‍[00:01] Jennifer Wu: Hi everyone, welcome to the Founder Spirit Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Wu. In this podcast series, I interview exceptional individuals from all over the world with the Founder Spirit, ranging from social entrepreneurs, tech founders, to philanthropists, elite athletes, and more together we'll uncover not only how they manage to succeed in face of multiple challenges, but also who they are as people and their human story.

The following episode was recorded during the Villars Summit. The Founder Spirit Podcast is proud to be a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero (and nature-positive) economy and restoring planetary health.

“This is a decisive decade for us, and the choices that we make now will determine the quality of life of people and the future of life on this planet for centuries to come. We have a moral and ethical responsibility with the rest of life on this planet.”

“It's going to take every one of us, every sector, old and young, and different kinds of production systems and governments, from national governments and the UN to local communities. It's going to take every one of us to do our best to scale up our ambition to do it faster so that we can really turn things around. But I'm confident that we can.”

And joining us today is Cristian Samper, Managing Director and Leader for Nature Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund, a major philanthropic initiative launched by Jeff Bezos in 2020 with the pledge of $10 billion to address climate and nature within the current decade. 

Cristian previously served as President & CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and the Founding Director of Colombia’s Alexander von Humboldt Biodiversity Institute. 

Cristian, welcome to the Founder Spirit podcast. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today at the Villars Summit 2025.

[02:06] Cristian Samper: Great to be here with you - thanks for inviting me.

[02:09] Jennifer: Thank you. Cristian, growing up in Colombia, what were the key influences in your life?

[02:15] Cristian: Well, I grew up as a kid in Bogota, Colombia, which is a large city up in the Andes in the mountains.

And I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time as a teenager hiking the mountains behind Bogota and surrounded by nature. And if you're a kid growing up in the tropics, surrounded by hummingbirds and all kinds of plants and insects and everything, you can't help but be fascinated.

And I've always said, every kid is curious about the world around them. You're always wondering, wow, what is that? And you start comparing them. I used to collect the things and bring them into my mother's kitchen, and she was a very patient, loving woman who allowed me to do that. 

And I think we all have a kid inside each of us asking questions about the world around us. Some of us never grow up totally, and that we're always kids asking questions. And that's, I think, what scientists are - we're always curious people.

So for me, it was sort of just the surroundings where I was having two parents that were supportive and understanding and gave me the space to do that. And then they decided, oh, I could actually do this for life. So I decided to study biology at a time when very few people were thinking about environmental issues. 

Even I wasn't - I was more interested, just curious about it. And no regrets, it's been an amazing life journey, surrounded by a lot of people and love, a lot of support. I've met incredible people trying to make this a better planet for all of us, which is what we all want.

[03:36] Jennifer: And can you maybe walk us through your career progression? I understand you started actually working in Colombia at first, and then after you did your PhD, you also worked as the Director of the Natural History Museum at Smithsonian.

[03:48] Cristian: Yeah, that was quite a long journey. Well, so let me just say by studying Bogota, I went to college there, Universidad Los Andes. And it was an interesting moment because I was fascinated by reading all these books from these famous professors all over the world, people like E.O. Wilson and Meyer and many others. 

And I still remember one day when I was walking through university, I walked past the international office, and they had this little signup for an exchange program where a student from Los Angeles University could go and spend a year abroad at Harvard University. And I sort of said, well, let's apply for this and I got it. 

So I did a junior year abroad, I went to Harvard. And for me, it was an incredible moment because I went from studying the books of these people (to) studying with these people who are all there. And to be honest, I was intimidated, I was afraid. I was wondering whether I was good enough for that. 

But it was an incredible opportunity that allowed me to leave Colombia for the first time, spend time in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I still remember getting there in the middle of the winter, figuring out, what am I doing here? 

But it really allowed me to broaden my mind and my ideas. And I also learned a tremendous (amount) about myself, because when you grow up in the city with a traditional Latin American family, you're always in a little bubble.For me, it was sort of, oh, who am I? What defines me as a person? And it was incredibly good. 

I went back to Colombia after that, and then I came back to the U.S., did my Ph.D. at Harvard. And it was a very interesting moment because I finished my PhD in 1992, which was the year of the Earth Summit. And that was a very important moment because I think it was the first time the world really came together and said, okay, we have a problem, we better do something about it. 

