New Ventures Podcast Sanjoy Sanyal

Bangladesh is acutely vulnerable to the climate crisis. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO is implementing adaptation clinics in very vulnerable areas. The process involves understanding the specific problem the community is facing and then implementing a solution, while taking the community along. The results are extremely encouraging. 


Sections

Section 1: First 25 minutes about BRAC’s approach     

Section 2: Next 20  minutes about how this approach is applied to the various geographies 

Host: Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise

www.regainparadise.org

Guest : Tausif Ahmed Qurashi

Senior Programme Manager, Climate Change Programme 

https://www.brac.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tausif-ahmed-qurashi-54287b85/

Cellular meat is not going to flood your supermarket shelves anytime soon. Across the world, only four companies have got regulatory approval. They are organising tasting sessions in restaurants and “pop ups” but it will take several years for companies to scale up manufacturing processes to produce sufficient volumes of  products at reasonable costs (even assuming that it is only the adventurous, conscious and rich customers who will be the early adopters of cell based meat and dairy products.

But cell based meat, milk and seafood can wean customers
off the real thing in a way that plant based foods cannot. The plant based foods is a rapidly growing industry and is an 11 billion dollar in the world.  Plant based meats have environmental benefits over conventional meat but it is hard for these “fake meats” to  cater to the aspirational and cultural aspects of a meat dish. Which is where cell based meat comes in.

Some countries are taking proactive steps in developing
regulation for this food innovation. Singapore which imports almost its food is doing so because it wants to secure food supplies (grow 30% of its food by 2030). One company has received regulatory approval. Netherlands wants to remain a food exporter even as they hit net zero targets.  The US is another front runner and has given regulatory approval to two countries.

The encouraging thing is that regulators are innovating
around the regulatory process itself. User friendly websites are encouraging companies to get in touch.. Enquiries and responses are promptly answered. Regulators are righty concerned about safety and health of consumers and go through a process that takes a year to two to understand the product and the production process, assess the risks and develop risk mitigation processes. However, the process is collaborative with regulators acknowledging that they are learning along with the companies. Most importantly the regulators appreciate that the companies they are dealing with are start-ups and do not have an army of lawyers. They are going out of their way to make the whole process transparent. Some of them are even making previous application drafts available so that companies can develop better applications.

Sections

Section 1: First 12 minutes Ambika’s background, why cell-based food and a global overview   
Section 2: Next 30  minutes regulation and government support.

Host : Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise

New Ventures Website

www.regainparadise.org

Guest : Ambika Hiranandani

Regulatory Affairs and Strategic Partnerships, Senara

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambika-hiranandani-b4815616b/

A rancher in South America is worried about the condition of his land. He knows that improving the soil condition will help in growing more grass which his livestock can feed on. He wants to leave his land in a better state to his children so that they can inherit his profession as well and decides to more regenerative practices. A NGO in East Africa has been already working in improving the agricultural practices of thousands of small holder farmers. This allows them to grow more food and not cut down forest trees in an effort to feed their families.
Farmers like these know the true benefit of “soil organic carbon”. It helps increase soil fertility and improve biodiversity in the lands they live in.  The voluntary carbon market which provides financial incentives to farmers to sequester carbon provides only additional benefits to these important gains.  
International organizations implementing large land restoration projects that help generate carbon credits need to remember that for these projects have to generate positive socio-economic benefits to local communities if the benefits of carbon sequestration have to be positive.
Soilwatch works with international organisations and carbon project developers to develop carbon projects. It tries to incorporate elements that help improve food security in these projects. The services include creating baseline of biomass in and above the soil, modelling how much carbon will be sequestered, designing project activities that help in achieving the goals and monitoring and verifying the amount of carbon sequestered. The process of doing this requires deep scientific expertise. The team at Soilwatch includes agricultural experts, ecological economists, data scientists and behavioral science experts. They use AI and machine  language tools to identify cropland from satellite images. But AI is not only the only arsenal at their disposal. To answer important questions like how much carbon is going to be sequestered if the temperature rises by 1 degree C there is a long history of statistical ecological tools that are available. The important thing is to do the right tool and the right data source for the problem at hand.                 
Sections
Section 1: First 5 minutes Joona’s background and starting Soilwatch
Section 2: Upto 22 minutes what Soilwtach does.
Section 3: Last 13 minutes about examples of Soilwatch’s projects 
Host
Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise
⁠www.regainparadise.org⁠
Guest
Joona Mikkola
Chief Scientist, Soilwatch

https://soilwatch.eu/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joona-mikkola/

The Luangwa region and the Kafue regions in Zambia hosts some of the finest national parks in the world. Unfortunately, these forests and the wildlife are under threat. An average farming  family who lives near these
areas cuts down 60 to 70 big trees in a year just to use as firewood for cooking food. Falling soil fertility and a growing population is forcing them to cut down more trees and convert to farmlands.  More recurrent droughts and floods, because of climate change is making the situation worse. To protect the forests and the wildlife, Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), a Zambian NGO is
working with farmers so that they have the right incentives not to destroy the forests and poach the animals.

