“Philanthro-activism” for the Planet Justin Winters – Co-Founder & Executive Director of One Earth

Simon:
One of the most powerful reframings any of us can do is to look at the many social and environmental challenges we face as opportunities in disguise. Only then do we start to think and act in ways that can unlock innovation and drive participation that was simply unimaginable before. So what if we look at the most daunting crisis we face today the climate emergency? And reimagine it as an opportunity to connect people with places and impact they care about creating a new breed of philanthropists, self-selecting how they become activists to build a future we all want, knowing that the partners they support are uniquely qualified and equipped to solve for the issues, regions or habitats that are personally meaningful to them. When we start to think this way, the future looks less like a cautionary tale and rather a cause for optimism. But what would that look like?

How would it work, and how could you get involved? Let’s find out. From We First and Goal 17 Media, welcome to Lead with We. I’m Simon Mainwaring, and each week I talk with purposeful business and thought leaders about the revolutionary mindsets and methods you can use to build your bottom line and a better future for all of us. And today I’m joined by Justin Winters, co-founder and executive director of One Earth, a global organization working to galvanize science, advocacy and philanthropy to drive collective action on climate change. And we’ll discuss how science has revealed that there is a solution to the climate crisis and how each of us can take action in ways that are meaningful to us to course correct our future in our own lifetimes. Justin, welcome to Lead with We.

Justin:
Thanks so much for having me.

Simon:
I want to start with a foundational question, which always intrigues me, which is, in everybody’s life when they’re committed to something like working towards solving the climate crisis and restoring and protecting biodiversity, there was something in their upbringing that created a profound and deep connection to the natural world that has sort of stayed with them. Is there anything you might point to in your background, how you grew up?

Justin:
Well, to be totally honest, I really think I was kind of born into the world with a really strong sense of that connection. I mean, I think everybody has it. Maybe some folks miss out on that connection or get disconnected and have to reconnect to it. But for me, from a very early age, I was super passionate about animals, nature and being outside. It was the place that brought me happiness. It’s where I felt at peace. It’s where I felt understood. So as early on as I can remember, I was always running to be outside and to be with animals. So I think, I don’t know, maybe I was fortunate in that I never lost a connection. I didn’t have to re-find it, and it felt really present with me from day one.

Simon:
I so relate to that growing up in Sydney, Australia, there’s greenery and nature all around you. And now living in LA, I go back to Sydney and I’m like, “Look at all the nature all around all the time.” And we took this for granted. We just get a rock and a stick and go outside. And that was it when I was growing up. So I completely relate. And then the journey that you’re on then led you to be executive director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation for 13 years, which was such an extraordinary role. And I believe there was over a hundred million dollars in grants in over 60 countries and so on. When you reflect back on that period of time and the impact and influence it had, are there any learnings that you might sort of share with us spearheading the environmental movement through that lens?

Justin:
I mean, there’s a lot. So I’ll try to pick out some really relevant ones. Kind of happening upon that opportunity and having the opportunity and the privilege frankly that I did and getting to help him build that and having the opportunity to work with hundreds of leaders and organizations from around the world is a very unique opportunity. It was very entrepreneurial. I was given a ton of space to be creative and strategic in my own ways and to learn from the field. So it certainly was a unique lens and it was a unique very organic pathway to having that experience. So it may not be relatable for everybody. Looking back, it feels like it was something that was meant to be for my life and my life path. But what I got out of it was a really strong sense of you have to approach things with a willingness to be creative, a willingness to be entrepreneurial, a willingness to look at what is working and what’s not working.

And a lot of that requires deep listening. It requires deep partnership. It requires taking the time to understand the space that you’re operating in and the issue that you’re trying to work on and learn from often the thousands if not millions of people that are already deep experts and hearing them out. And so I had this wonderful opportunity to build kind of from the ground up in that experience and to build relationships with hundreds of leaders around the world. And the first few years was a lot of listening, understanding, trying to figure out how we could add value, how we could help grow and expand the environmental movement, how we could expand people’s willingness to care and connect to their role in stewarding the earth. And when you take that time, you have an opportunity to build really unique solutions pathways forward and to be creative about it and strategic about it. I was lucky enough to have that opportunity, but it all started with listening.

Simon:
The point about the listening is so well taken, I want to ask a personal question.

