Speaker 1: It is the hardest working habitat type on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: If I could be king for the day of the
Speaker 1: entire planet, and there's only one thing I could do,
Speaker 1: I would protect all mangroves. Globally, It's only found in
Speaker 1: a very sort of a sliver of our planet.
Speaker 2: Fucked.
Speaker 3: Welcome to I'm fucking the future. I'm your host. Chris
Speaker 3: Turney are a climate scientist from Sydney, Australia. Today, a
Speaker 3: lot of people look to Silicon Valley venture capitalists and
Speaker 3: the next big startup to solve the climate crisis. But
Speaker 3: a lot of these solutions neglect the communities that are
Speaker 3: affected most by the crisis. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: that way. Actually, let me just say it should not
Speaker 3: and cannot be that way, because the answers to this
Speaker 3: crisis lie in our communities. That people have taken care
Speaker 3: of this earth and there's a small parcel of land
Speaker 3: or water on it for generations upon generations. They have
Speaker 3: solutions and that's one of the reasons that our guest
Speaker 3: today has been so successful. M Sanjan is an organizer,
Speaker 3: conservationist and media personality whose passion for the environment was
Speaker 3: instilled from an early age. Growing up in Sierra Leone.
Speaker 3: He's the CEO of Conservation International, and global nonprofit that
Speaker 3: does help protect more than six million square kilometers of
Speaker 3: land and ocean across more than seventy countries. Today, we're
Speaker 3: going to be focusing on a big part of this mission,
Speaker 3: their work on the world's oceans.
Speaker 4: We're fucking the future. We're a fucking the future.
Speaker 3: Our oceans are a major and wildly underutilized tool in
Speaker 3: solving the climate crisis, not just because they can strengthen
Speaker 3: the resilience of communities, but also because the ocean is
Speaker 3: a giant carbon capture machine. It draws down vast amounts
Speaker 3: of carbon in the atmosphere and ultimately moderates for climate,
Speaker 3: and it can do so much more. It offers the
Speaker 3: opportunity to walk back from the precipice we face. M
Speaker 3: Sungean is a biologist turned into national conservation superstar, and
Speaker 3: because of his upbringing, he's particularly interested in using our
Speaker 3: natural resources and water in particular to solve Earth's greatest challenges.
Speaker 3: Sungan grew up as Sierra Leone in a small logging
Speaker 3: and mining town surrounded by forest.
Speaker 1: And here's the amazing thing about this place. This was
Speaker 1: the place that David Attenborough got his start in television. Wow,
Speaker 1: very first time you see Assinbourgh on TV, it was
Speaker 1: in this not just in cyri Leone, but in this
Speaker 1: community that.
Speaker 2: I grew up in.
Speaker 3: Good Grief, and I think it's kind.
Speaker 1: Of remarkable that this tiny little town was the place
Speaker 1: that he he sort of got going on television and
Speaker 1: then I had the chance to do it.
Speaker 3: At the time, Sierra Leone was home to some of
Speaker 3: the most incredible forests in the world, so it made
Speaker 3: sense that one of the world's top nature educators would
Speaker 3: film their show there. And he wasn't the only one.
Speaker 3: Gerald Double spent time there too. He's another celebrated British naturalist,
Speaker 3: famous for his book My Family and Other Animals.
Speaker 1: So Darrel gets to start in sirial Leone too.
Speaker 2: Her first appearance on television isn't the same place. It's
Speaker 2: actually kind of amazing, right.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. You could imagine there's some producer there says
Speaker 3: hang on, I did a job there. We could go there.
Speaker 1: They used to call him, and when we were kids,
Speaker 1: we used to hear about this guy that the local
Speaker 1: people would call mister White.
Speaker 2: In decades to figure ound.
Speaker 1: Mister White was durrel o God because he was white
Speaker 1: and because he had a white beard at the time.
Speaker 3: So you've got mister White, David Dattenborough, and Lil Sanjan
Speaker 3: all learning about nature in the same twenty mile area
Speaker 3: totally covered in forest.
