As part of the TIME100 Climate series, business climate leaders talk about a moment in the climate movement that inspired them this year
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - I'm most inspired when I see communities
00:13 tackling the challenges of climate change
00:16 with solutions that work for them.
00:18 So earlier in the year,
00:20 I got to visit a nature-based carbon removal project
00:23 in Kenya, and there it was a women-led grass seed bank
00:28 and women who were also being trained
00:31 and working in the community
00:32 on range land management techniques
00:36 and seeing the change in that Maasai community
00:38 really did inspire me.
00:40 - Well, in Australia, with the change of government,
00:42 the Clean Energy Finance Corporation
00:45 was entrusted with a further $20.5 billion
00:48 to invest in transmission
00:51 to help Australia reach 82% renewables by 2030,
00:54 as well as invest in the energy efficiency
00:58 of homes across the country
01:00 and to make greater investments
01:02 into innovative technology companies,
01:05 a very inspiring addition to the CEFC.
01:09 - About 10 years ago,
01:10 I found myself in Yasuni National Park.
01:12 This is a park in the Amazon in Ecuador.
01:16 And I was there in the company of the Wurundjeri people.
01:19 This is the most biodiverse place on planet Earth.
01:22 It's dripping with life.
01:24 And yet, oil had just been discovered
01:27 and the government was gonna drill for that oil.
01:29 And I really thought there was nothing
01:31 that was gonna stop that.
01:32 Now, the government asked for $3.5, $4 billion
01:35 from the international community
01:37 in order for them not to drill,
01:39 and there was no way.
01:40 There was no way we and the international community
01:42 was gonna come up with that kind of money.
01:44 And so, for the last 10 years, if you'd asked me this,
01:47 I would have said, "They're gonna drill."
01:49 And yet, in August, something amazing happened.
01:52 The people collected 760,000 signatures
01:55 to put this idea of drilling in Yasuni
01:59 up for a national referendum.
02:01 And the people, by voting, basically said,
02:04 "No, we are not going to drill for oil
02:07 "in this most precious place,
02:09 "not just for Ecuador, but for the world."
02:11 - I was very happy with the announcement by the USDA
02:15 as part of its regional conservation partnerships,
02:18 allocating $1 billion in support and investments
02:21 to the agricultural community across the US
02:24 to really adapt climate-smart technologies.
02:27 Out of that $1 billion, roughly 100 million
02:29 included work around enteric methane or methane in general.
02:34 So I think this is a good start
02:35 because you need those incentives
02:37 to really get things to move.
02:39 - One important and inspiring event this year
02:42 is the investor focus on biodiversity and deforestation.
02:47 Both companies and investors have come to recognize
02:50 that there is room for soil-based solutions,
02:53 nature-based solutions through regenerative agriculture.
02:56 These were not areas we even discussed
02:58 or thought about in Paris in 2015.
03:01 So we have come to recognize that there are many fronts
03:04 on which there is room for impact and climate action.
03:08 (gentle music)
03:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]