And I just happened to go back in 1992. And Colombia, like so many other countries, had been there. They'd signed the three conventions from Rio, and they decided they wanted to do something about it. And the question, I think they came back and they said, so how do we do this? We've signed this, we need the institutions to do this. 

And I first came back to work at a foundation, Fundación para la Educación Superior, the Foundation for Higher Education, as the head of their Environment Program. And I also had a faculty appointment at the university in Cali, which is where I was living. 

And it was fascinating because I was 27-28 years old, I came back and then found myself thrust into this whole debate that Colombia was doing about how do we create a national environmental system.

And the result of that is it created a Ministry of the Environment because there wasn't anything like that. We said we need some scientific research institutes, we created a whole environmental system. 

And I suddenly found myself in the midst of that debate, which was fascinating. As a scientist, as we said, whoa, don't forget, you actually need to have science inform policy, which is a critical issue. 

And I often say that it was being at the right place at the right time. If I had gone back to Colombia, if I'd finished my PhD three years before, it would have been too early - nothing like this would have happened. And if I've gone there five years later, someone else would have done it.

So it was just happening to be there. And anyway, it's a long story to say the first thing I ended up doing was creating the Natural Biodiversity Institute of Colombia, which we named after Alexander von Humboldt, the great explorer. But my job was basically being chief science advisor for the government of Colombia for the Ministry of the Environment.

And really we designed in a way that was bringing together all the universities, NGOs and different organizations like a mini-IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) to focus on understanding, conserving and using the biodiversity of Colombia.

And it was an incredible experience, something I totally loved and I did that for about seven years. And the Humboldt institute is turning 30 years old this year and it's an incredible organization. And the way it continues to work, it's had its ups and downs, but it's still now really well-positioned as a key organization. 

So I'm a proud parent of a 30-year old institution, which is important. In addition to my two teenage kids, I'm also a responsible father for something like the Humboldt Institute that's a great opportunity. So that was my first step when I came out of college and my PhD. 

[07:50] Jennifer: So I understand Colombia is actually viewed as one of the most progressive countries in Latin America in terms of Indigenous rights. 

[07:58] Cristian: Colombia has actually been a very progressive country and the figure of the what-we-call the resguardos de Indigenas (Indigenous reservations), where these Indigenous territories and the recognizing the tenure for Indigenous people is almost a century old.

So Colombia was way, way ahead of almost any other country. And to this day, it's still very progressive and I think that's been important. It's also had very good people. Martin von Hildebrand was one of the key leaders in pushing this Gaia (Amazonas) and the foundation that he did. And of course now, he's running the organization of the Amazon Treaty, which is a wonderful opportunity to have someone with Martin's background.

And then Colombia, it's an issue of when things happen. Colombia actually drew up a new constitution back in 1991, which was interesting as well because of the timing. When you look at it being a good Latin American constitution, it's like 350 articles long. But the interesting thing is almost 40 of them have to do with environment. 

So it's actually a very progressive constitution. Some of the fundamental issues around environment, around rights of Indigenous Peoples, all these are part of the Colombian constitution, which is highly unusual. Most constitutions, including the US, do not have those elements embedded in there. And I think that's been critical. 

So it's got good people, good institutions, plenty of problems and challenges, as we always do in a country like Colombia. But I think overall today what we see, it is one of the countries that's come the farthest since the Rio conventions 40 years later, in terms of advancing the knowledge and the use around environment and nature.

[09:23] Jennifer: Right. So one thing I meant to ask you is as the Director of Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, a lot of people think that the Natural History Museum is just a museum. It actually does a lot of research - can you talk a little bit about that? 

[09:41] Cristian: Absolutely. So after I left Humboldt Institute, I was actually approached initially to join the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, which I did for a couple of years. If you're a tropical biologist, it's the best studied tropical forest.

And most people don't realize the Smithsonian has a research facility, Barro Colorado Island, for more than 100 years with long-term data about the biodiversity that's there. I did that for a couple of years and then I was invited to become director of the National Museum of Natural History, which I did for 10 years. 

And you're absolutely right, for me it was an incredible privilege as a kid growing up in Colombia, it never even crossed my mind that I would end up running the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

And most people think about the museum as a public space. And yes, it's a museum that gets almost 7 million visitors a year, which is an incredible opportunity when you think about all the kids, and you come there and always say these museums touch both the hearts and the minds of people that come there, which is critical. 

