Agroforestry and the Economics of Forest Stewardship: Reframing Forest Landscapes for Rural Prosperity, Climate Resilience and Restoration (UNFF21 Side Event)

Good afternoon, colleagues.
I think we can start in a minute or two.
I'd just like to invite you to settle in your seats.
Thank you very much.
Well, good afternoon, Dear Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
Good afternoon.
My name is Hendry Garcia, Deputy Permanent representative at the Permanent Mission of the Philippines, the United Nations.
We're very happy to co sponsor this event today with the permanent mission of the Republic of Indonesia and the United Nations Forest of Forum Secretariat.
Thank you very much.
I warmly welcome you to the side event on agro forestry and economics of Forest stewardship, reframing Forest landscapes for rural prosperity, climate resilience, and restoration.
As you all know, we're meeting here at the sidelines of the UN Forest forum, a very important meeting, and we're really pleased and honored to have with us a great Filipino, a special guest.
We have, Mr.
Apple Dp, president of the Apple DApp Foundation, and coming all the way.
Well, in this case, from the Philippines.
Thank you, sir, for gracing us here today.
It means so much to have you and to show that what you're doing in the country, for the Philippa but not only for the country, but also for larger climate action.
And I think what you're doing is a model for what all of us really in the world are trying to aspire for, which is more equity, more development, and more prosperity.
So I want to just, first of all, give you a big shout out.
Thank you for being here with us, sir.
And we also have a great panel here this afternoon, led by, of course, Ambassador Chantal Wong, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting before in many occasions while you were in the Philippines too at ADB.
So really, really great to be with you here today.
We also have Mr.
Derek Ruth, co founder and CEO of Ompti Ventures.
Derek, welcome, and of course, Mr.
Sim Powdell who I'll give the floor to in a bit to give us a bit of an introduction to our topic and also the wider context of what the UN Forest Forum is doing.
And our moderator for the panel, Mr.
Rob, can you help me with the pronunciation.
Midas.
I knew I needed to have a little bit of help there.
Because when you read, it's like Mateus Midas.
Okay.
Mr.
Romes, we'll take the floor later to moderate our panel.
Again, I want to thank all of you for being here.
I know it's super busy at the UN basically every day, but, um, Your presence is very, very valued.
So with this, let me just first give the floor to Mr.
Pudell to walk you through what the UN Forest Forum is doing and the larger context of our engagement.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues.
On behalf of U NFF Secretariat and our Director, Juliette Bell, I would like to thank you for inviting us.
This is a very interesting topic, and I'm a forester myself.
Have some experience also in agro forestry projects from my past projects, probably I will share during the discussion part.
Here, I would like to go a little bit broader one.
We all know agro forestry is integrated land management system.
It's not only about agriculture, it's not about trees, how we can integrate those things as a buffer.
It plays a critical role in advancing the goals and targets of UN strategic plan forests.
We heard a lot this week and we need to accelerate our implementation to achieve the goals and targets of the UNSPF Although arruity is mentioned only under the target goal two of target in the USPR.
But recently when we review the reports by the countries in our FG report, many countries emphasized the role of agroforestity in all the goals, accelerating all the goals and targets.
Specifically, it can help reducing the pressure on the natural forest.
There is an example from Nepal.
I'm from Nepal.
I grew up in a mountain.
Forestry is like a traditional practice there.
Nepal in 30 years back, we only about 26% forest.
Now we have 45%.
In 30 years, we increase our forest by 20%.
It's a limelight in the world in the forest area.
How we did that in two policy areas.
One was community based forest engaging people in management.
The other one was agroforestry, because people depend on forests so much for their livelihood, timber, food and fuel and anti.
Now they switch that to their agricultural land.
The pressure on forest was automatically reduced.
And also the role of agro forestry in climate resilience, I Management project in Timor-Leste.
You know, it was a UNDP funded projects.
Water management and people in Timor-Leste, they do the substance and farming, you know, without any scientific way.
So we launched this agroforestry project there and actually help a lot to improve the land productivities and conserving soil and water, then also, you know, improving the yield and crop.
So the other experience from Ethiopia, I was managing their landscape restoration projects because landscape restoration in the long term projects.
You plant today, you get benefit after 20 years.
But agroforestry help a lot because people can get benefit immediately.
So you can have that breeze three, four, five years that people can get incentive and those things, so that you can have this long term plan for the landscape restoration.
So there are many this experience I can share later on also.
But we also face lots of challenges, when I implemented those projects in Timor-Leste in Ethiopia, in Nepal.
The critical one was the land tenure because if people think it's not my land, they will not invest there.
You know, why we wait 30 years? I don't know whether this land belongs to me after three years.
That was the critical one and actually agriculture need more technical input than agriculture and forest integrated land management.
It's about selection of species, the spacings, combination of those.
Otherwise, you will not get that maximum yield.
You want to, if you don't do it properly.
Lack of technical input was another big issue.
Financing was another one.
People need some upfront investment there and government didn't have that policy.
All those things, you know, I tmity we also face the perception, people think if you do agroforestry, their yield will be declined because of the state, because they didn't know how to do that, you know, So those challenges were there in Ethiopia, because it's public access land, the livestock, the free grades.
So how to control this free grazing livestock.
When you do agro forestry landscape restoration was another challenge.
There are different challenges we need to address.
Anyway, from UF perspective, this is the global policy body.
We don't implement project directly on the ground, but we help countries through capacity building policy formulation.
We have some development account project.
I actually manage those projects.
We have one project on integrated landscape restors.