COMACO helps farmers learn agricultural practices to get more yield of the traditional crops they are already growing such as maize, beans, groundnuts and soya beans. They also introduce them to produce new practices: beekeeping, mushroom farming and caterpillar farming (dried caterpillars fried with tomatoes and onions is a local delicacy to be eaten with maize or cassava flour). They
help farmers practice agro forestry with a tree species that helps fix nitrogen to the soil and prevent the depletion of soil fertility. The twigs of these trees can also be used as firewood. Efficient cookstoves and sustainable hoes (that does not disturb the organic component in the soil) are provided free. COMACO then buys farm products from the farmers by paying them a premium, processes them into items like peanut butter and dried mushrooms. Most of the proceeds are ploughed back into the communities. 

COMACO is financed by a mixture of debts and grants. Some of the grants are for broader purposes but many are for specific projects. In partnership with the Stockholm 
International Water Institute, COMACO is digitizing all farmer records. The organization has also made some progress with carbon finance. They started developing a carbon finance project in 2012 to sell them to the World Bank. One more project is being developed with Acorn Rabobank. So far US$ 4.9 million of carbon credits has come to the communities.

COMACO uses market-based mechanisms to create impact but is itself structured as a non-profit. This allows it to meet pledges to remote communities.  It would not have
been able to do what it does, if it were not a community-focused non-profit.                         

Sections

Section 1: First 38 minutes about what COMACO does in
Zambia

Section 2: Next 12 minutes about impact, partnerships and
funding.

Host: Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise

New Ventures Website

www.regainparadise.org

Guest : Edward Zulu - Monitoring and Evaluation Manager, COMACO

Guests Website and contact details : www.itswild.org,

ezulu@itswild.org

Years of repeated tilling the same piece of land with a hand

hoe has compacted the soil in Malawi into a hard layer.

Plant roots cannot penetrate this “hard pan” and they grow

laterally, instead of vertically. Rainwater does not penetrate

the soil either but rushes along the furrows created in the

land, washing away the top soil. This is drastically reducing

agricultural production plummeting Malawi, whose

youthful population is dependent on agriculture, into crisis.

Climate crisis is making things worse. There are heavy

periods of rain, followed by dry spells and more frequent

cyclones. Standing crops are swept away and heavy rain

exacerbates soil erosion. Spells of drought makes plants,

already deprived of soil moisture, wither.

The solution is simple. Break down the hard pan of the soil.

Create deep beds and plant the crops there so that they are protected from storms. Rainwater seeps into the soil so that the soil has enough moisture during droughts. Tiyeni, a

local Malawi NGO has been training farmers on this

technique of “deep bed farming” for more than a decade.

They work with government extension workers who in turn

work with lead farmers who demonstrate these techniques

to other farmers.. Some of them have quadrupled their

yields. Tiyeni has worked with 30,000 farmers across the

county.

It does not cost too much money to train farmers. Isaac

Chavula feels that with about 450 million Malawian

Kwachas (less than US$ 300k) they can cover a lot of the

country. He also thinks it is a “lot of money”. That is

because funding for Tiyeni has been hard to come by – the

funding they get is from projects they do with universities

or companies. They are partnering with SIWI to raise the

profile of rainfed farming. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa’s

land is not irrigated. Governments have too little money to

invest in large irrigation projects. If all farmers in Malawi

could adopt deep bed farming, there may not be need to

spend a lot of money either in solving the looming problem

of food security.



Sections

Section 1: First 20 minutes introduction to the problem of agriculture in Malawi and the solution to the problem , Deep Bed Farming

Section 2: Next 23 minutes on what needs to be done so

that Malawi farmers have access to the solution.

Host: Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise

Website www.regainparadise.org

Guest : Isaac Monjo Chavula, Country Director, Tiyeni

Kasonde Mulenga, Programme Manager, SIWI



Guests Website and contact

details. https://www.tiyeni.org/

isaacmonjo.chavula@tiyeni.org

https://siwi.org/

kasonde.mulenga@siwi.org

The wine and the alcohol industry has been around for millennia and obviously is not the major cause of climate change. But then like every other industry it has to reduce its emissions and environmental impact. More importantly, the wine industry is being impacted by unpredictable weather events. Drought, sudden frost and wildfires are affecting the quantity and quality of grapes. Transporting wine requires a lot of energy. Glasses are heavy to ship around. Transporting bulk wine across the continents, selling wine in paper cartons, reducing the weight of glasses and using completely recycled bottles are all part of the solution. To adapt to climate change, wine makers are growing different types of grapes, growing them in

different regions, conserving water and discarding monoculture. Consumers care about sustainability but companies need to give them great tasting products which are also produced sustainability. It will be unfair to deprive a hard working person of a simple pleasure in the name of sustainability.

Sections

Section 1: First 10 minutes introduction to David and the sustainability commitment of Direct Wines

Section 2: Next 14 minutes about how the wine industry’s mitigation and adaptation approach.

Section 3: Last 8 minutes about consumer perception towards sustainability.

Host : Sanjoy Sanyal, Founder Regain Paradise

www.regainparadise.org

Guest : David Gates

CEO Direct Wines

https://www.laithwaites.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gates-72535627/