Aaron Perry
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Tracking Climate Finance & Minding the (Funding) Gaps
In this informative episode, Justin Winters discusses One Earth’s robust Solutions Framework and the allocation of over $400 million in climate finance in the United States. In their recently published “Minding the Gaps: One Earth’s Climate Finance Report,” Justin and her team provide analysis of investment and philanthropic capital flows according to data available through Candid and Crunch Base. These capital flows are segmented across three major pillars: (1) Energy Transition, (2) Nature Conservation, and (3) Regenerative Agriculture. Coming in at 89% of total capital within the data assessed, Energy Transition has thus far been an outsized sector, whereas Nature Conservation (4%) and Regenerative Agriculture (7%) have thus far received far less. There’s positive trending overall, but far more needed overall, according to Winters.
One Earth’s Solutions Framework encompass 75+ specific pathways, and their climate model, in conjunction with robust data analysis and finance tracking from Eric Berlow and his team at Vibrant Data Labs, is foundational to their Minding the Gaps report. The results indicate a need to further center nature and existing technology, as Justin explains in the interview, and to establish holistic capital sets among investors, philanthropists, and family offices. Winters observes that, among the many extraordinary innovators, entrepreneurs, and early-stage regenerative companies, there aren’t yet enough positioning their solutions in terms of the massive “unicorn” profit potentials that many of them actually possess.
About Justin Winters
Justin Winters is the Founder and Executive Director of One Earth, a global network of climate strategists and storytellers driving bold, collective action for the planet. Under her leadership, One Earth created a science-based Solutions Framework to the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, a roadmap of 75 proven pathways across Energy Transition, Nature Conservation, and Regenerative Agriculture, that turns knowledge into impact. By connecting local solutions to global systems, she’s built tools and storytelling platforms that inspire and guide place-based action. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Bioneers, Amazon Frontlines, and Regenerosity.
Prior to founding One Earth, Justin served as Executive Director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (now Re:wild), where she helped Leonardo reshape his approach to philanthropy and activism, leveraging his position as a global figure to influence decision-makers and the public on the most pressing environmental issues. Justin built the organization’s grant-making program, which awarded over $100 million in grants across 60 countries and created a series of innovative philanthropic funds. She also led the global communications platform, growing its digital media community to 80 million followers and generating approximately 4.2. billion social and online media impressions per year. Through her collaborative, inclusive, and entrepreneurial approach, Justin is building a broad public movement of engaged and inspired changemakers who, together, will help solve the climate crisis and build a vibrant, just future for us all.
Resources & Related Episodes
https://mindingthegaps.oneearth.org
https://www.oneearth.org/solutions
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-winters-oneearth
https://www.vibrantdatalabs.org
Ep. 168 – Ken LaRoe, Founder & Chairman, Climate First Bank – https://yonearth.org/podcast/episode-168-ken-laroe-founder-chairman-climate-first-bank/
Ep. 166 – Dahr Jamail, Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund – https://yonearth.org/podcast/episode-166-dahr-jamail-communications-media-relations-lead-home-planet-fund/
Ep. 138 – Tom Chi, At One Ventures, on “New Economic Epochs” – https://yonearth.org/podcast/episode-138-tom-chi-founder-ceo-at-one-ventures-on-new-economic-epochs/
Ep. 50 – Dr. Anita Sanchez, on Women’s Voices and Indigenous Wisdom – https://yonearth.org/podcast/episode-138-tom-chi-founder-ceo-at-one-ventures-on-new-economic-epochs/
Ep. 8 – Mark Retzloff, on Entrepreneurship and Organic Food Systems – https://yonearth.org/podcast/episode-08-mark-retzloff/
Partners & Sponsors
AndCO Hospitality, Bluestone Life, The Brad & Lindsay Lidge Family Foundation, Clean Content, Climate First Bank, Dobrosphera Kind Media Group, Earth Coast Productions, Gaia.AI, Goodstead Financial, Husch Blackwell, Launch Legal, Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund, Regenerative World Quest, The Riverside Boulder, Shaye Skiff Communications, SoundLight Foundation, Verona Rylander Philanthropies, and Wele Waters.