And we are helping countries to develop necessary strategies and agro forestry is a key part of that strategies.
The other work I lead here is developing forest financing strategy.
Agroforestry is always a key part of this strategy.
This is how we are promoting agroforestry, and lastly, the policy coherence.
Forestry is not all about forest only.
Forestry is about other sectors 80% of time, more than that, the deforestation and degradation in forest come from agriculture and other sectors.
We need to work with other sectors.
We try to strengthen this policy coherence.
Finally, we'll be discussing more.
I would not like to talk more.
UNF up is always willing to talk about this and our draft resolution, I already saw the agro forestry, you see the value already, and we'll be helping countries based on the need and their demands.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Caudell, for really underscoring some of the issues that we're going to tackle today, such as financing, land management, and other challenges that developing countries face as they seek to, um, be stewards of their environment, but also make sure that they're productive economies as well, and they're sustainable.
So let me turn the floor over to our moderator, Rob, who will manage the floor and the discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Knowing some of the panel the way I do, nobody can manage them.
My role, I just want to describe the discussion we'll be having.
We'll do some very, very quick self introductions.
We have some Q&A we've managed between ourselves to create content for us to dig into, and it's my job to make sure that by 220 or so we turn it over to question and answer.
Today's discussion must be part of rethinking everything any of us assume we know.
We are so used to talking about forestry in the context of conservation or extraction.
There are false dichotomies that exist in this landscape and in climate in general.
If agroforestry is only a buzzword, we will fail.
If agroforestry is a business model to build the integrations that you're describing, to create a bridge to all of the opportunities that you're describing, then we will have succeeded.
How do we create agri forestry as a vibrant business model, where we don't put farmer income in competition with the climate, where we don't put future generations in conflict with today's generations, where we don't put climate ecosystem services in conflict with all of these things? How do we create an integrated business model? We call that agro forestry in this space? That's the discussion we're having today.
Yeah.
This is a great panel.
We will do very quick intros.
I'll start with mine.
I'm an impact investor and entrepreneur.
The most important thing you need to know about me is on my T shirt.
Yes.
I'm a stubborn climate optimist.
I was inspired to wear this shirt by the great Catherine McKenna, who I believe is the UN's chair of NetZero.
I saw her wear this a couple of years ago.
It inspired me, so now I wear it all the time.
I'm a stubborn climate optimist as an investor, I'm a stubborn climate optimist as an entrepreneur.
I'm a stubborn climate optimist as a father, as a member of this community.
I'm a stubborn climate optimist in every possible way you can be.
My role is to be on the business side, on the investment and entrepreneurship side.
That's my role in life.
Apple, I'm going to turn to you for a self introduction, which will be a challenge.
You've achieved so much.
We know your public life and successes.
In an introduction, connect us to you and this topic, if you don't mind.
H.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Magadan Lahat.
I'm Apple Abb, co founder of the Black Eye Peace.
Very simple for me.
I got here today because of someone else's generosity, I'd like to pay it forward.
I like to help the farmers get out of poverty in the Philippines and encourage the youth and the next generation, the farming is cool again.
Excellent.
Thank you, Apple.
I'll turn to Chantal and I'm particularly looking forward to her effort to summarize her vast career and achievements in only two senses.
Actually, I'm not going to focus on that because I think you can Google me on all of that.
But actually, I grew up across the Pacific, Hong Kong, Okinawla, Guam.
And now Manila, I call Manila home.
I'm proud to call it home.
With family ties that really run deep in the country.
I spent my career in development finance trying to answer one question, and that is why do the world's most naturally wealthy communities naturally wealthy so often lack the financial resources to thrive and what do we do about that? Hope to have that kind of conversation.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Derek is a brilliant entrepreneur and innovator.
Derek, describe yourself for the group and then we'll begin.
So I'm here as a co founder with Apple.
CEO of Omesty Ventures, and we are really born to help to try to find and build economic systems to help the farmers just elevate the floor of what it means to be a farmer in the Philippines.
And we think it as an example for the world in general.
Thank you, Derrick.
I love the focus of Olms in the Philippines.
I love the focus on agro forestry and business model success in the Philippines.
As a business person, as an investor, when we create the successes in the Philippines, the world will change dramatically.
There's no location more exposed to these climate risks, to agri forestry risks, and therefore no location, better place to solve the business model challenges that inspire us.
That's what inspires me about Olms the Philippines in this work.
Apple, when we talk about agroforestry, we often talk about policy, finance, systems, all vital, all valid.
But, if you don't mind, I have a question for you in a moment, but I'd like you to remind us all of the beating heart of the people and the communities at the heart of agroforestry.
It becomes easy sometimes to forget the humanity of this question.
Apple, what would it mean to you? If the Philippines were able to create a vital economic force behind agro forestry? That means that would change a lot of lives just like I was given the opportunity before the music, the awards in the headlines.
I was a kid who grew up from a farming family, who grew up in poverty.
My mother left for work as OFW, overseas foreign worker so we could survive.
And for many Filipino families, sacrifice is a part of everyday life.
And when she left, I would work with my grandfather in the fields with our Calabas and I was the designated Calavo caretaker and the driver.
And that's where I learned the value of soil, hard work, and food and tenacity.
And, you know, also I grew up legally blind.
I was born with a rare condition called the stamus and I had a hard time getting an education, and I could have been I easily overlooked.
And, um and someone believed in a family from a small farming family, they saw not limitation, but potential.
And I was adopted as a kid, brought to the US.
And I come from $1 Kid a day program, and, you know, I've always back in my head to go back into agriculture because I saw how hard it was for my grandfather and to keep his legacy going.
