Big, fast, busy and noisier than ever, this year’s Climate Week New York City (CWNYC) was another highly memorable one. We stuck to trainers and the subway, downed coffee to fight the jetlag, dashed across town for meetings and events, and ate enough canapes to last a lifetime.

To kick things off, we were delighted to host the first filming for our podcast Conversations@hub101.earth in NYC, where we welcomed seven incredibly inspiring guests from across the climate-nature space:

• Anna Lerner Nesbitt of Climate Collective sat down with Jen Stebbing of Sotora Global to explain how AI can accelerate progress towards climate and nature goals, the difference between applied AI and generative AI, our agency in directing technology towards sustainable outcomes and why she advocates for building AI fluency among conservationists.
• Thomas Crowther also sat down with Jen to discuss his wide-ranging work: including his new book “Nature’s Echo” which explores the interconnectedness of the Earth and its ecosystems, emphasising the role of feedback loops and their impact on our planet’s past and future, as well as Restor.eco’s aim to connect conservation movements and foster collective action.
• Todd Stevens of Wildlife Conservation Society and Yuejia Peng of hub101.earth discussed the intersection of private sector investment and global biodiversity conservation, the need for localisation of finance to empower community-led and ground-up organisations and why philanthropy is important to de-risk innovative projects to make them investable for capital markets.
• Tim Christophersen of Salesforce – and author of “Generation Restoration” – sat down with Jen to talk about how nature should be viewed as essential infrastructure, the need for private sector to rapidly scale regenerative agriculture and high-quality carbon markets, how to shift our relationships with nature from extractive to reciprocal, while calling for “conditional optimism” where imagination and financial innovation can build a robust restoration economy.
• Elliot Formal of Agoro Carbon Alliance also joined Jen to explain how regenerative agriculture can decarbonise the food chain and support long-term food security, why practices such no-till farming and rotational grazing can improve soil biomass, biodiversity, water resilience, and Agoro Carbon Alliance use carbon markets to provide financial incentives and agronomic support to farmers and ranchers to manage their land sustainably with the help of clients such as Microsoft.   
• Eric Wilburn of Bezos Earth Fund sat down with Yuejia to discuss his passion to drive a healthy relationship between nature and humanity, how we should value nature and bringing capital towards her protection and restoration, the importance of understanding ecological dependencies in financial and business decision-making, how AI should be aligned with the needs of all life on Earth, the crucial value of Indigenous knowledge and Global South perspective, and how we can all approach environmental work from a place of care and love.
• Eric Levine of Count Us In also joined Yuejia to highlight how sports – in particular football – can be a powerful tool to build climate engagement, shift cultural norms and support action at the individual, communities, regional and national levels, through inspiring campaigns such as Earth FC and Green Football, why our well-being and that of the planet are interconnected, the great potential to engage young people, and the need for equal voices from Global South, Indigenous and First Peoples and other local communities.

All these exciting conversations coming soon to our podcast, so watch this space!

Elsewhere during Climate Week, here are our main takeaways:

• Football is more than a sport: Football-led storytelling and campaigns has the potential to reach billions of fans around the world. From leveraging global events such as the World Cup to amplifying existing local organisations, athletes, clubs, media and community can pool funding, share planning and complement efforts. 
• Australia in the green: Growing Australia’s Nature Economy (GANE) and Forest Trends is teaming up to strengthen confidence in environmental markets and support Australia’s leadership in the nature economy. The partnership is advocating for well-designed carbon and nature markets, sharing evidence of benefits for agriculture, First Nations communities, regional economies and ecological restoration in Australia. 
• Durability mechanisms can scale nature-based carbon removals: Permanence trusts can be based on existing long-lived institutional structures, supported by governance, risk management and financial modelling; while contracted durability can bridge the gap between thresholds and shorter liability periods.
• Nature-based infrastructure is scalable: And complements traditional infrastructure with benefits for climate resilience, biodiversity, communities and investment returns. Examples from the US shows projects can deliver three-to-one return on investment, while usage of satellite data, supply chain context and ground-level information can help identify priority areas and guide investment.
• Freshwater restoration as a bridge: Water links climate mitigation, nature risk management and corporate action, data from TNFD reveals water is investors’ second-highest nature-related priority, and there are plenty of restoration potentials around the world for freshwater ecosystems.   
• Oceans on the rise at UNFCCC COP31: The Turkish COP31 Presidency is giving greater prominence to ocean and seas within the global climate agenda, linking climate, biodiversity and ocean processes and moving ocean–climate commitments from dialogue to implementation. Priority needs are accessible finance, stronger science and data, regional cooperation and meaningful community participation.  
• Carbon markets need community-led stewardship: Indigenous and community ownership and governance must be at the centre of carbon projects, the full cost of their stewardship must be recognised and properly valued, and more flexible, transparent and supportive infrastructure needed. 
• Women and Climate going strong: from a large Slack community to monthly virtual gatherings, a book club and local networking opportunities, there are many ways to encourage women who work across the climate space to connect and enhance collective action.

It was wonderful to see and catch up with so many colleagues and friends, all doing amazing work for people and planet. We came away feeling united, uplifted and ready to charge ahead in our mission to share knowledge on climate, nature and people positive solutions, so that we can all be part of the change we want to see. 

We’ll be heading to COP31 in Turkey next, so get in touch if you are too!