Rainforest Trust Interview

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Welcome to great.com talks with I am here today with Leslie Vansant, who is the Chief Philanthropy Officer at the Rainforest Trust.org.. Leslie, how are you doing today?

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Good morning. I’m very well. How are you today?

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I’m excited to speak about the rainforest preservation because that is something we have been involved with as well, with great.com. And I think it’s a hugely important area. So from my understanding, your organization is purchasing and protecting critical ecosystems with rainforest. But how would you describe your organization to someone that might not be so familiar with your calls or the challenges that you’re facing?

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So you want to know what I would say to someone if I met them in an elevator or in a cocktail party? Right.

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Or maybe a rainforest hut somewhere. Some rain outside the place.

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Rainforest trust is an international conservation organization. We’ve been working for more than 30 years, actually. Thirty three, to be exact, this December to protect threatened and imperiled ecosystems across the tropics for endangered species. So what does this mean in sort of layman’s terms? We protect rainforests. We protect tropical habitat. We’ve been doing this so far. We’ve protected twenty four point seven million acres. And that’s in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

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We work with local partners and engage with local communities to make sure that the protection is something that is wanted at the local level, which we have found makes it all that much more effective and sustainable.

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So it’s a partnership, right. So help me understand, how big is an area like that? Can you compare it with something twenty four point seven million acres is.

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It’s slightly bigger than the United States. Wow, you know, the state of North Carolina.

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Ok. I was puzzling things on the run up there.

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No, no, it’s a pretty big area. It’s not a little bit of land. And this is you know, if you can see the background behind me, this is a rainforest in Ecuador that we’ve helped our local partner there are the Jocotoco

Foundation protected in a reserve called Tapichalaca, which is an amazing place with the mountain forest and high diversity of birds and plants and reptiles and mammals. So the thing about the rainforest that I actually just learned last night and talking with one of our team members. So in Ecuador, there’s seventeen hundred bird species. Well, in the United States, the entire United States, there’s something like 600. Wow.

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So the biodiversity in the rainforest is so much greater than any other place, even where you are in Sweden, there’s tremendous biodiversity, but it’s not the same as in the rainforest. And that’s why these areas are so important, because they hold so much life and they’re important for our weather systems. They’re important for the climate with the carbon that’s stored in the ground from the rainforest. You know, they put moisture back into the air so that we get rain and that weather systems and breezes, there’s food that’s produced there, there’s pollinators. There’s tropical migrants. So the birds that I enjoy in my backyard where I live, in the United States, in Virginia, winter in the rainforests of Colombia and Ecuador. So these places are connected to us, even if we’re far away from them. And saving them is critically important to all of us.

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I think it’s a hugely important task, for biodiversity, climate change, so many things. And I want to understand what your approach is to saving these ecosystems. But before we go there, could you expand on what are the biggest threats from your point of view towards the ecosystems that you are protecting?

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So the biggest threats to our deforestation, fragmentation of habitat, and this comes from resource extraction or conversion to agricultural lands, so it could be conversion to small subsistence farming, small fields always having to go to new places or conversion to large agriculture. So it might be for sugar, palm oil, rubber, soybean, cattle. There are all different kinds of agriculture. There’s mining in the rainforest. There’s other types of resource extraction, whether it’s petroleum or gold or any kind of mineral development, just the growth of people on the planet that puts pressure on natural areas because we need other places to live. People want to live with others. We need more space as a species. And that expansion pushes on natural areas. And we need to recognize that we need to save and let places be wild. So there’s this 30 by 30. So saving 30 percent of the world’s surface by 2030 is something that we very much ascribe to and believe is critically important in saving rainforest is part of that. So the threats are tremendous.

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Another thing that is a threat to rainforest is that it’s circular, right? So we cut down forests and the climate gets hotter, drier. Right. And then the remaining forests are put under stress and they die because they’re not getting the moisture that they need. So you have sort of another threat to rainforests is climate change itself. So places that used to be damp and cool are no longer that way unless you go higher up slopes. And so the climate change is because of destruction of the rainforest and is also impacting tropical habitat. Does that make sense?