Transcript
10:41 – Aaron Perry
Welcome to the Y on Earth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. And today we’re visiting with Justin Winters, the founder and executive director of One Earth. Hi, Justin.
11:20 – Justin Winters
Hi. So great to be with you.
11:22 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, I’m really excited about our conversation today and grateful that we were able to get our schedules to harmonize finally to have this conversation together.
11:34 – Justin Winters
Likewise. And thanks for your patience.
11:37 – Aaron Perry
Oh, you know, it’s just how it is, especially given the incredible work that you’re doing. And I’m so delighted to be able to share a bit of that with our audience today. Yeah, we’ve got a lot to talk about. Amazing.
11:53 – Justin Winters
Yeah, really grateful for the opportunity.
11:57 – Aaron Perry
Justin Winters is the founder and executive director of One Earth, a global network of climate strategists and story storytellers, driving bold collective action for the planet. Under her leadership, One Earth created a science-based solutions framework to the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, a roadmap of 75 proven pathways across energy transition, nature conservation, and regenerative agriculture that turns knowledge into impact. By connecting local solutions to global systems, she’s tools and storytelling platforms that inspire and guide place-based action. Prior to One Earth, Justin served as Executive Director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, where she helped Leonardo reshape his approach to philanthropy and activism, leveraging his position as a global figure to influence decision-makers and the public on the most pressing environmental issues. Justin built the organization’s grant-making program, which awarded over $100 million in grants across 60 countries and created a series of innovative philanthropic funds, tremendous impact. She also led the global communications platform, growing its digital media community to 80 million followers and generating approximately 4.2 billion social and online media impressions per year. In addition, Justin serves on the board of Amazon Frontlines, Regenerosity, and one of my very favorites, Bioneers. Justin, it’s such a joy to visit with you today, and clearly there’s a lot to talk about here. And I’m hoping we can kick it off by having you share with us what you and your team are up to at One Earth generally, and then of course, we’ll be sure to talk about the very important Minding the Gaps report.
14:05 – Justin Winters
Sure. Thanks so much, Aaron. At One Earth, we’ve been our own nonprofit Prior to that, as you mentioned, I was leading Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation, but One Earth actually was incubated when I was working with Leo. North really comes out of this unique experience that we had in working with a global network of incredible people working on environment and climate issues. And we felt that there was a clear gap in the space, in the movement, for an organization that was really lifting up a solutions framework, kind of a North Star for where we could be heading as a collective humanity, and the key solution pathways that we needed to be on in order to solve the polycrisis. You know, you can also call it the twin crises, but it’s even more than that, as you know. And so One Earth was really born out of this desire to have a different frame, a different frame that was around giving people a sense of agency, being really clear about the actual science-based pathways that we have to building a much more vibrant, healthy future for all of life. And so been our own nonprofit now for six years. And in that time, we really, you know, finished up some of the core scientific work that was that’s behind the water solutions framework, the bioregional framework that we built out. There’s a lot behind all of that. And it took much longer than we anticipated. And in the last couple of years, we’ve really been shifting to how do we bring those frameworks and those science based tools to the global net of people working on these issues so that we can drive impact in a much more expeditious collective and collaborative way. So it’s been quite a journey and a big piece of that is not just around building the tools but it’s about inspiring and mobilizing more and more people to understand not just the problem that we’re facing but the actual opportunity we have in this moment to collectively solve this and So there’s a whole kind of culture narrative piece to the work that is, you know, part of our DNA. And then the other piece of it, which is something that’s really aggravated me for years and years, is this small, is addressing how little capital is going to climate and environment issues. And within that, how little capital is actually going to the ground game. You know, the incredible people that are implementing solutions at a very local level or state level. So that’s really kind of at the core of One Earth is, you know, how do we shift culture around the climate crisis and really framing it as an opportunity to collectively build the future that we want? And then how do we influence more capital, more resources to flow into the space and to actually mobilize the solutions that we know we need now?
17:07 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, yeah, fantastic. It’s so exciting and encouraging. And of course, the Minding the Gaps report is among the most comprehensive science-driven global surveys of the opportunities, the actions and impacts, dollars invested, et cetera, thus far across a variety of sectors, and the identified pathways for more deployment and mobilization, and I was hoping you could give our audience an overview of the Mining the Gaps report and how they might come to your website and navigate that and start engaging with this incredible resource that you and your team have created.