Speaker 1: And my dad, here's an amazing thing. My dad at
Speaker 1: the time was working for a logging company.
Speaker 3: Before the logging industry got to Sierra Leone, more than
Speaker 3: seventy percent of the country was made up of biologically
Speaker 3: diverse forest, seventy percent. When European colonizes invaded the region,
Speaker 3: they began exploiting these incredible forests for their timber. This
Speaker 3: paved a way for a commercial logging industry to take
Speaker 3: over the country.
Speaker 1: So this company would go into the forest and cut
Speaker 1: down one giant tree, loaded onto truck, that's how gigantic
Speaker 1: these trees were, and then bring it back in. And
Speaker 1: as a child, I would go in with them sometimes
Speaker 1: and run up and down the log as the tree
Speaker 1: once the tree fell down, and collect animals from the
Speaker 1: canopy and bring them home, like chameleons and baby parrots
Speaker 1: and things like that.
Speaker 2: And then and you know, back then, we didn't have
Speaker 2: a sense of the loss of the forest.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember feeling really bad about the tree,
Speaker 1: you know, because it just felt like a big frontier
Speaker 1: and it felt like there was so much more Now
Speaker 1: that same forest, it is one of the rarest forests
Speaker 1: in the world now.
Speaker 3: Heartbreakingly, less than five percent of our original forest remains today, that.
Speaker 1: Upper Guineaan forest, there's only a sliver of it left.
Speaker 1: It's got thirteen speeds of primates, pygmy hippos, a few elephants.
Speaker 2: It's still there.
Speaker 1: It's still that amazing biodiversity, but it's so much smaller
Speaker 1: than it used to be.
Speaker 3: Oh r, I forgive me, but we've really got to
Speaker 3: discuss how terrible the global logging industry really is. Deforestation
Speaker 3: makes up about fifteen percent of our global greenhouse emissions,
Speaker 3: and yet this industry continues to grow. Much of a
Speaker 3: wood that is cut down today is processed into sawn, timber,
Speaker 3: pulpwood board, and wood based panels, and we as consumers
Speaker 3: love process would. In the US, demand for wood based
Speaker 3: panels has increased by eight hundred percent of the past
Speaker 3: three decades. We simply can't get enough of it. It's
Speaker 3: how we end up with fast furniture, you know, like
Speaker 3: how your parents' dining room table seem to last for
Speaker 3: fifty years and yours barely holds up after five. But
Speaker 3: back when Sangan's family was in Sierra Leone working for
Speaker 3: the logging industry, we really had no idea that the
Speaker 3: commercialization of our trees would turn into fast furniture trends
Speaker 3: on TikTok. But here we are. We're fifteen percent of
Speaker 3: our global emissions caused by deforestation and a fast furniture
Speaker 3: industry that's only getting worse. So Bat Desangean. He grew
Speaker 3: up in this incredible environment where they were able to
Speaker 3: save chameleons and watched David Attenberg get his start. Pret
Speaker 3: you dream if for a kid is into nature, right.
Speaker 3: He left Sierra Leone to study conservation biology under Michael
Speaker 3: Soule at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1: Michael Soule is often seen as the father of conservation biology.
Speaker 1: He coined the word conservation biology, and he was really
Speaker 1: a big figure and in really established the field. And
Speaker 1: Michael at the time, I went to study cheatahs, you know,
Speaker 1: like the African cat, right, That's what I really wanted
Speaker 1: to study, and.
Speaker 3: That would have been very cool.
Speaker 2: It would have been very cool.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, very sadly, my project got canceled halfway through
Speaker 1: because of some funding dispute, nothing to do with me,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the project. But I was studying
Speaker 1: in Namibia, uh and there was money that was going
Speaker 1: from the US to Namibia that got caught up in
Speaker 1: some politics. My project got canceled halfway there, so I
Speaker 1: had to quickly switch and find something because I was
Speaker 1: on the student visa right so clock is sticking, you know,
Speaker 1: my visa runs out, I'm getting sent back, and so
Speaker 1: I ended up switching to study. You know a little
Speaker 1: rat that lives underground. They're called gopherst If you ever
Speaker 1: watched the movie Caddyshack, Yes, no money is off to
Speaker 1: killing Gover like that's it, And that's all I knew about.
