Season 3 Episode 3: From Free to Priceless: The True Cost of Nature

Every breath you take is free - but in an economic system that only values what's priced, could this be nature's greatest vulnerability? In this rare podcast-meets-podcast exchange, David Meyers and Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez (host of Poder Ambiental) flip between interviewer and interviewee to dissect this dangerous paradox. Their conversation transcends typical environmental gloom, revealing how innovative financial mechanisms are already transforming our relationship with nature - from biodiversity credits empowering Global South economies to debt-for-nature swaps creating billion-dollar conservation opportunities. As the two environmental specialists analyze not just what we say about nature but how we say it, they unveil why reframing our relationship with the natural world might be less about saving the planet and more about saving ourselves.

Links:

uan Pablo Romero Rodríguez 's Podcast website

Transcript

David Meyers: [0:00] Welcome to another episode of For Nature Podcast. I'm David Myers, and today we have a kind of fun podcast for you. Juan Pablo Romero is joining us. Juan Pablo is an environmental consultant, and he runs a podcast called Poder Ambiental, or Environmental Power. And his goal is to help build clear communications around environment and how we talk about environment and increase the amount of ways and we talk effectively about environment. And so Juan Pablo and I had a conversation and I hope you enjoy it. It's quite wide ranging and it's kind of a podcast where we interviewed each other.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [0:40] Hello, everybody. My name is Juan Pablo Romero. I am the founder of Poder Ambiental, an initiative that aims to talk better and more about the environment. And I think that that's important because society is built through conversations. And I'm here with David Myers. David.
David Meyers: [1:07] Juan Pablo, a pleasure to be here with you. I'm David Myers. I'm the executive director of the Conservation Finance Alliance. And I'm the co-founder of the For Nature podcast and I've been working in conservation finance for many years and conservation for even longer than that. And I've done work in business and research and so I'm very excited to be with you, Juan Pablo, having this conversation about how we think about nature and economics and what we need to change. So a pleasure to be here.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [1:42] Great to be here. So shall we, let's begin with a topic that is, how do you think that the economic system records the importance of the environment? We recently were at an event together and you mentioned that and I saw myself in you. So how do you think that that happens?
David Meyers: [2:07] Well, very poorly in general. So I divide up the way we think about economics and finance into two categories, those that are about the economic value of something, and we can talk about what that is in a bit, and then the financial value of something. So for me, a financial value means monetary value, cash, someone's willing to pay for something, money changes hands. That's the financial piece. Whereas the economic piece can be quite broad, including the value I get, the satisfaction I get from walking in the woods, the satisfaction I get from breathing the air and being part of nature. And their nature is hugely valuable in terms of the economic value. The challenge I find is that it's hard to integrate environment and nature into the financial or the monetary value of nature. So we can do studies looking at how important nature is, and people have shown that it's worth probably more than the entire global economy is worth. But how do we bring that into financial decisions and budgeting processes? And how do we bring in the true value of nature so that we're using that information to make decisions? That, to me, is the question. What are your thoughts on that?
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [3:34] My thoughts on that is that, yeah, I interpret value as something that is important. So value is something that is important. And I think that recently, well, not recently, but a couple of years, I listened to a book of Mariana Mazzucato. And she, one of the discussions that she had is that somehow in the recent years, money became value. And money, it's a representation of value. And the economic system that we have signals the importance of something through prices. So if something is expensive, it's important. But if something is free, it's not important. And nature gives us everything for free. And that's the tragedy of nature. We overconsume it.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [4:38] Because it's free, and we pollute it also because it's free. And the economic system does not record those processes. And that creates a loop that is awful. I think that that's the core of the economic, of the environmental crisis, that the economic system is sending all the wrong signals.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [5:05] And basically it's finishing nature as we know it.