17:58 – Justin Winters
Great, and thanks for the opportunity to share it with everybody. So I guess before I dive into that, it might be good to just share a little bit about the Warner Solutions framework. Because that really is the container through which we did the analysis of financial flows. So the One Earth Solutions Framework is a science-based roadmap that’s backed by more than 50 scientific publications that we’ve either been involved in funding, leading, or collaborating on. And the core of that is the One Earth Climate Model, which shows, and there’s been multiple versions of the One Earth Climate Model, but shows that it is still viable for us to achieve a C goal around climate, specifically with existing solutions. And what we meant by that was really centering the role of nature, the role of equity in this moment versus over reliance on unproven, inefficient technology solutions. So what came out of that whole body of work, which folks can explore much detail on our website, but was the One Earth Solutions Framework. And so this is a body of 75 specific solution pathways that have been mapped, all backed by the science that we’ve been working on with collections of scientists and experts and leaders and knowledge holders. And all 75 of those solution pathways are organized across three core pillars. And the first one is ensuring that transition to 100% clean, renewable energy for all. And so there’s a body of solutions that fall under sector. The energy The middle one, which we at One Earth are particularly focused on is nature conservation. And that is a set of solutions and an actual blueprint that we’ve been building again with some incredible folks across the space called the Global Safety Net. And that is a blueprint of the high priority lands and hopefully eventually oceans that we need to protect, connect and restore in order to solve the twin climate change and biodiversity loss. And then the third pillar of solutions is the transition that we need to make up for our food and our fiber systems to regenerative agriculture. So it’s a really unique solution set because we intentionally centered nature and equity into the model and the solution pathways. And it proves that it’s still possible. It’s ambitious. It requires, you know, collective humanity achieving some of these top-line goals across the energy transition, nature conservation, and regen ag, but it is technically possible, and it’s something we should be shooting for. So, getting around to the Mining the Gaps report that you just shared about. So, a couple of years ago, we had begun a friendship with a company called Vibrant Data Labs, and in conversations with them, we became more and more aware body of work they had created called the Climate Finance Tracker. And they had built a tool that essentially is mapping private climate investments in the US. So this is both grant making dollars and investment capital across different climate, you know, climate pathways. And we were super intrigued with it because it was a novel tool. It was incredibly innovative. It brought a lot of transparency to how finance flows were happening in the U.S., and it mapped 400 billion in finance flows, in fact. And it was also super intriguing because it was showing you both grant capital, philanthropic capital, alongside investment capital. So we got to know each other and we realized, once they realized what we had been developing, the Warner Solutions framework, and because they come from a background of ecology and being really just passionate, individually passionate about the protection of nature, they saw that this was a really incredible opportunity to overlay the Water Solutions Framework on top of their tool and the basis of the data assessment and mapping that they were doing. And so we worked with them for two years to figure out how to do that, because it’s a live tool that is actively mapping finance flows. And so we had to figure out what are all all the words associated with every single of the 75 solution pathways and how can you best enable a tool to assess those capital flows. And so that resulted in what we launched last fall, which was the One Earth Solutions Finance Tracker Tool. And it’s essentially a part of their Climate Finance Tracker Tool. And alongside the update to the tool, because not everybody is really into diving into a data tool, no matter how cool it is, we decided to launch the first in a series of reports about the stories that that data tells. And so alongside the launch of the tool, we also launched the Minding the Gaps report, which is, as you read and know well, it is not your standard kind of, you know, written in stone PDF that is static. It is a snapshot that is telling you part of the stories that we’re seeing in the assessment of the data and trying to make that data come to life. So it was the first of what we hope will be several because there are so many stories to tell, but a really critical, another entry point in order to enable folks that are moving resources around climate to be able to better understand where are some of those gaps, where is the money really flowing, where is it not flowing, how could we more strategically allocate capital together. So yeah, I can share more, but I’ll pause there.
23:53 – Aaron Perry
Tremendous, yeah, tremendous. Yeah, thank you for that for that overview and I definitely do have a handful of nerdy questions here.
24:03 – Unidentified Speaker
Hopefully I can answer them.
