Intro
In this episode of our podcast Beyond the Canopy, Alexander Watson sits down with Mathias Perobelli Schmidt , Agroforestry Investment Specialist at Ecosia, to unpack the concept of Circular Funding—a regenerative finance model that recycles returns into tree-planting, agroforestry, and forest conservation rather than paying dividends. We explore outcome-based loans, how biodiversity and social impact de-risk projects, and real investments across Latin America.
The episode
About Ecosia
Ecosia is a purpose-driven company with a mission to fight the climate crisis by planting trees. Since its inception, Ecosia has planted over 227 million trees, focusing on ecological hotspots to maximize carbon sequestration and biodiversity. As a certified B Corporation, Ecosia reinvests 100% of its profits into tree planting projects and maintains a policy of never distributing dividends. By using search engine revenue to fund its tree-planting operations, Ecosia offers a sustainable model for both environmental restoration and social impact. Through its circular funding approach, Ecosia ensures that the money generated continues to be reinvested in further projects, creating a self-sustaining system for long-term environmental impact.
Transcript
Alexander Watson:
Welcome to Beyond the Canopy, where we explore the most innovative approaches to nature conservation, ecosystem restoration, and impact-driven investments. I’m your host, Alexander from OpenForestn explorer.land. And today we are diving into the concept of circular funding which is a financial model designed to create a self-sustaining system for financing reforestation and conservation. Our guest today is Mathias Perobelli Schmidt. He is an acrophase reinvestment specialist at ECOSIA. And you might know ECOSIA is the search engine that plants trees. It has taken its mission a step further by investing in projects that not only restore ecosystems but also generate returns. This again is allowing continuous reinvestment. So Mahtias, welcome and please feel free to introduce yourself and give a little bit of a background about you.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Hi Alex, thank you for having me. Um, I’m as you mentioned, I’m the agroforestment investment specialist at AOSIA. But curious enough, my in my background, uh, I wasn’t always an agor investor. I started my career in consulting after finishing business school. Then I went to after a couple of years I went to the industry and eventually started my own company. So I think I have quite a diverse background uh when it comes to uh to to investments and people working in the finance industry. And as I was developing my own company uh eventually I found a model that uh that worked. So we we reached the product market fit as a B2B marketplace for V for V ingredients for the food service and that’s when I started talking to potential investors and specifically impact investors because you were also an impact driven company and I’ve remember thinking to myself wow that sounds very interesting something that I would definitely like to do in the future And in 2019 I exited the company and thought well as the next step then let’s get closer to the impact investing uh segment. So I did a master’s in banking and finance in Utra in the Netherlands and started working at the sustainable finance lab uh that was very close to the traders bank uh which was the first sustainable bank in the world. Yeah, sustainability bank. Yeah, exactly. So after I finished my masters, I started working there at the at trios at the traders regenerative money center and that’s when I got in contact with Fakosia and they had this very interesting opportunity to combine entrepreneurship with investments because they were creating this new area dedicated to planting trees through uh investment instruments. And this was what eventually came up to be the circular funding strategy.
Alexander Watson:
Great. So there’s an entrepreneurial background and know you bring this also to work at ECOSIA. Um maybe before we really dive into circular funding. Most of our listeners know ECOSIA as a search engine that plants trees but today we are talking about something a bit different. So about circular funding and I want to maybe before diving into that maybe you can give us a quick refresher on what is ECOSIA’s mission and impact so far.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Of course. ECOSIA is a purpose company. So it works under the law like a regular company. In German law it is a gamebeha, So a limited company. Yeah, but the shareholders made an agreement within themselves between themselves to prevent any profits distribution at that moment and in the future and any sale of their shares. So it frees the company from any kind of financial pressure to use all the profits that they generate to fulfill that purpose. And the closest purpose is to fight the climate change. So yeah, we are fighting climate crisis and we’re doing this primarily by planting trees. If you go to EOS’s website, you see that we have planted over 227 million trees and we only count the trees that have survived over a three-year period. In fact, we planted more than this. But sometimes uh the trees when they’re very young they die or sometimes the project doesn’t really work as you intended. So to avoid too much fluctuation in our tree counter we only count trees that have already survived three years. Yeah. And in terms of other impacts that we have, we’re always working ecological hotspots to try to generate as much carbon sequestration per tree as possible. Ecological hotspots are places where trees have more biodiversity. You have more uh biomass gain per year for the trees. So the trees grow a lot faster. And we are also pushing for more biodiversity in our projects. So every time that we are counting trees, we’re not just every time that we are planting trees with our project partner, we’re never planting the same species. We’re never planting monocultures. That would be potentially a simpler method to plant trees, but it would generate so many new problems for nature that it would make no sense at all to plant trees in that way.