Justin:Sure.

Simon:
There you are convening people who have self-selected to want to make a difference to an issue that’s larger than themselves and you’re seeing that happen more and more as business engages in and around these challenges we face. Yet at the same time, there are always those human being elements, those character elements, those flaws within us that even when you convene people who care about the same thing, it’s often hard to resolve some of the tensions or the competitiveness or the healthy self-interest among the various stakeholders. Any advice as to how you help navigate a large group of people who all want the same thing and it’s something higher than themselves, but still there’s a bit of tension in there?

Justin:
Yeah, great point, because I was working globally with a broad network of different organizations and leaders. And we did that because at the time, especially Leo had and continues to have a very global audience. So if you know that the opportunity you have is to speak to a wide diverse array of people from different experiences in different countries, then the frame to meet them on is also to have a global frame, which meant that we ended up supporting projects all over the world in a wide variety of landscapes, different solutions, different approaches. We kept it that way so that we could attempt to tell a whole story, but that made it infinitely more complex, of course.

Simon:
Right. I was about to say, sure.

Justin:
It’s a lot easier to just focus in on one geographic region, one specific issue, one specific solution. But I’m really proud of both the opportunity that we had to work so holistically and globally and a lot of the problem solving that we did. There’s great opportunity in taking on challenges that seem too complex or too insurmountable, but that is in many ways what was missing and what has been missing from the environmental movement, I would argue is a lack of cohesion and a sense of the power that the movement has collectively together.

Simon:
I completely agree. I think we need to move further fast, and we’re only going to do that together and the point of departure in all of our minds, that mindset needs to be that collaborative approach. And obviously that’s why Lead with We, the podcast, focuses on this area. In my experience in and around climate and other impact movements is the complexity is just a creative brief. It’s just a constraint, but it’s also a springboard for new ideas and innovation when it’s seen the right way. So coming back to your journey, how did you then move from that role to standing up One Earth? What was that journey or the story that led to One Earth being born?

Justin:
Well, out of grappling with the complexity of the problems facing our planet, the myriad and often seemingly disconnected solutions out there, because I was both shaping a communication strategy at Leo’s foundation, but then also building and creating a grant making strategy, and they needed to be cohesive, both the storytelling and the grant making strategy. So one of the questions that we were trying to answer is really big top line questions that we weren’t getting clear answers on. And that was, A, is it even possible to solve a climate crisis? If so, what’s the goal line? We were doing this work back in 2013, 2014, 2015. It didn’t have the same clarity that it has now, and we’ve been part of that narrative journey and understanding can we solve the climate crisis, et cetera. But to get back to the beginning of it, we were trying to answer those questions, can we solve it?

And then a big one was, what is the role of nature in this? Surely they’re deeply connected. What is the role of nature in solving the climate crisis, and how are these twin crises that we’re facing connected? At the time I had the opportunity to call any expert, any scientist, any academic institution, any partner in the field, we could ask anybody these questions. And what we were finding was that there were some gaps. There were some gaps in clarity. There were some gaps in the science. And so way back in 2016, we started working to get those answers. That led to a two and a half year effort that we spearheaded and supported with two leading IPCC authors, major climate scientists in the space to produce the One Earth climate model. It was a two and a half year effort led by University Technology Sydney and Dr. Sven Teske and [inaudible 00:10:24] out of German Space Aerospace Center. And that climate model, which ended up being published in 2019 by Springer Nature, one of the leading science publishers out there, was a 500 page book then.

And the cliff notes of that book was that actually we can solve this, and we can do it with existing solutions and we can limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, and we have everything we need right now. And so that was one of the major pieces of science that underpins all the work that we do at One Earth. And that started to create the clarity of how to communicate about it, how to start defining what the solutions are, and how to bring things like that science to life to support collective action on this issue.

Simon:
I was about to say, just the mere fact that it was grounded in science because everybody wants that sense of certainty especially at a time when these issues have become so politicized. It’s very disorienting for everyone else who looks at the headlines every day on their phones and says, “I’m worried about our future, but how do we know that any actions we’re taking are going to actually get the results we need?” Because there’s so much dialogue out there.