24:04 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, and you know the first is I’m so curious. So with your partnership with Vibrant Data Labs, between OneEarth and Vibrant Data Labs, data labs, how are the financial flow data being gathered, right? Because I imagine a whole lot of, say, investment activity out there is happening in private transactions that may not be so easy to access from a public information standpoint. So how is that being gathered and compiled?
24:36 – Justin Winters
Yeah, great question. And there are limitations to what we did, but it was the sources that were gathering the data from are big enough that they allow you, because they’re allowing us to track over 400 billion in climate finance flows, that they do tell a really powerful story, even though, to your point, it’s not tracking everything. So the sources for the tool and where it’s grabbing the data from are from Crunchbase and from Candid. And this is a very unique opportunity because we live in the United States and we have some level of transparency around certain finance flows. And without having that baseline accessibility to those data flows, we couldn’t have built the tool. I mean, Vibrant Data Labs couldn’t have built it. We couldn’t have done this additional joint project together. But so that is what makes the tool live and dynamic. Because around every six months, they are getting updates from Crunchbase and Canvas. That is directly feeding the tool. And so the reason that the partnership and the two-year process of building the tool took so long is for a number of reasons. A, you know, we are a nonprofit, and we had to raise the capital to finance the work. But it’s also something that hadn’t been done before. So we had to essentially work in partnership together to define all the words that could potentially be associated associated with each individual solution pathway so that the tool itself could grab that data from Candid and Crunchbase. So it’s an insane amount of data points, but it’s really incredible to have been involved in a project that was using language learning models and to some level to make that possible. And we’ll see where it goes from here. There’s a lot of additional opportunities for how you build out a tool like this and you make it even more user-friendly and even more transparent. Does that answer your question?
26:44 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, thank you. That actually is very interesting. I can imagine that as you’re looking out over the next couple few years, you’re seeing a pathway where the data is increasingly robust, increasingly reliable, and perhaps you’ll activate and invite in other self-reporting from other sources as well to build upon what you’re able to harvest passively.
27:16 – Justin Winters
Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of where we’re at right now, because unless a tool is actively being used and it can enable a field of folks that are deploying capital, more effectively, you know, to work to work within the strategies that we’ve laid out and to think about how can they like stress test, where’s their money going and not going, then what’s the point, right? Like a tool is just a tool, unless it’s driving impact, in my mind, at least. So we’re really we, we launched that first phase, but we are really actively seeking feedback and input from folks, both on the tool and on the report. So as we look to what we build from here and how we can have these tools actually directly drive impact and make them more user-friendly. Something like this has never been done before. It’s highly unique, which I love because it’s really interesting. I love doing things like this. I don’t come from a tech background, but I love being challenged to think about things this way. But I think there’s big opportunity there. To build something new that provides more transparency, more ability and opportunity for driving action and impact. So I think it’s really just the beginning of the story with that tool and that scope of work.
28:44 – Aaron Perry
You know, I’m reading Tom Chi’s new Climate Capital book.
28:50 – Justin Winters
Oh, I haven’t read it yet, but I’m dying to. Yes.
28:52 – Aaron Perry
Oh, it’s fantastic. And, you know, we’ve had him on the podcast previously and will likely have him on again to talk specifically about his new book. And in there, in the epilogue, he has this fabulous little couple pages celebrating the builders, the folks who are on the edge of innovation and leaning in and taking the risk, right? And traversing the landscapes of uncertainty that are part and parcel to innovation. And I just, of the pausing, stepping back and just recognizing and acknowledging when we’re building new things, it’s often really hard and it’s often likely we’re going to encounter challenges we couldn’t even imagine at the outset, right? And one of the great jokes about entrepreneurship and building things is that if somebody were to know all of the challenges they’d encounter up front, they probably wouldn’t be as inclined to embark upon such an adventure. That said, of course, there’s similarly a lot of unanticipated Yahoo moments and Eureka moments and hooray moments. And I was just wondering if you might share with our audience, you know, just sort of pulling back the curtain a little bit, this process over the last couple of years of innovation you’ve been engaged in. Was there a moment you’re, you know, pulling your hair out with frustration or on the flip side, is there a moment you’re like, oh my gosh, this is absolutely incredible. And there’s like an insight or a discovery you hadn’t anticipated previously?
