when we talk to a conservation organization and we try to scope the type of data that we want to access and then show in this ecological assets this proof of contribution we try to ask for the most relevant so we want to try to minimize the type of data that we give access to to normal people because sometimes it's overwhelming and it's not necessary to access everything so what is the most relevant piece of data that we can access that tells us something about the the health of the ecological Focus you have not only the species itself but maybe their focus the ecological focus is on a community so the relationships between different species in an ecosystem so we access the most relevant data it can be data about an indicator species so jaguar in the Amazon is an indicator species that if you know there's enough of them there's a healthy population of them you know that all the way down they have prey the prey have enough food I mean the vegetation is also doing well right so you can use these euristic to kind of have an understanding of the health of an [Music] ecosystem hey what's going on refine Nation I am super grateful to bring another episode of refi podcast today we sit down with alesandro Matti the head of Partnerships and field research at The Sovereign nature initiative based here in Lisbon I have been super impressed by this organization and their pioneering thought leaders ship at the edges of culture Community data and conservation we hear Ali's personal Journey as he transitioned from a master and international law into the work of conserving Nature's Most Precious ecosystems we talk through a number of the pilots that they have been working including the Kenya Wildlife trust bringing data around particular species in this case Lions to gaming communities and other organizations around the world to really demonstrate the value that these specific organisms have for human and for broader planetary Health in this conversation we start to look at the role of the human species in this broader Web of Life and really begin to untangle some of the thoughts and patterns that have gotten us out of right relationship that we've known for Millennia in indigenous cultures around the world it really hit me and struck me as we've seen how far and how separate we are from nature and how much we've boxed in ourselves from communities around us us how we really do need to change and we have an incredible opportunity before us as biodiversity is collapsing and cascading we can actually become the architects of nature they are releasing some incredibly exciting developments and partnership with wallet connect soon and shortly um check out this episode and Glimpse the frontier of biodiversity conservation and web 3 hope you enjoy the show please do drop us a f-star review if you appreciated the content today and let us know what you think Al such a pleasure to have you here my friend how are you arriving today yeah thanks John for having me it's it's been it's pleasure i' be looking forward for this conversation for quite a long time and um I'm doing okay it's been a very very busy time for Sni so um leaning in the end of the of the year and enjoying and looking forward to the next nice nice man I remember when we first met it was at the very beginning of my refi Journey um I don't know how we got in touch but I remember I I had to think about it in preparation of this conversation and um I think we were very much like at the beginning of our journey as well with and we were launching our first hackathon yeah and the refi space was just starting right was sprouting and um we got a lot of applicants and and participants from from that space so I think that's how we got to talk with each other you were at Tuan at the time and it's been a long time and like in web pre world it's feels like uh two or three decades I know it's just two years two years um well I'm super excited to dive deeper into the work that you guys are doing um it's really nice to come and visit your guys amazing office here in Lisbon and be a part of some events together but I was really struck by this moment in your Ted Talk um where you describe this experience of feeling like you don't belong in the world which is something that I've very much felt in my body since a very young age and I remember specifically you describing searching for a new story and then at some point recognizing that actually your mind was also part of the problem and thereby wanting to drop into your body to a deeper kind of felt experience of this childlike joy and curiosity for nature that you had and this ultimately LED you to free diving which is something that I'm actually going to start um yeah training with in March so I'm like really curious but uh you had this scene of of um free diving uh with a bunch of different fish during like a sardine run and almost like this Epiphany experience that you had um can you fast forward or fast back to that moment and just kind of drop us into what you were going through and what this was like for you yeah sure um so let me start with like yeah belonging right and um there's been a process for me uh when I realized that um the work that I was doing or what I was told was the normal let's say was wasn't fitting with with me like with intuitions I had and curiosity I have I had since I was a child to discovered natural world I found out that we built a system that was destroying the planet and was seeing us as separate from uh all the rest of the living so I needed to find a way to kind of like get back to that sense of uh you know belonging and I've always been a curious person and in terms of like curiosity towards nature um so I thought why don't I just do something extreme like trying to pretend to be a dolphin you know by learning how to hold my breath and go deep and uh I was stcky enough to have a friend of mine in South Africa that goes every year to chase the sardines and the Dolphins and the Sharks and the whals that come together with it so I yeah I joined him and uh that experience very much um brought me to really not just just understand with my intellect but with my body that we are part of uh of this natural world like so Dolphins communicating with me um and me communicating through movements with them you know just made me feel like it's actually there's another being that is as curious as I am about uh who we are you know so these experiences brought me to to realize um that there is a commitment that I want to and and a lot of people I work with have the same commitment towards reconfiguring the relationship that we have with the Living Earth yeah and with the minds that we have then you know create some economic systems or governance systems that are more in line and partnership with uh with all of the living and we can get very Concrete in what that means but I think it's good to start with like yeah yeah um what's most meaningful to to to us and I guess also in this ecosystem that we're trying to create of of you know developers uh designers uh economists that are trying to answer those questions I always like to start from a place of like why are we doing this and I think this understanding of we are part of this larger Community ourselves extend and all our actions extend always yeah to to include to include others um from that perspective then we can start to build you know better future better technology economy and so on but need to start from there and there's also a seemingly shift in Consciousness you describe the mamillion dive reflex as effectively lowering your heart rate and changing the way that your body responds in water and for me I've definitely found um these kind of Altered States Of Consciousness through even deep bre can allow you to really resonate with nature in ways that are hard to achieve when we're super stressed out running around all the time with our hands and our phone um so maybe later in the episode we can kind of yeah dive into some of your practices and how you really maintain this anchor to a broader awareness of self as being an intricate part of nature as separate from it but why don't we open up this dialogue around you know why biodiversity why conservation why does this actually matter sure um I mean it's to to some uh cultures I guess this is very obvious why why a thriving environment around us uh it's it's good for for humans right um for let's say Western the Western mind that was at some point in history um separated from the natural world there needs to be some sort of like rekindling of the the whes it is so important but basically if we want to get down to uh to the science right so we are under understanding now that biodiversity offers a lot of what we call services in the western world or or you know things that it's offered to us in terms of safety Health um that is you know the World Bank I think came up with this half of the GDP whatever uh is is dependent on biodiversity on the half of biodiversity we know that biodiversity loss say is is is the planet boundary