And you said something very important there, Justin, which is what is the role of nature in all of this? And one of the things I’ve been struck with over the last few years is if you look at COP27, which is focused on climate and COP15, which is focused on biodiversity, there seems to be this false separation between issues. And only recently are we realizing that by nurturing nature and unlocking its regenerative capacity, we will in turn help solve the climate crisis. And by addressing the climate crisis, by changing what we’re doing outright as a species, we’ll also solve the climate crisis. And there’s this sort of cycle between the two. Why has it taken us so long to get to something which seems so self-evident?

Justin:
Because we’re coming out of an era of specialization where everything has become… You have to be an expert at heart surgery. You have to exclusively focus on that and almost decide by the time you’re a teenager that you want to be a heart surgeon. And then all of your studies are predominantly focused on the heart without seeing the whole picture. I use that as an analogy for all sectors across this space. Everything has gotten-

Simon:
Too siloed.

Justin:
Too siloed. And, meanwhile, that is not the nature of nature. It’s not the nature of the planet, it’s not the nature of the human body. I hope that we are coming out of an age of extreme specialization back to our origins, which are more deeply rooted in understanding how deeply connected we are to nature, how deeply connected human health is to the vibrancy of the planet and natural systems and how everything’s interconnected. It was really fascinating. I’ve always felt very clear about those interconnections, and I always struggled to pick a silo. And it turned out that in some ways that could have been my strength. And what I was bringing into the space was a willingness to grapple with the challenges of how everything is interconnected.

Simon:
Right.

Justin:
And so it has been a journey for us because even the scientists and the experts that we ended up working with were challenged to think differently and beyond how they normally had to function.

Simon:
Yeah. It’s hard to be a sniper in the sense that you’re so specialized or [inaudible 00:13:54] at the same time to keep the whole kind of landscape in mind. So tell us about One Earth then, because it sounds like there was the science basis through which he revealed there was a solution. It was possible to just limit our impact to 1.5 degrees celsius in terms of temperature rise at the same time that you wanted to provide a sort of ecosystemic solution that sort of mimics nature in some ways. Would that be fair?

Justin:
Yeah, definitely. Probably the most important thing to share is that what we learned out of the science that we were involved in with this network of scientists and experts was that there’s actually three core solutions pathways to solving the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. And that is that we need a just transition to a hundred percent renewable energy to get off of toxic extractive fossil fuels. The second one, and arguably the biggest one in our frame, is that we need to protect, connect and restore 50% of the world’s lands and oceans. And then the last solutions pillar to share is that we have to transition to regenerative agriculture. So that means that all of our food and fiber systems need to shift to regenerative methods.

We have a lot more detail on that. Early this year we will be bringing out online and digitally and maybe through some other media sources or avenues a full set of solutions that are backed by the science that we’ve spearheaded and really allowing people to go on a learning journey of what that means. What does it mean to transition to a hundred percent renewable energy? How do you do that across the space? How is that broken down? What are the solutions that folks can be involved in? Or where is it that resources need to flow, et cetera? Because it’s a whole systems change, but very top line we’ve found that people are very empowered by the fact that, A, science says we can solve this. We know what the goal line is, and there are three core solutions pathways to get there; transforming our energy systems, protecting and restoring nature, and transitioning to regenerative agriculture.

Simon:
And before we dive into the specifics of the one of platform or marketplace itself, from a communications point of view, it’s so necessary to have a clear ambition and break down the messaging and the pathways down to something manageable like three kind of pillars like you described. Yet what it provokes in me is we have a roadmap to how to solve for these issues, but the obstacles or the roadblocks to allowing those solutions are often outside of that. It might be government, it might be lobbying, it might be politicking, it might be legacy interests and so on. How do you then build on the science-based solution for climate and biodiversity in our future, but how do we solve for the human problem that’s getting in the way right now?

Justin:
With patience.

Simon:
Patience and persistence and chocolate and alcohol. I don’t know. Whatever it is.

Justin:
Possibly, yes. No, it was interesting. So we have one slide that we’ve worked to produce, and this will be kind of released along with a lot of educational materials with it, but on this one slide, which is the One Earth kind of solution set, if you will, you can see the three pillars of solutions. You can see the 76 solutions organized across those three pillars of the specific solutions that need to be seated and scaled and supported. And then at the bottom, which is arguably the most important piece that you just spoke of, is intersectional themes that run across all these solution sets. Things like social justice, things like gender equity, things like sustainable livelihoods, et cetera. So these intersectional themes, which are the human story, the human element and mess, which as you said is arguably the most complex.

