Bionic Planet: Reversing Climate Change by Restoring Nature Steve Zwick

Today we’re going to try and help you understand one of the most vexing components of the climate challenge — namely, the overlapping, interlinking, and contradictory land titles that determine control of so many tropical forests — in this case, the Amazon, the lungs of the planet.
 With no clarity over control and no realistic way of enforcing it, there’s no way to sustainably manage and protect this massive bulwark against climate change.
Today’s episode centers around a few individuals, most notably a Japan-born physician named Jonas Morioka, who migrated to Brazil in the 1980s, purchased timberland in the 1990s, pivoted to conservation in the 2000s, and is now embroiled in a title fight over a transaction that may or may not have taken place a century ago.
His story is far from unique, and it shows how easy it is to chop the forest, how difficult it is to save it, and how tenure disputes make it even more difficult to leverage carbon finance for the common good.
My guests are Vinny Maffei and Olivier LeJune of Quantum Commodity Intelligence. We collaborated in a recent story they ran called “How a decree created a REDD old mess in Brazil, and the new effort to fix it,” which you can read here:
https://www.qcintel.com/carbon/article/long-read-how-a-decree-created-a-redd-old-mess-in-brazil-and-the-new-effort-to-fix-it-23409.html
Quotes
"To meet the climate challenge, we must save the Amazon." - 00:02:38-00:02:49
"Decades of research have shown that you reduce deforestation in part by reducing poverty, and you reduce poverty in part by giving people an incentive to manage land sustainably." - 00:04:23-00:04:34
"Brazil is very famous for having a lot of large properties owned by just a few people. It's a very unequal country." - 00:19:33-00:19:44
"Forest conservation starts with the people in and around the forest." - 00:28:16-00:28:26
"Deforestation isn't a puzzle book with answers in the back. It's a wicked problem with no simple solution." - 00:30:24-00:30:36
"There are groups out there that are devoted to going in and finding things wrong." - 00:45:01-00:45:12
"There's a lot of interest around REDD+, amongst the media and other actors." - 00:46:39-00:46:49
Timestamps
00:00:00 - Introduction to the Climate Challenge
00:05:30 - Introduction of Michael Greene and Initial Impressions
00:10:12 - Overview of Land Titles in Para, Brazil
00:14:06 - Discussion on Pará State and Porto Region
00:18:29 - Jonas Morioka's Land Purchases and Legal Issues
00:21:48 - Land Ownership and Settlements
00:25:52 - Legal Disputes and Involvement of Public Defender
00:30:03 - Discussion on Indigenous and Environmental Groups
00:32:27 - Arguments Regarding Land Rights and Conservation Efforts
00:37:00 - Negotiations with ITERPA and School Construction
00:41:21 - Financial Aspects and Legal Agreements
00:43:10 - Status of School Construction and Legal Challenges

Photo courtesey of  HH58 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70303656  This episode of Bionic Planet is entitled "The Mosaic, the Minefield, and a Manifesto." 
The "Mosaic" reminds us that there is no single solution to the climate challenge. Instead, we have a mosaic of interlocking solutions that fit together like a clock. Carbon finance is just one part of it, and it's one of the few parts that have worked well, albeit imperfectly.
The "Minefield" reminds us that the mosaic of solutions sits in an ideological minefield, and you never know if you’re going to trigger an explosion.
The "Manifesto" is my promise to leverage my 20 years of experience in environmental finance to give you a truer, more nuanced, and complete understanding of the climate and biodiversity landscapes than you’ll get anyplace else.
The New Vertical
This episode is part of a new vertical called "the Tribes of the Climate Realm" to reflect the fact that the climate community is a disunited hodgepodge of tribes who occasionally unite against a common enemy, but who are divided by ideological and sectarian differences that sometimes erupt into something akin to civil war. Tragically, as often happens in these situations, the most combative, belligerent, and least civilized tribes are usually the most colorful, despite having the least to offer. That's led to a dangerous disconnect between the real debates taking place inside the climate realm and the public discourse unfolding outside of it.
I initially started to call this vertical "Unmasking the Anti-REDD Crusade," because there is a very high-profile anti-REDD crusade, but I felt that frame was too narrow and dismissive of legitimate challenges, philosophical disputes, and areas where reasonable people can disagree. 
It's part of a new vertical that I'm calling "The Tribes of the Climate Realm" to reflect the fact that the climate community is not a monolithic entity but is, instead, something like a disunified realm spread across thousands of contested miles of mountains, plains, and forests, with competing tribes and factions and all the different perspectives, agendas, and intrigue that come with it.
The Tribes of the Climate Realm may occasionally unite against a common enemy –- climate change –- but they're divided by ideological and sectarian differences that sometimes erupt into something akin to civil war.
Tragically, as often happens in these situations, the most combative, belligerent, and least civilized tribes usually have the least to offer but are also the most colorful, so they win the hearts and minds of outsiders drawn to bright, shiny objects –- which is to say, most of us who've ignored the Climate Realm and its internecine battles until recently -- despite the fact that the realm and its battles have been very public since the United Nations' First World Climate Conference in 1979.
Related Links
 Will Coverage of Climate Solutions Suffer the Same Fate as Coverage of Climate Science
Six Lessons from the History of Natural Climate Solutions
Where Does Healthy Critique End and Cynical Denial Begin?
Timestamps
00:00:00 - Introduction to the Tribes of the Climate Realm
00:04:10 - Introduction to Enhanced Weathering as a Solution
00:05:03 - Historical Background of Enhanced Weathering
00:06:29 - Debate Over Enhanced Weathering Methodologies
00:07:10 - Purpose of the Voluntary Carbon Market
00:08:03 - Mark Kenber's Perspective on Climate Efforts
00:09:21 - Marc Stewart's Contribution to Forest Carbon Protocol
00:09:55 - Media Misrepresentation of Carbon Markets
00:10:39 - Challenges Faced by the Verified Carbon Standard
00:12:14 - Importance of Accurate Storytelling in Climate Discourse
00:13:09 - Call for Sponsorship and Support for Bionic Planet
00:14:23 - Emphasizing the Complexity of Climate Solutions
00:16:30 - Contrasting Narratives in the Climate Realm
00:17:44 - Manifesto for Honest and Nuanced Cl