that was mostly crossed right we're beyond that we're talking about six mass extinction the effects that biodiversity has on us we're still finding out right so you have um new science looking like the the health of the guts and the the diversity of the guts and how that relates to the biodiversity outside of our body and how less bacteria less diversity is actually influencing the health uh our physical health but then as uh consequences on the health of our uh um minds and our capacity to cognitively you know our cognitive functions let's say so um biodiversity is or diversity of life is uh is what we depend on as humans yeah and we are the last ones to come and and it doesn't mean that we are the most important yeah right we're actually the ones that will probably feel the consequences of biodiversity loss the most we are um there has been in the carbon Market uh um discourse that say an attempt to find a way to link the carbon cycle to biodiversity so this is also uh something that's at least in terms of Storytelling that's been tried to kind of show show to people that protecting better ecosystem is also an impact on carbon Cycles carbon storage um but this I think as not yet you can see how with the the cup the climate Cup and the biodiversity cup the type of priorities that has been given in the international um uh realm or International sustainable development realm is B diversity is still not made it to having having priority in in policy M because I believe and we can get into that maybe later but because the measurements are very hard yes so if we uh are obsessed continuously with measuring measuring measuring the exact Health what does Health mean what does it's going to uh we're going to be to though to then you know thanel the capital that we actually want to thanel towards biodiversity conservation at restoration yeah it's such an interesting framing you know beginning the conversation with you know a sense of I don't belong here in this mechanized industrialized World extracting all of Nature and killing you know much of life on the planet and we can experience it like you said in the health of our gut but also in the health of our minds and in the experience of what it's like to live in a community in a concrete jungle where nobody looks at each other in the eyes and you don't wake up to the bird songs you wake up to the sound of a horn you know this is a real Onslaught on our experience of what it means to be human and yet there's this trap it seems where the economic system and its abstract value of all these different things is really struggling to figure out how to accurately value nature because like you described our obsession with measuring stuff and at the same time I know you know some of the work that you guys are doing at Sovereign nature initiative is very much squarely situated you know in data around biodiversity and cons exposing this and making it a part of culture of games and art and community so if you would I would be really curious to hear you describe the work that Sovereign nature initiative is doing and kind of the core theory of change behind this and how we can balance these different drivers and siming paradoxes to actually move the planet towards a more you know healthy and diverse and yeah balanced Place yeah sure so let's let's Place us and what we do in in the context of let's say the what is now called or widely referred to as the voluntary contributions towards nature positive efforts so this is the the framing um or the the the world real Med that we are part of which has into it uh um very different aspects from biodiversity credits to biodiversity markets to Nature capital and um what we are trying to do and the market is not there yet right so like it's all very new yeah um but basically what is um what are the questions in that that we're trying to tackle through technology and through methodologies that we are developing is how does the private sector find where does the private sector find Value in a voluntary contribution where there's no direct return interesting to be expected yet right there's no yeah Financial return at least on the on the capital that I put into this um um into a project for instance that I'm trying to support um through our research the value that corporations or the private sector in general it can also be a community right online and this is why web three we can get to that later on but um let's say talking about corporations now what they find very valuable about having a proof of a game they're making of you know project they've supported is that that brings um retention in terms of employ employees customers brand value right so look at Patagonia for instance and how much value they got and how much Community there you go um how much Community they have created around around the brand around the message right so this is the type of value they they find and for them it can be translated at some point as Financial value you know ging more customers and so on but for now is like about getting the trust of the public of the users of the consumers on the claims that they're making yeah um then we can get into the Beyond uh beyond the corporate uh value that they find that the private sector finds which extends to citizens as well so with the technologies that we're we're developing basically you're able as an individual to have continuous Dynamic life access to the impact that this project that you supported is having on the ground super cool and you mentioned data right so yes data basically gives us the connection between a contribution the someone made Financial contribution towards the project and the actual data that this project collects to form their operations their strategies and to report on the outcomes of of their actions and strategies so we have this of learning so someone that holds this asset that proves that the contribution went to support by diversity restoration or conservation they can access um what does the data mean to the what we call ecological Steward the organization itself how is informing their work and how can I check whether they've reached the outcome that they promised us to reach and if they didn't is not a big deal they can explain you why so sure sure on the data side we've also complemented it with what we call the steart feed which is a more qualitative way of reporting which is basically done through content Rich information like videos photos cool inter short interviews from from the field from the ground of these organizations interesting yeah they do the they do the work and it the more raw and unpolished the better right so like I want people to get and we can get into that as well like on the realness and the roughness of the work of these people and um now so we want contributors to B diversity restoration conservation to feel part of that yeah and um yeah we can get into you know what uh what the theory of change um of each project that we're fac you know that we're supporting how we guide them through through that if you want sure yeah pack Yeah so basically just to recap briefly here so um the the kind of key premise is that um humans actually do value nature and that there's this increasing wave of awareness about the importance of Nature and the pain that we're experiencing at individual level and a societal level and we've seen that Brands who really lean into you know having a positive impact and doing it with Integrity are actually building a type of you know social capital and brand trust and loyalty um and even sometimes a premium as a result of that difference that they're making in the world alongside a competitor who is making no difference Patagonia being an example and that actually um data itself and the ability to verify you know the impact that these organizations are having on the ground is really key piece of the puzzle going back to that whole measurement aspect and it sounds like you guys are dancing with different types of data you have the more structured data of the kind of Quantified um field surveys you know probably uh you know exactly where it is on the map and who's uh calculated it at what point in time and you're also building what sounds like a more social and kind of dynamic feed of stewardship on the ground to create a richer platform probably also you know to tell stories and engage communities at a deeper level um is that a fair kind of summation of what you described did I miss anything let's let me ground it to with examples of the type of data right so what we collect usually we work with what we call ecological stewards with are which are organizations and at times these organization extend to local communities as well so they hire local communities to do the conservation work um and is species mostly species specific data so you can think of uh what is called signs of presence so tracks cats uh like fishes and um or camera traps bio Acoustics this gives you an understanding of what by what Wildlife is present in this ecosystem yeah um direct observations