Speaker 2: Go first. I've got a more important job.
Speaker 5: I want you to kill every gopher on the course.
Speaker 2: Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy. But if I kill
Speaker 2: all the golfers, they're gonna lock me have to throw
Speaker 2: away a key.
Speaker 1: Go first, job, great kidnaped, Call first a little brown
Speaker 1: furry rodents. You know my advice I actually gave me
Speaker 1: you know Caddyshack and said, go watch this.
Speaker 2: It'll tell you everything you know. And it's such a
Speaker 2: depressing sort of story.
Speaker 1: Because I was here here, I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to go out there, you know, and know, live in
Speaker 1: Africa with a land rover and my binoculars and my
Speaker 1: khakis and you know, sipping a gin and tonic under
Speaker 1: an efcresive, watching a spotted cat across the Serengeti.
Speaker 2: And the plains of Africa.
Speaker 1: And I end up instead digging in the dirt in California,
Speaker 1: in the most boring part of California, which is the
Speaker 1: agricultural region of California, the Central Valley.
Speaker 2: But here's the amazing thing about the story, Chris.
Speaker 1: You know, in doing that and being forced to do that,
Speaker 1: I ended up meeting some amazing people. And I started
Speaker 1: understanding that the people who lived in the Central Valley
Speaker 1: of California had so much to tell me about the
Speaker 1: land and about me, Except they weren't using words you
Speaker 1: and I would use. They were using I was using
Speaker 1: words that had to do with love. I love nature,
Speaker 1: I love the landscape, I love wildlife. They were using
Speaker 1: words that had to do with value. You know, we
Speaker 1: value what's going to happen the soil or fire season,
Speaker 1: or the crops or when the first day of frost
Speaker 1: shows up right, And it really opened my eyes that
Speaker 1: the whole thing about conservation. I always thought that what
Speaker 1: this field is about is how to protect nature. It
Speaker 1: really isn't nature will take care of itself. It really
Speaker 1: is about how to protect people. And when that turn
Speaker 1: happened to me, it really made a lot of sense
Speaker 1: because I do come from the global South and in
Speaker 1: the countries that I live in and I work in
Speaker 1: and Conservation International works in. If you want to make
Speaker 1: conservation stick, it has to make sense for those communities
Speaker 1: and those people. And that was my first glimpse notion
Speaker 1: that these people who we have often seen as the
Speaker 1: enemy could really be our allies.
Speaker 2: We only shifted the frame through which we were talking
Speaker 2: about what we do.
Speaker 3: This mentality and approach to conservation led Sangan to Conservation International.
Speaker 3: Their mission is to protect communities by protecting nature.
Speaker 1: You cannot get to a stable human friendly climate without
Speaker 1: including nature. So not only is it an ally, but
Speaker 1: ignoring it is not enough either. Without without it, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get to the numbers don't add up, right,
Speaker 1: And another way to put it is that even if
Speaker 1: miraculously overnight all of our energy use becomes renewable instantly,
Speaker 1: and I think we are heading in that direction, you're
Speaker 1: still going to be, you know, aft because so much
Speaker 1: of the carbon emissions that we get comes from our destruction.
Speaker 2: Our war on nature.
Speaker 3: One of the key priorities for Conservation International is preserving
Speaker 3: and protecting the ocean because it has a critical role
Speaker 3: to play in carbon capture.
Speaker 1: Now the shouldn't have been a bit ignored in that
Speaker 1: whole equation. It turns out they're great at sequestrian carbon.
Speaker 1: They're also incredibly important in buffering temperature itself. Like this
Speaker 1: giant body of water is great at absorbing that heat,
Speaker 1: and without it, we would be in a frying planet already.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's amazing, amoun it's only ninety percent or something,
Speaker 3: it's ninety three percent.