David Meyers: [5:10] Well, let's pull this apart into different pieces because I think that, you know, that in a way economics, the study of economics has identified these problems and there's names for it and there's some tools that are in place to address it, for example, green taxes or, you know, other kinds of incentives. But overall it's absolutely true that nature seems to be outside of the economic system and you know our work, what my work, a lot of that is to try to bring it in to the system and people are doing that through various ways not many of which have been effective so it's interesting to explore but you know natural capital accounting is a big initiative where we tried to quantify the value of nature and create natural capital accounts along with other kinds of capital accounts to integrate those into national planning, for example. And a lot of great work's been done on that, but it hasn't really necessarily changed the way we're accounting for nature. In the monetary system, right? Or the value that you're describing as it is defined by money and monetary value, right? So just knowing the value of nature does not seem to be enough to change people's attitudes, right?
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [6:34] For example, with natural capital accounting, also coming back to Mariana Mazzucato, she said in one of her books that national accounts are political decisions. You know, I think that the countries measure what they think is important and to live outside the measurement of natural capital at the level that it should be reflects a societal decision. I think that the fact that we are not measuring natural capital as much as we're measuring, I don't know, employment or economic flows says a lot about a society, how much it values that decision in itself, because we don't have enough information to make decisions around the environment.
David Meyers: [7:35] Yeah, really interesting point in that we are maybe not measuring and monitoring natural capital because we don't consider it important, right? I get that. But also, you know, a lot of studies show that we do value nature and that we value the ecosystem services that nature provides from a pure economic point of view, right? But we just, as you say, we're not willing to pay for it because historically it's been free or it's been low cost. So we're in this situation where in the past, nature provided us all these free services, water regulation, coastal protection, soil production, pollination, recreation, all these services were provided effectively for free by nature. We've reached a point now where nature can no longer provide those services without major changes in how we manage our relationship with nature. So what was free in the past can no longer be free because there's too little of it left and we're destroying it at too quick a rate, right? So we need to transform the way we look at and invest in and record nature in our economy to have a better relationship with it going forward. How do we do that?
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [9:02] Well, I had this conversation with Pavan Sukhdev. Brilliant. And I was talking with him, and he says that we need to incentivize the good and incentivize the bad. So basically, we need to develop economic incentives, and we need to tax more. But that, in practice, it's increasing the cost of products. And that has an incredible political complexity in itself, because people are poor nowadays, and to basically, to modify the economic system demands a lot of nuts and bolts. So essentially, for example, if you need to disincentivize something, you need to tax. And tax makes things more expensive.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [10:14] And for example, I don't know, this year, I think that it was this year or later last year, there was a major strike in Germany, because of the environmental things that were put in place. And some of the things that the farmers were protesting was the increase of diesel fuel prices. And that has to happen, you know? I mean, the cost of fuels needs to increase in order to decrease the demand. You know, that's economic theory. However, that is incredibly popular everywhere in the world. So that politically-wise, it's a decision that demands political will, but also it's like shooting yourself in the foot, you know, and it demands, because people want to do those transformations, but on the other half, they have the budget constraints. So that transformation, I think that demands public policy and also a ton of communication. And it's a painful process. It demands conversations like this.
David Meyers: [11:37] Yeah, well, I agree. And I think that there's mostly what we do is to try to look at the current economic system, systems of corporations, system of reporting, system of government, and say, it's not working for nature. How can we make little improvements to change it? As, you know, Pavan was saying, you know, incentivize positive actions, disincentivize harmful actions. To me, this is really important, and that's what economic theory provides and tells us to do.
David Meyers: [12:14] Taxes, subsidies, you know, different ways of doing that. But as you're saying, where we show what we value is in some of these financial decisions. And we apparently value fossil fuels much more than we value a stable climate because we globally are providing over $1 trillion a year in subsidies for fossil fuels. These are the governments that come together every year and say, we're going to address climate change. The money that the developing world is asking for them for adaptation and mitigation was about that same order of magnitude, a trillion dollars. They've agreed to, I think, $300 billion a year, but apparently have not been providing the $100 billion a year that was previously agreed. But they are providing $1 trillion, these are the world's governments, to fossil fuel industry, at the same time saying we need to transform out of fossil fuels into renewable energy. So here we are saying the right things, doing the wrong things.