Rangers go out this is another type of thing where they see the animal they record that this animal was there what type of behavior was it's showing and yeah then you have more like Advanced GPS tracking where then there's a device put on spefic spefic animals to for instance if it's on a um um if you want to track a population of elephants you will put that um that uh color on a female like The Matriarch because the matriarch is the one guiding The Guiding the herd so you will follow a certain group of population of elephants this way uh right now satellites are becoming coming closer and closer as you as you know I think uh to to the ground so it might be that soon we will be able to access very cheap type of data or open source data about uh Wildlife wow which raises a lot of questions of course sure but um but yeah and Edna is another very exciting um type of data we will get very soon from these organizations um which will give you a again a very um economic economically efficient way to do environmental assessments so by simply collecting samples from soil to water well that would then give you an understanding of what biodiversity is out there because it takes very small traces of DNA that some animals left in in in the air and then it is deposited in water East s environmental DNA so this is really cool and um yeah this the type of data that we play with but now when we talk to conservation organization and we try to scope the type of data that we want to access and then show in this ecological assets this proof of contribution we try to ask for the most relevant so we want to try to minimize the type of data that we give access to to normal people with because sometimes it's overwhelming and it's not NE necessary to access everything so what is the most relevant piece of data that we can access that tells us something about the the health of the ecological Focus you have the population that you're trying to to to conserve it can be at a community level too right so not only the species itself but maybe their focus their ecological focus is on a community so the relationships between different species in an ecosystem um so we access the most relevant data it can be data about an indicator species so a jaguar in the Amazon is an indicator species that if you know there's enough of them there's a healthy population of them you know that all the way down they have prey the prey have enough food I mean the vegetation is also doing well right so you can use these juristic to kind of um have an understanding of the health of an ecosystem then from there we asked them what is also data that is educational right so what I was just saying is like how through this data about let's say a lion in in a bamara ecosystem how does that inform me about the health of the ecosystem how can we tell that story to to you know a lay person to understand the role of of the species that you're protecting for the ecosystem this is why you find in our language that we use a lot the ecological right so the E ecology is means you know the relationship of the the house the or the relationships that make up the house right the the home that we where we live so the stewards that we protect we always see them as stewards of the relationships that make up the ecosystem and not necessarily a single population yeah so we also always want to extend uh their the scope of what they do to to to The Wider more holistic um uh picture that we can give to someone because sometimes you know like in the past conservation has been seen as protecting the the cool pretty animals yeah which has never been that for scientists like they knew that what they were doing and they what they're doing is to actually protect the whole ecosystem yeah which includes humans so we can go into that as well interesting so but with this let's say data that is relevant educational empathy reach we like to say so it's like how can we how can this data also connect people from the heart yeah understanding for instance through listening to a bi Acoustics of whales right like how can connect with the mystery the beauty of of of of of that species so we try to do that um through data right through very raw data um one of the things that we also do with the data for instance what we did with the the mama the um crowd crowdfunding uh project is to look at how can we produce something at the derivative of that data that is um appealing to the community that will receive this asset so with them was gaming right so we we took a catalog of lions from the masim mara of 400 Lions individually mazara being in Kenya it's a it's a it's an ecosystem uh in Kenya greater masara ecosystem is one of the most yeah diverse ecosystems in uh Eastern Africa um and has predators of uh big big cats and wild dogs and it's very wild um it's one of the most visited um tourist you know Safari places in the world so you took a collection of 400 lions from the Maz Mara for this community um yeah for this Gaming Community yeah Mama we created uh together with them in partnership with them 400 avatars of this gu of this real existing Lions yeah um that these avatars then been created are nfts that will be used within the game for for the own game mechanics so this was like a way to show and each nft that is used within the game includes this proof of contribution right so um so our question there is like how can we make these assets that we are creating which again gives you proof of a contribution supporting conservation and also be engaging for the community that sure has been gifted that is buying that are buying this this this assets which in effect I guess are in-game assets right these are in-game assets yeah and I'm curious what was the response of this Gaming Community and like what were they using these in-game lion avatars for like what was the purpose sure um actually this is um uh evolving um there will be soon a release of the adult uh lions that will show basically all these features that the conservation organization uses to identify cool this is you know Sam this is carface this is it right and I'll get to like why this is important um um to no individual Lions but basically what what uh what they're going to be using it is is a companion to their existing uh uh um assets that they're using so they will be giving to these Gamers extra Powers okay interesting one interesting thing that we've done because we were not just happy with like all right you get these cool avatars that have the characteristics of existing living lions in the wild but we wanted these communities that are very far away from the actual grounds you know the topics of by diversity by diversity restoration conservation the challenges of conservation and so on to learn about it so we how do you do how do we do that um we will soon be launching this um with them but basically we will get them to answer certain questions about lion ecology um conservation work specifically of the maai mara for them to be able to unlock certain powers that comes from yeah within the game and this is just like to you know get again the world to understand the the importance of this work and the importance of this species beyond their Beauty Beyond what they what they represent to us in terms of you know the the images that we have from Walt Disney movies and so on like what is it really what is it uh means to life um totally I'm curious to even follow that thread because as I was looking at this focus on the species of lions in particular you mentioned earlier how Predators have this kind of proxy for ecosystem Health as a whole because if you know there's presence of you mentioned earlier Jaguars um that the rest of the food chain effectively is um strong enough to support that population but what happens say if all the lions in the Maz Mara were to be destroyed like what would happen to the ecosystem and also how would this affect human health what I guess and I'm not an ecologist or W try to pretend to to do that but you know like it's pretty I think it's it it can also become pretty obvious to people if you think about it MH no Lions means prey want prey numbers wild prey numbers won't be on check hence they might be starting to overgraze the land it might be that desertification happened and this animals will probably die um because of yeah they don't have enough enough enough resources for themselves the ification is happening disease might be spreading hence like um humans around might also start to use in the case of the maim Mara cattle and this has happened actually in the past where this is from the wild wild beast wild wilder beast was um was infected cows and cattle Okay C with some kind of disease yeah all right yeah yeah so this is the type of things that can happen so the traic Cascades all the way down to to us if we live our lives mostly sitting in rooms um uh behind screens we don't necessarily see what uh why nature is important until it shows up you know in in in our in our doorstep with climate change with you know news that reach