Simon:
If we just got rid of us, this whole thing would be hell of a lot easier I think. I don’t know, draw me crazy. But what’s so powerful now is knowing that rigor, both science and sort of executional rigor, is there, you stood up a platform which allows all of us to participate in ways that are kind of self-expressions, that are a way for us to unlock our own agency for change through the One Earth marketplace. So how does it work, and how do you get people motivated and involved to do it? Because I think the distance in time that people go from sort of dread to doom where they think there’s no problem to, there’s nothing we can do, it seems so short. So how do you get people engaged and keep them engaged?

Justin:
Well, one more thing to add that I think is a piece that I wanted to share with you too is that it’s not just those intersectional themes that are part of complicated human story, there’s also something that we call levers of change. And that is the specific ways in which we need to drive these solutions and this transformative change. And there’s a myriad of ways to do that, whether it’s through policy and governance, whether it’s through public and private finance, whether it’s through community action. It’s been interesting because we’ve been kind of testing this and sharing it with networks of stakeholders, everything from young climate activists to policy leaders, et cetera. And when they see the whole picture and have a really broad understanding suddenly of what’s at stake, what we need to do to solve this and all the elements that are involved just by looking at it on one slide, it is a very clarifying moment for them because they realize that, oh, there’s all these different things that need to change at the same time.

It’s not just driving international policy change from the top down. It’s also, it’s extraordinarily relevant, I would argue, to drive community action from the ground up. So you start to see a whole picture and have an understanding of all the forces that are at play. And we live in a world now that’s extraordinarily complicated. And we have systems that are so complex and problematic. So one value that I hope that we’re providing and that we will provide over time is a sense of clarity about what’s necessary and a sense of clarity and understanding about how everybody has a role to play in this moment. We won’t get there just by driving policy change. It’s not going to work that way.

Simon:
Absolutely, I could not agree more. And in my opinion, here’s the good news, is that the same way that these issues are interconnected and compounding and so on in terms of creating the problems, by solving for one, you’re also solving for others. That interconnectedness can work to your favor rather than just your detriment. So coming back to your point about getting clarity, so how is one sort of funded? For example, if somebody makes a contribution through the platform or the marketplace, how do they know what proportion of that is actually going to a self-stated course and so on? And then how do you inspire people to participate? Give us a sense of the marketplace.

Justin:
Sure. So the marketplace is still a relatively new platform, and we are adding new elements to it every day. And we hope for it to become an even more robust way to provide agency for folks in this moment. Right now, when you go on the One Earth Project marketplace, which is also the Project Navigator, you can explore the world, and you can explore the 185 different bioregions around the world. And bioregions are this really fascinating thing that most people don’t know about. Bioregions are a roadmap of the world drawn by nature essentially. And it is an interesting frame to see the world drawn by nature but not by geopolitical boundaries. And in this moment where we really have to put earth first and really protect and restore earth and then redesign our energy and our food system in respect to that, an invitation to understand your place on the earth where you live and the plants and the animals and the biodiversity that you coexist with is a powerful proposition.

Simon:
It’s so extraordinary. It is so moving. If you think about that, just redrawing the whole geography based on nature’s habitats and what’s meaningful to you. I just wanted to call that out because I hope that’s not lost on people.

Justin:
Yeah. And we hope to make that experience for folks really vibrant and meaningful. If you go on this globe and you explore your bioregion, we have a thousand pages of content. So this network of scientists that worked to redraw this bioregional framework, we have write-ups on every single bioregion in the world, which gives you a really good understanding of the different species and plants and geography of that region. We’ve worked to identify iconic species that represent each of those bioregions, and they’re really interesting, unique species that most people haven’t heard of or play a really critical role in the health of the bioregion. And then the next kind of piece of how people can engage is while they’re exploring their bioregion, they can explore the projects that are in that bioregion that align with our science, that are community driven, grassroots driven predominantly projects that are implementing solutions to the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.