But what most people don't realize is the collections that are behind the scenes are enormous. So the Natural History Museum has almost 150 million objects and specimens that go back almost 200 years, of which much less than 1% are on display at any one point in time. 

And what you think about it, that collection is a record of life on Earth, and not only life on Earth, because it covers all the work in geology and the rocks and the formations, all the work in paleontology, all the work on biodiversity and anthropology as well.

So it covers a whole range of disciplines, as we always said, understanding life on our planet and our place in it and making that connection. So the collection, one of the key responsibilities of museums like the Smithsonian is being good custodians and safeguards of these collections. 

And then to do that, there's a very large research enterprise. So there's over a hundred scientists whose job is to do advanced research to understand the planet, basically, and our place in it. And so it was, for me, a wonderful combination of science and education and stewarding the collections. 

And because every one of those objects or specimens are from a particular point in place and time, they can go back and ask the question with the new tools that we have. So say all the DNA tools that we have today in genomics, we can go back and look at the genomics of some of these species and figure out how we could do them and how we can use that information to protect species.

So just to give you one example, one of the species in North America, the black-footed ferret, which is a species that almost went extinct. It turns out the Natural History Museum has a very large collection going back more than 100 years of black-footed ferrets all the way from Mexico up to Canada. That preserves the genetic diversity of the whole range of the species.

And then you went through this bottleneck where many of these areas, these species were extinct, was going to go extinct and they found a few and then set up, with the National Zoo, captive breeding programs. All these, you could go back to collections to understand where they came from, the original population.

And there are going to be some very interesting dilemmas because I think it's not too far out, but we'll be able to go back and take some of the DNA from some of these species and could we use this to actually bring some species back? 

The whole field of synthetic biology will open a whole world of possibilities and some really important ethical dilemmas that I think we're all going to have to wrestle (with). I'm a very big proponent of the importance of having these collections as a way to document our planet. 

I'll give you another example - I mentioned the museum does work in anthropology, and it has some of the earliest collections of the recordings of some of the languages of the Native American tribes that went extinct or disappeared. These languages, which is something we talk about the loss of biodiversity, we don't talk so much about the loss of cultural diversity.

And one of my favorite stories, there was one of our curators in geology, a guy called Tim McCoy, was from the Miami tribe. And it turns out when he was a small kid, nobody in his group was speaking the language. It had been lost there. 

But those recordings, the language had actually been documented at the Smithsonian wax cylinders and all this information that had been recorded there. Some of the next generation could come back and take this information and use it to reconstruct that language and teach it to the others. 

And my favorite moment, I still remember seeing Tim at one point, who grew up without speaking this language, with his 15-year old son reading a story of the traditional practices of some of these people. And that's the kind of knowledge that would have been lost and the language probably would have been lost if it weren't for the collections of the Smithsonian.

[13:55] Jennifer. That's a really beautiful story. Yesterday I did a podcast with Sylvia Earle - we talked about the “Hope Spots” on the Ocean related to Mission Blue.

Cristian, I was wondering if you have some ideas on what “Hope Spots” we have on land.

[14:05] Cristian: Yeah, look, I think there are areas around the world where we're seeing biodiversity and wildlife coming back. One, in Central Europe, we're seeing whole areas and some very interesting programs that are happening there on rewilding.

Some of these countries, we find that they've already gone through the demographic transition - a lot of people have moved to cities, some of these areas in the rural areas are being freed up. And that brings the possibility of bringing some of this wildlife back. 

And several philanthropists, British and American philanthropists, have been supporting some of this working with the local communities and creating a new model of not only bringing wildlife back, but bringing different livelihoods for the people that live in some of these communities around us. So I think there's some very interesting work that we're seeing there. 

And the marine space, as you mentioned, they're very good examples. We know that even protecting a relatively small area in the coastal area can be incredibly powerful in terms of bringing life back all around it. Of course, this is a practice that's been used by some of the traditional communities across the Pacific and many parts of the world for many generations. So a lot of what we have to do is sit down and listen.

The good news is, despite all the challenges and everything we see right now, one lesson I've learned, I guess, in 30 years working these things, is that nature is resilient. Nature will come back if we back off and we give it space in the right conditions. You will see that animals will come back, and we saw that, a little bit of that during the COVID pandemic.