Alexander Watson:
So it’s also about quality and not just about quantity in terms of impact, right?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Exactly. And in the long term, you get many more benefits. If you plant a monoculture, you’re constantly needing external inputs to make sure that those trees survive. But under a biodiverse system, the trees are compensating for themselves. So you have one tree that’s using nitrogen from the soil, you have another tree that’s putting nitrogen back into the soil. They’re working together to thrive. So, it makes sense to always look for biodiversity in any project that we’re working with. And also social impact. If you’re only planting trees for the sake of planting trees uh and you’re not helping the surrounding communities, the people that are actually close to those trees, they will not be that interested if the trees leave or die. But if you’re able to plant trees that fulfill a specific purpose for the people around those trees as well, for example, providing food, increasing their livelihoods, or even being part of a business model. Then you’re actually increasing the chance of survival for those trees. So social impact leads to a higher tree survival rate.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. And I think by also creating these revenue streams for the local people, you can reduce the pressure on existing nearby forest ecosystems, right?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Exactly. Exactly. Yes. That’s also the case. Sometimes you see people cutting down trees for additional income or for charcoal for example. Uh but then you can also always plant trees that will fulfill those roles. So we can plant a tree to generate uh to provide a sustainable source of charcoal for the ceramic communities or to increase their livelihoods so that they are not pressured into cutting more trees.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. Great. So I see you introduced this idea of planting trees not just in terms of numbers. So you introduced it also as an impactful activity with a holistic view that considers social, economic and biodiverse um components and I think EUSIA has done quite well by planting over 200 million trees which is an incredible milestone. Um so why do you shift towards circular funding at this time and what challenges are you looking to solve?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Uh yeah I think it’s a very interesting moment for ECOSIA. We had worked in the past with other investment opportunities. uh but we came to realize uh that there was this big opportunity uh for us to increase the number of projects that we work with. So it is not a shift in the sense that we are not doing something anymore and are doing something different. We are adding the circular funding strategy uh on besides the service contracts that we are usually working with. So the majority of the trees that we have planted so far were under service contracts which means that we would hire an NGO or a farming association to plant trees. We had specific conditions that they needed to meet for example in terms of biodiversity uh monitoring and taking care of those trees to ensure that they survive and that we’re not just planting trees and then not following up on them anymore. So that’s why it is a service and not specifically a grant. And we learned a lot from doing this. Yeah. And one of the key learnings is that if you have people at the center of the model, you are drastically increasing the chance that the tree will survive. So planting trees or creating a service contract that will just focus on the trees uh well is reducing the chance that we will be successful. If you create a service contract that thinks about people involved uh as I mentioned before increasing livelihood providing food or being a part of a business model increase the chance that the trees will survive. So if you’re working with projects that have a business model around the trees, that condition is always fulfilled because then the trees are a necessary part of that business model and have then an additional impact. When we’re working with service contracts uh there is one metric that always uh that always uh is brought up to the discussion that is the cost per tree. So we as the finance here want to be as effective as possible with the money and the service provider well they need to fulfill some conditions they need to manage the costs. So for them it’s more interesting to have a higher cost per tree and then for us it’s interesting to have a lower cost per tree which means that sometimes we cannot work with all the partners that we wished to work with. Uh sometimes the cost per tree is too high under specific geography or under specific conditions uh that it is it makes it impossible for us to finance. But if you’re working with businesses that plant trees, then you change your approach from a cost per tree approach to a return per tree. So sometimes even if you have a higher initial cost because eventually those trees will generate a financial return, uh it is not as impactful as it used to be anymore. Mhm. And we then have an alignment of interest between us financing the project and the organization executing the project because we are both looking at a good return per tree. Yeah. And with the service contracts there was always a linear flow of capital. So the money because it would generate profits from its search engine uh operation, we use those profits to find its tree planting activity and the organization would then follow up and monitor those trees. Yeah. But the money would never flow back to ECOSIA. Yeah. With the circular funding strategy, the money will eventually flow back to ECOSIA and because ECOSIA doesn’t distribute dividends, it will be redeployed again and again into more tree planting projects. So at the end of the day one planting many many more trees than would otherwise be possible with service contracts.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. No, it totally makes sense. So if you look at an ecosystem, a healthy ecosystem that has built in this structure because the trees germinate, they produce seeds and then these seeds are distributed through birds or the wind and the ecosystem can restore. But as you mentioned, now you’re adding also a more sustainable finance flow to it because that was like a linear system. And now as ecosystems produce a certain income also for the people and this money can be paid back then it could be reinvested and help other um projects Yeah. to basically get the kickstart to to repeat the system in other places.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And in a time where we are discussing so much how to also move our economy into a circular economy. If we look at capital as another resource like raw materials like infrastructure uh like you know things that we’re using day-to-day that we’re trying to adapt to a circular economy. We should also be looking at our capital in a circular way. How can we make sure that it is constantly flowing back and not just being accumulated by one specific individual? How can we maximize it or how can we put it to actually work to focus on impact and not wealth.