30:36 – Justin Winters
Well, one of them is a kind of a recent one, and that is, and I don’t have the answers to it yet, and we’re trying to kind of have some internal conversations about this and with our close partners, but we’re realizing that we built the data infrastructure for this tool that doesn’t only need to be used for this finance tool.
30:59 – Unidentified Speaker
Right.
31:00 – Justin Winters
It could be applied to many different things. So, for example, you could potentially apply it to a content engine that is covering climate finance to assess how much of their content is about the energy transition versus what we consider very problematic tech solutions versus nature conservation versus regenerative agriculture. And let’s like, are we, you know, in following like the ebb of money, are we just giving more time and attention to things that are flashy and bring us potentially the biggest return. But meanwhile, all these critical solutions that actually are essential to having life on earth, are just being left out to dry, unintentionally in some cases, right? Like, so that’s, that’s of how we could potentially use this data infrastructure that we built and apply it for assessing other ways in which, you know, how the narrative is being told. You know, what are the solutions that media outlets are covering and which ones are they not covering? Like, I think paying attention to those gaps is really important and could have bigger implications that are beyond climate finance. And also connect and directly relate to climate finance. So that’s one version of it. The other version of it was, I loved being involved in this project and working with Vibrant Data Labs and our team because it was such a collaborative experience. They couldn’t have done it without us. Couldn’t have done it without them. We didn’t exactly know where we were going. We had instincts about it, but like we had to live problem solve and assess things. And we didn’t, when we started it as early as like last April, we didn’t know what the narrative was going to be because the data was going to dictate the narrative. So like we had instincts about it. I pretty much knew that most resources across our solution set were going to the energy transition and not to in nature and region ag, which we should cover those kind of top line findings, too. But it was interesting that my instincts were validated. And they’re not just my instincts. We’ve also seen many other reports out there that were pointing to some of these gaps. But I didn’t know how radically underfunded nature conservation and region ag were. And I guess the other little surprise thing out of it an aha moment for me was not only thinking holistically about solution pathways and solution sets that we need to collectively achieve but also thinking about the myriad forms of capital out there and which ones are ready and make sense to be funding some solutions other areas where you’re not going to have that kind of growth and just thinking about a holistic set of So it’s not just a holistic set of solutions, it’s also thinking about capital and how can we redesign or more strategically deploy capital in ways that align with what the planet needs us to get done, you know?
34:33 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, that’s super interesting. Well, yeah. Could we unpack the disparities you’re seeing across the three pillars?
34:42 – Justin Winters
Yeah. You know, there are lots of data points around this that you can go many different directions with it, but very top line since listeners are now familiar with the three pillars of One Earth across the energy transition, nature conservation, and regenerative agriculture. The top line breakdown that includes both investment and philanthropic capital is that within that pool of funding that we assess, the 400 billion of funding that we assessed, 89% of it is going to the energy transition. Just 7% is going to solution pathways that are connected to regenerative agriculture. And just 4% is going to nature conservation. And that is such a disparity that no matter how you slice the data or how things may look different in six months, the story is not to get much better because it’s just such a radical divide. And we now know, and this is something we were talking about before we got into the podcast, but we now know because of the update to the One Earth Climate Model, and I may get this percentage incorrect, but roughly 45% of the solution equation is around nature conservation. 55% is around the energy transition and we are not yet able to fully quantify the region ag portions of this, but we know it could potentially be enormous.
36:14 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.
36:15 – Justin Winters
But when you think about that 45% of the equation, the solution involves nature conservation and restoration. And you look at just 4% of climate finance dollars in the U S are going to that solution pathway. We are in trouble. Yeah. That’s a big problem.
36:33 – Aaron Perry
And I get encouraged knowing there are so many tremendous efforts at many scales in both nature conservation and regenerative agriculture, the two most underfunded of the three pillars. What are you seeing out there? Any trending or developments that is giving you hope?
