As part of the Lab's Investing in Critical Systems series, we bring you this exclusive interview with Florian Vernaz, Head of the World Economic Forum’s 1t.org, a platform for conserving, restoring and growing one trillion trees by 2030.

Lab: Hi Florian, thanks so much for joining us. To start with, it would be great if you could introduce the 1 trillion trees platform, and give us a bit of background.

Florian: Absolutely, yes. Thanks for this opportunity. The initiative started in 2020, in support of the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration. The idea was to create a platform to engage with corporate partners so that they can raise their ambitions and support nature restoration at scale. 

It was really created at first as a community of practice, a safe space where corporates could get together, share experiences, learn from each other, and get connected with project implementers, ecopreneurs and so on. We have companies that are at very different stages of their nature journey. It's great to have this diversity in the community, so that the newer members can learn from the older ones, and that they can share experiences about what works and what doesn't. We also have very diverse sectors that are represented - insurance, agriculture, finance, tech and so on. 

Over the past five years, we have grown to 87 companies that have collectively committed to restore and protect the equivalent of 9.4 billion trees globally. And what we are really trying to do, and excited about for the next phase of the 1t.org initiative, is to really activate that community and to create pathways for collective action through learning. So there are several ways we will be doing that. 

First, because we acknowledge that we have a very diverse community, we're trying to look at industry clusters to help industry players understand and address nature risks, develop nature-positive industry roadmaps. So the idea really is to bring a core group of companies together to outline the nature dependencies and impacts for the sector, and highlight the critical actions that they could collectively take. This helps contextualise the reflection on nature restoration, and that provides us with the foundations to articulate how forest conservation and restoration can address tangible and material business risks. 

Regional engagement is also really important. We catalyze action in priority regions such as China, India, the Sahel region of Africa, Mexico, US, Canada and Europe and we call them our “regional chapters”. The idea is really to create opportunities for public private partnerships. So, we're trying to work with local partners to develop a portfolio of landscape projects allowing corporate partners to invest in structured partnerships. Because we see that there is strong demand from our partners to not just focus on what they should do better individually, but on what they can do collectively. I think there is a very strong rationale for them to invest in landscape projects, to mutualize the risks and cost of implementation across larger landscapes. 

Finally, we are mobilising our partners around thematic issues such as wildfires, watershed restoration, or urban restoration.

Lab: tell us a bit more about what you see as the advantages of landscape approaches in the context of private sector collaboration?

Florian: I think the advantage of landscape approaches is that they can resolve a range of issues. Our partners will invest in forests for very different reasons. Some of them for carbon offsets - in a landscape programme, you're likely to have opportunities for carbon projects. Some of them invest to address, for example, water risks, and within a landscape you will have opportunities for watershed restoration. Some of them are focused on wildfires, and so on…so we're trying to put together a kind of menu of landscapes where our corporate partners can connect to implement or to test solutions to address a range of nature risks. 

We have global communities around these thematics that I mentioned - wildfires, watersheds, urban restoration and the bio economy, where we're trying to develop thought leadership, to identify innovation, not just technological but also in terms of landscape management, and to see how we can scale up those solutions. There is a very strong case to be made for the adoption of innovation - there is actually a lot of innovation already out there, and we need to make an effort to ensure that companies across different industries actually adopt the best practice and innovative technology supporting sustainable landscape management. 

Lab: As a proportion of the pledges that have been made, how many would you say, roughly, are actually part of a landscape programme, as opposed to simply stand-alone projects? 

Florian: That's a good question. When we first started, we basically invited companies to share their existing projects and expand what they were already doing. As we grow, we're trying to be more intentional about integration and collective action, especially in regions, and there’s definitely demand for this. 

For example, we have a very strong chapter in India working to develop this kind of collective action, through a process of developing jurisdictional partnerships. Having a landscape-level or jurisdictional-level roadmap for investing in nature can provide assurances to corporate partners that they can safely invest in those jurisdictions because, you know, land tenure regimes are clear, the government has invested in community engagement and education, etc. And we're trying now to create those bridges between landscapes, innovators, and our corporate community. So we’d say that initially most of these pledges were maybe not necessarily linked to each other, but the more we evolve, the more we're trying to push for that collective drive.

Lab: It’s really interesting to hear there’s corporate demand for landscape-level action. I’m interested to understand what is motivating businesses to join the platform and make pledges. There's obviously various business case drivers for wanting to do this, are you seeing they’re more on the compliance side, or wanting to push for beyond-compliance? 

Florian: I think it's a combination. As I mentioned, we have a very diverse community of businesses. Some of them are investing in forests because it's part of their net zero strategy, to offset residual emissions. But it's not all of them. I think we have somewhere between 20% to a quarter of our pledges that have a carbon offset component, but we also have corporates driven by other motivations, for example to engage their employees and their community. So to take that example, especially in the past couple of years, there has been a lot of demand from our corporate partners who say, ‘we want to invest where we live and work and we want our staff to be able to allocate time to support, for example, ecosystem restoration initiatives around cities.’