David Meyers: [13:26] And continuing on with business as usual. So my question is to you is, how can we step out of this entire system that is unable to make these transformative changes that we need? Because, you know, if we can decrease those subsidies from $1 trillion down to $800 billion a year, we will consider that a huge success. But we're still financing fossil fuels at $800 billion a year. And renewable energy gets subsidies of, I don't know, $100 billion, $200 billion, if we're lucky. So how do we step out of this entire system and find ways to communicate and convince people to elect the right government people, to allow the government to put in place taxes and other incentives without protesting? How can we convince people that we need to transform how we relate to nature in a positive way?
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [14:34] I think that the transformation comes from power. So I'm going to elaborate on this. I think that the insurance sector is going to play a major role in this. For example, in Florida, in the U.S., I understand that like a year or two years ago, Farmers Insurance, I think that's the name of the insurance company.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [15:03] Withdrew from Florida.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [15:06] They say we cannot be in here anymore because we're paying too much premiums on this. So basically, what is going to happen in there is that the insurance companies are going to be, I think, that very important allies in this because they can signal those price signals in the economy. So people feel that in the U.S. I understand that insuring a property in Florida, it's more expensive than in the rest of the U.S. Because of the calamities that happen in there because of the hurricanes related to climate change.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [15:53] So as climate change and the global crisis hit harder, where the occurrence of those type of things that are very bad is going to happen more often. So the insurance companies, they're going to say, okay, this is something that needs to stop. And that is a power structure that can fight somehow big oil. Because insurance companies have money, you know? So they can become a very important part of that. So that's a price signal. I think that another component has to do with.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [16:36] People and governments having longer decision-making periods because people make decisions, especially oil. For example, here in Colombia, most of the economy of the country, the state is financed by a company that is called Ecopetrol, which is an oil company that is partially owned by the state. So if Colombia does not, for example, extract oil, cannot sustain itself, you know, so it's a transition of the economy and also think in a longer term. I think that those would be the two things I can think of initially. And a lot of conversations explaining the importance of making those decisions. What do you think that we should do, David?
David Meyers: [17:39] I don't know the answer to that. I worry about, I think about this a lot. I agree the insurance industry could be a very powerful ally for this. They see the risks of environmental change of biodiversity loss and of climate change better than almost any other industry out there because they're specialists at understanding systems and they track data and their business is based on understanding how that data might influence their profits so as a business they're really focused on some core issues and were some of the earliest companies to be aware of climate change when it first became an issue.
David Meyers: [18:29] The transformation I see we need is more along the lines of convincing people that it's worth making changes to their lifestyle and making changes to their politics that is longer term. And, you know, you'd mentioned the short-term piece. Even insurance companies, they're investing their money in the stock market. They need to generate returns from all the capital that they're holding for people. And they also invest in oil companies because they generate good returns. We all use oil. Let's be serious. I use oil. You know, you use oil. We need it right now. But we need to move away from it. And it's harder to move away from it when the price is so artificially low. So we need to explain maybe what the true cost of products and services are, including environmental services, ecosystem services, but also food and oil. And if you integrate all of the economic costs and benefits of nature into these different products, the price will change.