And during pandemic, it sped it up for me I met someone of my you know His name is Sad guru He taught me about the danger of soil degradation happening around the world.
And as a farmer, I took that as a responsibility.
And, um, And so I challenged Os my team to, can we make an impact in this situation and how can we bring technology to revolutionize the agriculture back home in the Philippines? And I learned so much things along the way.
We ran into this thing called biochar, and it's the organic soil made from the paralysis of any biomass and a you know, we thought that that would be a great extra income for farmers, you know, and then we started working with the PCA, made me the ambassador for coconuts, and, you know, come to find out coconut is the best source of biochar.
And so we focused on that.
We tried to spread the word throughout the Philippines to the farmers.
And, you know, Also, we learned that monocropping is bad for the soil, so we're going above and beyond in creating food for us.
And also, that means extra income for the farmers, and also it protects the soil.
So we picked cash crops from Minga to cacao to coffee and coconut.
So at least the farmer has an incentive to stay in the land because we figured out that moringa you could harvest every four months, at least and it's a good source for protein, right? And uh And so, you know, we're focusing on bringing technology for the farmers' reality and not just, you know, your big servers and computers.
But, you know, technology to bring to the people to the rural areas, you know, just simple connectivity, just getting online is a challenge, you know, so someone believed in me, and now I got to pay it forward and believe in someone else.
And those are the farmers and the youth of the Philippines.
Farmers are rock stars.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That was excellent.
A few points of personal resonance and what you described, and I'll continue.
But I love the way Apple you made your personal connection to the topic come alive.
For me, my parents were immigrants to America, came with nothing.
The waste, and I'm a business guy and an investor.
So my lens into this is the waste inherent in forestry now, in farming now makes me insane.
I can't sleep at night.
I grew up my father bought his factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 1950.
It came with furniture.
That furniture never changed in 40 years.
Waste is not something I know how to deal with.
I bring that up as I turn to Chantal because the waste inherent in today's economic systems around Forestry is bizarre.
We're wasting resources, we're wasting money, we're wasting time, we're wasting people's lives, we're wasting the planet.
This is all a choice.
This is a choice we're making.
It's not a mandate from above, it's a choice.
As I look at Chantal, I think, easy to say, hard to do, how do we make better choices? As I'm inspired by your career, you've been in a lot of rooms where how do we make better choices happen.
I'm curious how you see a theory of change to make agro forestry a business model that drives change.
How do you see that happening? Well, thank you for that question.
I think underneath all of that waste that you are describing and what Apple just described is a deeper problem that I see.
It's really that we have financial systems that are blind to the wealth of islands of forest communities that they actually hold.
A dear friend of mine, Robert Underwood, former congressman from Guam, I grew up in Guam as well, later president of the University of Guam, really coined the term blue capital.
His insight is that Pacific Islands and island countries are not small, they're not poor, they're just miscounted.
The Pacific Island, for example, is about 200 square miles.
Of land, but it's actually 200,000 square miles of ocean, fisheries, reefs, marine biology, marine biodiversity.
How do low income countries for low income countries, natural capital makes up about 40% of total national wealth forest, reefs, watersheds, mangroves.
None of this is actually counted in the GDP and none of it is on sovereign wealth sheets, balance sheets, none of it eligible for capital markets, as you described.
So how do these communities are surrounded by natural wealth that looks on paper like high risk and low asset borrowers.
They can't borrow against their reefs.
They can't leverage their forests.
They can't pay for conservation, which many countries have to do without access to capital values.
This is not just a measurement problem, but really it's a justice problem as well.
But it's a solvable one.
So agri forestry, as we have now learned, makes natural capital visible and productive at the same time.
That is not what financial systems have yet learned to do.
And so food security and forest health is actually inseparable.
Now, 375 million people in the Asia Pacific region face food insecurity, massive severe food insecurity, exasperated by degraded land.
Agri forestry um, simultaneously does a forestry strategy, but also an income strategy, as well as a climate strategy.
So at the ADB, which I just left, we've just had published a guidance note that looks at just recently in March of 2026 tells us that 75% of economic activity in developing Asia, by the way, is 21 trillion.
It depends on nature.
So how do we use this financing gap that is for nature, which is estimated about $900 billion a year? It exists, but we have to build systems around it.
And so, you know, I am privileged to sit on the Apple the App Foundation board, as well as advisor to Ohms and we are now looking at this, I've stood with Apple at Brooks Point in Palan Southern Palawan, which is the most diverse the most biodiverse space on Earth, alongside with Apple and indigenous communities, farmers who have stewarded these landscapes for generations.
What are we doing there is not just a pilot, but it is a live demonstration of what natural capital looks like when we include communities at the center.
Manila is now my home and family ties and personal commitments, but the Philippines is where this argument now moves from theory to actually ground truth.
I love that description.
I love how you immediately went and I'll come to Derek in a moment.
I love how you went in terms of theory change to natural capital.
Among the things we could accomplish together, in other words, how do we make the financial benefits and specificity of those dollars come alive for farmers, for systems and business models they exist.
I think one of the greatest things we could accomplish together, and I'm going to offend a lot of economists here, I think in just a minute.
But the laziest, most destructive concept in all of economics work is externalities.
It's 100-year-old set of excuses to take somebody's costs and dump them on somebody else because we say they're hard to quantify, we say they're hard to attribute.
If I walk into a board meeting, she tells my chair and I say, our marketing plan, it's hard and I can't quantify, I'm not going to do any marketing, she fires me.