Alexander Watson:
And ECOSIA is let’s say in the privileged um position that it could reallocate 100% of the returns again into projects, right?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Mhm. Exactly.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. So let’s maybe have a closer look at the projects themselves. So on the real world examples um in terms of how you invest or let’s say fund these initiatives in the first place what flexibilities are available for the projects um in terms of um money flow into them and basically also out of the projects. So how is this working?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Good. Um well I can talk a little bit about this as well. So at Aqua we have uh loans we are also working with equity and anything in between right for the loans uh it is possible to have a traditional loan with fixed interests and a specific time to maturity but we came to realize that that’s no not always the best solution for the farmers specifically if I think about a traditional loan the repayments are are linked to time. So you need to repay every month, every quarter or or every year and then after some years you need to repay everything that is the principle of the loan and a lot of times you already need to start paying interest from the day that you sign the loan.
Alexander Watson:
Okay. So, it does not coincide with the revenue streams.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Exactly. That the farmers experience because if we’re providing a loan to a farmer that’s going to plant a tree, there will be no revenues from day one. Those revenues will only start from year three or four for the trees and they will not be generated every month because you have the specific time to harvest. So it also doesn’t make sense to apply a time uh driven repayment schedule to a nature-based business. So what we are doing is exploring something between loans and equity that we use what we refer to as outcome based loans. So these are loans that we use to finance specifically transitions from mono-culturous to agroforestry systems and we would be entitled to a share of the profits. So the farmer only needs to repay us when they have money available to actually repay us.
Alexander Watson:
That’s really fair. That’s really fair.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
It is a little bit more risky because then if there are no profits, we’re also not getting any money. But we think it’s a lot fairer and we’re also drastically reducing the financial pressure on those farmers so that they can dedicate themselves more freely to the farming activity. And then when there’s a nice harvest where they find a good deal and they have additional cash flow available, that’s when they repay us.
Alexander Watson:
Okay, great. Yeah. So, for example, if I with my project want to apply for a circular funding with ECOSIA um what kind of project I have to be? So, can you give me an idea of that?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. Yeah. We are segmenting our projects in three main uh business models. So we’re looking at agroforestry projects as our main segment of operation. Yeah. Uh these leverage natural synergies to grow uh crops and trees together. So you can combine successional models, plant different species. And what’s beautiful or at least what I find beautiful about agroforestry systems is that when you look at a monoculture plantation from the top it is a flat 2D image that you have. But when you look at an agroforestry system you have all those different layers from the forest that actually increase your production output per hectare. And we understand the forestry systems. We have worked a lot with them already in the past. So it is a well proven and understood business model for us and it’s very easy for us to finance the transition specifically from monoculture production into agroforestry systems.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. So that’s so I was just asking if there are also other categories.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. But you mentioned we have three main categories that we’re looking at. The first one and our core anchor business model is agro forest systems. We’re also working with what we’re calling conservation projects. So what are the businesses that keep the forest standing and it’s interesting for us because in the conservation projects we’re not adding the trees to the tree counter because they were already there. So if we want to add something to our tree counter, we need additionality. We need to be the reason why those trees were planted. And the conservation projects, we’re working with them because we understand the necessity of also protecting the standard forest. And it is a little bit trickier then to also find proven business models. We have found some success with sustainable extractivism. But then there’s the challenge of how to scale that. So we’re looking for ways, we’re looking for innovations in processes in the supply chain management of how we can make it more successful and more replicable as well, more more scalable in that sense. And we actually already have investments into this segment. And the third one would be enablers. So what are the technologies that will increase tree planting capacity or tree conservation capacity? Uh for that one specifically, we still don’t have any investments, but we are also looking for what would be the enablers that would kind of like lead us to a breakthrough in technologies or in process innovations that can then lead to uh scaling trip activities worldwide.