David Meyers: [19:56] And we, as a global community, need to understand that prices will change if we start to take better care of how nature is accounted for in our financial markets. And instead of, you know, arguing against it or protesting against it, let's try to understand it. And there's ways probably to make those changes gradual, but we need to figure out ways to accept the true cost of products and services where the environmental costs and services are included. And that can be done through taxation. It can be done through subsidies. It can be done through a range of incentive structures that Pavan is talking about, right? But the consumer and the civil actor, people that vote, need to be aware of these things. So that's why I'm excited by what you're trying to do, which is communicate these issues in a way that helps people understand how nature can be better accounted for in our economy and society.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [21:07] Yes to all, but what I think that is very complex is what you were mentioning, you know? The prices need to be modified and when you include positive and negative externalities into prices meaning those for those that are not economists, the benefits that are not accounted on a price that a product generates it's a positive externality and the social cost that it generates it's a negative externality. So if we include those in the prices, it becomes more expensive.
David Meyers: [21:52] Something's more expensive. Something's cheaper. Yeah. If you have a product that is benefiting nature, it will be cheaper.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [22:00] Through subsidies.
David Meyers: [22:01] Yeah. No. Well, through subsidies, through the increased cost of other products, for example. So even pricing is a system. We don't pay a certain price for something only because that was what it cost to produce it, if all we pay for is the cost to produce something no one makes any profits if it costs $3 to produce a cup of coffee and I pay $3 for it nobody makes a profit, if it costs $3 to make and I pay $5 somebody's going to make $2 a profit on that, right? So we want people to make profit. Now, if it's one coffee company competing with another one, and that coffee company is making sustainable bird-friendly coffee, but it costs a bit more, right?
David Meyers: [23:02] But no matter what, everyone's only willing to pay $5 for a cup of coffee, then they'll make less profit so here's a company doing the right thing trying to be sustainable helping birds managing forests it increases their cost we all benefit from it but they lose, so how can we create a financial incentive so a company that improves how coffee is made, supports bird life, and this has been going on for years, can they get a premium for the coffee? And the answer is yes. There's systems in place where you get sustainable coffee, organic coffee. People pay a premium for that, right? So you're integrating some of the economic benefit that nature provides into the price of that coffee. So now imagine that there were systems that government put in place to incentivize.
David Meyers: [24:04] The production of sustainable coffee and maybe penalize the production of harmful coffee with a lot of chemicals and too much irrigation, you would have a competition between the different producers of coffee. And so, although in theory, you may be raising the price of the sustainable coffee because it costs more to produce, in the end, they'll be more profitable because they'll be able to sell more, and they could ultimately lower their price. And they don't use as much water, so they don't have to pay for the water. Or there's less chemical entrance because it's regenerative agriculture, and so they're more profitable in the long term. But the system currently is basically against any company that tries to do better with regard to nature. All it is is a cost, and it's hard to capture a benefit.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [24:59] Where do you see the role of the state in all this process? I mean, because what you were mentioning, for example, those signals, going back to the example of the coffee, for example, it would need to be more expensive to produce, like polluting coffee, for calling a name. There should be like the carrot and the stick, you know? So the stick should be fines or taxes or all of that. But that entails a lot of work from the state, meaning, yeah, on a national level or on a regional level. And where do you see the role of the state in all of this?
David Meyers: [25:55] Yeah, that's such a great question. Because when we started the conversation, we were saying how nature and environment are poorly integrated into the economic system, right? And it makes us think that the economic system is some kind of planned system. That someone said, oh, I'm going to design an economic system. But in reality, it's something that evolved. It just evolved. It's a natural system that evolves. And as I think Adam Smith would say, the individual, invisible hand, right? So this is, so to, and in that evolving system, if you don't price the value of nature appropriately, really.
David Meyers: [26:49] Then we have the problem that we've been talking about. So what is the role of government? Government is essential to determine how companies work. So it's not, if we just leave the markets to themselves, then they're not going to take care of society's needs. They're not designed to take care of society. They're not designed for the long term. In fact, they're not designed at all. The markets are just systems that are self-evolving systems so government comes in and sets rules they set rules like no child labor right remember a long time ago I mean and in many countries still it's it's you know there's risk of children having to work at dangerous jobs now governments come in across the world now and said, no, we want good worker conditions.