So this is a master project. It’s a big global scale project. We currently have 130 projects up there, and we have representation in most bioregions, but that collection of incredible projects led by incredible people with incredible stories is going to grow and grow and grow and grow. And we do a lot of storytelling around all of those folks. So when you explore the projects and you read about the project, the effort, the community behind it, the people who are leading the way, you can directly donate through the project marketplace to those projects. Currently, because this is still a relatively new platform and because we are really doing it in honor of the movement of people who are driving transformative change, we don’t currently charge a fee. We are collecting donations, and then on a quarterly basis, getting them out to the projects. Hopefully over time this grows and we build a community of people who are committed to protecting the planet and each other.

So there’s a big proposition at hand right now. One of the things that has driven me for 15 years is knowing about, seeing, hearing, acknowledging, and being in partnership with hundreds of people around the world who are up against incredible odds doing amazing things in their communities. And those folks which most people don’t see or hear or know about their work, if you don’t know about their work, you think that this moment feels overwhelming. But through the project marketplace, through our storytelling platforms, we’re hoping to make that movement visible and accessible to everybody so that it fosters a sense of community, a sense of what’s possible when we work together towards a common goal.

Simon:
What you said about how people are feeling right now and they can so easily and readily feel overwhelmed is so important, but that sense of community does make it possible and it does reweave that social fabric around what we care about. We are hardwired, chemically wired, to be connected to each other and the planet. And I think one of the encouraging things is we’re not learning something new, we’re remembering what we forgot in a way, which is our undeniable connection to each other. To your point about sort of returning from this sort of estrangement, this self-imposed estrangement, the way we live our lives now, I went with The Pachamama Alliance with Lynne Twist to the sacred headwaters of the Amazon over the new year and spent two weeks with some of the indigenous tribes there. And two things I took away was how deeply they felt literally like all other living species plants and otherwise, they were related to them. They were literally part of their family, and also they considered wealth when you have enough to give away something to others.

And this is so counterintuitive to the way that we’ve been reared. It’s so foundational to the idea that we live as part of the natural system as opposed to holding dominion over it or being in control of it. Getting back to that sense of place and right sizing who we are within the ecosystem is going to solve for a lot of these issues like feeling anxious or overwhelmed because the system will solve for them as well through the integrity of the system and the efforts of everyone. I think that’s why the Marketplace is so important. I want people to understand what they can do. I grew up in Sydney in the water at the beaches. I like to surf. I can go to the Marketplace, the Project Navigator, and select something that will be deeply personal and meaningful to me and make a contribution that I feel is manageable, and then suddenly I feel like I’m part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

And I think that does a lot to help how we feel. What’s the experience of people been like who have been using the platform so far?

Justin:
It’s been really heartening to see kind of organically what’s happening. One thing that’s been heartening is we’ve had several schools reach out sharing pictures of kids using the navigator in the Project Marketplace to understand the earth, to understand the buyer regions and to explore all these projects. That’s been some of my favorite kind of feedback is just seeing how ready and interested kids are in the issues at hand and reconnecting to the earth without us even trying just organically by making this information accessible and well designed and an easy way to understand the issues and the context, there’s a bunch of wonderful things happening that you don’t even know about.

Simon:
Right. There’s a lot of amazing things happening that we don’t get enough intention. The headlines every day tell us all the bad news, and we feel like that all hope is lost, but amazing things are happening. Could you give us a couple of examples of some of the projects? Are there any of those 130 projects that are up there right now? I saw Daughters for Earth and a few others jumped out at me. Give us a sense of what an actual project looks like.

Justin:
I mean, there’s a huge variety of them. I am proud to say that the majority of the projects that we have on the project marketplace are either women led and/or indigenous led. And that was done intentionally. It was done intentionally because we are coming from a history and an experience of such a lack of resources going to climate and environment issues and projects and leaders, but then in even smaller fraction of that actually going to communities of color, to women led efforts. And so we intentionally, because we see great opportunity and huge intrinsic value and justice being served in elevating those projects, and getting them resources, most of the projects are focused that way.

Simon:
They’re also part of those overarching themes that make everything else possible, right?

Justin:
Yes, totally. And historically, even anecdotally, my experience has really led me to see explicitly the power of community driven, often indigenous led, people of color led, women led efforts. Many of the projects on there, for example, there’s a long-standing partner that we have in the Amazon called Amazon Front Lines, who’s working in Ecuador, who has a long history of building deep collaborations amongst what was originally very fractured tribes across the Amazon, all in an effort to bring indigenous land tenure rights, protection of their lands, their waters, their culture. And all of that work started many years ago, I think back in 2012 2011, with bringing clean rainwater catchment systems to communities that had been impacted by toxic oil spills. Those projects in the Amazon were about making sure that the communities and the tribes and the families had access to clean water because without your health, how can you possibly fight to protect your land and your water and your community?