Alexander Watson:
Okay. Yeah. Great. Can you give some examples of investments ECOSIA has already conducted?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah, of course. So, starting with the agroforestry segment, uh there are two investments that we did last year that I think are uh nice business cases to bring. The first one is slow uh slow forest. They are a company that grows, processes and sells agroforesty coffee and agroforesty cocoa then as chocolate and they do this by sequestering CO2. The agroforesty system is such a powerful model to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere that when they deliver the coffee for example for every kilogram of coffee that they deliver to the client at the end of the supply chain they are actually sequestering 6 kilograms of CO2 even when you consider transportation packaging roasting everything that happens in the supply chain. So it is a powerful transition mechanism to a low-carbon supply chain. People are already buying coffee. So why not buy negative carbon negative coffee and this is their main value proposition. You buy the coffee you get six kilograms of CO2 that you sequestered. Yeah. Great. Great combination. Next to them in the agroforestry system we also have ASC. ASC is a timber fund. They are producing or they are developing multi species in timber plantations that also dedicate a portion of the land to food production. So in the same plot of land they are planting a mixed silver culture with many tree species that will be used for timber and they’re also producing food. And what’s key about planting many species for timber at the same time in the same plot at the same time is that you never have a clear cut. If you plant always the same species, they will all grow at the same pace and in a given year, you cut the entire forest down and you lose all the biodiversity benefits that you had. But if you’re doing it in uh with mixed species, then you can selectively harvest and make sure that you always have a canopy cover in your forest and you’re not losing all the benefits that you added to that. to that land. As examples for conservation projects, uh we have Biotara. Biotara is supporting communities in organizing sustainable harvesting and processing for non-timber forest products. So they work a lot with oils, with butter and uh key bioactive or key uh ingredients from the forest that have uh high value for this for the cosmetics industry.
Alexander Watson:
Mainly like essential oils or certain um fats or lipids.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. Yeah. essential oils, butters for creams and also forest bioactive principles that well can then have different benefits for your skin and and for yeah for makeup and and other coat cosmetics products.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. So um investing into these initiatives um it’s it also helps to yeah and helps and reveals that that there are a lot of hidden um yeah e economic benefit streams that are still available in the forest that are yet not tapped into. Right.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. Yeah. Uh myself, I recently discovered that there’s this Brazilian flower. It’s called jamboo. When you eat this plant, your mouth becomes a little bit numb. Mhm. So it always played a key role in the Amazonian region as an ingredient for the traditional recipes. But what they discovered is that you can also apply it to your skin and have and then you have a temporary Botox effect with all the injections and all that aggressive without the disadvantages and great. Exactly. Exactly. So if you want to go to a party and then be, you know, reduce the wrinkles for one night, you can apply jamboo to your skin and there you have it. So these are some of the ingredients that Biotar is working with and I think that it’s just very interesting to see how much is still there in the forest that we were not familiar with, we’re not knowledgeable about.