Speaker 1: Yes, the valace amount of energy that hits this planet
Speaker 1: gets absorbed by the ocean.
Speaker 2: It's kind of mind boggling how we treat the ocean.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should continue to put out fossil
Speaker 1: fuel emissions. I think we need to get that to zero,
Speaker 1: and get that to zero fast. But we also need
Speaker 1: to do this other thing, which is protect and restore
Speaker 1: nature at scale.
Speaker 2: You can't do one without doing the other.
Speaker 1: And you get great return on the nature side right now,
Speaker 1: because frankly it's cheap.
Speaker 3: Oceans are carbon sucking machines, and the seaweed didn't help
Speaker 3: forest within. Oceans are spectacular at absorbing carbon. In my
Speaker 3: home in Australia, I regularly swimming in the ocean on
Speaker 3: the weekends, and as I swim for the sea grass,
Speaker 3: I can't help but notice just how much biodiversity of
Speaker 3: they hold. But behind the scenes, the water I swim
Speaker 3: through and all the wildlife I admire is working over
Speaker 3: time to save our planet. It's such an important part
Speaker 3: of a global carbon cycle. Not to mention it might
Speaker 3: actually be the cheapest carbon capture we have available to us.
Speaker 2: I'd be willing to bet this.
Speaker 1: It's probably the most carbon rich environment that you have
Speaker 1: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Those seagrass bet and that's very little.
Speaker 1: You know, people don't really know that how important they
Speaker 1: are for the world's future but also Australia's future. The
Speaker 1: amazing thing about that also is that when I was there,
Speaker 1: you know, I was studying I was. I was there
Speaker 1: with some researchers who were looking at dogongs. Oh right
Speaker 1: now that live on the coast of Australia.
Speaker 3: If you haven't seen the do goong, please google. It
Speaker 3: is absolutely the amazing do cele sea mammals. They're kind
Speaker 3: of graceful, but Sanjin explains it far better.
Speaker 2: Mythical the old sirens of the deep right. That's yes, the.
Speaker 1: Mermaids legends came from the sea cow. They're very very threatened.
Speaker 1: Now once upon a time in Sri Lanka you could
Speaker 1: find them there. Now there's probably fifty there. Both sides
Speaker 1: of Australia have dogongs. But it turns out that sea
Speaker 1: grass seeds only really germinate if they go through the
Speaker 1: gut of a dogong. So dougong poop basically is full
Speaker 1: of seeds that are primed to germinate. If you just
Speaker 1: take sea grass seeds and just plant them, the germination
Speaker 1: rate is I think one fifth or one sixth the
Speaker 1: rate you get when they go through the gut of
Speaker 1: a do goong. So dogong's, it turns out, are incredibly
Speaker 1: important carbon sequestration catalysts, if you will. So here's this animal,
Speaker 1: this dozy thing called the sea cow that again could
Speaker 1: be part of the future of our planet.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to the other big point of this episode.
Speaker 3: Our oceans might save us. All the ocean suck up
Speaker 3: twenty five percent or so of the amount of carbon
Speaker 3: that we humans put up into the atmosphere, and that's
Speaker 3: why Conservation International has made ocean conservation a key part
Speaker 3: of their strategy.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a healthy ocean, you are making
Speaker 1: it impossible to have a healthy planet. When it comes
Speaker 1: to oceans, we focus on three areas, you know. The
Speaker 1: first is really creating marine protected areas. So only about
Speaker 1: five percent of the oceans are actually protected at any
Speaker 1: reasonable level, and that's far below the thirty percent or
Speaker 1: so that we think we need. We are putting in
Speaker 1: substantial funding to help create, better manage, and better protect marine.
Speaker 2: Protected areas around the world.
Speaker 1: So we want to go from five percent to ten percent,
Speaker 1: which is about eighteen million square kilometers of ocean that
Speaker 1: we want to add to the protected area network around
Speaker 1: the world, and we're on a great pathway to doing that.