So I think there's a real interesting moment where it's not only going to be about protecting the most important places that we still have, but it's about restoring nature, restoring cultures, restoring these places, and then using that to build a different economic development model for us that will be more compatible in the end.

It is about how we can all live in harmony with nature.

[14:05] Jennifer: Yeah, actually, a friend of mine, a couple of years ago, bought a coastal property in Nicaragua, focused on land and marine restoration, but also regeneration and creating livelihood models and economic models for the people that live in those communities.

[14:22] Cristian: And they're remarkable stories. Another step in my journey was president of the Wildlife conservation society for 10 years. One of the really remarkable projects we saw as being in Rwanda with the mountain gorillas and the surrounding communities. 

And WCS, the Wildlife Conservation Society, has been working there for more than 50 years.The first surveys done by western scientists of the original mountain gorillas were done by George Schaller, who was a gifted writer as well and did a lot of incredible work. And what we found is there were thousands of these gorillas. They really went downhill because of poaching and different kinds of pressure.

And a couple of the scientists at the WCS decided, well, why don't we turn this around and why don't we create basically a tourism program, an ecotourism program, back in 1970s. And what they started doing is based on the scientific information that was the result of 10 or 20 years of field work. 

And nowadays you go to Rwanda and you see all the communities around the parks are depending on the ecotourism here. People are paying $1,500 for one hour with gorillas, which is quite remarkable. And most of that income is going back to those local communities.  

And the good news, talking about Hope Spots, is the population (of gorillas) which had crashed in the 1960s and 70s is now recovered to pretty much the same levels that we had documented back in the 1940s and 50s. 

So it's a whole cycle that went through a bottleneck but has fully recovered. And it's partly because you have the buy-in and the support from the local communities who see a lot of value in nature, in this case with a flagship iconic species like the mountain gorilla and this is something you could replicate in many parts of the world.

[17:55] Jennifer: Fascinating, and also I think a friend of mine is working on wildlife conservation in India, so related to tigers and things like that. And I understand the Indian government's also doing a lot to incentivize people not to kill the wildlife, even though that they do destroy a lot of property - so that human wildlife coexistence.

[18:17] Cristian: Yeah, it's a real issue. And of course we as humans have encroached in many of these areas and introduce livestock and all these other things. And if you're a tiger out there, it's a lot easier to eat a cow than it is to try and take down a gower (Indian bison) or something like that.

So we do see it and India is a good example of another area in the Western Ghats (Mountain range in India), where the wildlife has recovered dramatically. The populations of tigers have increased probably 300% by now. And it's been the work of a lot of people. 

One of them was a WCS scientist called Ullas Karanth, who was an engineer who was the first person to do camera trapping in these areas and Ullas was amazing. I had the privilege of spending time with Ullas more than 10 years ago in the field. 

And what I learned, it wasn't just the poaching of the tigers, it was also about the poaching of the prey of the tigers that was a critical issue. So the key issue was in many cases, these rural communities would hunt the deer, the chitral deer, which is one of the key prey items - the tigers didn't have enough food. 

So the whole issue was restoring the habitat, rebuilding the connectivity because you had these isolated patches. So it's about building and connecting these protected areas and building corridors so the tigers could move - more space, but more connection, which the Indian government has done a very good job with. And what you see there, it was absolutely wonderful. 

We visited three different places, different national parks, which were at different points of intervention. The first one went to, there was nothing. There were no deer, no tigers, very little there. And there was a relatively new protected area. 

Second one we went to, had been protected 10 or 15 years before, what you saw is the populations with the deer had increased dramatically. And so it was crawling with chitral deer and gower and all these ungulates that were there that were eating everything, but there were no tigers there. But then about five years later, the tiger population starts recovering. So if you don't kill them, if they have enough food and they don't get some serious disease, they can come back.

And the third area we visited, Nagarahole National Park, what you found is fewer deer and others, and the population of the tigers was healthy, so it was reaching an equilibrium.

So it's fascinating for me, in one week, to basically see the history of 30 or 40 years of interventions. So back to the same point. I'm convinced that if we create the right conditions, we can bring nature and biodiversity back.