But if I walk in and I say, I can't quantify natural capital damage, she promotes me because I get to waive this vague banner of externalities.
Externalities are being internalized.
As a businessman and an investor, those who are internalizing externalities are driving returns.
Apple, you mentioned the biochar benefits, the nutritional benefits, these are real economic goods.
To waste them is insane.
One of the reasons why I'm so thrilled that Derek is here is because he's on the ground turning internalizing of externalities into real value, turning natural capital into investable product.
Derek, my question for you is, what does a roadmap of success look like today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year? Because this is quite a comprehensive set of topics.
What does winning look like now and going forward? I mean, for us, I think it begins and ends with participation.
Not only from the farmers and the people on the ground, they need to participate in this economic cycle more, but it's also capital, finding ways for capital to participate.
There's, I think, like you said, so much of capital comes really so late in the process.
They see value so late in the process, finding ways that capital can participate sooner.
The value only in one extractive moment.
Correct.
But because that's, I think the people on the ground, they've been told and learned that short term yield is where extractive value is where they get and can live.
Of course, they're going to follow that line.
Part of what we do is we start on the ground.
We go into communities that are really missing the infrastructure and missing the ability to see the land for what we know it can give.
They know the value of the land.
We've gone into a lot of communities and a lot of places where conservation groups have gone in, they've spent money on reforestation and two years later a mine comes in and tears it all down.
But often they go in and it's two years later the money that they gave them is gone.
They still need to eat.
They're deforesting not to go sell timber, but just to plant more crops that they know is short term value and they know will grow and feed their families.
First thing that we do is we go into these communities and understand what they're growing, understand what their needs are, and start to build the economic infrastructure around what they can do to get value out of what they have.
There's areas that we go to Brooks Point that, you know, they have hundreds of thousands of coconuts a day in excess that they have no access to market for.
So how can we close that gap, start to build those economic structures, and then we start looking at the infrastructure that capital can come in and be a part of an economic system.
They don't have to wait the 20 years, the five years for the yield to come through.
They can start investing into these areas to start building community and infrastructure around the growing.
I think the idea that communities and forests can't grow together, and I think that needs to change.
I think we can grow and conserve and reforest these areas and still support the communities that are there and making sure that they make money off the land, they can build the communities that they know they can build, their water supplies are stable, their food supplies are stable and the children that grow up in these areas can see an imagination of a future that they can build and grow in.
Because right now these families are they're so used to having no value in the agro forestry and the agriculture that they that they teach them all to leave because that's the only future for them and we need to shift that thinking.
I know Derek is a brilliant businessperson.
I love the fact that success is roadmap starts with community participation.
I'm going to ask you a question about that in a second, but we have to reward that participation.
Farmers got to make more money.
We have to increase their yield.
When we increase their yield, we don't put it in conflict with biochart.
We increase their yield because we're creating ecosystem services that they can get paid more for and But I think I think they also need to be a part of the economic system that rewards the biodiversity.
When people come in and want to sell a biodiversity credit or a carbon credit and someone in another part of the world benefits from that, the community needs to benefit from that.
They need to realize that if I cut down this forest, I take money out of my own pocket and only when they're a part of that full economic system will they understand the value of what it is.
And then teach them that if they grow more crops on a single land, they can get a more yield, a higher yield, as we talked about, you don't get less from agri forestry, you get more.
Single sources may be less, but as a whole, they're more.
We need to start teaching that thinking.
Yeah.
Actually, Derek, when we were in Brooks Pointe, we looked at schools and talk a little bit about, and I love that, that we want to make sure that the next generation is also thinking farming is cool, and how do we ensure that? That's true.
Farmers are rock stars.
Yes.
During our visit there, a few students came to interview me and they wanted to know how they could participate and we have a technology and app that the farmer has to learn to map out the land, geotraced trees.
We're like, look, why don't you teach the farmers how to use these apps.
They feel included and it makes farming enticing for them.
We also started earlier too.
Working with the local schools and you know, building micro farms within those within those younger schools.
It not only gives them the kids a safe place to be and a safe place to learn, but it also teaches them the value of agroforestry, and it feeds them.
It creates this cycle really early so they understand the value of what that system can be.
And, Derek, I want to come back to you on participation in a specific way in a moment.
But Apple's example of unlocking the passion of the next generations, In we've seen this before.
We just have not seen it in agriculture.
I used to spend a lot of time early in my career bringing emerging new software technology to mold makers in Southeast Asia.
You'd go one week to see hand blowing glass and everybody's with glass exposed in shorts and the next week machine tools and younger people and education.
We've seen these transformations before.
We just have not seen them here.
That's what we're here for is an agri forestry revolution in the ways you're describing.
I want to come back to your comment though, Derek, about participation because I'm an investor.
I need data.
How do you measure participation, particularly amongst communities? I mean, I think it's the people involved.
I think it's the hectorage involved.
You know, if you start to build these systems that aren't just not just the arable land, but also the land around it, you start to see stability and regrowth of the forests, the mangroves and the coastal preservation.
You know, when you look at the Philippines, the most climate impacted country in the world, part of what, especially in the northern parts of the Philippines, these agricultural lands are so impacted by the typhoons and the weather, we need to create better ecosystems around the land so they're supported.
Because there's been so much deforestation, because of the lack of growth in the areas where they are, we need to start teaching them the value of being able to have the land around it.
I think as we start to look at the communities that are involved and the land that's a part of this program, that starts to show value.
I want to connect a few dots about this question of measurement.
Again, as an investor, I need data, I need a theory about data, and I can make a financial bet.