But that has grown into a full scale movement of many communities and tribes working together in the Amazon to ensure that their lands, waters, and cultures are protected, to ensure that their communities are healthy, to ensure that the forest and the biodiversity is healthy and vibrant. So it’s really interesting if people take a minute to understand the stories and the context of different places on the planet, different cultures, and what it means to really problem solve from the ground up and what that can lead to ultimately. That project and those efforts specifically in the Amazon, they started out as small scale projects, and they have led to full scale protection of millions of acres of rainforest. And so that’s the opportunity here is investing in these incredible people driving change within their communities from the ground up who are our best shot at long-term sustained protection of the planet.

Simon:
Let me push in on that a little bit because what we’re really talking about is speed and scale, which is the great concern that I had writing the book Lead With We is how do we work together in new ways to accelerate our response to these challenges? Is it a matter of letting these things happen organically because they take on a life of their own, which is amazing? But given the timelines we’re working against and how they’re contracting towards us, do we have to accelerate them, almost mobilize them in a way? And what role can business play? What role does the economy play? How can we become a force multiplier for what we know needs to happen?

Justin:
Yeah, it’s a great question. What was an interesting experience for us in the development of the solution set was suddenly we were looking at the 76 solutions organized by energy, nature, conservation and regenerative agriculture. And then our question was, we know that resources, money, needs to flow in a whole different way in order to scale up all of these solutions. Some of these solutions are already being financed by governments around the world like the transition to renewable energy. But there is still a role for philanthropic capital in supporting community driven kind of decentralized individual transition to renewable energy.

Simon:
The percentage of philanthropic capital going to climate or biodiversity projects is fractional, isn’t it? It’s tiny.

Justin:
Less than 2% of all philanthropic capital goes to climate and environment.

Simon:
Which is crazy.

Justin:
And just a fraction of that, they think something like less than a quarter actually reaches community grassroots led efforts. So that means that most of those fractional dollars in philanthropic space that are going to climate environment are going to top down kind of policy moves, et cetera, which not saying they’re not important, but we see it as this massive opportunity that we’re missing out on change from the ground up.

Simon:
Right.

Justin:
Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also a huge opportunity to drive systemic change much faster if we get those resources flowing so those community efforts can start mobilizing and moving.

Simon:
Two questions there. One is there’s a lot of dialogue around the state of the Amazon right now, which in some ways is like the air filter system for the planet. It pulls the carbon out of the air. These flowing rivers put moisture back up into the air and it’s so determinative in terms of weather and so on, things around the world. But depending on what you read, 23% of it has been lost to 27% becomes a Savannah, and that has huge consequences in terms of all of our futures. And a separate but related question is someone goes to the Marketplace and they make a contribution once, but then how do you engage them through storytelling to be a sustained contributor to something they care about? So my question here is, how are you mobilizing story or narrative in terms of urgency but also in terms of participation to get people to make a difference?

Justin:
Well, from day one, when we launched One Earth, there was always a commitment to spearheading and communicating the clear science around the solutions that are needed. There was always a clear commitment to changing the game around philanthropy and the incredible inherent role of philanthropy in this moment to drive speed and scale. It’s not just about investment dollars. They play a key role, but they’re not everything, particularly nature space. There are some things that will never be profitable. There are some things just need to support changing the narrative, changing the story, and really showing folks what is already happening and what is possible in providing clarity and inspiration in the opportunity at hand right now. For folks listening, go to oneearth.org. You can follow us on Instagram, you can follow us on Twitter, you can follow us on all the different platforms.

We’ve made a lot of effort into doing storytelling, short form digital storytelling, around these projects, the climate heroes that we’re seeing doing incredible work, the communities that are implementing incredible solutions around the world, clarifying what is regenerative agriculture. There’s infinite amounts of content to create obviously because this is content that hasn’t been invested in. We have this predominant kind of media culture that is telling a whole different story, and it’s mostly a doom and gloom story. It’s mostly very urgent, relevant pieces of information, but we’re missing the other side of the coin, which is what is possible and the solutions that exist and how we as a community can work together towards a much bigger aim.