36:58 – Justin Winters
Yeah, I mean, I think certainly we’re going to see see a lot of, I think there’s a lot of potential for regenerative agriculture solution pathways because there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that are building companies connected to these solution pathways that have very viable ways of becoming investable opportunities. I think one of the bottlenecks is that, and I’m not going to be the best to talk to every form of capital, but I have been on a huge learning journey in understanding climate finance writ large. And so many of the new upstart entrepreneurs and companies that are holding the right solutions and are poised to be activated are having trouble accessing capital. And most of the time, I’m sure there’s a much bigger to this, but most of the time it’s because they’re not pitching a massive unicorn potential. And most of the people sitting on most of climate finance are looking for these big, massive return opportunities. And some of the greatest solution pathways that are most urgently needed by people and planet require investment capital that is not necessarily going to give a massive but could still give a return. So it really challenges us to, for those of us that are really focused on we want to deploy capital and service to the planet and service to climate, it really challenges us to get more educated about what the planet needs and how can we make financial capital meet the moment. And so that is something that I found really interesting And just to clarify for folks on the tool, it gets really granular. It gets down to geographic mapping of companies and nonprofits that are tagged according to one of our solution pathways and one of the three pillars. So you can really explore. And not only that, it’s also going to show you who else is funding that nonprofit or that company. So there’s a lot to dive into there, but you can get really specific. If you’re really interested in a very specific solution pathway, the tool makes it pretty easy for you to go deep and explore what do some of those companies look like and some of those nonprofits. And we work to uplift some of those stories in the report to really help those nonprofits and companies come to life. But there’s 10,000 plus companies and nonprofits across the US who need better stories told about their incredible work.
39:53 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is tremendous. And let me just remind folks, this is the Why on Earth Community podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. And today, I’m visiting with Justin Winters, the founder and Executive Director of One Earth, which you can find at oneearth.org, which is where you can find the tool, the report, all sorts of resources to explore that we’re discussing. And I want to take a moment to mention also, and we’ll include these links in the show notes, Justin had a wonderful short interview on Marketplace called Climate Finance is on the Rise, but is it keeping pace? And I love how our friends over there at Marketplace do their interviews. They’re kind of high energy, sort of end of the day financial market energy, and it’s a lot of fun. So I want to encourage folks to check that out as well. And I want to be sure to…
40:57 – Justin Winters
I was just going to say that one was really fun because they, for some reason in the interview, glommed in on some of the stories that I was telling about regenerative agriculture. And I got a flurry of LinkedIn messages and messages from people in the Midwest who were like, Oh my God, this is so exciting that, you know, the necessity and the need for regenerative agriculture. And it was just fun to illuminate that space and like hear from people that I didn’t know who are working on, you know, companies and nonprofits implementing regenerative agriculture. So yeah, that was a fun interview to do.
41:33 – Aaron Perry
Oh, that’s excellent. I love hearing that. All the dots getting connected that way.
41:37 – Justin Winters
Yeah. Sorry, I interrupted you. Go on. Not at all.
41:41 – Aaron Perry
Nope. Let me just take a moment to also thank the sponsors through the Y on Earth community who make our podcast series possible along with our other programming and offerings. And our sponsors include and co-hospitality, Bluestone Life Insurance, the Brad and Lindsay Lidge Family Foundation, Clean Content, Climate First Bank, Dobrosfera Kind Media, Earth Coast Productions, Gaia AI, Launch Legal, Patagonia’s Home Planet Fund, Hush Blackwell, our friends at the Riverside Boulder, a wonderful Event and Gathering Center right here in Boulder, Colorado. By the way, if you’re thinking of doing an event, a wedding, whatever, and reach out to our friends at the Riverside, be sure to mention Y on Earth and get a 20% discount on facility rentals with them. Soundlight Foundation, Verona Rylander Philanthropies, and Waylay Waters, our biodynamically grown hemp-infused aromatherapy soaking salts. We love to share with our friends and colleagues. And of course, a huge shout out to all of our ambassadors worldwide in the Y on Earth community. And as we do with most interviews, after our main conversation, Justin, it’ll be a joy to have a few extra minutes with you behind the scenes for our ambassadors exclusively. And folks, if you’re not yet connected with and part of our ambassador network and would like to join, Just go to why on earth.org and you’ll find the ambassador page can get your journey started that way. It’s a wonderful way to continue cultivating community learning and networking, sharing resources across a variety of disciplines and domains. And yeah, I know, you know, I, I get so excited hearing about Justin, both the response you experienced from the bread basket with regard to regenerative agriculture and also the early ways in which you’re seeing the infrastructure you’re developing potentially serving multiple stacked functions over time. And I imagine in the next several years, that’s going to be an incredible set of additional resources for a variety of other actors and change makers and innovators out there. Yeah.