Speaker 1: The second part of it is is restoration of core
Speaker 1: reefs and mangroves. I would say that the third part
Speaker 1: of this is fisheries. Right, So you know, three hundred
Speaker 1: plus million people are directly dependent on fish in the
Speaker 1: Pacific for their primary source of protein. It's incredibly important
Speaker 1: to the GDP of many many nations. If we don't
Speaker 1: find a great way to manage those fisheries resources in
Speaker 1: a sustainable way, you know, the world is going to
Speaker 1: be poorer. And some of these countries really just don't
Speaker 1: have an alternative, right, no alteri. So, particularly in the Pacific,
Speaker 1: we're very heavily involved in the tuna fisheries in the Pacific,
Speaker 1: but around the world around coastal fisheries. You know, how
Speaker 1: do you manage those fisheries better, How do you think
Speaker 1: about aquaculture and make sure they're sustainably done, and how
Speaker 1: do you make sure that you know, it's the last
Speaker 1: hunter gathering resource we have left, right, there's no other
Speaker 1: There's not other thing that humans go out there into
Speaker 1: nature and gather in large numbers of the old days.
Speaker 3: People often forget that, don't they they're actually going out seafishing,
Speaker 3: your hunting. We're still hunter gatherers scale right, It's amazing,
Speaker 3: and so this is the last.
Speaker 1: Thing we have to do, and you know what a
Speaker 1: shame if we if we don't find a way to
Speaker 1: do that right.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something Sanjan mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: mangroves and coral reefs. Now, coral reefs are greatly underprotected,
Speaker 3: but we all know how valuable they are. They're biological
Speaker 3: hotspots about the court of all marine life on the
Speaker 3: planet living coral reefs. Plus they're crucial to local economies
Speaker 3: which depend on the reefs for tourism and fishing. They
Speaker 3: should be protected. But how often do you see people
Speaker 3: shouting to protect our mangroves? I mean, do you even
Speaker 3: know what a mangrove is.
Speaker 1: It is the hardest working habitat type on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: If I could be king for the day of the
Speaker 1: entire planet, and there's only one thing I could do,
Speaker 1: I would protect all mangroves globally.
Speaker 2: It's only found in a very.
Speaker 1: Sort of a sliver of our planet, A tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: portion of our planet has mangroves in them. So they
Speaker 1: are sort of an aquatic or a semi aquatic tree,
Speaker 1: and they are fast growing for the most part, and
Speaker 1: they grow in the boundary between salt water and land.
Speaker 1: And when I was growing up, they were really seen
Speaker 1: as just a terrible habitat. They're hard to get through,
Speaker 1: lots of insects in them. They're basically in swamps right
Speaker 1: right on the coast, and if you are if you're
Speaker 1: trying to get to a coastline, if you're trying to fish,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to do anything like that, you can't
Speaker 1: get to the beach because of the mangroves. It's moist,
Speaker 1: lots of bugs, and you can't really see the sea.
Speaker 1: You can hear it, but you can't see it from
Speaker 1: lamb because you've got this big forest, this thick, intertangled
Speaker 1: network of aerial roots and tree cover, multiple species, all
Speaker 1: twisted with one another, and then surrounded by water that's tidal.
Speaker 1: So sometimes it's just mud and you step into it
Speaker 1: and you're going to sink, you waste. Sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to get in there with a boat.
Speaker 3: Look, as someone who loves our planet, I've got to say,
Speaker 3: even this is ridiculously understating how much people don't like mangroves.
Speaker 3: They have this smell like stale water mixed with the
Speaker 3: overpowering odes or rotten eggs. It's of a mistaken for sewage.
Speaker 3: So safe to say they're not coral reefs. People don't
Speaker 3: go on vacation to admire and take pictures of mangroves,
Speaker 3: but they should.
Speaker 1: They end up being incredibly important for humans and for nature.
Speaker 1: So mangroves are obviously important because they stop sea level rise.
