NB106: Becoming part of the solution
Tarmo Virki
I help companies with story-telling and branding I Founder of the NatureBacked podcast I ex-Reuters
Hello there! Welcome to the NatureBacked newsletter; we hope it finds you in recovery from election session depression…
In this week’s podcast episode, Tarmo chats with Rare 's president and CEO Brett Jenks . They discuss Rare's mission to inspire change for the benefit of both people and nature and how community engagement and behavioral science can drive sustainable practices.
Without further delay, take a listen to the podcast.
What’s in the news?
Newsfeeds this week are dominated by Trump’s triumph and COP29 next week…
This week, Americans voted Donald Trump into his second term as president, showing that the environment, among other things, was far from their concerns when they went to the polls.
Trump calls climate change a hoax, and experts say that his agenda will risk adding several billion tonnes of extra heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, according to The Guardian.
With COP29 around the corner, Reuters has what to expect from the talks in Baku next week, and Politico questions if there i any leader showing up to check Trump’s climate wreckage.
There’s snow on Mount Fiji! You may be thinking, isn’t there always? Well, no, and this year is super late. Ordinarily, early October is when the snow cap begins to form, but it’s a month behind.
The Impact/Week was launched with an alarm on all participants' phones (and for full disclosure to everyone’s phone in Barcelona) over the increasingly extreme weather events.
Hats off to the Norrsken team for pulling the fantastic event together again! While we missed morning yoga/swim sessions on the beach, we participated in the Interesting program and met with several future guests of the show on the sidelines of the event.
One highlight: Prof. Dr. Martin R. Stuchtey of The Landbanking Group spoke in the morning after Trump's win was clear and gave a grim perspective. His key takeaway: The current climate situation underlines that the neoclassical growth theory is outdated. It's time to embrace a new paradigm that accounts for natural capital and social equity.
It sounded a lot like the philosophy of NatureBacked ... :)
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One to watch
This week’s one to watch is Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering, a San Francisco-based startup that’s rewilding the ocean. Its developing technology that enables kilometre-scale seagrass restoration and has just raised $2 million, backed by Lowercarbon Capital, Superorganism, and ReGen Ventures.
It’s just emerged from stealth, so that’s all we have at the moment, but if these underwater drones can master their horticultural skills and furnish the oceans with the super carbon-capturing plant, this could have a significant impact. It’s estimated that we lose an area of seagrass equivalent to two football pitches every hour.
Impact events
Fiona will be at Slush in Helsinki, Finland, on the 20th - 21st of November to network at the event and take in the Climate Summit. Let’s meet up!
Tarmo will head to the Baltic Sustainability Awards and Forum as a jury member on the 26th - 27th of November in Riga, Latvia. Get tickets for the event here.
What we are listening to
Sticking with Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering, The Entrepreneur Experiment podcast interviewed co-founder Will O’Brien. Well worth a listen to hear how he bagged himself a summer internship in the Cayman Islands and a stint with Budist monks.
More news
NatureBacked has joined the Climate Media Collective, a collaboration of podcasts, blogs and newsletter brought together by 4WARD's global climate network, including We Don't Have Time, 10-Second Climate, The Climate Optimist, The Transition, Another ClimateTech Podcast, CREtech Climate Cast, Impact at Scale Podcast and 4WARD's Community Newsletter.
More Listening
If you missed out on any of the last 100+ podcasts, now is your chance to catch up. You can find the whole catalogue at NatureBacked take a listen.
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Have a great weekend!
Creative brand strategy with a touch of behavioural magic!
4moBehaviroual change and the science behind it are key....so glad to see you are exploring this more. Politicians are not really going to solve much of it as their plans always come with a blatant financial cost to the consumer or they shy away from exploring short term monopolies to standardise key infrastructure. (car charging, renewable energies etc) .... after all their priority is to keep their jobs and keep that GDP percentage rising. The way the UK converted my father to recycling 15 years ago was not through adverts, policies and marketing...it was giving him three coloured bins and tell him what days they picked up which colour. (although what happens after that is still a massive problem). The same with the charging for bags in shops..... Politicians should have put in an outright ban on plastic supermarket bag as this ruins recycling if it enters the system....BUT the policy of charging did push the act of actually asking the simple question of 'Do you want a bag' in many shops which offered up a choice, which in itself reduced usage. Simple solutions that invoked a behaviroual change are the key to the future...thank you for highlighting this key area of need. 👏