44:17 – Justin Winters
One of the really interesting experiences that we’ve had since launching the report, and also just in tandem with some of the workshops that we do around the Mars Solutions Framework, because we do workshops for a wide array of different audiences, from a foundation’s board who’s rethinking their climate strategy to networks of climate activists that are looking for more ways to be informed and given a sense of agency. But one of the most one of the kind of aha moments that was really interesting for me was. Presenting to several different networks of entrepreneurs, climate entrepreneurs and And also being part of doing an assessment of for a fellowship of climate fellows and helping someone impact kind of, you know, look at this wide array of that had applied to their climate program. And what we ended up finding is that, A, there’s a huge amount of people who are transitioning their professional pathways and want to be doing something that they feel is more purposeful and more directly aligned to climate and writ large, planetary well-being. And how brilliant inspiring. So many of those people are. I mean, the wealth of passion, creativity, intelligence, entrepreneurial thinking that’s out there amongst humanity is really inspiring. But one of the things that we noticed was that so many folks that were now leaning or trying to lean into climate lacked a real baseline understanding of what qualifies as a solution pathway. And where they should be putting their time and their talents. And so that’s something that worries me, but I also see as an opportunity. And I really think that empowering more and more folks with a greater understanding of just how much humanity’s well-being is connected to the well-being of our planet and our incredible ecosystems, and look, and that’s how they can utilize the water for understanding how this is all interconnected. And what is a solution that’s not only solving for climate, but is also not being harmful to our ecosystems, or maybe it’s actually helping our ecosystems. And not creating a solution pathway that’s just technically about how much carbon is being addressed, but isn’t on the other hand actually affecting communities, frontline communities in a negative way. Way. So like, we need to be really thoughtful about our time, our energy, our talents. It’s also a huge opportunity for learning, I think, for everybody. And curiosity, you know?
47:17 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, well, and speaking of learning and curiosity and empowerment and sort of future visioning, I wanted to also ask you a question one parent to another. You what would you share with other mothers and parents out there being a mother yourself regarding where we’re at right now and where we’re heading and the potential future scenarios that our kiddos will be encountering?
47:55 – Justin Winters
I mean, there’s so much there to unpack and luckily you’ve asked many other people this podcast for their opinions about that. So there’s many different answers and provocations. But for me, kids are naturally more connected to the earth. They are naturally more connected to the array of living systems. They haven’t been fully pulled into kind of westernized society as much as adults have. And they also have a natural curiosity for learning. And I think the more that we can do to not just educate kids on the problem, but on the actual solutions, which are in many cases, can be as small as protecting biodiversity in your front or backyard or on your porch. There are lots of direct ways to engage your kids around a solution framing and activities that get them outside, get them connected to nature and connected to each other. Those are just as important as things that we deem as, you know, the end all be all for climate, like international agreements on climate change. We need to be raising the next generation to be empowered to lead and build and protect. And I think we can do that. Being a parent to my son, Lachlan, has been the joy of my life. It has only further kind of driven me to continue to do this work. So, yeah.
49:37 – Aaron Perry
Yeah, absolutely. Hear, hear. That’s fabulous. Yeah, I love hearing from the parents who are engaged in this kind of work, connecting those dots. And it’s part of what, I guess it’s part of what keeps me energized, to be honest. And this is, you know, so, so tremendous what you’re doing with One Earth, Justin, and I want to be sure to encourage everyone to go to oneearth.org to explore the resources that are put together there for all of us to engage with. And I wanted also to ask you about the work you’re doing on the boards of a few really important organizations, Bioneers, Amazon Frontlines, Regenerosity. And I was hoping, I imagine there’s a few in our audience who would also be interested to hear an interesting story or moment from your time working with Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I’m sure so many of us adore and love to see on the big screen through so many different great stories over the years. Yeah, I was hoping you could speak to some of those other organizations and work you’ve done that way as well.