David Meyers: [27:46] We don't want child labor. We want safe factories. You can't have harmful chemicals in your workplace. There's all these rules. A government comes in and that increases the price, the cost of production for the companies. And they have to pay people more salaries. They have to put in place safety regulations. that's all government. Government comes in and sets these lower rules. That influences price because it influences cost. It influences the competitive framework, the whole environment. And these are not what we would consider incentives. It's basic, just regulation, right? These are the rules. And how does business react to that? Business, they go, okay, we can't have child labor.
David Meyers: [28:31] Great. So they stop hiring children, you know, and they pay people a little bit more. And so their profit maybe goes down. But in fact, they're competing with other companies all the time. Companies are competing with each other like species compete with each other in a natural ecosystem. It's nonstop competition. So although you think that a government regulation would come in and increase prices, for example, it only does it for a little bit. Companies are constantly competing with each other, trying to figure out how to produce something more efficiently, more effectively, how to market something for higher prices, how to make more profits. That's what they're good at. They're very good at allocating money towards making more profits. That's what businesses are designed to do. So government comes in and they set the rules for business.
David Meyers: [29:27] That influences prices. So what's the difference between, you know, and for example, I mentioned the fossil fuel subsidies, and we're talking about agriculture and coffee production. Well, petrochemical-based fertilizers are cheap because of the subsidies for fossil fuels. If there were less subsidies for fossil fuels, then organic fertilizers would be more competitive, and you'd see more organic fertilizer being used. You would see more regenerative agriculture. So in a completely separate situation, the choices that governments make about how much they're going to charge for extraction of oil on public lands, how much they're going to subsidize certain activities that could reduce the cost of fossil fuel, have influence on the entire system of the economy. So whether a government wants to support free markets or not, they're influencing prices all the time. They're making these value choices that you talked about all the time. Every government regulation, every rule, whether they enforce something or not, that's a choice that's made. If they don't put enough money into enforcement.
David Meyers: [30:45] Then more people are going to break the law, like what we saw in Brazil during the last administration. They reduced the amount of money going to environmental enforcement, and more and more people cut the forest illegally.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [31:01] I agree. And I think that the role of the government, because of the nature.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [31:08] When you see microeconomics, economics there's the market failure component so you say okay the market does everything well unless and there's a set of rules but there's one that it's resonates a lot with me it has to do with public goods and I think that the environment it's essentially a public good because in many cases, you cannot restrain the access of somebody to that. And it's, and also, I don't remember the other feature, but yeah, they're public goods and public goods must be managed by the state. You know, I think that that's the, that's the role of the state.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [32:00] There's something that I am very afraid of recently, and it has to do with the political complexity of the process. Meaning that the problem that we have right now, it's with the system in itself, and the transformation needs to happen regardless of who is in office. So that is something that I have been thinking a lot recently because of the political landscape that is taking place. And I think that there's a...
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [32:45] And there's a danger of putting the environment into a single political ideology because the economic system needs to transform for a society to exist, period. And I think that the political process needs to happen in a way that all sectors agree on that has to happen. And that's very complex because, for example, you see in Argentina with the arrival of Milei, basically they were saying, I heard a politician in Argentina that was saying that the problem with, for example, with conservation is that, for example, a well doesn't have an owner. You know, if somebody owns a well, then it wouldn't be hunt and it would be valuable. And I think that explaining the existence of the world through the economy, it's a mistake because the economy is a social construction and the social construction lives on the environment. So try to adjust the world to nature. It's something, I mean, to adopt nature.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [34:09] Nature to the economy, it's nonsense. But the political conversation around that needs to happen on both sides of the aisle. Meaning, for example, in the case of the U.S., the debate cannot be, I mean, for example, if the environment is.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [34:32] I mean, because I'm going in circles in here, but I'm heading somewhere. For example, we have elections next year here in Colombia, and there's a lot of environmental work that has been done by this president, who is the first left-side president in the history of Colombia. I'm extremely afraid that the right-wing candidates may reject the environmental topic just because the left-side government did, you know? So I think that going back to the role of the public sector, I think that is very important that we ingrain these debates in the political arena. And I think that the discussion could be who does it more efficiently, where are the opportunities, and that should be the discussion because the role of the government, it's so important that politics should go to efficiency more than if it happens or not. But how do you see that political complexity of that process because of the importance of the government in the management of the environment?