Speaker 1: They protec coastlines from big waves. They're really good at
Speaker 1: blocking waves. If you remember the big tsunami that hit
Speaker 1: Asia back in I think two thousand and what is
Speaker 1: it six or two thousand and four won that hit
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka and Thailand and Indonesia, mangroves really did protect
Speaker 1: some of that coastline and places that had mangroves were
Speaker 1: protected and is that didn't lost it. They're also incredibly
Speaker 1: important of fish because they're fish nurseries, and lots of
Speaker 1: fish that you go out there and catch in the
Speaker 1: open ocean end up spending their lives.
Speaker 2: As babies sheltered in the mangroves.
Speaker 1: And then they're really important for climate change because they
Speaker 1: are fantastic at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. So all
Speaker 1: plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere, that's how they grow.
Speaker 1: They're fantastic at doing this, it's called photosynthesis, and they're
Speaker 1: just a giant carbon captive machine. Mangroves do it really fast,
Speaker 1: and mangroves put all that carbon that they captured underground
Speaker 1: and underwater. So what's good about mangroves is they're not
Speaker 1: just capturing it in their branches and their leaves, but
Speaker 1: they're really good at setting it all the way down
Speaker 1: at their root systems, and that goes down six meters underwater,
Speaker 1: right like under the mud. And so that mud under
Speaker 1: the mangroves, if you ever dig into it, it's.
Speaker 2: Dark black mud that is chock full of carbon, and.
Speaker 1: It's like four to six times the amount that an
Speaker 1: equivalent sort of chunk of rainforest would store. So hector
Speaker 1: by hector, acre by acre, mangroves gives us the biggest
Speaker 1: bang for the buck when it comes to capturing carbon,
Speaker 1: and then they do all these other things as well.
Speaker 1: So you know, my belief is that no mangroves should
Speaker 1: ever be cut down.
Speaker 3: But sadly, mangroves are still being attacked.
Speaker 1: They're still being cut down, and we should actually restore
Speaker 1: mangroves to their former glory. And we have a big project,
Speaker 1: a joint project with lots of other groups called the
Speaker 1: Mangrove Breakthrough that is really trying to incentivize all the
Speaker 1: countries of the world that have mangroves to protect them.
Speaker 3: But that's not the only solution. Sangan and his teams
Speaker 3: are also working with private companies to create carbon buyback
Speaker 3: credits for promote for creation and protection of mangroves.
Speaker 1: So we brought the first blue carbon project to market,
Speaker 1: which was in Colombia in a project called Vita Manglare.
Speaker 1: And in this case, one of the one of the
Speaker 1: partners that came into to help us do that was Apple.
Speaker 1: So you know, Apple's got a bit of a carbon footprint.
Speaker 1: Now most of their footprint they're trying to reduce on
Speaker 1: a track to reducing by reducing their emissions, reducing packaging, etc.
Speaker 1: There's some part of the mission that is hard to abate,
Speaker 1: and it's that part of that emissions that they're trying
Speaker 1: to get ahead of the curve on and meet their
Speaker 1: goals sooner than they can do through industrial processes, and
Speaker 1: then doing that by protecting these high carbon ecosystems.
Speaker 2: In this case, this.
Speaker 1: Project, community run project on the coast of Columbia, which
Speaker 1: is just this amazing mangrove.
Speaker 3: Forest community is at the heart of these projects.
Speaker 1: They're involved in the protection activities of it. They're involved
Speaker 1: in how the revenue is accruede and then spent, and
Speaker 1: then importantly in this project, they even got to choose
Speaker 1: who they were willing to sell this carbon too.
Speaker 3: Gosh really really yes, so involved in the whole process.
Speaker 1: They were involved all process because, as I said, I mean,
Speaker 1: we had the choice of whether we would sell it
Speaker 1: to a say, an oil and gas company, or whether
Speaker 1: we would go with maybe a company that has a
Speaker 1: higher brand profile and really much high ambitions, like Apple,
Speaker 1: and it was the community's decision to go with Apple.
Speaker 1: Can make all sorts of jokes about whether or not
Speaker 1: they were going to get an iPhone out of it,
Speaker 1: but they they that even in very rural parts of
Speaker 1: the world, people know Apple.