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a scary, vicious circle, so what is your approach to?

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To lessen the effect of this, to reach a 30 by 30 goal, so the heavy lift we feel is saving the land and we use a variety of different methods to protect land. We don’t have one way that works everywhere. We have a toolbox and different tools inside that. And we take out the tool that is the most appropriate for any given location. Sometimes it’s a direct purchase with the clear title. Sometimes it’s helping indigenous communities gain title to their land, official title to their land. When that is a legal process they can access and within that, helping them establish a sustainable sort of management approach to those ancestral lands and codifying that and putting it down so that it can be monitored sometimes its designation as a national park or a regional park. Sometimes it might be the purchasing of long term leases so that land is not logged or cleared. Whatever. We try to get the highest protection, the highest level of protection possible for any place. And you can’t just go and people say, why, I’m sure you’ve heard this. Why can’t we just go buy the Amazon? It’s not for sale, so we can’t just go buy it. It’s not in Sweden, you can buy land. Not everywhere has that same process.

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Right. So who owns the Amazon?

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Because, um, I don’t know so much about it, but I’ve seen both Bolsonaro becoming president. There’s a lot of forest fire, increased amount of logging. I’m sure you can elaborate on this. So who owns that forest?

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So the increased fires that we’ve been seeing in the Amazon specifically are a result of conversion to agriculture. And in many cases, that’s a legal process that’s authorized and promoted by the state. So there’s those are state government lands or they might be indigenous lands, but the indigenous communities may not have the paper

title to them. So they can’t prevent these activities from happening. It’s about those fires that are a result of people coming in and clearcutting, and that’s the first step of conversion to agriculture. And then the second step is burning. What remains. Do you have a clear open space? And that’s the fires you’re seeing.

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But sale of land, direct purchase, doesn’t work in every location. There’s not a history of it and everywhere, so.

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There’s so much like designation to make it a national park or community reserves are another great way to protect areas working with the local communities to establish protection and reserve.

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Right, and since there’s so much land that you are talking about, I guess the price tag to purchase it would be quite high. How much is the price you’re paying for? Let’s say, do you know the price for one, three or one ton of carbon dioxide prevented?

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It really is, again, that varies per location, but we look across our portfolio of work, how many projects we have, what’s the total cost of the projects? What’s the total acreage that will result in being protected once the projects are completed? And an average for us is two dollars per acre? That’s because we have some designation projects that are very large and the cost to designate land is very inexpensive in some cases. And then we have purchased projects where the price to purchase is very high. So it’s you know, we try to get the best. We try to be incredibly effective and. Transparent with how we spend. The generous contributions from supporters to make this work happen, and that’s why we use whatever is the best method to establish protection for any location, we don’t try to make it one. It’s not a one size fits all, I guess. Does that make sense? What is the same about our approach everywhere is that we connect with and build a relationship with a local conservation partner and local community organization. And we find these partners and build relationships with them because we have found in our experience, when you start from the place where the protected area will be and you build support within that community, then the protected area has a much greater, higher likelihood of happening and continuing and being sustained versus if you come from the top down and say this area must be protected.

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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and also then you’re helping those communities that I guess would otherwise be pushed out of their forest by the loggers.

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Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, sometimes it could be logging, it could be poachers. It could be a variety of things. But usually when people are doing illegal activities like poaching or illegal logging, oftentimes they’re not nice people. So stopping those activities makes those local areas better places to live for everyone.

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And it makes sense. So moving forward in time, what would be a great outcome for your organization in the next five, 10 years?

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We’ve actually just been going through a strategy and planning session like a five year strategic planning session, and we, like our work would be done if half the Earth’s surfaces, terrestrial and ocean surfaces were protected. We would say, OK, then we’ve done our job here, but that’s a that’s a pretty big decision.