[20:28] Jennifer: What are the conditions do we need to bring nature back?

[20:32] Cristian: A lot of it is around space. So we've already transformed about 72-73% of the surface of the planet, mostly to produce food. Some of these areas have degraded as well because we didn't produce food in the right way. So there's a real issue about just space.

So when we talk about protecting 30% of the planet, well, we barely have 30% of the planet left at this point. So we're going to have to not just protect what we have, but restore what we've lost. 

And one of the key elements there is transforming the way that we live and in particular, the way we produce food. And there is no reason today where we should be able to produce twice the amount of food and half the amount of space with the right technologies and the right tools. 

And one of the key drivers that we're focusing on at the Bezos Earth Fund right now is around the whole issue of beef and cattle. It turns out the majority of the land is being used for either beef or cattle, or sheep or goats or others, but primarily cattle or food that's going for them, soy and others that’s going to the cattle feed. 

And this is just crazy because I mean, we're basically using a huge portion of the planet for this in very low technology ways. And we can improve the production dramatically. So we can do two key things there. 

One is we can do sustainable protein, much better production of cattle by using technology, genetic breeding, different feeds, electric fences. There's a whole set of tools that we have where you can increase productivity. 

So in Colombia, the Llanos Orientales of Colombia, you can have one cow per 10 hectares of land or whatever. You should be able to have 10 cows per hectare if you have the right conditions and the right elements there.

But the second thing is we do need to shift our diets and look at other alternative sources of protein. So we're making some big investments in that area, trying to build better, more nutritious, less expensive sources of protein that could be either plant-based or it could be cultivated meats, or there are various other mechanisms that you can use so that people have more choices. 

So if we shift those diets, we improve the production, we could get many areas of the world back into restoration activities.

[22:40] Jennifer: So, you talk about shifting in diets. I can tell you after one week in the rainforest, I'm almost a vegetarian now.

[22:47] Cristian: Well, I'm glad to hear. I think each of us has a very big role to play. And we think that's a problem out there in Africa or wherever it is. It's about the choices we all make. It's about what you get, what you eat or not.

We've cut back on our consumption of meat, red meat at our house, dramatically. I'm not a full vegetarian, but I'm quite happy. And there are whole societies that are basically vegetarian or they use other kinds of sources of protein in much more sustainable ways. 

So we, as humans, are having a tremendous impact and we can feed the planet with the amount of food we have right now. It's a problem more of equity, about distribution. It's a shame about technology. We can really invent ourselves out of this hole that we're in. And in doing that, we can give space back to nature.

[23:31] Jennifer: Very, very interesting. I'm going to pick up one point that you talked about on sustainable protein. The (Bezos) Earth Fund was created with the commitment of $10 billion by Jeff Bezos in 2020 to make grants that address climate and nature within the current decade. 

We've all heard the message this whole week that we don't have enough time left. And, this morning we heard from Johan Rockström saying, we really only have five years.

So in your mind, Cristian, this is what we have, five years. If we really screw up the next five years or the next 10 years, what are our choices?

[24:11] Cristian: Well, fewer, few choices. And that's the whole point. I do think this is a decisive decade for us, and the choices that we make now will determine the quality of life of people and the future of life on this planet for centuries to come.

So I do think we need to act fast and there needs to be a sense of urgency, for sure. Will all of life on the planet disappear if we don't get it right in five years? No. But we will lose many species. I think we will see big changes and a lot of wildlife (on) the planet will go on with or without us, to be candid. 

Personally, I think we have a moral and ethical responsibility with the rest of life on this planet. My view is many societies, people think, well, nature's there to serve us and it's there to feed us and for us to be used.

And yet I think we're just one of 10 million species (on) this planet. And every one of them has a right to live the same way that we do - we need to take that into account. So I approach this from a very much more of a biocentric point of view, where I think we have to live up to that reputation and avoid extinctions.

And we do know, we, in the last 200 years, have caused the extinction of a number of species, some of which we never thought would go extinct. I mean, you think of the passenger pigeon in North America or something like that; nobody ever thought that the species that was so abundant could actually go extinct. And yet it did, more than 100 years ago.

Sylvia Earle in this morning was mentioning about whales - whales is another species we almost decimated them totally. And yet, we realized that in time, created the mechanisms and the protections. And what we're seeing is a massive recovery in the populations of most species, not all. 