Alexander Watson:
Yes. So I understand you’re quite open for new and interesting um inspiring business concepts, sustainable business concepts. Also in the preparation for this call, I heard that your are already testing new concepts for circular funding Brazil. So maybe you can re iterate a little bit on that?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah, of course. We’re always open to new ideas and to innovations in the sustainable and impact world because we see that they’re still necessary, right? There has been so much money invested in bad things that also drove innovation uh to that direction. So we need to do more and find out more ways that we can bring back uh or take control of the direction where the the our society and the the economy is moving towards and I think that innovation and investments will is are part of this and so specifically for the models that we’re trying to develop we’re looking for concepts that can be easily replicated to so that we can then also facilitate our work. If we have a proven business case and an investment structure that we know that works that we have all the details it is easier for us then to reinvest again and again and again but it can also be picked up by the broader market and other investors could also participate in those. So it would be easier for us but it can also be catalytic for the broader market. The three main concepts that we’re trying to develop is the first one is sustainable timber fund in Brazil. So, we’re looking for a way to combine uh or what are the the options out there where we could combine forest conservation with sustainable timber harvest and then applying those concepts of a mixed species harvesting or mixed species growing. How can we add a successional design into a timber plantation and try to produce food with recurrent revenue trees and then also the timber to harvest at the end of the day and across all these different uh models that we’re trying to develop. So for timber and for the other ones I’m going to discuss, we want to do it in a way that’s not relying on carbon credits. Mhm. We want to use Slow’s example of how we can increase the value of a specific product because we sequester carbon in the supply chain and then deliver a different unique selling proposition to the project. So the first one is about timber. The second one is about pasture integration. Yeah, there’s a big problem in Brazil with cattle grazing and I always assumed that it was because there was an increase in meat consumption but actually the main issue is related to land degradation. Cattle grazing in Brazil is seen as a short-term uh investment because of how fast the land becomes degraded and then you cannot grow or you cannot graze cattle in that specific plot of land anymore. So if you will just want to maintain your herd the number of cows that you’re managing you need to cut down more trees and that’s happening uh every day in Brazil. So you have small farmers, you have large scale farmers, they’re all chopping down forests, moving into different grasslands and degrading the soil. So if you find a way that you can integrate trees to the model and manage your herd differently, you could potentially stop the need to move additional land into new land. Chopped down the trees and turned it into grasslands. You could say.
Alexander Watson:
It’s basically stopping this vicious circus circle of degradation by some but to some extent respecting current land use which is livestock to some extent but makes it more sustainable. And yeah, I personally believe I saw it a lot in Latin America that it has really potential to scale because if you can make an established system, if you’re not trying to work against the system, use the existing system but enhance it. I think that’s really a very nice approach.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s always challenging because I mean I don’t eat meat myself but I see how hard it is to make a wild scale change. So while ECOSIA is also investing in uh plant-based alternatives and plant-based alternatives for uh for meat and uh for protein I’m also looking at how we can prevent society from adopting a plant-based diet. How can we then change some aspects of it so that it is less damaging to the environment and the third um model that we’re looking at is a private agrarian reform. So in Brazil there’s a big political movement that’s called the landless farmers movement and as the name says these are farmers that don’t have access to land because in Brazil there’s a very large land concentration. So even though there’s land available for everybody and there’s land that’s not productive that’s just sitting there and that’s actually degraded, nobody’s using that land. And what we thought was well what if we either partner with those land owners or buy the land ourselves at the end of day if that’s necessary to then slowly transition them into agroforestry systems managed by those farmers and after a while after the system has been established after there’s a business model has been developed and it’s safe for them to assume the land to to assume the ownership of the land also from a financial perspective. We make this transition and then they take over the land rights.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah, these are super inspiring approaches. When you explained you gave some examples on yeah projects initiatives ECOSIA already invested into it. You showed us a little bit the focus and scope. Um so the leverage on how you try to to make the change happening and scale it. Um where do you see the biggest challenge um you’ve been facing so far in implementing these initiatives on the ground?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Well, I’m not sure I would call it the biggest one. Um but I would call this a constant one. That we are constantly facing is the reliance on carbon credits to finance many of the projects that we want to work with. So every tree that ECOSIA adds to the tree counter to its tree counter is free from carbon credits. Otherwise we would be uh double counting the impact that we’re generating. And well, I believe as I mentioned before, there’s a significant opportunity to explore here, which is the transition to carbon negative supply chains where you can create or grow a product with a higher selling proposition with a higher value because it’s sequestered carbon while the tree was going, while the the coffee was growing, for example. and you sell this carbon negative coffee or this carbon negative cocoa or coconut whatever you’re growing with this sustainable packaging instead of disentangling it and then selling two products separately the crop and the impact if you maintain those two combined uh I think that that’s the way they can actually make the transition into a lowcarbon uh supply chain And then you have the impact flowing through the supply chain with the product instead of each going their separate ways. So in that sense finding the right partners that share this vision and see the same opportunity as us uh that’s where I think there’s a well a challenge that we’re constantly facing.