us to say like well if we don't fix our soil uh we won't have any any produce in the next you know 20 30 years and the relationship with biodiversity to that is something that we only you know recently at least is coming to public awareness right now so we see calls from the United Nations from corporate Partners uh of of this International organizations that say basically we need billions to be funnel to towards biodiversity conservation done in a way that is different from um from what we've done in the past of excluding humans from from these protected areas right so um it's a big and this is why the amount of money that is needed is is is Big because you need to be able to ensure that these human settlements around berse areas or the buffer zones of these berse areas are also taken into account the livelihoods of these people yeah I mean the UN recently uh actually in the targets of the biological uh the convention of biological diversity in Target 19 is there is this 200 billion per year by 2030 as a as a Target to be you know the money that we want to raise and the private sector is the Hope gosh that uh you know that they will um they will be able to pull that off and um what I would say with Sovereign initiative we're trying to really carve a space for ourselves is like how can we incentivize corporations to um contribute the financially contribute to biodiversity restoration and conservation without any Market based mechanism so totally I see this you know and I think the community building participation of of communities the customer base with these claims with these contributions that are making um that are nature positive uh call them more berse uh positive towards biodiversity how can this become um something that is valuable to them yeah to the customers and um yeah so it's it's a big question you know but I think this is where we want to move towards until maybe at some point a market might be able to price value nature in the correct way but until that's not there and I think we this kind of a segue yeah I mean you can see the Vera you know you know that world I think uh Vera is coming up with a nature framework to sort of you know create their own methodology on how to Value the outcomes of uh on nature positive outcomes efforts uh of projects but um we'll see you know this sounds very complex what they're trying to to to to make and I think maybe not necessary but we'll see you mentioned some pretty significant Capital flows 20 billion dollar a year um towards biodiversity and nature I know that there was also the H hundred billion doar a year um from Paris and loss and damages which hasn't seemed to materialize um but it sounds like you've made some really nice progress funneling Capital to these conservation projects through these Pilots that you've done give us an overview if you will of how much money that you guys have raised for these organizations and what did you learn about what was effective in raising Capital um for funding conservation in this way yeah so um right now um and I'm very bad with meth but I think we have raised around between 150 and 160,000 amazing for uh for organizations so cool um and it's been interesting to see how much you know also small funds so for instance for one organizations we we have raised 15,000 EUR and the feedback on that when I was like almost being like you know it's not a significant amount of fun right now but hopefully you know we'll be able to raise more for you in the future he said Al you know this is this head scientist like you have no idea how much 15,000 means to us and I can tell you exactly why he's going to in the next so by the end of 20 25 with the extra monitoring of uh of whales uh in martinque so in the French Caribbeans with extra monitoring that he will be able to support through the funding which includes you know U new hydrophones gasoline for the boat salaries for an extra researcher he wants to produce uh a scientific paper that then will be able he's convinced because he's done it in the past to uh influence policy and laws locally to basically reduce the amounts of boats whale watching boats and also vessels that can cross the areas where these whales live in the ocean so and his it was able to produce U uh and show us evidence of him being able to or the organization itself called aqua search has been able to do that two three years ago and now he's like we need we can do more we can put more restrictions on how you know and show like how the whs are reacting to boats jez crossing crossing their paths right and through bio Acoustics mostly so they take this is the data that we access is the Acoustics that can show the stress levels of of the whals um related to you know vessels being being closed by and crossing their um the paths so and this is with small amounts yet right so what we can do with greater am amount it's uh it's going to be interesting but the point I wanted to make here is that when you get very close to uh these organizations and the work that they do you understand that the problem is not necessarily the size of funing but it's like actually connecting to the ones that with the smallest amount can do the most can have the most impact and I'm understanding more and more that like yeah biodiversity restoration doesn't necessarily need more money needs smarter money yeah and um and less bureaucracy like give the money to the ones doing the actual work on the ground and the last year and a half with a SI IE so I'm the head of Partnerships in field research which means I'm kind of like the steward of our stewards so I'm the one very close to them I speak to them on a weekly basis I I know what they're doing I'm getting to know all their operations and processes and this is fundamental it's very important it's very hard to do impact reporting when you don't have a very strong relationships with the organizations that you that you're supporting helping support so I want to bring that which I'm seeing that I'm and I'm experiencing and I'm developing with them very close to the people that contribute to them and it can be these corporations right so how we work is we have these 10 ecological stewards right now with whom we have a contract on giving us basically the rights to access the data that we scoped through that we reach out to corporations so we sit in the middle between conservation organizations and the private sector yeah and we tell them the stories about these organizations the different ones and the corporate organ corporate partner decides which ones which organizations to support based on the type of data this they they can produce the type of stories they can tell and the type of impact that they are you know they are um Desiring let's say through um through that then basically um we we decide the the type of project within their scope of operations that these funds will be going to um to to support the type of outcomes metrics that can be produced the periodicity of the updates on you know meeting the objective of the project and U and through this very simple theory of change connected to a specific project we are able to bring not only the corporations the funds but the the people that actually receive which are users customers of these organizations that would receive these assets to get very close to the stewardship work of these of these organizations or communities um and feel part of that so we have in um the plans for next year to experiment with also online support governance support So decision making for instance could be extended to these online communities that they receive this ecological assets which are the proof of their contribution such as we've raised 20,000 for uh for this organization the organization can ask to the communities that has contributed These funds to suggest what strategies might how shall we spend this 20,000 three options yeah coloring of of of of animals um Anna survey sure or this and they can to become active participants yeah that's really nice explain why right like why would this be beneficial why would this be beneficial and why would this be beneficial you know and in this way you get the people to participate with uh individuals to participate with this these efforts and you create a community around it that informs informs the policy and also build some resilience in terms of the funding stream for these organizations you know it it seems like there's this fascinating model you guys are approaching which is how do you bring this into human culture knowing that most of society now lives in cities are living increasingly digital lives how can you surface you know these really nuanced but important aspects of nature that our lives literally depend upon and bring this into this new culture that's emerging and then help them become active participants in you know the formation of these initiatives so that they really relate to it and also I guess feel a sense of self in that work of like I am an act acve participant in you know supporting the Kenya Wildlife trust