I can bring natural capital live if I have data that drives an outcome.
I love this.
These are the threads of that data.
I'm going to posit something and then I'm going to offer my own suggestion.
But first, I want to posit something about participation and measurement.
Agri forestry has a lot of opportunities to bring a lot of different data streams together.
It must.
That's why it'll work as a bridge.
Increasing farmer yield.
We can measure that.
Carbon, carbon capture, carbon management.
We've got hardy things to get there.
Natural capital is emerging, water use, land use, biodiversity.
But this is my proposition, and then I have a suggestion.
I believe we're all too silent on measuring participation, community action.
I have a startup now that's looking at biodiversity with cheap microphones that get you insect sounds, married to satellites because the nature of those sounds will tell you the biodiversity health per micro hectare of land.
Why are we it's a great indicator.
All right.
Give me my indicator of community involvement, community participation.
I think a lot of it is retention.
The kids not leaving.
Sounds good.
Do steal yours? No.
I was going to say that the app that Apple just described, everybody has a cell phone now.
The problem is connectivity in island communities.
But we're going to be writing in a little tiny LLM onto a cell phone so that we could be measuring as they grow, we ask them to, you know, the farmers to take, by the way, they don't do this to their farms.
They actually interact visually and audible and we will be capturing all of that.
As they grow, we ask them to take photos of the trees.
So it's not your normal monitoring and evaluation where you send in field workers to do surveys, but it would be direct interaction with the farmers directly.
I love it.
It Well, it's a sensor that you stick on the ground.
However, the soil, how healthy and bugs and all kinds of stuff, it gives you a frequency and you can make music off of that.
There's a key.
That's a good discovery for musicians.
I'll sing to the cocium and the roots.
I'll give it some symphony.
Just to capture some of this energy in ten, 15 more minutes and then we'll turn it over to Q&A.
Agro forestry as a business model that bridges away from extraction only, away from conservation only, that bridges to multigenerational farming, that bridges to increased farmer yields, that bridges to climate benefits, that all these bridges inherent in agroforestry give me one moment to bring natural capital alive.
These different thoughts about behaviors through tech are driven to create data streams we can invest in.
I love where Derek went quickly on how do we measure engagement.
Are farmers getting younger or not? Yeah.
A I'm there as an investor, I don't need 100% specificity about causation or correlation.
I need to know the direction of travel.
If farmers in a community are getting younger, Agri forestry is winning.
I don't know how it's winning.
I don't know what it's doing.
I know it's the LLM that it.
I don't know if it's the rock star.
But if we're getting farmers younger and younger, it's because they see a future.
Can we blend as Derek is attempting to do, as Chantal is attempting to do? How do you blend these outcomes? Younger farmers, increased yield, ecosystem services.
How do we create a blend of economic value that is a shared value from in the community and out of the community? What are your thoughts on how that comes together in the marketplace now? I mean, I think that's again, going back to participation.
I think there's so much tied to single yields.
Most people that invest in agriculture, it's a single yield.
They want a single yield, so it's super weak.
Most of the time the farmers bear all the burden of the debt in the beginning and as long as the weather comes through and there's no pests and there's a yield at the end, they make their money back.
If they don't, they don't make their money back.
Like the capital bears almost no burden in that exchange.
If we can start pulling forward this idea that I know that you and I talked about, Rob, this idea of agriculture as climate infrastructure, it has benefits to the soil, it has biodiversity, it captures carbon, especially in agroforestry.
It's not a perfect model, but it's a model.
Then we start using that as an option as downside protection.
We start bringing them into the later yield conversation.
You start to expand the inputs to the capital, then the money coming in has a better way to participate.
You made a comment I want to bring alive, capital bears no burden.
It's because we've permitted that.
The externalities of the cost of that capital.
Who pays the price of a dead field because it was over extracted? Who pays the price of climate damage? These are being internalized costs and revolutionary thinking here about agroforestry creating a life cycle of financial benefits is what we're attempting to accomplish.
There's one more thing, actually, Apple mentioned about the intercropping that we're trying to also accomplish around that.
I'm really excited about being able to plant meringa because guess what? One of the highest stunting happens in the Philippines and we need to figure out how to solve that issue.
I think this is also solving a lot of that because mega is nutritious.
I love that.
Yes.
Yes.
From Nepal.
One of the example of participant would be in the young people in Nepal, they migrate to other countries for labor work.
Now they see the value of agriculture in the mountain, especially the coffee.
They are selling coffee at very good price.
The market is other factor if there is a market and the people see value, they come back.
Coming back is a strong indicator of the participant.
Retaining our youth, retaining their future instead of losing it.
These are not just intellectual propositions, they're not academic statements, they are investable activities that unleash the natural capital that unleash the future.
We hear that same thing.
Apple is talking about the students that we met in Brooks Point and we've heard this in Manila and other places like People will literally come up to us and say, my entire family has left.
My parents have sent every one of us to leave.
But if you make this something that we can come back for, we'd all come back.
They all want to come back and do their parents wanted them to be farmers, their families were farmers and they want to see a life there and they're waiting to come back if there's a life for it.
We've seen this before, just not in agriculture.
We've seen it in the Philippines before.
Some of my life included being an early outsource financial entity in the Philippines.
When we started, Really, who's going to answer the phones? How are you going to get all these hits? Now it's a major industry.
The Philippines is a major innovator and a driver of those activities.
When we started, it was an unknown activity.
It had as many questions about its economic value as natural capital and agri forestry have now, but we solved not perfectly solved, but we created an ecosystem, an economic ecosystem to drive young people to what were great jobs at the time.