So we have very different motivations. I mentioned that we launched, this year, a new chapter in Europe. We started off by looking into what existing landscapes, landscape projects, we could offer for corporate partnerships. We identified some really good landscape projects, very well designed, with potential for significant impact. And it was really interesting, because the response we had was great - to paraphrase, corporates were saying ‘we have no doubt these landscape projects are going to deliver impact. What we need to do is to make sure that it aligns with our core business strategy, both in terms of geographies and thematic focus.’

And I think that's really the challenge - how do you go from philanthropy to unlocking operational budgets, to invest in restoration at scale? 

The key is to find those entry points in the landscape that can address specific nature dependencies and impacts. For some companies, it might be, for example, investing in insetting projects to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations. For some it will be to protect their assets and operations against, for example, the risk of floods or wildfires. I think it's critically important to have this landscape approach, because for issues like watershed restoration or wildfires, you cannot resolve that with piecemeal projects. You have to look at a large ecological unit, and you have to engage a variety of stakeholders. So the landscape approach is something that allows us to think holistically how to address those different issues and to integrate them.

Lab: And are you finding that you are having to do a fair bit of educating, of certain businesses, around holistic approaches, to shift the focus from just “let’s plant some trees”?

Florian: We have to have a balanced approach. I mean, if you look at a landscape, it's not only about planting trees. It's also about preserving the trees that are already there. And it is about planting the right tree at the right place, we insist on the importance of science-based approaches. This is what we’re asking our partners to commit to. And they report back on progress against key performance indicators on a yearly basis. And I think it helps to really keep track of the challenges and lessons learned, to share those learnings among our community. 

I think there is a very strong awareness about the benefits of more holistic approaches. But as I was saying earlier, there are still some operationalization challenges to scaling up investment, beyond CSR. So I think it's time for us to reflect on transition finance and how we can help those businesses to integrate nature into core business strategy and to unlock the resources that are necessary to make that nature-positive transition happen.

Lab: That's interesting, because we often think of corporates as a source of potential catalytic finance for landscapes, but we don’t often consider the fact that businesses also need finance for their green transitions, and that finance might not always be readily available for them.

Florian: Businesses can bring catalytic finance for landscapes. One thing we're looking at currently, for example - you know that there are 2 billion hectares of degraded land globally, and demand for wood and fiber is going through the roof. Can we actually leverage commercial plantations to be a driver of land restoration? Because we need to make sure that the demand for sustainable construction materials, bio-based packaging, etc is met from new forests rather than extracted from natural forests; and that those new forests fit into a wider landscape plan, integrating biodiversity objectives. So we need to find those commonalities between business and nature interest. We need to consider how we can generate new economic activities on degraded land that would benefit the ecosystem, by improving connectivity, by improving the quality of the soil. What we're looking at now is creating new opportunities for growth, and nature markets are actually a huge untapped opportunity for new areas of growth.

Lab: Coming back to that transition finance and investment in nature restoration, do corporates see the future, long term benefits of investing now, to be ahead of the market, ahead of regulation, protecting themselves from risk in the long run? And are there options for finance for them, if they're, say, a medium sized business that's looking to transition some of its practices? 

Florian: Again, we have a community that is very diverse. We have companies that are very advanced in their journeys, and some that are starting it, but I think there is generally a very good understanding that investing in nature makes business sense in the long term. I think the issue is more that you have limited resources, or competing investment priorities. Many companies will invest, to some extent, in nature. But the issue is scale. How do you move from an initial CSR investment, towards a scale of investment that is transformational. And I think that's where philanthropic funding can come into play. 

How do we create finance mechanisms that will support businesses in the early years of their nature transition. It's about creating that case, creating that proof of concept, and then unlocking new opportunities for investment. 

Lab: Picking up on that, in terms of corporate cooperation. In a situation, for example, where you have multiple corporates in a single landscape… How do they reconcile different partners’ differing levels of commitment and investment, if some are allocating greater budgets - greater sums from core business funds - but where presumably all are benefiting from the positive impacts of changing practices. Are we starting to see a bit of corporate peer pressure to do more, from those that are ahead in the game? 

Something that I've seen happening for the past 10 years, I spent a lot of time in Indonesia working on palm oil value chains, is that you have a strong realization now, among the main traders and consumer goods company, that they are all sourcing from essentially the same landscapes, and that they share the same risks and therefore the same responsibilities. And that has led to really interesting collaborative approaches where the main players in specific landscapes are collaborating to fund landscape planning and landscape restoration initiatives. There is the example of a program in Sumatra called CORE, and that is basically a coalition of eight major companies, including PepsiCo, Unilever and others, that are putting funding together to work with local governments, to work with local NGOs and communities on preventing deforestation in the landscape and making sure that their own supply chain is protected from the risk of deforestation, the risk of fires and the risk of social conflict. I think that there is this realization that landscapes basically are an interface where many businesses interact, and that they all share a common incentive to address the risk in the landscapes where they operate.