There's still some, like North Atlantic right whales and those that are very much at the brink, but you see other populations definitely coming back. So it's another good example if we make the right choices and implement them and enforce them, if we operate differently as a society, we can bring nature back.

[25:57] Jennifer: So besides this focus on sustainable proteins, what other projects or what other focuses…

[26:03] Cristian: Our three big focus or strategies and the nature program of the Bezos Earth Fund are to protect, restore and transform. 

We need to protect the most important places that are still there, so we made a big bet. Our first big commitment back in 2021 is that we were going to invest $1 billion to support the idea of 30x30 protecting 30% of the planet by 2030.

We've already committed almost $700 million of $1 billion. So we're well ahead of our plans there. But we also reach out to 10 other organizations and philanthropies. And we said, let us work together - this is a very big problem. 

So together we created something called the Protect Our Planet Challenge, where we committed together to invest $5 billion by 2030 to protect 30% of the planet. And we're working together, coordinating among ourselves. 

And we did it because we wanted to send a signal to the world leaders. Many countries will say, well, yeah, I want to protect them, but show me the money, where is it going to be? Because I don't have the money, I have too many… If you're the president of Central African Republic, you've got many other choices, issues you have to deal with.

So we wanted to send a very clear signal that if there was a political commitment, determined, the funding would follow. And that was critical, it was one of the key elements that led to the adoption of what's now called the Target 3 of the UN Global Biodiversity Framework. That was a political commitment to protect 30% of the planet. That's the good news. 

The bad news is we're not on track to doing this. We're about 16% on land, probably 4 or 5% on the ocean. So we have a lot of work to do - we have to have a lot of ambition. So we've made choices to invest in certain geographies that are high for biodiversity, high for carbon stocks and protecting them. Also places we felt there was a political commitment. 

So, for example, the Andes, we've made commitments in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru and Bolivia, and we've invested $150 million there. In the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. It's a great success story where the presidents of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador came together and in a matter of two years they increased the marine protected areas to cover 30% and restore the connectivity, which is critical for migratory species like hammerhead sharks and turtles and so many other species. So that's a big part of our focus, is the 30x30 strategy around key places like those or the Amazon or Congo basin as well. 

Second key program for us is (to) restore. It's our restoration program because it's not enough to protect what we have. We want to bring it back. And that's going to require real commitments to both doing research and development and science, but also supporting local livelihoods and building the infrastructure that we need to do this. 

So, for example, in East Africa and Kenya and in Rwanda, we are investing there in building the infrastructure, supporting organizations and civil society organizations that are committed to restoring some of these areas about half a million hectares.

This is part of what the bigger vision that the African leaders have outlined called AFR100 to restore 100 million hectares in Africa. And the good news about restoration is that not only is it good to bring back some of the nature, or in some cases, taking degraded areas and bringing that back into agricultural production systems can create jobs. So it's actually good for livelihoods and good for the people, and it can be a win-win for biodiversity.

We're still investing in this, but we've already invested over $100 million just in restoration programs in East Africa. And we've done some in North America as well, particularly in the northern Great Plains in the longleaf pine ecosystem. So that's the second big part. 

And the third one is around transforming the way we live. And in particular, we're focused on the food system, as we just discussed, because we do think we need to change. And when you look at the data and you say, okay, if we want to transform the way we live, and the question is, which are the biggest drivers of our food production system in terms of impacts of nature and climate?

If you follow the data, you're going to end up looking at cattle and beef. And that's why we decided to make that a key priority. So that's where the sustainable protein initiative is. So those are just the three pillars of the work that we're doing.

[26:03] Jennifer: On sustainable proteins, are you investing in startups or are you investing in the research?

[29:53] Cristian: Well, for example, last year we created three research centers at three different universities. So we're trying to spur innovation around this. We set up one in Singapore, one in the United Kingdom, one in the United States. We may do one or two more. 

But these are specifically research hubs where we can bring the best power of the universities, the best ideas to develop better products and better alternatives. And each of them has a slightly different focus. So that's a big bet, the biggest investment that's been made in the alternative protein space.

We think very clearly that at a certain point, when you get the products to a certain point, then you leave it up to the venture capital, right? So you let the markets and the private capital deal with it.