David Meyers: [35:58] That's a good question. I... No, in the U.S., in the past, the environment was not politicized. We had conservative governments putting in place new legislation for water and air. Richard Nixon famously put in place key environmental legislation. And so, although recently it seems that there's a bit more disagreement, I don't think that anyone would disagree on the importance of clean air or clean water. And the services that nature provides to us in terms of recreation and protection of coastlines and things like that are services that we all need and we need them now and for the future generations. So I think reinforcing the message about how important nature is and how important the environment is for us all is essential and will move society gradually towards more responsibility.
David Meyers: [37:16] I sometimes feel like we're always working on the margins of the big picture. Like we're trying to make small changes here and there and missing the larger picture. And I'm trying to come back to that larger picture sometimes, but I remember 25 years ago when I was doing a master's in business, I took an economic course at the School of Environment at Yale. And at that point, there were 80,000 chemicals that were being used in the U.S. That's 25 years ago. There's been a lot of innovation since then. There's probably over 100,000 chemicals that we're producing that are registered. Globally, I don't know how much larger it is. At that point in time, only 20,000 of those chemicals had even been assessed for the risk to human health.
David Meyers: [38:26] Now, we are, as a society, we're moving forward thinking that we know what we're doing. We're overconfident in the ability of technology. We're overconfident in the ability of markets to solve problems. We're overconfident in the ability of science to even track impacts. And I think that we really need to take a step back, and maybe this is more of a spiritual thing to think about, in that we need to reassess our relationship with nature in a big way. And as individuals, as a species on the planet with regard to other species, and, you know, I think there's some great innovations and thought that some of it's coming from indigenous groups and traditional societies, others from the legal sector looking at the legal rights of nature, including the legal rights of whales, the legal rights of mountains and rivers.
David Meyers: [39:34] Recently, I heard about, you know, putting nature on the board of companies. You have someone who's sitting on the board who represents nature on that board to try to give a voice to nature in a way that we really haven't done effectively in the past. And to me, that kind of consciousness, the transformation of how we think about nature, that's the kind of big, big consciousness change we need because otherwise we're just trying to fix things on the margins. They're small changes, little wins when we win, but mostly just continuous changes.
David Meyers: [40:15] Confusion, continuous frustration. And somehow we need to really change how people think about our relationship with nature and the relationship between nature and money and the relationship between government and nature and the relationship between business and nature. And this is happening in many ways, but we need to make leaps and jumps in our understanding.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [40:39] Where do you think that that's happening? Because I think that we're being too... I was talking to a journalist that interviewed the other day and she said that there's a problem with environmental communication that is very depressing. People get very because it's very sad so let's bring some hope into a conversation you just mentioned that there are things happening what gives you hope of things that you're seeing that are transformative and you think that can have an impact that's.
David Meyers: [41:20] A great idea I'd mentioned And looking at the rights of nature, because that's a huge area of opportunity. Giving nature some legal standing in courts, I think, is huge. Putting nature on the board. I think the disclosure rules that the European Union are putting in place, the Task Force on Nature-Related Disclosures, the work that's being done there for companies to disclose their impacts and dependencies on nature. I see a lot of positive movement there. There's a lot of interest in investing in nature. This is the benefit of the positive side. People want the positive stories. They want to be, I want to invest in nature. I can get a return by investing in climate change. And very few people want to spend time fixing the dirty problems. People are really excited about positive investments. But that's great. We need more positive stories. There's so much, you know, even the 30 by 30, the expansion of protected areas is an incredible vision. 30% of our oceans, forests, lands, you know, and fresh water could be under some kind of conservation and protection by 2030 if the world can achieve this goal. That's 30% of the planet. That's huge.