Tim Mohin wrote “Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Tree-Hugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations” back in 2012, after three decades in sustainability — first in government, with the US Environmental Protection Agency, and then at companies like Intel, where he served as director of sustainable development. He went on to head the Global Reporting Initiative, which administers the GRI standards for sustainability. He recently helped launmch ESG data provider Persefoni and hosts his own podcast, “Sustainability Decoded with Tim and Caitlin.” We look back on 40 years of sustaiability finance and ahead to the future of Environmental, Social, and corporate Governance (ESG) reporting — its potential for driving real change, its prospects for employment, and its inherent limitations.

Remembering the Surui Forest Carbon Project, which was the first indigenous-led REDD project, plus:
A conversation with Geoffry Mwangi Wambungu, Chief Research Scientist at the Kasigau REDD Project in Kenya.
He explains what social scientists mean by “theory of change,” and tells us why he believes the term “co-benefits” is a misnomer in natural climate solutions.
Further reading on the Surui Carbon Project here: https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/story-surui-forest-carbon-project/
Full Transcript (non-scripted portions translated by AI)
 
CO-BENEFITS VS CORE BENEFITS, WITH GEOFFREY MWANGI
Bionic Planet, Season 9, Episode 95
OPENING HOOK
STEVE ZWICK
Almir Surui was ten years old when the first logging truck came to his tiny village deep in the Amazon Forest.
It came to chop a single stand of centuries-old mahoganies, and it came with the grudging approval of the chiefs.
After all, they reasoned, it was just one truck, one stand, one time, and for a good cause.
The chiefs weren’t the grizzled old men you probably imagine. Most were barely into their 30s, because more than 90 percent of everyone had died in the five years before Almir was born in 1974.
Ninety Percent.
Gone.
They lost their mothers, their brothers, their sisters, and their lovers.
They lost almost everyone who knew anything about governance.
The surviving chiefs, shamans, and elders lost faith in their own abilities to serve their people, because their time-tested traditions had failed.
Prior to 1969, Brazilian authorities categorized Almir’s people as an “UNCONTACTED” tribe of the Amazon, but in reality, they HAD contact — SOMETIMES peaceful but MOSTLY violent contact — with neighboring tribes, rubber tappers, and even Brazilian explorers going back decades.
One of those neighboring tribes called Almir’s people the “Surui,” but Almir’s people called themselves the Paiter.
In the regional Tupi dialect, Surui means “enemy,” while Paiter means “real people.”
Due to a miscommunication, the Paiter were entered into the lexicon of indigenous people as “Surui” in the leadup to First Contact, which took place on October 7 1969.
Today, their name is hyphenated: Paiter-Surui.
The Paiter-Surui had lived in harmony with the forest for centuries, but they didn’t live in harmony with those who invaded their territory.
And invasions increased dramatically in the years prior to First Contact, as Brazilian authorities encouraged westward migration into the forest.
It was a bloody period, and the Paiter-Surui held their own in combat, but they couldn’t hold their own against European diseases — such as smallpox, measles, and the flu.
That’s what got them in the end.
The elders died, and kids became chiefs. One of those kids was a 17-year-old named Itabira, who learned to navigate the OUTside world of Brazilian society as the world IN-which he’d grown up disintegrated
(Aside)
By the way, if you can’t find any of this online, it’s because it’s all original reporting, and my book hasn’t been published yet.
Anyway, Itabira realized early on that to save his people, he had to push the Paiter-Surui and their struggle into Brazilian awareness. To do that, he and other chiefs stopped fighting illegal loggers and started colluding with them to finance trips to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
Soon, they were chopping trees to feed their families and pay for medicine, and by the mid-1990s, they were known as the “logging Indians” — despised by environmentalists who saw them as traitors to the cause and riven internally by fights over how to manage their resources.
The Paiter-Surui broadly split into three factions:
one that embraced the destruction of the forest for commercial gain,
one that opposed that destruction,
and one — the largest of them all — that WANTED to save the forest but NEEDED to feed their families.
Almir was born in 1974 — five years after First Cont

Dr. Zorodzai Maroveke -- AKA "Dr. Zoey" -- heads the Zimbabwe Industrial Hemp Trust, which is promoting the uptake of industrial hemp as a climate smart alternative to wood, cotton, and plastic.
Hemp, she explains, replenishes faster than wood, uses far less water than cotton, and has almost no waste.
Its ecological benefits are clear, and she hopes carbon finance can be used to overcome the financial challenges to scaling up.
Supplemental Reading: "Commodities at a Glance: Special Issue on Industrial Hemp"
https://www.mycannabis.com/cannabis-in-zimbabwe-conversation-with-dr-maroveke/

Zimbabwean entrepreneur Chiyedza Heri runs the Ubuntu Alliance, a company that's helping farmers leverage carbon finance to shift to more sustainable forms of agriculture.
She's one of more than a dozen young Africans I met at year-end climate talks in Dubai (COP 28) -- a new breed of entrepreneur that the late Ghanian economist George Ayittey calls "cheetahs" because they're nimble, quick, and hungry.
Green Cheetahs pursue activities that are pro-nature as well as pro-growth, and today's guest certainly fits that bill.