That is not our job as a philanthropy, but certainly the early stages of research and development is something we can invest in, or places where there's a clear market failure, where the private sector cannot lead or provide the solution. 

Clearly, in the case of nature conservation and protected areas, that's a place where you can't just leave it up to markets. That's a place where we think philanthropy and public policy have critical roles to play.

[29:46] Jennifer: So Cristian, here at the Villars Summit we have so many young Villars Fellows between the age of 16 and 19. I was wondering if there's some messages, some key messages that you want to convey to them? 

[29:53] Cristian: Well, just that we all share this - this is our planet, our whole planet. I want to start by saying I'm sorry for how badly we've screwed things up because we have not done a very good job in my generation and generations before me looking after this planet. 

But I do want to leave them with a message of hope - part of what gives me hope is that next generation. As a matter of fact, I'm here with my two children who are 19 and 16 years old and they're here in the conference taking part, meeting people because it is those people, it is that next generation that are going to be great stewards for this planet.

So I think we need to do the best job we can right now. And the sooner we can hand it over to this next generation and give them the tools and the power and the information. I'm actually more optimistic about the future in their hands than it is in my generation or my parents generation.

[31:51] Jennifer: Very good. You also talk about 30x30, and saying that we need to have more ambitious goals.

[31:58] Cristian: Well, we've got a very ambitious global goal which was adopted in Montreal at COP15 - 30x30 is not going to be easy at all. The challenge is that you take it from this global ambition, you have to deliver it. 

The question is now the next step is looking at which countries are actually committing to doing some of this. And the way you do this is you have these national biodiversity action plans that have to be submitted. And not all countries have submitted them, but the whole idea is they need to say how they plan to contribute to the global biodiversity framework. 

What we're seeing is a mixed bag. Some countries really have a lot of ambition, and some are not, they're coming short. And certainly the commitments so far and the plans that have been submitted will not add up anywhere close to 30%.

So we're going to have to raise the political ambitions of these countries and then very importantly, making sure we're protecting the right 30% and making sure it's effective because it's not just about a number. 

Look, we need to protect a lot more than 30% of the Amazon to avoid tipping points. And there are other places like India where you don't have 30% left. So you're going to have to restore it.  So it's not one size fits all.

It's going to be the collective effort of all of us. But we do know that there's some places that are much more important for biodiversity or for ecosystem services than others. So it's really using scientific data and the planning to figure out which are those important places, make sure that 30% is in the right places.

And if we make the right choices as a society, even though we may just protect 30% of the planet, we could probably protect 80% of the biodiversity of the planet if we pick the right places.

And the last piece is effective management because certainly in Colombia, in my home country and others, we have a lot of paper parks, papers that have been parks that are being declared, but the government does not have the resources, the personnel to be able to look after them properly.

And we're seeing this throughout the Amazon - all the pressure coming in on Indigenous territories, illegal mining, all these challenges that are enormous. So we need to strengthen the capacity to manage these, whether they be national parks or Indigenous reserves or what are called the OECMs, the other effective conservation measures, different categories of protection to make sure that they're effective. 

And we think that's about resources. Yes, but it's about training and it's about technology. We actually think that technology can be a big part of the solution here. So in the Ocean, you have tools like Global Fishing Watch. Now we can actually, with the remote, the kind of sensors we have now are incredible that allow us to track what's happening to the planet on a real-time basis. 

And we get that information to the hands of the right people at the right time, that can substantially improve the way we're doing it. So, for example, if you're the director of a national park and you've got 1 million hectares to look after and 10 people, how do you use this information to decide how to deploy those and where to use them?

So we've played around with some of these tools and technologies, tools like SMART and others that are really optimizing the use of the resources that we have to better protect and manage these areas.

[39:49] Jennifer: One of the things that you talked about on your panel earlier today is the close linkages between climate and biodiversity. We've now separated them - we also have two separate conferences. It was used to be one, but then they separate them out. 

What is the effective way to convey the interconnectedness between climate change and biodiversity?

[35:14] Cristian: Yeah, look I think in hindsight, one thing we did not get right in Rio was creating not two, but three different conventions, and they're all interlinked. Death certification is the other one, and they really should be one. 