and there's something about me and who I am that really feels at home in this initiative and whether it was you know liking Lions growing up or just recognizing the ecological impact that this is helping to change the story of people who are probably looking for purpose and meaning in their life and struggling in various ways so I think it's it's an interesting a very interesting theory of change um because so much of the rest of the refi space is kind of sorely locked into the financialized markets that are also struggling for obvious reasons and I know nature-based Solutions have taken an absolute pummeling recently um and yet we need nature very clearly there's a lot of capital going into engineered um removals and things like this but um everyone intuitively knows that we don't really want to live in concrete jungles with pigs and uh and chickens and cows and nothing else I'd be curious to get just just a a highle overview of some of the other kind of cultural experiments that you guys have run with other organizations I had to look through the tracing the wild initiative which I thought was very interesting in terms of the way that this data was being surfaced but um what else is out there maybe just super high level top view people can see the kind of landscape of cultural experimentation that you guys have doved into sure I I think I would I would love to bring the Trac in the wild experiment and explain it that way because it was such an incredible project that we did and and it's it's one of these art projects the only art projects I think I've been really involved with in my life and it was such an amazing experience so the this is a branch of Sni that is right now we're so fully focused on the methodology the technology the the creating this these assets and bring value to it that we sort of put it on pause yeah um but the art is always embedded in the in the assets that we develop so you can see with the subzero for instance um example how we have created um these beautiful Point clouds representations of a dolphin that then the community that receives it um would you know appreciate and this is kind of like what we're trying to do when we create a derivative okay of the data we wanted to make it um appealing to the receivers the community receiving it um another example of embedded in inside these uh ecological assets that again serves a certain purpose is we are creating um with a wallet connect project that is supporting these Aqua search organizations I was just talking about uh through bio Acoustics we are creating generating uh art basically through this um clicks and whistles from uh Sperm wheels and H Wheels oh really nice cool inputs for generative really nice Yeah so basically you will receive these ecological assets that are proof of your contribution but within that there's an nft that is um that is being generated through the sperm Wells by Acoustics W yeah and you will be able to also access the raw uh you know uh acoustic data which is I mean for a nerd like me it's an amazing thing some other people think like well this is just like noise but sure um but it's you know this this is the type of uh art that we still are doing despite being going maybe more like the the the business route want to call it the more strategic routes let's say but the going back to the trace in the wild what was very powerful about that project is that was an incredible collaboration between like very different artists with the intention of using art to tell this very complex stories about human Wildlife uh coexistence or conflict okay interesting so we took uh data from three different uh lionesses that had a GPS track and and um um artist basically used this data to to create a map whereby you could see how close these lionesses these three lionesses were um getting to um to households of people okay okay these were both a digital art version and a physical art uh that Chum B Nigerian artist has created that was then uh presented and showcased at the Nairobi design week in March this year and what um what that and I was there at the launch and I was there when people were looking at it and people were you know nairobians from the city uh um Kenyans that you know even though this ecosystem was like 30 minutes away by by flight or a few hours Away by car from them they had no idea that this was happening you know that's every few days uh amazai Community loses their you know parts of their livelihoods like a cow or sheep because of um a predator basically getting their their their the cows and so so this and the conflict what creates is sometimes ration so yeah killings or poisoning of lions which then has cascading effects on you know scavengers animals that eat on the poison carcass and also die and so so it's very bad um so this was like how can we use this project the trace in the wild was how can we use this um art medium to tell stories very complex stories like such as the human Wildlife conflict story in uh um in Kenya in the Zara there was also an audio uh recording and a playlist sort of made through interviews that I myself and uh and the K Wild Life Trust have collected in um from communities they live close to the Predators asking questions such as like what is the value of a lion to you yeah yeah and um and then mixed that and created nfts uh songs basically super interesting man so I mean what like what is the solution though you know if there's human communities living on the edges of these areas where there's Lions prowling like how how do those two communities coexist and how does Raising Capital um for the Kenya Wildlife trust support that because I think that's what we're looking at here is you know humans are increasingly infringing in pra nature um and the boundaries so like what What's the hypothesis on how to address this yeah so for for the Kenya Wild Life Trust through the mama uh call crowdfunding funding uh uh project initiative we managed to raise 100,000 uh that's amazing dollars so that was that was the first during a bare Market yeah no that was that was pretty crazy so cool and um Comm love that yeah so this was uh this was a big our first let's say POC that we launched uh and it was so successful that then we decided to like okay we got to we got to um do this more with other organizations looking what type of communities they they they they work with and what type of assets we can created are appealing to to them so with this but kind of get short this uh this money what uh what the Kenya trust did was they uh they've hired a new ranger they bought a car that would allow them to reach more um more of the the areas especially the hotpots were were conflicts are happening they could not reach because they just didn't have the capacity for that right um they hired a consultant uh on Lion ecology to give them advice on on uh on specific um U research they wanted to do and basically right now what they are producing in terms of impact is to show us how tarting different communities and basically addressing conflicts so you they would go with the with with a vehicle to do weekly surveys around places where a conflict happened to understand the reaction of the communities towards the conflict and um what was their not in place that would would have prevented it so some of the solutions that are the most effective are really not uh they're really not sexy you know like there's no there's no there's no like there's no there's no like I don't know special drone or AI solving that is like reinforcing the Bas as they call them so reinforcing the fences around the cattle where they deep at night because lions are you know nigh Hunters so yeah totally at dawn so like they would just if you haven't created a good fence around C where they sleep they will come in and of course yeah yeah as simple as that reinforcing the show that reinforcing Bas will um um will dra ically decreas inci reduce incidence and this is one of their uh their goals because the two threats so in in our let's say reporting model we always want to show what is the what are the main threats the direct threats to the population or or the ecological Focus as we call it so like the can be a community can be a population what are the direct threats and how is this project trying to alleviate those threats or AB bet them completely and um for them the goal is yeah to reduce human Wildlife conflict and another threats they have is habitat loss so we decided to focus on a project that would allow them to monitor spaces that they haven't monitored but that are Hotpot for human Wildlife conflict and then for them to address at least 75% of the reported conflict so that they can understand what type of policies they can suggest in the future um the Kenya also very connected to to the government they collaborate with the government so they can influence policy through the scientific research which is um nice nice what I found is a lot of the conservation work is doing is like trying to prove certain threats strongly through S rigorous