Speaker 3: That's incredible as lovely in Colombia, the local communities around
Speaker 3: the mangroves are also benefiting from the project. They're paid
Speaker 3: for their labor, and community organizations also receive funding for
Speaker 3: their projects.
Speaker 1: And the wonderful thing about the funding, particularly for carbon projects,
Speaker 1: is it not year by year. It's like a thirty
Speaker 1: year thing, because you're selling those credits for years of
Speaker 1: thirty years.
Speaker 2: So imagine having that like that life for us.
Speaker 3: So the communities know that actually they've got this long
Speaker 3: term income stream right exactly, long.
Speaker 1: Term fantastic can plan around it. They can build a
Speaker 1: school because of it. I mean, they can really invest
Speaker 1: in the right way. And that project is I think
Speaker 1: like three or four x oversubscribed so once while yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like there's so much demand for.
Speaker 3: It because mangroves capture carbon. Supporting a mangrove ecosystem on
Speaker 3: the other side of the world helps you wherever you are.
Speaker 3: A That's what Tom Starr was talking about a few
Speaker 3: episodes ago when you mentioned that carbon capture can help
Speaker 3: create economic equality in our incredibly unequal world.
Speaker 1: Like you protect mangroves in Papua New Guinea or West Papua,
Speaker 1: it will have a direct material impact on my life
Speaker 1: in New York City.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's powerful.
Speaker 2: It is. It's true. It's true.
Speaker 3: If you're ready to take to the streets and protest
Speaker 3: for mangrove justice, I'll be there right beside you. Sanjin
Speaker 3: says that every single one of us can actually support
Speaker 3: the regeneration of mangroves.
Speaker 1: So the thing about mangroves is that you can restore
Speaker 1: them they do grow back fast, but you've got to
Speaker 1: do it in the right way. So some of the
Speaker 1: stuff you might see on YouTube, like you know, all
Speaker 1: these towns mobilized and they go out and plant a
Speaker 1: million mangroves in a weekend or something like that, most
Speaker 1: of them don't succeed because they're they're not using the
Speaker 1: best sort of available.
Speaker 2: Science on how to do it.
Speaker 1: You need to understand the hydrology, you need to understand
Speaker 1: how water moves.
Speaker 3: But don't let that warning deter you from going out
Speaker 3: and getting involved in mangrove restoration. Both Sanjan and I
Speaker 3: were at a climate conference last year in the UAE
Speaker 3: and outside the metropolis of Abu Dhabi there's actually a
Speaker 3: mangrove forest that was only planted ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Just north of Abu Dhabi, right there's a restoration site
Speaker 1: and you can see mangroves that have been planted before,
Speaker 1: like ten years ago, and they're quite big. They're quite
Speaker 1: big now, So you know they can do it if
Speaker 1: you do it right.
Speaker 2: So yes, the average person actually can get involved in
Speaker 2: mangrove restoration.
Speaker 1: You just need to find a credible organization to sort
Speaker 1: of work with.
Speaker 3: And don't forget the two big tools in front of.
Speaker 2: Us, the two big levers we have. The two big
Speaker 2: levers we have.
Speaker 1: Are government and private sector. We need to keep the
Speaker 1: pressure on governments. They do listen to a They listen
Speaker 1: to concerned So vote, you know, vote again, get involved right,
Speaker 1: make your voice heard with government for sure. Number two companies.
Speaker 1: Reward the companies that are trying to do the right thing,
Speaker 1: Punish the companies that are not, And don't be too
Speaker 1: harsh on it, like it's not easy to do this right.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to get the perfect trying it better.
Speaker 4: We're fucking the future. We're fucking the future.
Speaker 3: Sanjan and Conservation International are having a big impact protecting
Speaker 3: the natural biodiversity of our oceans. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most important things we can do to slow global heating
Speaker 3: because all of those mangrove and kelp forests and doogongs
Speaker 3: and other sea life enhance the ocean's ability to absorb
Speaker 3: carbon dixide. So you might be wondering how you can
Speaker 3: get involved, which brings us to our final segment of
Speaker 3: a show where we ask what the fuck can I do?