50:49 – Justin Winters
Well, from the board perspective, and I’ve been on many, many boards over the course of the last 20 years, both for nonprofits that I really believe in, or in some cases, philanthropic funds that have been, you know, they’ve been very actively part of building and scaling and building momentum and strategy around. I guess, to me, it’s kind of knowing that there’s this incredible network of amazing organizations, communities doing incredible work and having building relationships with the incredible people working at them or leading them is really what keeps me going. I feel like, you know, there’s an unwritten, unseen story that is happening. And it’s something that Paul Hawkins spoke about years ago in Blessed Unrest. But there is a very vibrant, incredible movement of amazing people around the world doing incredible things. And they don’t get much media attention. They don’t get much acknowledgement. There’s been more acknowledgement in the last couple of years, you know, the last several years than ever before, but it’s still nothing. It’s still a drop in the bucket. And when you tap into that kind of mycelium network of organizations and peoples and communities doing that work, and you know how brilliant they are, how ego-less they are, how committed they are to the well-being of their communities and to planet, it just gives you this sense of this is possible. And if people don’t know that that exists, then it feels very overwhelming in this moment. So part of the work and part of the way that we operate at One Earth is in service to that movement, in service to lifting them up, to giving people more access to not only the solution pathways, but the incredible people doing it. And to those stories. So just know, no, we are not alone. There are amazing people over the planet that are committing towards a roughly similar positive pathway and we’re all fighting for it and actively building it. So that’s just something to share about why I serve on boards is in service to the movement. And very much, it’s been a group of either, it’s either like systems change, narrative media, folks like Bioneers, who has, you know, Bioneers has really shaped much of how I see things, how I experience things, how I’ve been educated on environmental topics and way beyond environmental topics, but the interconnectedness of many different topics and issue areas. And then, you know, the other organizations are often organizations that are working closely with frontline communities on implementing solutions, whether that’s regenerative agriculture solutions or nature conservation solutions. So to me, that’s why I serve is to be of service to them and to help you help them on the very tricky, difficult road of being nonprofits.
54:13 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s tremendous.
54:17 – Justin Winters
And then I guess from For a Leo story, you know, that experience was the honor of a lifetime. It was really special, but something that really was always central to the work and was central to what connected Leo and I in the work was a true understanding that I didn’t work for him, he didn’t work for somebody else, worked together in service to the planet, in service to Gaia. And we were very clear about that. And that guided all of the work that we did together. And it made it a true partnership. And it made it have a lot of context and meaning that was a really special opportunity. So super grateful for that. That’s not a funny story, but it’s a good meaningful story. That’s fantastic.
55:11 – Aaron Perry
I love it. I really love that. I often tell folks, my boss is Mama Gaia. And so it really speaks to me also. And I imagine and experience a whole lot of others worldwide have a similar sense of for whom we’re working, right?
55:30 – Justin Winters
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It changes the outcome of the work too. Like if you actively work to put ego aside and to be of something greater, it changes the outcome for the better.
55:44 – Aaron Perry
Yeah. Yeah. Truly, truly. Well, Justin, it is such a joy to have this opportunity to visit with you today. And I know it’s probably about time to wrap up our interview and transition into our behind the scenes segment for our ambassadors. But before we sign off, I just want to invite you, if there’s anything else you’d like to share with our audience, please the floor is yours.
56:11 – Justin Winters
I guess just that every, in the context of what feel like very overwhelming problems on so many different levels, every individual matters and every individual counts. And if you think about the true context, which is that you are not alone and that you are working and you actively cultivate those relationships with others that are in service to that too, it will build momentum. So this is most certainly not the moment to give up. This is the moment to lean in. And for our part, would really appreciate folks coming to the website, signing up for our newsletter, exploring the tools we have also We also put up feedback forms on all the different tools that we’ve built and really would appreciate feedback from folks because what we’re building is supposed to be in service to you all. So we need your feedback as we think about our next steps and our next strategies. And let’s build community together. That is what will save the day.
57:24 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.
57:25 – Aaron Perry
Absolutely. Hear, hear. Thank you, Justin. I really appreciate it.
57:32 – Unidentified Speaker
It’s an honor to be here, Aaron. Thank you.
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