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It would make me feel happier to be on this earth knowing that half of it was protected and reserved for other species. Not from your point of view. What is the likelihood of that being a reality, the way the world looks today?

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Definitely there’s such a greater urgency on establishing protected areas that has come recently and there are many factors for why, but to me that those are not important, just that people are now focused on saying we need to protect land, we need to protect biodiversity. We need healthy ecosystems, a healthy ecosystem, healthy forest means a healthy planet. And that means you and I are healthier. You look at the covid-19 pandemic that is a direct result of a virus that was deep in nature somewhere. Coming into contact and having an opportunity to jump and spread, which is what they do, so we protect nature, in a sense, we are protecting ourselves.

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You have been in this for maybe not you personally, but your organization has been in this for 30 years. How have you seen the attitude change towards the preservation of the climate for those 30 years?

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So Rainforest Trust was founded in nineteen eighty eight. And you may recall in the nineteen eighties, that was

when the first sort of very global awareness on rainforest deforestation. I remember being in school and hearing about the rainforest being cut down and I remember different entertainers and people who, you know, talked about this and why it was important that we had to save the rainforest. So then the 1980s, we talked about saving the rainforest and that kept going and conservation really started establishing protected areas.

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But then as we got further away from that, as many things happened, people sort of added other things to their plates in the conservation sector, rainforest trust just really never did we continually focused on saving land. I think over that time there, of course, where the challenge is raising money to support the work people have a lot of causes that they need to support and it’s a matter of how much they can support any given cause, but having more support, we’re able to do more and protect more land.

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Right. So imagine now that someone is listening to this and they feel connected to so many different reasons why you want to save the rainforest, maybe imagine a rainforest in front of them, maybe they see your beautiful background. If you’re watching this on YouTube, they say, I want to do something to help preserve these ecosystems. What are some things people can do to help and how can they stay in contact with your organization?

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I think, you know, I was just talking with someone about this the other day to help protect the Earth, to help save rainforests, you can become engaged with an organization like mine, Rainforest Trust. You can also make choices about your own personal, like how you make your personal choices. So that could be do I take public transportation or do I drive a car to buy? What food do I choose to buy? Do I buy food that is locally sourced in my buying food that comes from far away, being aware of things like plastics and palm oil, making those choices if we also make better choices and those are things that are personal and you have to do what is comfortable for you, what is right for you and your family, and but be aware how those choices ripple across the planet so people make the choices, are aware of it. And so a choice I make, for example, for me personally, I have tried to eliminate Single Use Plastics in my life. So wherever possible, I’m not using single use plastics. This was complicated during the outset of the pandemic a little bit because that had the needs for sanitary. But I tried to eliminate those plastics. I also try to be aware of where palm oil is in my life and making the choice. Do I need that or should I not have that? And, you know, in some ways that’s healthier for me, too, because maybe I don’t need to eat chips that are cooked in palm oil, as delicious as they might be. So it’s being aware of those choices. So I choose not to use single plastics as much as I can, and I choose to be aware of the palm oil in my life. I also choose to eat locally, so I try to source my food locally as much as possible. And I think even if you live in a city like Stockholm, you can be aware of that. Your food is coming from farms closer to Stockholm versus half around halfway around the world.

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Yeah, I think these are some changes a lot of people can do if they are aware of the options. So thank you so much for sharing that and taking the time to speak with greater calm today, Leslie. I really appreciate your time and for us to get a chance to talk about rainforest protection.

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Thank you so much for having me. And I hope everyone will continue to be aware about the importance of saving the rainforest. I can visit our website, RainforestTrust.org, and we really appreciate your support.

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Thank you. And for you listening, if you enjoyed this conversation and you would like to help us out in some way, something that we would be really happy for if you went into your podcast app and you pressed subscribe, that can really help us get into different top lists and then more people can hear uplifting conversations like the one we just had. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you in the next episode.

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