scientific research and outcomes so that they can afterwards influence policies in regards to conservation of species and ecosystems yeah it's super interesting I think going all the way through to better understand yeah what this means by human Wildlife conflict and kind of witnessing these two keystone species lions and then people obviously and I could be totally sympathetic to you know the gentleman or the family who'd lost their cattle to um a lion you know and that kind of natural desire to retaliate and yet I think it's interesting that this organizations kind of continuing to show up in relationship in community to really help circumnavigate this conflict um first thing came to mind for me was fences like these are very simple as you describ not sexy but also there's this kind of emotional response that we have um if we're responding from a place of separateness and otherness and oh like this other thing took something from me as opposed to like oh actually this is a part of life and balance and nature and I need to be more responsible for you know the way that I am stewarding my own resources because this the way that life Works life gets life and death is a part of it and so um I think it's yeah a fascinating kind of microcosm for this broader picture of humanity really grappling with um this age-old story um that we've been telling ourselves around man against nature as opposed to Man a part of Nature and uh I'm curious it seems like you've covered a lot of ground over the last 18 months um I can't believe it's only been that long and you guys have raised as much money as you have for these organizations and pretty rough macroeconomic conditions and crypto conditions as well um what are some of the things you've seen that give you the most hope and bring the most optimism towards the work that you're doing conservation yeah so one one thing that came to mind when you mentioned is like you know human human nonhuman uh conflict conflict of friction right and like seeing ourselves is not part of and um one of the one of the things because I I'm the one reaching out to conservation organizations and you know closing those Partnerships one of the things that I um I always asked themselves I would ask them is um how do you include the human in everything that you do like in conservation work that you do and some some of them like the Kenya wildli trust has specific community outreach programs Community lead conservation programs where they hir the people uh to do conservation work um others including their threats model threats to human well-being of their actions right so you look at the threat to the ecology to to a species you look at how this intervention is helping the the nonhuman and you're sure that it's going to help the non-human but how is it impacting the life of people living around right so this type of considerations is something that we want to ask and we want we we expect from the organizations that we work with to have at least a consideration in the theory of change and the project that is included the social part sure of it and seeing this movement moving forward gives me hope nice in terms of like how what is the vision um in this you know let's say stewardship world is it about saving species so that we can send tourists to go look at these pretty lions or we actually really moving towards uh creating the conditions for coexistence between humans and wildlife in an expanding population and and you know um how can we re cities like I mean this is not necessarily sn's Focus work but you know Urban but we started sort of there so oh inter Urban yeah so Urban reing like how can we bring nature closer to to us and what are the conditions again that we want to set to make that happen because we know that living with Wildlife costs I mean you lose things you you know a monkey takes takes takes food from your house and like you know there there's there is a friction that we don't want to completely eliminate what we've done we tried to eliminate it by building fences that those fences are too expensive to keep up first of all and they're not effective because the long term in the long term you won't be able to enforce all the time that then actually is not good for the for Animals as well because it it locks them into close the ecosystem and so so I mean the hope is that yes the biodiversity conservation movement is moving towards answer the bigger the bigger questions through their strategies which is like how can humans and Wildlife coexist another just quickly I just want to touch on that I think I think it's a fascinating idea I mean I'm obviously new to the space and I haven't gone into it but having kind of a human Centric biodiversity conservation model is a really interesting concept I was talking to Greg from Pama who described you know working in fisheries and organizations being very tempted to just come to fishermen and say don't fish here you know and yet it's not a practical model because this is how people survive and if you begin to look at humans as you know just an element in the ecology as a keystone that has particular needs particular patterns motivations it becomes yeah a very different way to approach this Challenge and I personally am very yeah sympathetic um as a father towards just that deep instinctual need to survive and to provide for our next of kin you know this is runs in our blood and yeah also recognizing um the conflict and the tension that happens when we run into wildlife and you just used the example of a monkey stealing things um but this is also what happens when we're with other people community is hard relationships are hard you know love often brings pain and yet um we found especially through the pandemic this intense loneliness and isolation and being separated from one another and I think this is very much you know expression of the separation of Nature and so I love this idea of bringing Wildlife into cities and bringing um you know the Wilderness back into our life it's something I feel very deep calling for right now is to actually just immerse myself in the wild because at 33 now years old I've never done it you know I've always lived in environments where there was that nice square box to return to and so I think that's a very interesting kind of Pinnacle concept as you guys are obviously on the very edge of this movement really pushing so many different boundaries and worked a lot with amazing communities and you guys have done several hackathons to really you know ideate and generate Concepts around this but for me this this feels very very fascinating and very promising and also something that I seems like people could get behind more um as a as a mode of yeah valuing actually Harmony and nature where humans can coexist as an intricate part of this ecosystem and to really shift away from this conflict so just wanted to provide yeah some kind of thoughts and narratives um you were just about to move on to a second piece of yeah what you've experienced that was giving you a lot of Hope and optimism in this space sure actually I've yeah I I can share a thought that came to mind now that you were sharing um in terms of like intrusion of wildlife into somehow a space that we have created in the west especially as like a protective thing there's a wild there and there is us here um what we've seen in Europe right like so in in Continental Europe a lot of the wild big mammals have disappeared and now through different programs um like reing retroduction of of species we're seeing a comeback of the wolf the the big so the big carnivores the wolf the Bears and so on and they're creating conflict and so on in other areas we introduce grazers like so one of our uh Partners is re Wilding Portugal in the north there as a introduced um towers and wild horses to increase the diversity of grazers in the in their ecosystem cool to help the Regeneration of the ecosystem why I'm sharing this is because especially in Europe we're seeing this this friction of like now wolves are getting into people's Farms which they didn't do and and maybe the last generation ever right so have this new although this was an old problem I mean not a problem but it was an old relationship I would say yeah relationship totally between you know humans and there histories that you can go read you know like how how people dealt with this and now is new and is often times perceived as um um you conservation organizations I brought this this is your animal go go catch it you'll find a solution like we won't right as no but you understand like there is how the perceptions is is wrong right on like how how this this animals almost seen as pets right because they be reintroduced or they being facilitated to come to a new place right that's some wolf yeah I mean sure like with WWF Romania with with whom we will launch a really interesting PC next year they they were introduced a bison around 10 12 years ago in in Romania um and yeah they were telling me stories of like you know Farmers that had