I think if we wait for perfect, nothing ever happens.
Nothing ever happened.
We need to start.
There's a lot of imperfect things I think we also argue about like, Well, it could be this, it could be that, but we just need to move and do things.
A couple of quick things.
One, as an investor, I'm intimidated by the intellectual capital in the room.
I The things that make me certain are far less of things that make all of you certain, but we bring all those things together.
We have a few minutes to turn to Q&A.
You made a great comment as we were just getting to know each other before about your father who was what we now would say farmer.
But we talk about the future and youth in farming.
I think what we also need to learn is that The last 50 years or more of extractive agricultural know how turns out not to be so valuable.
As we internalize these externalities, where are we turning for insights? His dad.
Your dad and grandfather.
The regenerative economic value over time of agroforestry is an art and a science.
It's a culture and a philosophy.
We sometimes say these are about Indigenous peoples, but that knowledge base is part of the natural capital too.
Turning that knowledge base back to the economic power.
One of the reasons why Derek, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the reasons why community participation matters is because that's who knows what to actually do to drive the economic returns.
We're not giving them anything.
We're thrilled to partner with their know how to create these great returns.
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of these communities, it is that.
It's taking that knowledge, adding knowledge, but I think they know the land, they know it grows, they know the native species, they know what it can come back to.
Right.
Can we add business model? Can we add tech? Can we add culture? Can we add personality? Can we add stubborn climate optimism? Can we add financial returns? Can we contribute in the Say again.
Yeah, exactly.
So This is like all these conversations.
This is a gentle walk through vital topics we all need to spend more time on and in fact are.
The purpose of a panel like this is to create some drive in the day, to create some focus in the day around the topics we raise.
I'm going to turn to Apple in just a moment to bring the moderated portion to a close so we could turn to Q&A.
Apple, as I look at you, I think of another famed musician, Elvis Presley.
Now, I bring that up because among the songs and lyrics Elvis Presley made famous is one that has always stuck with me and you probably know it and the lyric goes like this, a little less conversation and a little more action, please.
Now that song is not about ag forestry.
But we're in the world's greatest deliberative body where discussion is our currency.
It's how we drive action if we're successful.
But it's also how we just create more discussion.
It's vital for all of us to leave here and Apple, I'm going to ask you, we need to leave here with a fire lit under us not to continue to discuss agri forestry, but to do it.
Now, today, this, this very minute, because the opportunities are vast as are the costs of not proceeding.
Apple, what kind of a fire can you light under us to drive action in all of our lives on the agri forestry topic? Yeah.
With the impacts in the world happening now, it's more important to plant more trees and more than that, to take care of the people tending the trees and supporting agroforestry allows the earth to heal and feed people at the same time who really needs it to live.
The call to action that you always remind us of, it's a call to action for people whose lives we're wasting.
It's a call to action for land we're wasting, money we're wasting, time we're wasting and a planet we're wasting and there's no need for that waste, none whatsoever.
Thank you, Apple.
Thank you panel, for that part of the moderated section.
Now we'll turn it over to Q& A in the remaining time.
Oh, I'm so apologies.
That was my fault.
I had that in my notes and I forgot.
My fault entirely, please.
Then we'll turn to Q and A.
Thank you, Mr.
Moon.
Excellency, teaching is past speakers and participant.
Our discussion today is very interesting about acro forestry.
Indonesia expresses its appreciation to the organizers, permanent mission of the Philippines to the United Nations for arranging event acro forestry and the economic for forest stewardship, for farming forest landscape, for rural prosperity, climate resilience, and restoration.
Indonesia are looking forward output of the discussion regarding contribution from acro forestry to reshape the economics of forest stewardship by linking restoration, small halter productivity, community resilience, market creation, and inter gerational participation.
Indonesia I believe that acro forestry is able to support in developing sustainable forest management since this framework has adopted three aspects, namely, first, ecology, by maintaining the sustainability of ecosystems, biodiversity, and the function of forests as life support which main focus includes preventing deforestation, protecting water, and sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change.
The second, economic, by optimizing the responsible use of forest area and products as a source of economic growth.
This includes tostreaming forest product industry, providing food and energy and increasing national and recal income and lastly, social, by offer hauling forestry development, profits direct benefits to communities, especially local communities around forest areas.
This is realist true agro forestry proclaims such as social forestry to reduce economy inequality and all property.
Excellence is testing is participant under cultry, Indonesia promotes inclusive and sustainable forest management, accelerate the recognition of customer forests, targeting 1.4 million hectas by 2029 and strengthens social forestry and multi forestry schemes.
In this context, Indonesia has launched acro forestry for food and energy under social forestry program, integrating food and energy protection within forest landscapes in the sustainable manner.
We have allocated 1.1 million hectas for priority commodities and social forestry schemes.
Furthermore, Indonesia continues to prioritize social forestry and community based forest management as central pillars of sustainable forest management.
To date, 8.33 million hectas have been allocated under social forestry schemes, benefiting for more than 11,000 forest farmer groups and nearly 1.42 million households.
While promoting multi forestry, sorry, while generating an economy value of approximately ITR 5.3 trillion.
Indonesia is also promoting multi business forestry to strengthen competitiveness, particularly by developing non timber forest products and forest based value chains.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No, I have a question that is very specific.
Yes.
I just want to make sure you mentioned integration.
In terms of agro forestry, has there ever been any consideration of hemp integration as a part of contributing to that ecosystem? Because just for the properties of carbon sequestering, improving soil health, and just all the other properties that comes with it, including removing the toxins out of the air.
