 about cooling the planet, food as medicine, regenerative renaissance, indigenous knowledge and decommodification

As we are wrapping up 2023 we look back at a year which feels even crazier than 2022. Another war has started and we have been flooded literally with extreme weather events. Every month seems to have been the warmest, driest, wettest etc. in history! Let’s look at what we covered and learned in the podcast!

Tim Coates – Sell flood mitigation to institutional players to finance water cycle restoration

A conversation with Tim Coates, co-founder of Oxbury Bank, the UK’s only specialist agricultural bank, about flood risk mitigation, water quality, water cycle restoration, selling flood mitigation to institutional investors and much more.

Zach Weiss – On a mission to train hundreds of thousands of people in key water restoration techniques

A check-in interview with Zach Weiss, founder of Elemental Ecosystems and Water Stories, about his mission to train hundreds of thousands of people in key water restoration techniques, institutions, how would Zach make the space investable and bankable, and much more.

Ties van der Hoeven – The regreening project we can’t afford not to do, restoring the water and weather systems in the Med, starting with fish

A conversation with Ties van der Hoeven, founder and creative director of The Weather Makers, about restoring the water cycles in the Mediterranean, the effect of water vapour on cooling the planet, our tunnel vision focussed on carbon, and much more.

Neal Spackman – Why it is so difficult to get truly regenerative water and ecosystem restoration projects funded

A check-in interview with Neal Spackman, founder & CEO of Regenerative Resources Co, on why it has proven to be quite difficult to get his RSA Regenerative Seawater Agriculture project funded. We also talk about mangrove restoration projects, why investors are not jumping on top of it, what he has learned over the last 6 months of brutal painful pitching and hearing no, and more.

Rose Marcario – From growing Patagonia to $1b in sales to making early stage regen tech investments

A conversation with Rose Marcario, former president and CEO of Patagonia and current founding partner of ReGen Ventures, about moving from an organic food company to joining an early-stage VC fund focused on regenerative technologies.

Clara Rowe on mapping all restoration projects in the world and provide transparency to the restoration movement

Clara Row is the CEO of Restor, a science-based open data platform to support and connect the global restoration movement. This is conversation about technology, transparency, and bioacoustics in our transition to regeneration. 

Maddie Akkermans on changing the weather systems in the Middle East through regeneration at scale

Maddie Akkermans, co-founder of The Weather Makers, joins us to discuss the role of water cycle, aquatic systems, and weather systems in regeneration.