Lab: I wanted to talk about landscape partnerships and multi stakeholder platforms. And in particular, how communities and Indigenous People are being approached by corporates, and how ethical and equitable arrangements are being fostered? 

Florian: In every regional chapter where we work, we will have a stakeholder council that will bring representatives from civil society, from indigenous communities and youth. So, for example, in Canada, we have representatives of First Nation communities. And one of the main focus of our work in Canada will be to look at unlocking finance for indigenous-based conservation. Over 100 Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) have been established in Canada. So we're going to look at how we can develop a pipeline of indigenous-led conservation projects and, yes, scale that up across the country. But the idea is really to create a governance system where those different voices can be heard. And we do see that there is interest from the corporate world, for interaction and dialogue. There is always an inherent risk of mistrust and misalignment of incentives in any kind of multi stakeholder platform. But I think the key is really to ensure that those different stakeholders that don’t often interact actually have an opportunity to be in the same room. And again, I think the advantage of landscape approaches is their ability to find entry points that are relevant for everyone. So if you're talking, for example, about flooding or wildfires, well, it's an issue that impacts indigenous communities. It's an issue that impacts companies and governments. So there is a common interest in resolving those issues. What we need to ensure is that the solutions that are being designed are representing the interests of all parties. 

Lab: And how important is it to have supportive governments, in terms of being able to realise these pledges? and how much are corporates actually able to lobby governments for more conducive policy environments? 

Florian: As I mentioned, when we talk with our corporate members, I think what they expect from initiatives like 1 Trillion Trees is to create opportunities for public private partnership. I think even more so when you talk about restoration at scale. Corporates need clarity on land tenure, they need a framework for engaging with local stakeholders, including local government and local communities. So it's very important that this alignment occurs. And when we think about what some of the hindrances are to scaling up innovation, very often it will be issues like, yes, land tenure. But also, I think we have, you know, a lot of national and regional target frameworks that are coming into place - all countries now have to develop their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (their biodiversity targets). And what we hear consistently is that it's great to have those very high ambitions - everybody understands that the private sector will need to participate to accelerate the movement of restoration - but we need clear mechanisms for collaboration. We need a clear mechanism for engagement. And we also need clarity as to what will be the claims and benefits that can be derived from such investments. But definitely, I think there is a strong realisation that public private partnership is key to investing at scale in nature restoration.

Lab: And in landscapes where you've got potentially multiple corporates involved. How much do they need to align their indicators? What they’re monitoring and what they are reporting on? 

That's a great question. I mean, that's a question we've been discussing for four years now! And really, I think what we need to understand is that the reporting landscape is changing very, very quickly. Five years ago, there was no TNFD (Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures), there was no CSRD (EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), there was no EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation). So companies needed to find the right voluntary platforms to structure and to demonstrate their commitment to nature. The EU CSRD, and the EUDR, are very powerful drivers of action. 

It requires a lot of resources, a lot of time, to adjust and to comply with those new reporting requirements. And as a voluntary platform, we need to find ways to build upon that, and not add an additional layer of reporting that will not provide any additional benefit. So what we are trying to do now is to make sure that we can streamline the reporting process, and that we can align with those different standards. 

Again, corporates have to comply with existing disclosure requirements, so we need to provide some additionality. So if companies report on landscapes, for example, what would be the additional benefit that could be derived from this additional layer of reporting? 

We need to insist on the benefits of landscape programs. Investing in structured partnerships at the landscape level, rather than in individual projects, does not only reduce implementation risks and increases impact, but also allows to mutualise the cost of monitoring and reporting and to enhance reporting consistency. 

So on one hand we are trying to streamline reporting requirements and align with TNFD and CSRD indicators. On the other hand, offering opportunities to invest in structured partnerships at landscape level rather than individual projects is also a way to standardise reporting and to provide corporates with strong accountability assurances.

Lab: Florian, thanks again for your time and your insights.

Florian: Thank you!

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Here’s how you can get involved:

• If you’re a business interested in taking ambitious action to protect and restore forests and reverse deforestation, join 1t.org's cross-industry alliance of companies committed to forest leadership and impact.
• Keep an eye out for our upcoming publication, Investing In Critical Systems - the short guide will explore a practical methodology for directing investments into four critical ecosystems, including rainforests, which we argue are crucial to solving our planetary crises. 
• Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about news from the Nature Positive Landscapes Facility - a blended finance vehicle focused on landscape-scale biodiversity investments across our four critical systems, expected to launch in 2025.