David Meyers: [42:47] We need to manage the 70% as well, but just getting that 30% conserved is great. So there's vision.
David Meyers: [42:58] There's also an increase in awareness and empowerment of indigenous people in local communities in ways that we haven't seen in the past. And these are groups who have had great relationships with nature and, over thousands and thousands of years. And we're starting to listen to them more. We're starting to empower them more and provide them with the support that they need to continue to maintain the areas under their right and responsibility. And that to me is exciting. And yeah, I just, it's just, there's all these great initiatives happening and nature. The one thing that if I can say one thing to kind of conclude this question that you're asking is how do we reframe the way we look at nature? Not as it's a crisis, we're losing it, we're all going to die. That doesn't help.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [43:57] That doesn't help, no.
David Meyers: [43:58] No. We need to look at nature as, oh my goodness, this is an amazing planet, which is providing us with incredible resources, air we can breathe, water we can drink, rainfall for agriculture, bees that pollinate our crops, coastal protection, things that make this planet amazing, climate regulation, wood products. I love wood products. There's so much that nature provides to us. So we need to think of how can we live with abundant nature? We want these services, ecosystem services to be abundant. I want to continue to get free services from nature, lots of them. Every breath I take comes from nature. I want that. I want that for my kids, for future generations, for future whales and trees. That's the vision we want. We want a rich, abundant world locally in our backyards and in places like remote that we don't even visit, maybe Antarctica, I want it to be healthy, abundant, productive.
David Meyers: [45:14] When you look at the world, it's incredible. The diversity of life on the planet is mind-blowing, how amazing it is, and how it all evolved. You go to Mars, there's nothing. I can't even breathe there. Why would I want to go to Mars? The Earth is unbelievable.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [45:38] It's unbelievable.
David Meyers: [45:39] Yeah.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [45:39] On that regard, I think that there's a couple of things that the first one has to do with biodiversity credits. I think that there's an opportunity.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [45:54] Hopefully, those markets will learn something from the experience of carbon markets. But I see a very positive possibility there, especially for the countries in the global south. I think that those markets have really good possibilities that can transform the economic system. And I think that there are good things happening there because in COP15 in Cali, for example.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [46:27] Some banks were saying that as part of some loans that some countries undertake, they need to purchase biodiversity credits. You know, so there's a market in there that hopefully, if it's well managed and we cut all the intermediaries and we can get that most of the money goes not to consulting companies, but to the people on the ground, I think that that can be very transformative. On COP15 also, what happened with the creation of the Cali Fund, I think that it's very important because it allows companies to directly to put money on a fund, not a government. So I think that that's very important because pharmaceutical companies that use, for example.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [47:26] DNA from a product that was taken from the Amazon, they need to put a portion of the income or for the profits. And that, I think that it's a step in the right direction because it's less political, because the road is paved for the private sector to directly put money into the funds. And finally, I think that it's very important. What is more important right now is what is happening with the initiative regarding debt for nature swaps or debt for climate swaps. I think that that's where the opportunity lies ahead. Because...
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [48:11] I think that most of the conversation that we have been having shows that we're missing money. And the money that we're missing, it's in the costs and the benefits, and that is not included. So the discussions that are taking place in there have to do with how the debt of a country could be somehow repaid.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [48:39] By the inclusion of, and this is where it gets technical, the Monetary International Fund allows for the emission of withdrawal rights or something like that. So there's a possibility of, it's similar to what happened on the COVID pandemic, but it's put money into the economy and that money could be invested into public goods, into nature. So in here in Colombia, the communication strategy of the president is to think about that as a worldwide Marshall plan for nature. And I think that there's hope in there. And I think that youth, it's very interesting what is happening with young people. You know, I think that they're, they're pulling their weight with the environmental crisis because they don't see a future, you know, so they're playing a major role into that. So that, that gives me hope, a lot of hope.