Alexander Watson:
Maybe out of curiosity, what role does biodiversity play as a kind of currency in your model?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
We see it as a de-risking factor. So every time that we’re investing in a project, our core, the core return that we’re looking for is trees. uh because trees would then imply carbon sequestration and they would lead to our purpose which is fighting the climate crisis. As we know if we plant trees under a monoculture arrangement the amount of external inputs that you need to make sure that those trees survive throughout the lifetime of the trees increases when compared to a biodiverse system. If you add biodiversity to your model, you’re actually derisking the whole uh transition that you’re trying to make because you’re reducing the amount of external inputs that will be necessary throughout the lifetime of those trees. So, you’re increasing your chances of sequestering the carbon that you wanted to sequester in the first place and you’re building a more resilient system in the fight against the climate crisis. And we do the same with social impact. So we’re looking at trees as the return and then you have biodiversity and social impact as d-risking factors. So if you have a model where you incorporate social impact, you are increasing the chances that you’ll be successful. Otherwise, well, you run into issues in the future. You won’t have people engaged in your trees. People won’t care and then you’re increasing the chances that they will die. So if you want to be very uh well can I say pragmatic or really look at it from a financial uh sector perspective that’s always making the comparison the risk return assessment well you can look at risk as biodiversity and social impact and return as as the the trees that you plant.
Alexander Watson:
Great. So I see ECOSIA has had great success so far. Um how can this model be replicated beyond ECOSIA? For example, could other companies or investors adopt this circular funding approach?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Oh, absolutely. Um the model has the potential to be widely adopted by impact investors, climate funds and uh corporates looking for increasing their uh their uh sustainable impact and it’s a simple decision that they need to make specifically the shareholders need to make. ECOSIA could only truly create this circular model because it closed a gap uh that was allowing our profits to leak uh that could allow the profits to leak into shareholders pockets. So the question is can can these other investors also say at a given time that they already profited enough from this specific business unit and decide to close the profit gaps or the profit leaks so that they can really create a circular model that being the reinvest all the profits generated from this business unit into that one specific purpose and circular funding uh it blends financial availability with ecosystem restoration something that a lot of the organizations are already looking for but to be truly circular the profits will need to be constantly reinvested.
Alexander Watson:
Cool. What role can individuals play in supporting this transition towards circular funding?
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
The first step is uh start by using ECOSIA research funds our tree planting activity and beyond that also support regenerative products like agroforestry coffee or sustainable timber can also help create demand for those models. And if you’re an investor there’s an opportunity to back regenerative projects that align with circular funding principles. And if you’re an impact entrepreneur, then you can also reach out to us through our powerful projects.
Alexander Watson:
Okay, great. Then I don’t have to ask this question. So, Mathias, just as a side note, can you tell me where you are located at the moment? And maybe you can show it quickly to me with your camera um if you direct it to your window. So, we can have this.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah, of course. I’m based in Brazil. I’m working out of Florianopolis. It is an island in the southern region of Brazil. A lot of small ones are state capitals. So, uh is it is a very big island, but an island nonetheless. And it is interesting or it is beautiful here because we still have a lot of forest cover. And I’m actually living close to a protected area. So, can you see it here through the window? I lost the image.
Alexander Watson:
Wow, this looks amazing.
Mathias Perobelli Schmidt:
Yeah, I can say it is a source of inspiration to me, in my daily work. This is the ambition that you see this everywhere.
Alexander Watson:
Yeah. So, um thank you very much Mathias for joining this podcast. Um I think I would say this has been a truly inspiring conversation about circular funding and it’s just not about financing nature-based solutions. It’s about making them self-sustaining. So you really explained um that there was basically like a missing component to build like a sustainable ecosystem that could be replicated. To our listeners if you want to support this movement of course start using ECOSIA for your searches, learn more about their funding model and spread the word about innovation in innovative solutions uh like this. And for those who want to apply to ECOSIA circular funding um call um we have a call for projects. You’ll find a link to the um to register in the description of this episode. So make sure to submit your project and link to your explorer land profile to your submission. For those who don’t have a profile on explore.land, you’ll also find a guide in the description. Let us know what you think in the comments section and stay tuned for the next episode where we continue exploring game-changing approaches for a more sustainable future.
