Can Profit Help Save the Rainforest?
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
07/03/25
•25m
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Global meetings on climate change almost always turn on two factors: political will and money. Even when the will is present, the money is not---and the result for decades has been the seemingly endless, accelerating slide toward a hotter, more volatile, climate.
Each year the big international climate meetings like the 2025 COP to be held in Belém, Brazil in November produce ever larger estimates of the financing needed to move away from fossil fuels, to compensate developing countries for loss and damage, to sustain biodiversity, etc. Each year governments are more and more stretched to meet growing social, defense, and endless other needs and less and less willing to even to pretend they can find the vast sums needed to slow, stop, or reverse the climate change spiral.
That only leaves the private sector as source of finance. However, many climate activists distrust private capital or seek to create conditions that deny businesses the opportunity to earn competitive returns on their investments. But without private money OR enough public money...there simply isn't enough money.
So, whether or not it's possible for a profit making enterprise to do the right things for the environment while making a decent return on their investment is critical to the future of the planet.
For insight, we went to the front lines of climate change, the Congo River Basin, one of the two "lungs" of the planet. SODEFOR is a forestry company in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that manages a million hectares of forest. They have a well documented record of operating legally and responsibly in the rainforest. Tânia Trindade plays a key role in managing the company's commitment to its shareholders as well as to the planet; she deeply believes that SODEFOR can do both.
Listen as she describes the challenges of operating in a complex environment as SODEFOR tries to do good and to do well at the same time.
What do you think: if the public sector won't find the resources to mitigate climate change, is there a viable role for the private sector? Or should we just give up?
Previous Episode
Mutually Assured Madness?
June 5, 2025
•42m
We live at a moment when everything we thought we could rely on to understand our world seems to be becoming unglued. Whether it's “uncharted waters” or the “break up of global order” or “the end of the American century,” at the least we are entering a period of change and chaos unlike anything that most of us have experienced in our lifetimes.
Whatever emerges is likely to be shaped in important ways by the evolving relationship between China and the United States. Those are the only two countries with the power, the ambition, the history, and the hubris to imagine themselves as great enough powers not to rule, perhaps, but to shape the new world. The problem, of course, is that no two countries—indeed, civilizations—could be more unlike each other. In the past, that set-up has been a formula for competition, even conflict, but as Henry Kissinger pointed out, such competition never before played out in a truly globalized world like that of the 21st century. The potential for catastrophe is obvious.
Avoiding such a worst-case scenario must begin with U.S. leaders and elites gaining a clear understanding of China—and Chinese leaders and elites doing the same with the United States.
So as an approximation, in this episode of New Thinking for a New World, we explore what all this looks like from an Asian perspective. Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow, a Pan-Asian think tank based in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. He is deeply knowledgeable about both Great Powers and, as you will hear, believes that the Chinese are much more clear-eyed about how the world ought to work.
He may or may not be right: what do you think?
Next Episode
A River Runs Through It
July 17, 2025
•31m
The Congo River Basin includes six countries and covers approximately 3.7 million square kilometers, making it the world's second-largest rainforest basin behind the Amazon. Like the Amazon, in practical terms, it is vital to the health of the planet. Also like the Amazon, scientists and conservationists worry that the Basin's ecology could tip if its rainforests are seriously degraded.
Unlike the Amazon, however, the immediate threat to the ecological integrity of the Congo Basin is not large-scale agriculture, but the demands of the Green Transition, since the region seems to hold vast reserves of minerals and rare earths. Could the rush to “electrify everything” lead to the destruction of the Congo rainforest?
This week, we have the opportunity for a conversation with someone who is deeply invested in trying to guide the countries of the Congo toward a positive future. Jaap van der Waarde has worked for the last two decades in the Congo Basin and is now the World Wildlife Fund's Conservation Director for the region. He spoke with New Thinking for a New World in his personal capacity.
What do you think?
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