like a bison rocking up in their Garden in their apple uh you know Orchard um Orchard and um uh say calling them like hey guys your bison is here come get it you know so and why again like I'm sharing this is that a lot of these reing projects their goal the long-term goal is to let nature take care of itself as as we have created the conditions for humans to coexist with this this new not new but reintroduced species yeah they want to obsolete themselves and this is kind of like the the hope that I'm hearing from the most Earnest scientists conservationist conservation practitioners I heard from two of them they told me you know at the end of the day my uh my success in the long term will be um um verified when I have I've obsoleted myself from this ecosystem so when I've done the work to then move away from it yeah right to and this is so important we don't want to create dependencies either Wildlife or community human communities there that we cannot let let ourselves you know go with our intervention so all the projects that I'm working and we are working with I'm trying to always ask that question as one of the first like what is your longterm yeah goal I you make yourself Absol how can you obsolete yourself that's very nice because um because at the end of the day this is what what we're trying to reach you not continuously fixing the the symptoms of the problem mitigation right like that's not what we're doing now in biodiversity we're adapting so interesting and trying to create adaptation strategies that can last for Generations so cool what came to mind as you were describing that is this um kind of historical patterns that humans have constructed Cathedrals and temples and beautiful structures as a home for worship of the Sacred and the Divine and you know from the enlightenment onwards science science became this um new structure upon which to hang the mystery of the world and I feel as though a lot of humanity has kind of augmented some of our own intelligence and processing to this big black box of Science and really we lose some of the connection to the lived experience of what it means to be human and just assume science will figure it out and Technology will solve these problems but I almost imagined as you guys describe this conservation work of becoming architects of life again where actually we've spent the last you know however many Millennia as a human civilization really depleting natural resources for our own benefits and you can track in the fossil record you know the uh Extinction of large mammals with human settlements but what would happen if you know organizations um are actually beginning to look at the future of human culture and expression of really being an active participant in the cultivation of life and Beauty outside of our homes and this little moment of a bison showing up in our garden or a wolf you know coming into our farm is is yeah it might be an initial pain point on the premise but actually is an invitation to go deeper into this role where we're not just providing food for ourselves but food for this incredible tapestry of life upon which we're just an element and yet we're an intricate part of the whole I don't know if you've had any um cultural experiences or communities where you feel like this kind of work is being expressed really richly this sort of artistic cultivation of life in nature um for me I'm kind of thinking you know indigenous communities have really been doing this for a very long time but um I don't know it's uh yeah a bit of a future casting exercise that that came up I'm not sure if it resonates it just um yeah I feel like we need a new story of of human success in a way uh right now I'm I'm studying uh there might be the next part partner uh the snow leopard case um Co SN leopards and and over there they talk about um I mean there is um in Tibetan Buddhism there's no leard seen as a go a ghost like a spirit that comes and goes that you you need to respect and protect and rever uh because of these Powers uh that it has um you know to to come silently within the village and steal every now and there sheep but this is is all faith-based so all the um in specifically in Nepal uh they're running um a conservation program with monasteries uh with Tibetan Buddhism monasteries that is called the calling faith-based conservation so inter the llamas in this in these uh villages they inform they they they work with the communities to basically help them perceive the snow leopards as that is something to be revealed as something important for their livelihood and so on because the Lama uh is the the steward of the human Community but that human Community extends to everything else right so wow um so this is a very fascinating story but we haven't worked yet with his SN laer so I can bring you another one that I always use um the example of the Kenya um Kenya context because I was there like can I um I talked to a lot of community leaders and so on and um one of the things that came out of these conversations is that you know Masai have been living with predators in general not just like lions but you know hyenas are actually worse than than lions in terms of like they're incredibly opportunistic so they also do a lot of killing but the lion has a certain cultural uh importance and what they would tell me is that when I asked them what is what does a lion mean to you what is the value of a lion to you to these maai leaders or community members they would say that the lion means to them Pride means uh protection it means danger also and in the Maza culture you have a ritual um sort of like a right of passage for an adult man to become um a warrior and they need to kill uh a lion that would mean to them and to their Villages that these men are ready to protect the village so okay uh from the danger which is which is the lion is a danger but he also a way and this is something I heard from the community members is a way to REM to remind the lion that the humans are also dangerous right so there was this sort of synergetic relationship built whereby there was a killing every now and then which had a cultural signic significance um but that created this respect M between humans and Wildlife you know so we see that a bad thing although now at some point when population went down which was mostly about habitat loss and prey and so on then the killing cultural killing of the lion started to also become a threat because beforehand was was so minimal that balance it was keeping the balance and keeping the Lions also I'm curious to look at you know as Sni grows up in its fullest form what's it going to look like what are you guys going to be and what will be made possible in the kind of fullest vision of the world that you're doing sure so as I said you know we we are now in in the process of uh Distributing all these ecological assets that are proofs of contributions towards nature positive efforts um one of the things that we want to do is to keep uh uh expand the funds that we can access to to then be distributed to these conservation organizations experimenting with different ways of Distributing These funds from looking at Ubi related to conservation uh places uh what is what they call conservation basic income you know and all these type of like distribution mechanisms we want to explore um but most importantly beyond the funneling the funds and finding ways to distribute These funds in a way that is the most efficient and the most respectful of the people living with the wildlife and so on and um we want to see a community online being developed around or different communities being developed around specific projects and ecological stewards that are long-term committed yeah to to the work that they do and the ecosystems that they are trying to to to protect super interesting so we want to see I mean I'm I'm usually carefully ambitious but I can say that in the last next like three years you know we want to see a million people amazing hold holding these ecological assets engaging participating with the work that these organizations are are doing so nice and that are they stick with a specific project yes they they they commit exactly so I like to call them like ecological committed communities you know like a community that is following the low process of regeneration of a certain ecosystem that takes long I mean cannot produce an outcome about the grazers role uh in an ecosystem that takes sometimes 10 20 years to to to produce results so how can we create that commitment that committed support yeah which comes from funding but also from participation with decision making yeah so this is the the the long-term vision of Sni to look at like how online communities can become committed supporters of uh offline field communities and steuarts on the ground um and long term to me also would mean that this hope that I shared with you before of the conservation organizations obsoleting themselves yeah I would like to see that happening in in the next you know I cannot even say 