I think if we were having the Rio summit today, we'd probably do one. And more importantly, we'd make sure that it's also about bringing the nature and climate dimensions into agriculture, into the various sectors and development infrastructure, many others. I think this has become a little bit too much about the environmentalists, and it's about taking these issues across the entire government and really embedding it there. 

And I think there is hope. There are some countries where I'm seeing more of this really being embedded in the national plans. The national accounting and the private sector is also starting to really look at this and make a commitment. So I think we need to really be able to deliver on those big outcomes. 

We're going to have to raise the ambition on these national plans. We're going to strengthen the capacity we need, and we're going to have to look at the connection between climate and biodiversity very clearly, because people don't necessarily realize that about a third of the emissions, the global emissions, are directly tied to climate, whether it's deforestation or land use or land use change. 

So by taking some of these areas and protecting them, some of the Amazon, we're going to prevent emissions. So I think we clearly need to look at that. And then at the same time, programs like restoration - we do restoration the right way, at the right scale - this can help us with the capture of carbon as well. 

So, and we know there are certain places that we can't afford to lose. Take the case of peatlands, tropical peatlands. We cannot afford the amount of carbon that's there. We burn these peatlands, there are going to be huge amounts of emissions that are going to happen.

Just to give you one example. So most people think of the Congo Basins, this gigantic forest where there are massive peatlands in there that probably have about 50 gigatons of carbon, which is the total of the annual emissions of carbon globally today. We have to protect those peatlands. We can't afford to do it. 

And yet countries like the DRC, they have plenty of other challenges. So the international community needs to come and do it. So we need to look at some of these alliances and partnerships and deals that can be made in the way that we can all work together for the good of the planet. 

So, yeah, climate and nature are two sides of the same coin. We need to address them, we need to be smart about both of those. And what I'm liking now is I'm seeing we're moving here.

Villars (Institute) is going from being carbon-neutral, which many companies have absorbed, but to do that and also be nature-positive, that's harder to do because it's harder to account and harder to measure. But I think when we are able to do those two, I think it would really allow us to have a much better planet for future generations.

[37:43] Jennifer: Thank you, really appreciate it. Cristian, one very last question, what are your key takeaways from this conference?

[37:51] Cristian: One of the things I've liked about Villars and the way it was designed from the very beginning is much more of the systems change approach. And I think it is about thinking about this whole thing as a system of which are the various levers. 

One of the initiatives that we support at the Bezos Earth Fund, for example, something called the Systems Change Lab. We're looking at all the pieces - it’s like this gigantic puzzle and understanding the data and figuring out what is contributing to what.

So if you really want to tackle greenhouse gases, you have to know the sources and that will point you to energy, but it'll point you to land use or point you to the different sources. So I think a much more systemic approach to this and figure out that's something that's important. 

What was striking to me today in the comment from Kristian Teleki made a very good point. It said, who's interested in biodiversity, who's interested in climate? All the hands went up, okay, but who's here from the mining sector, from agriculture or the others? And there were no hands up there. 

So it's still very much those of us that are already committed to this, talking to each other, working. We really need to bring other voices from those other parts of the system here to be active listeners and helpers. And we need to learn how to dialogue with them and how to find solutions that work for nature and climate, but for people and for business. So I think that's the challenge that we all have looking ahead. 

It's going to take every one of us, every sector, old and young and different kinds of production systems and governments, from national governments and the UN to local communities. It's going to take every one of us to do our best to scale up our ambition to do it faster so that we can really turn things around. But I'm confident that we can.

[39:29] Jennifer: I sincerely hope that we're very close to the tipping point of that happening.

[39:25] Cristian: I hope so too.

I know it's not easy given some of the global headlines and the things that we're seeing right now, but I'm convinced that if we all redouble on this and stay focused on the mission and continue doing our work, and if we enlist other people and take our message to those other places and sectors, I think we can.

[39:42] Jennifer: Well, thank you so much, Cristian. Thank you for joining us today and sharing with us your over 30 years of wisdom and work in the field.

[39:49] Cristian: Well, my pleasure and thank you for the opportunity to share this with some of your listeners and other people and so many of the people at this Villars (Summit).

[39:47] Jennifer: If this podcast has been beneficial or valuable to you, feel free to become a patron and support us on Patreon.com, that is P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/TheFounderSpirit. 

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The Founder Spirit podcast is a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero (and nature-positive) economy and restoring planetary health. 

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