When it comes to the environment.
So I found it really interesting to just know that, is it a possibility of him integration and being able to allow alley cropping potentially? I think you already answered also in your questions.
That's a very interesting thing.
This is integrated models.
It's about agriculture, it's about grassland, it's about livestock, it's about tree, it's about people, it's about market.
Everything is integrated.
Market seems to be very driven factor here and we are talking about business model, investment.
People invest when they see the profit and when they see the market.
Example, in Ethiopia, we wanted to promote agro forestry and people were not interested in the beginning because they like f in the Injera and, you know, then there was a market, there was this plywood factory, plywood and they buy a lot of this eucalyptus, you know, the people started planting eucalyptus, although I would not prefer eucalyptus as the agroforestry model, you know.
But they find the way, like a cluster, some cluster they do the plantation and some cluster they do the p.
Like also in timorals because it's a fragmented farm, they have a very small, you know farmland.
So there is a company called carbon offset Tsitye were asking for incentive, upfront investment, government doesn't have money, project doesn't have money.
The somehow this Cote tried to link with the carbon market.
They make these cooperatives and they signed the agreement with the voluntary market.
That's how they got the upfront incentives.
This is how everything was somehow climate, environment, soil, business, people were really integrated and now they are actually developing the agrif international strategy that actually link and connect with everything.
Thanks.
I know you have a question.
I think in general, there's been a false step to imagine a future where ecosystem services would be monetized on their own.
There's no magic that comes from saying, well, I can do this with carbon or I can do this with hemp, unless you start with, I can create greater farmer yields because of my agri forestry practice, and then over time, unlock ecosystem services that unlock natural capital into investing streams.
We've got to get the sequence right.
I love the way Derek and Ohms are sequencing right.
I need community participation.
From that, I can create stakeholder gains, as you described in your comments.
It's a great question that triggers a lot of thoughts and further digging in.
Thank you.
I think we have three more requests for the floor.
So kindly introduce yourself, Mr.
Ang and then I saw the gentleman over there, and then maybe we could do a batch of three so we can.
Hi, my name is Mike Eg.
I just have a general question for Derek and Ab.
In regards to Ons, what exactly is the business model that you guys have and then how can we participate and be part of it? I'm involved in import export business with the Philippines a lot, Philippines in the United States.
Um, and I also own an entertainment media company as well.
So there's a lot of different things and I want to explore how that could be something I could be involved in and just kind of understand more about the actual business model for Is Thank you so much, Mike.
Maybe we'll do a batch of three and then I think over here, please, on the left.
Thank you.
My name is Adi Joke Akinli and I'm from Nigeria.
I don't have a question, but I do have a commit.
I'm just wondering why the new interest about agroforestry.
Because as far as I know, agroforestry has been practiced in.
If I cannot speak for the all over Africa, I can speak for West Africa for generations.
They've been practicing agroforestry.
They've been doing it sustainably.
They know that they need to put together different sources of income to bring about diversity.
So if my cassaba is not going to grow, I can get something from my bees, I can get something from my copy, I can have my animals and raise them.
So this is not new for me.
I'm wondering what the new craze is.
I'm sorry to use that word about agroforestry.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the comment.
I invite the panelists to address that as well and then a gentleman from here on the left.
Thank you very much.
Can you hear me? My name is Tiago.
I am from Brazil, from the Ministry of Agan Development and Family farming.
We hosted Cp 30 last year in Belen and President Lula said, we cannot host the Cp 30 and do not present concrete solutions for people in the forest.
Our ministry came up with a program called Productive Forests.
The idea is to support family farmers in the Amazon in the production of food, both for cash crops, for short cycles, while the trees grow and they can have profit from trees that also produce food.
One of the important things for these programs to work is to connect the produce to the markets.
You said a lot.
We heard a lot about investments and markets, but in our experience, one important market is the institutional market, state market, especially school feeding programs.
Because in the first stages, they may provide to the farmers, they may diminish the uncertainties for the farmers to invest in that productions guarantee some market.
So I would like to hear from you your thoughts on institutional markets and school feeding programs, especially.
I would also like to share that the FAO visited this program, Productive forest, and they told us to launch an international dialogue on productive forests.
That dialogue was launched in March in FAO.
And we are having hearing this forum, the second round and we will have more rounds up to September.
It's good to know that we are doing same things all around the world, but we do not know each other.
We need to connect and to show the strength of producing food as a way to generate income, recover the soil, the biodiversity, and all of that.
Of course, you are all invited to be part of this dialogue, and we can talk about it later.
Thank you very much.
To our Brazilian colleague, also the Nigerian colleagues for their important remarks.
I think definitely as an outcome of this panel today, we need to work more closely together.
Thank you for that.
I give the floor to the panelists to respond to the three questions about business model, agri forestry, is it particularly something new? Third, how to work more closely together, especially with institutional partners.
Maybe, Derek, do you want to go? We'll go out of order and say you're absolutely right.
It's done sustainably in a lot of places.
What we see is capital doesn't see it that way.
They still see that system as single yields instead of seeing it as a whole.
We find in the areas that we've been working in that the farmers still have a problem accessing capital that sees it as a blended system.
It's the laziness of the capital market.
That is the revolutionary not the no.
But in some areas it is the know how they're very monocropped and they don't see that.
Part of, I think what we have two things that we're doing is in that participation is bringing that knowledge to people and having them realize that the reason why they need to deforest around them is because what they've done in monocropping is killing the soil alongside everything else.