David Meyers: [49:47] Those are really great points. I agree 100%. And, as I said, there are a lot of good initiatives going on, and there's incredible growth and awareness of the importance of finance for nature, and a lot of interesting, innovative instruments being developed, and a lot of interest in investing in nature. So we need to balance out those positive things with the systemic challenges against which we're working to align everyone's interests for a healthy, abundant future that's productive and gives an opportunity for all species to continue evolving on the planet and for humanity to continue its beautiful journey.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [50:38] David, what do you think then, I suggest that we make this our last question. What do you think that is going to happen next year? I mean, for people to, in environmental terms, what are you looking for in 2025?
David Meyers: [50:57] Well, as you pointed out, the interest in biodiversity credits or certificates is really growing quickly. And so I'm seeing for 2025, I see there'll be some significant advances in growth in that area. Right now it's very confusing. And we're hoping to bring a little bit of clarity to that and support that market. I'm seeing a lot more debt for nature conversions. I think that's gonna help countries who are struggling to repay their debt. I think there's a big and new initiative by a range of partners, including TNC and WWF and Pew to support that. And I think that's very positive. And I'm hoping that we just keep working, you know, keep our heads down and work hard towards achieving some of these targets that the global community has agreed to with the global biodiversity framework. But what I would love to see is, you know, more conversations like this and more transformational discussions where we can, you know, look at the problem and try to come up with some solutions. So there's, you know, opportunities, different conferences coming up that will be interesting to have, see where the discussions go. How about you? What do you think?
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [52:19] Yeah, I agree on the conversations. I think that it's very important that we demystify the environment, you know, because I think that most of us environmentalists are terrible communicators. You know, we make things that are supposed to be simple, very complex. So I think that that's something that I look for for next year. And I think that next year on March, we're going to have the results of the steering committee on depth so that those results will be publishing in March. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with that. And I am also curious on how the geopolitics and the environment are going to take shape next year, because when Trump assumes office, it is important to see what is going to happen and how the world is going to adapt to it.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [53:23] And I think that is going to be a very challenging year, but I think that communication is going to play a central role in this process because it's going to be very political. And I think that we're going to need to have all these early discussions. So we need to gear up our, for example, our basics on climate change. Why does climate change exist? And not think of it as something that is a set decision. No, we need to have those discussions with whomever wants to have it, you know. And we need to have those conversations a lot. And we need to enjoy the process and have those conversations to get the momentum that we need to ensure that process. But it's going to be a marvelous year, I think, for the environment. And I think that it's going to end up in COP30 in Belém de Pará and hopefully I'm going to be there, and I'm hopeful I'm very hopeful because of the challenge that we have ahead, it's very complex and I think that that in itself it's, exciting you know.
David Meyers: [54:39] I'm glad you're excited by challenges because we definitely have one going forward but as we talked about earlier it's a great opportunity we have a beautiful planet we are more and more aware of what we need to do and we just need to bring everyone along with it bring everyone along with us and get everyone to share and incentivize those youth ambassadors you had mentioned because they really are the future.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [55:11] Thank you so much for this opportunity. And do you have a web page where people can follow you or social media, where can they follow you?
David Meyers: [55:22] Yeah, so you can follow me on LinkedIn myself and we have the website at conservationfinancealliance.org so you can find out what we're doing and subscribe to our newsletter and join the movement.
Juan Pablo Romero Rodríguez: [55:36] Perfect. So please follow David and you can follow me as well. I have an Instagram account that is called Poder Ambiental. That's in Spanish. I'm going to write that in the caption. So at Poder, that's P-O-D-E-R dot A-M-B-I-E-N-T-A-L. Exactly thank you so much David thank you thank you.