10 20 30 years whatever but the idea of creating a support mechanism whereby the people on the ground the stewards the communities on the ground actually then able exactly as we created the conditions for them to leave and we give them enough tools to compensate for losses and things like that that they can actually do the work by themselves the data collection that allows them to monitor the populations they can do themselves because you know it like technology is is becoming so sophisticated what we can access at individuals and citizens that for instance applications like I naturalist are already used to do data collection ction from citizen science you know type of initiatives so this is the um the long-term vision of Sni and it's almost an entire new profession to be an ecological Steward and to actively participate in monitoring regeneration and you know to be running experiments on the ground in your own Community to see what works and to really learn and discover how we can restore these natural habitats um curious for people listening really res ated with you and your story and the work that you're doing at Sni um what's one thing that they can do to get involved sure um I think right now really we're trying to connect with uh um corporates um Enterprises that are interested in getting involved with uh conservation organizations and their work and supporting their work through funding super cool so uh you can reach out to to me directly if you have any suggestions of organizations we could reach out to um if you want to get involved with uh if you want to become a committed Community member um you can uh you know reach out to to us and how you can you know get one of these these ecological asses that we're creating uh that we're creating right now um usually it works with like in the web fre space for instance if we're accessing funds from protocol for instance they would then be creating the assets that then will be Distributing to their communi so if anyone is from a web three U protocol involve the community and can suggest within that ecosystem a potential crowdfunding campaign that we could do with one of the ecological steart that we have in our portfolio that's going be be spearheading this stuff amazing yeah fundraising uh ideas where by we can use gcoins or any type of like other web free grants to to do something like that would be amazing because why web see this why web 3 I think web 3 has showed us that communities can be created online around uh an asset um sort of and and the story that that asset has from the board Apes to you know all other um nft uh or or currencies in general tokens in general there is some sort of a strange trctor that creates these communities how can we bring more meaning to to those communities through you know BYOD diversity restoration stories yeah how can you bring more meaning and also like these communities seem to be pioneering um new systems of value and if we can encapsulate nature as an asset and show that actually people do care about this and they're willing to put their money behind it you know this is a kind of far Upstream signal to these corporations who ultimately responding to Consumers and shareholders did you want to drop a little Alpha about what you guys are doing at wallet connect before closing the show sure absolutely so I mean the what we are creating as a community um development uh tool is called real uh which is a registry for ecological assets uh linking basically so we're creating a link between the funds and the data okay um with the wallet connect project what we will do is uh wallet connect has agreed to uh allocate certain amount of money for this conservation organization called aqua search that is providing bioacoustic data from Sperm wheels and H Wheels um what we will do with that data we will generate uh nfts um that are generated specifically from the audio um and distribute this nfts to 100,000 uh customers of wallet connect super cool who is launching um a new feature in their let's say products um which is called the uh web3 in box which basically would allow anyone that holds an asset like an ecological asset issued by by us to receive notification as they subscribe to to this feature to receive notification exactly about a certain State change in their in their asset what we produce in is ecological asset that's data inside it so a change in the data or a change in terms of uh an update for instance that we receive the conservation organization would automatically send to the contributor the holder of these assets they update so they don't need to check their assets every now and then to see what the update you know what's happening on the ground they receive these notifications by email can be an impact report it can be hey guys we just bought these new hydrophones here is how we use it as you know raw as that but they would be able to receive it in a very web to way experience and then go back to their assets you know so we are definitely using capacity is from web 3 but the usability and the access to through web 2 tools like emils um good old emails man never get over good yeah the good old emails my Grandma knows how to use it you know so um that's a game changer man I'm super excited and we will have our first you know when I say when I said a million I know it sounds like a lot but if we're already 100,000 uh individuals receiving updates from the Marine wildlife of you know Martin and updates and they can they can be part of you know how these funds are distributed and what type of impact in terms of policy it has this is very strong and it's again with not so much money allocated yeah imagine what you can do with more larger amounts maybe more projects that then are supporting not only monitoring but it can be another uh yeah strategies as well yeah I think there's some really interesting design space here I know we're just over time but I I love this this idea of you know all these conservation organizations surfacing structured data that you guys as an organization can help give increasing guidelines around what data is valuable but really it seems you know someone like dclimate who's building this climate data Marketplace could actually help to service this stuff programmatically to all of these other gaming communities and you know any communities in general who want to consume this data in a meaningful way and to be able to receive um you know compensation for the use of this data and I think really opening this up and making this data accessible as a you know a building block in the new culture of this civilization that we're building together that's trying to figure out how to create harmony with nature is a really fascinating play and you guys are building so much deep expertise and also relationships on the ground with these organizations leading this work and yeah man I'm really excited to see what comes to the next cycle it feels like prices are definitely going up again which is always an interesting signal um and things can get a little bit stressful and hairy uh just to close here I'm curious what your personal practice is um to yeah stay centered and stay connected to that kind of deeper sense of self sure um wow there's there's a few um I think um a morning uh morning surf when the conditions are out there I live close by the beach so uh that's that's usually a a good practice for me um I use the breath a lot to connect to to to my heart um there's a visualization practice that I think I was explaining in the yeah in the T tedex about kind of like connecting to to the world outside seeing every in inhale as you know a gift of oxygen given to all living uh living things out there and the exhale as a gift that we give back to so nice to to life you know and like kind of visual visualizing with every inhale and exhale this type of like giving and receiving it's been very helpful in something that I would do when I feel a bit disconnected and so on just walking around or or sitting behind my screen and kind of reconnecting to it and um yeah there's many different ways and of course you can go to the more extreme ones like free diving and so on kind of like uh incredible disciplines and practices but I you know anyone can find find their own way to remember how to belong you know like yeah just a practice got to remember man Al thank you so much for your time it's been an absolute adventure and uh looking forward to see how your guys Journey unfolds thanks John been a real pleasure absolutely my friend we'll see you [Music] around thanks so much for tuning in I hope you enjoyed the show I would be so incredibly grateful if you could leave us a fstar review wherever you listen to your podcast this helps us reach more listeners attract amazing guests and ultimately get the story of regeneration out to a wider audience takes just a couple seconds it makes a massive difference thanks so much and do let us know if there's any guests that you'd love to hear from we'd be very grateful to hear from you [Music] thanks