Simon:
Your point about narrative is so important in how you characterize it then this doom and gloom story, and that’s just one way of presenting the picture of our future. How do you characterize it? You hear everything if you look at the news stories from just this cascading effect and we’re running out of time, and it’s very negative and we can wring our hands. Through another lens, you might say, “Wow, this is the necessary painful birth, this new renaissance of business and stewardship on behalf of humanity and service to nation.” How do you see it through your unique lens of all you’ve done in the past and what you’re doing right now? Where are we in this moment of time? Because God knows we’re all a little bit confused about what’s going on.

Justin:
I think it’s a painful moment. It is a moment where systems are breaking down, and that’s everything from ecological systems and weather patterns to our financial systems and the institutions that we’ve thought as being very stable for a long time are in question. It’s also a moment of reckoning where there’s a lot of, over the last couple of years in particular, a real recognition of the communities of color and people that have been unjustly hurt through hundreds of years. All of that pain, there’s a purpose to that pain. It needs to be recognized. It needs to be reckoned with so that we can step into a space of healing. All of these issues are interconnected, and it is, I think in this moment of being truthful of listening, of learning how to be supportive of each other, it is also a moment where we can kind of move into a really transformative time for the human race.

That’s my hope. I think that putting out there that it’s possible, shining a light on the amazing leaders who are leading the way and showing the type of reconnection and healing that is possible provides the opportunity for that to manifest at a much bigger scale.

Simon:
Right. It’s not any one thing, it’s many things. And I’m going to be cheeky and say in your quieter moments you wake up in the morning or you’ve kind of got through another week, endless Zoom calls and so on, what do you hang your hat on? Sometimes I hang my hat on the innate goodness of human beings. I think we are going to show up in our best and highest selves at this moment of crisis. Sometimes I look at the regenerative capacity of nature and go if we give it half a chance, just look at how extraordinary it can be. What is that thing that you point to, that bright spot that is sort of, I don’t know, almost your North Star that keeps motivating you?

Justin:
I tend to agree with you. I think it’s pointing towards the innate goodness of people and the evidence that I’ve seen of that over the course of my lifetime and in this work. It’s also the recognition of the profound healing power of nature. We have evidence of that everywhere too. So those two pieces are big ones. But when I think about the North Star for me, that drives me, it’s giving space to a future that is just, that is vibrant. And by that, what I mean is a future where we are really protecting, respecting and honoring biological diversity in tandem with respecting, honoring, and supporting cultural diversity. That is the fabric of life. That is what makes life meaningful and beautiful. And I want that future not only for myself, but for my seven year old. And I want it for his children, and I want it for every child. It is a beautiful world, and people are beautiful, and I want to protect that beauty.

Simon:
Thank you, Justin. Thank you. I can echo those sentiments on behalf of my 23 and 20-year-old daughters. If that doesn’t motivate people, I don’t know what does. Who on earth doesn’t protect their home? It’s such a sobering thought. And I want to thank you for your leadership through the lens of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, carving out and raising awareness around something so critical long before with quite as mainstream as it is today. And then secondly, grounding what we are doing at One Earth in the science that gives us hope for a solution, which is half the battle, one, because hope is such a powerful force.

And then for giving us all a way to participate through the Marketplace, through the Project Navigator so that it’s not about being of service to something that somebody else says we should care about, but giving us the opportunity to invest in what we care about. And that’s when real change can happen. Justin, thank you so much. And I would encourage everyone to go to the One Earth Marketplace, show up in a way that’s meaningful to you, and let’s see what we can do together. So thank you, Justin.

Justin:
Thank you so much. It’s been an honor.

Simon:
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Lead With We. You can always find out more information about today’s guest in the show notes of each episode. Our show is made possible by partnership between We First, a strategic consultancy driving growth and impact for purpose led brands and Goal17 Media that’s building greater awareness all in financing full purpose led companies. Make sure you follow Lead with We on Apple, Google, or Spotify and do share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you’d like to dive even deeper into the world of Purposeful Business, check out my new book and Wall Street Journal bestseller Lead with We, which is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google Books. See you on the next episode. And until then, let’s all Lead With We.