You're absolutely right.
It should be talked about more.
People should know the areas that are doing it and that's part of what we're trying to do.
I'm glad that there's these conversations to make sure people understand that there are areas and places that have been doing this wonderfully for a long time that we should learn.
Part of lighting the fire, we don't have to reinvent physics.
No.
This waste is a choice.
Wasting the know how globally is a choice we're making.
I love those observations too, but I know we have two other.
Then real fast.
Our business model, a lot of times we go into these areas and understand the opportunities that are there.
I don't think we have one business model.
A lot of it is We begin and end with the mandate of, how can we help the farmers? Is that turning them into farmtrepreneurs, and understand that they create products that they can get full value of the ecosystem? Is it understanding that the Philippines is an energy deficit? How can we come and bring energy solutions to make sure that they can not have brownouts in the afternoon.
Can we create processing and process yield that already exists? Can we help to replant and start to bring yield? We're opportunistic in a lot of ways and how we can help the farmers to make sure that they can get there.
Yeah.
Connecting off takers to the farmers directly is another one, since you make liquor too, so that you can stuff to you directly Yeah and making sure we're bringing offtake directly.
For us, if they can't sell what they grow, no one's doing them any service, they're wasting time.
We always think about offtake first.
Are they growing what people want to buy? Are they growing the types of we putting the right seedlings in the ground? The material in the ground to make sure it grows what they need to sell? Making sure schools are involved so we can feed the kids and the institutions and the rest.
We think about offtake a lot in this before we even put anything in the ground.
I wish to respond.
Quick.
The institutional market, one example I wanted to give.
I used to promote the bamboo for agro forestry in Torley Actually, we had a small factory and we started producing the bamboo engineer for furniture.
But then they were asking where is the market? Then government actually created the market.
They actually made a rule that all university and school, they need to buy bamboo furniture.
That happened in Rwanda, if someone who is from Rwanda.
You can create this market within your country.
We train markets to respond to that.
Purchaser and private capital behind Capital.
It won't do the first ten anything.
But it'll do through 1,000.
How do we scale it? Absolutely.
We always start with.
Wouldn't it be amazing if saving the planet actually made people money? Everyone will want to save the planet.
Just looking around the room, are there any other requests for the floor? One question I might have to the panels is, how do we involve the 10% of our population, the Philippines de our OFWs that are working abroad? How can they help invest in this new model? Perhaps, has there been work perhaps in your ongoing engagements, Apple, Derek on this? Yeah, we often people come up to us that's moved to the US and they have lands back home and they don't know what to do with it.
They're like, Yeah, give it to us.
We'll do something like that.
We'll plant some stuff over all over, you know.
Yeah.
I talked to a lot of Filipino Americans, the diaspora in the US, and many of them actually have not been home.
They don't know what's going on in the country.
And so I spent a lot of time saying, Hey, it's actually incredibly it has progressed.
I mean, the first time I ever went to the Philippines was 1993.
And then I actually spent some time there in 1999 to 2002.
It is a very different Philippines today, and it is investable.
You know, there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of jobs that can be if we spend our time to focus on that.
So I'm really excited because we've got about ten mega projects that is happening, many of them because it was borrowed from the ADB, and I got to see all that.
Uh, increases in airports, in transportation, all the different infrastructure that is really going to make the economy of the Philippines great again.
And so I always tell Filipino Americans to come back home, to come back and reinvest.
Yeah.
The human capital focus that you're bringing the right way to close, just anecdotally for me I What? You know, there's something there's a human capital opportunity and there's something wrong with that.
Why is an outsider stranger like me seeing these opportunities when people from the community aren't it's easier for me.
But there's an opportunity there that's very significant.
I'm glad you brought it up in the way you did.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much, everyone.
I think we had a very, very rich discussion, maybe by just way of conclusion.
I think today's side event did three things.
First, it really opened our eyes.
Second, it connected the dots and all the different processes and, um, important things that are happening in many places around the world.
And third, it zeroed in on the transformational power of agri forestry and the business model that led by Apple and Olms and supported by Ambassador Chantal and UNFF and Rob, that this is something special happening.
It's a seed that's being planted and it's growing, and we're asking the world to take notice and be part of it.
And so we thank you for being here, but it's really a model that connects sustainability with resilience, climate action, and intergenerational equity and prosperity.
It's making sure that the farmers can stay in their land and livelihood.
First of all, I mean, I just want to give a special shout out and thank you to you, Apple, for first of all, sharing your moving inspirational story.
I think it's something that should move and should be told and continues to move people throughout the world.
Second, thank you for your commitment to inclusivity and thank you for paying it forward to our farmers and believing in them and believing in healing the world and making it a better place.
I think your music and everything you've done in your life attest to this.
First, thank you so much for this.
Things like that.
And then, thank you to our panelists, Ambassador Chantal, for being, you know, a champion of the Philippines and becoming a Philippines, in a way, Derek, for, you know, everything you're doing and helping our communities rob your experience.
I mean, as an investor who believes also in the Philippines.
And I fully it's about empowerment, right? So that we ourselves become entrepreneurs in our own country, right? So, But while that has to be more implement or to become a reality, we continue to rely also on partners like you, like the UN, and of course, our dear friends from Indonesia, Dig Dia, thank you so much for being here and all of you for taking the time.
I know it's a very busy time at the UN, but you missed your lunch.
Hope you can eat something afterwards.
We do have a reception later at our mission, so those of you available are warmly invited.
Again, thank you very much.
Wish you a good rest of the day.
Samat and Mabuy