Speaker 2: What fuck can I know?
Speaker 3: I'd like to welcome back to the show our good
Speaker 3: friend and activist Maggie Bird. Maggie, what did you think
Speaker 3: of our chat with Sanjan Okay?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, how amazing are kelp and seaweed? Incredible?
Speaker 5: Conservation International scientists found that seaweed absorbs as much carbon
Speaker 5: as one point six billion trees. One point six billion.
Speaker 5: I cannot get my brain around that number. So I
Speaker 5: just want to first acknowledge that all of us should
Speaker 5: be more appreciative of the often overlooked seaweed. And then
Speaker 5: the second thing, I want to encourage people to consider
Speaker 5: volunteering with the local environmental group. Places like Conservation International
Speaker 5: depend on financial support to do their incredible work, but
Speaker 5: there's also a lot of local environmental groups that depend
Speaker 5: on our volunteer time to accomplish their goals, whether you're
Speaker 5: working in the trenches or serving on their boards. True,
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be something
Speaker 5: you do every single week, but just making a commitment
Speaker 5: to a local environmental group that you'll volunteer, say once
Speaker 5: a month with a beach cleanup or a tree planning event,
Speaker 5: that can make a huge difference.
Speaker 3: So how can people get started with volunteering? Where can
Speaker 3: they start? Well?
Speaker 5: If I was going to find one here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: for example, I might just google Volunteer LA Environmental Group,
Speaker 5: check out their websites, look at their mission statements, and
Speaker 5: then reach out and see what their needs are.
Speaker 3: That's a great suggestion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know what, you can narrow your search
Speaker 5: by the issue that you care about most. So if
Speaker 5: you're into greening your neighborhood, check out tree People. If
Speaker 5: you care about food equity and how it relates to
Speaker 5: the climate crisis, we'll check out my organization Support and
Speaker 5: Feed Friends of the La River, for example, is focused
Speaker 5: on how we turn that big concrete waterway of ours
Speaker 5: into a dynamic, functioning ecosystem. We have so many cool
Speaker 5: orgs just here in LA and with a little searching
Speaker 5: you can find similar organizations wherever you might be.
Speaker 3: Such a good point, Maggie. Our time is so valuable
Speaker 3: to local nonprofits. We've all got to do our part.
Speaker 5: We really do, and it's a great way to do it.
Speaker 3: And that's what the fuck you can do?
Speaker 4: What the fuck can I do? Oh?
Speaker 2: Fucked?
Speaker 3: You may have started this show because you thought we
Speaker 3: were seriously fucked. Now, don't get me wrong. We're not
Speaker 3: in a great place, but I hope you, like me,
Speaker 3: have been in Spa by the amazing people out there
Speaker 3: doing incredible things. If we're going to unfuck this, we
Speaker 3: need to act quickly, at speed and scale. But perhaps
Speaker 3: most importantly of all, we need to do this together
Speaker 3: as one global community. Look, we haven't covered all the
Speaker 3: solutions to the climate crisis, we haven't even touched the edge.
Speaker 3: But there are great people and great ideas out there
Speaker 3: that can make a difference. We really can turn things around,
Speaker 3: and it's already starting to happen. So get involved and
Speaker 3: let's all unfuck the future together. For now. This is
Speaker 3: Chris Turney signing off from Sydney, Australia. Hope to see
Speaker 3: you soon.
Speaker 4: We're Fucking the Future.
Speaker 3: Unfucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and Awfully
Speaker 3: Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney.
Speaker 3: The show is written by Meridi Brian. I'm Fucking the
Speaker 3: Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Rene Colvert.
Speaker 3: Ron Howard Brian Grazer, Carral Welker and Nathan Chloke are
Speaker 3: the executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie
Speaker 3: Hodges are the executive producers from Awfully Nice, sound design
Speaker 3: and mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lilly Hayden,
Speaker 3: and producing services by Peter mcgigan. Sam Swinnerton wrote our
Speaker 3: theme and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode,
Speaker 3: be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or whether you get your podcasts