EST and good morning good afternoon and good evening to all of you joining us from across the world a warm welcome from the science side team to all the esteemed panelists and participants of today's webinar on the topic of carbon sequestration project development on tribal lands I'm Ankita Mitra a PhD student in the Department of Forestry and natural resources at Purdue University and my current research focuses on analyzing planted forests in the East Asian countries in addition I'm also a team member of the science eye organization which leads to groundbreaking collaboration among the interdisciplinary scientific communities um allow me to introduce my fellow members of the science side team akany Abbasi and Choi who are also the PhD students in the Department of Forestry and natural resources we also have with us shinizo as one of the other supporting members of our science side team and glad to uh be uh like glad to invite her as well because she's an undergrad student at Pearl University and last but not the least let me introduce Dr jinjing Liang who is the associate professor of quantitative Forest ecology at Purdue University and the founder of this amazing platform science side so today we are really excited to have all of you uh in today's webinar and we do expect a power pack 90 minute learning session but it doesn't end today this is the stepping stone towards greater collaboration among the participants of this webinar who are experts in their um individual scientific research areas and today is the first of the series of webinars being hosted by the science side group and more information about the upcoming webinars have been posted in the sciencei website as well as in the Flyers sent to you in your respective emails by the science side team in addition if either of you are interested in contributing to the white paper entitled empower the underrepresented in Forest science please do complete the survey form my co-host akany Abbasi will shortly provide the link of the survey uh in the chat box and then finally before we begin this session a quick reminder I'm sure many of you will have questions during this interesting presentations of today so kindly make sure that you put all your questions together in the Q a box and not in the chat box so the Q a box is specifically for the question and answers uh from the attendees or from any other members uh for the presentation and the panelists will address those questions at the end of their presentations and also please feel free to reach out to either of the supporting members of science I if you have any technical questions or doubts or any other confusions we are here to help you as much as possible and uh now without taking much of your time I would like to welcome Dr Liang and akani to provide further insights so Dr Liang and akani the floor is yours now thank you

thank you Ankita hi everyone I am akane one of science side supporting team members we like to start the session by taking the poll just to uh just for us to get a brief idea of what our audience look it's look like it's looking like so I will start the poll and I would appreciate if you can answer the short survey right now taking one minute

okay you should be seeing the poll now

I will give one minute or so for you to answer

okay 70 of the participants have already answered

it's now eighty percent I'll wait for maybe 10 more seconds

all right so almost 90 percent of the participants have answered thank you so much I will share the results now

foreign so we have a very diverse audience today uh from almost all the continents except Oceania that is very interesting good morning good evening or whatever that is for you and affiliation we have participants from governmental groups individual as well as uh ngos intergovernmental organizations but the majority is from Academia it looks like and we also have more male participants than females so yeah I hope uh that gives our panelists a good idea of how our audience is looking like today thank you very much everyone for uh sharing your survey answers and with that I will hand it over to Dr Liang thank you akani um hello everyone um uh warm welcome for everyone to joined us on in this first seminar of the webinar series of science I and so today we are very glad to have Dr Brown Advanced dieten and a doctor Carly King to join us as guest speakers before I introduce our guest speakers I would like to remind everyone that we have a a short survey so if you can enter your name and contact information in the survey if you go to the chat window you are going to see the survey link so please enter the name and email information of yours so we can contact you and keep track of our white paper development with you after the seminar so with that um I'd like to bring your attention to our guests the speakers and so today we are going to have both Dr Ben the prior against the colleague King as our guest speakers and Dr Brian van Steven is a program director for national Indian carbon Coalition an initiative of the Indian Land tenure Foundation that provides education training and technical assistance to American Indian tribes Alaska native Villages and corporations native Hawaiian organizations and the first nations in Canada on the development of carbon credit and a renewable energy projects on tribal land a member of the ornier nation of Wisconsin doctors van steiben is previously served for seven years as tribal attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Justice in Wisconsin where he was responsible for land acquisition and other land related issues so Dr Brian Vance Gibbon earned a bachelor's degree in business and administration and a master's in computer information system from the toilet and State University in Texas and he is a graduate of the University of North Dakota School of Law the University of Tulsa College of Law and the University of Arizona College of Law and then we have a Dr Kelly Kane and Dr King is a founder and CEO of The simcoa Institute and he is he has a long history of Diversified clients including multinational corporate Consulting for circular economy multiple Think Tank projects for the Aspen Institute Community strategies group conceptual design and project navigation for student core Habitat for Humanity Eco Village and here he is also the primary author of the first carbon negative climate action plan among the U.S college campuses and in many other projects he is currently a senior program and a policy strategist for the national Indian carbon Coalition and so with with uh with that I'm I'm the florists are yours Brian and Kali

great thank you for that Dr Liang I appreciate the opportunity to be able to present to this group today for science I especially on some of the work that we've been doing with indigenous populations in North America over the last few years so after that very in-depth introduction which I haven't heard in quite some time I do want to say siguli and yaakov I greet you and I thank you in my traditional language as a member of the Oneida nation of Wisconsin our reservation lands lie within the exterior boundaries of the city limits of Green Bay so we are just in northeastern Wisconsin here in the United States with some major population centers in our region um in which I live just off the reservation lands so as a in the introduction Dr Liang had mentioned I am an attorney by trade I came into this position as the program director for the national Indian carbon Coalition approximately five years ago in 2017. I had really no background in this industry besides taking some environmental law classes it was kind of throwing feet first Into the Fire 2017 was obviously right after the elect action season and watch a lot of federal policy was trending away from what climate change entailed and how to address those major issues for the first six to nine months I struggled wholeheartedly in this position and at one point in time told my boss that we might shut this whole thing down because people just were not interested a lot of negative connotations as to what these types of projects entailed and then all of a sudden something just flipped I went to visit Appalachian State University for a conference ran into a couple other individuals that were struggling as well and they said you know you got to keep your head up and keep plugging along because you can't give up we need to get this type of work done not only for indigenous populations but for the world in general so it took that renewed faith and went forward again and things just changed dramatically because the prior Federal Administration kept talking about climate change more and more people started asking questions as to what this actually meant and how carbon sequestration projects could benefit their lands so it was a a little bit of a of a heavy lift in the beginning and so we've come full circle on how we present a lot of our information how we engage with these indigenous communities how we present um our information to these tribal communities because there's been a lot of negative information a lot of misunderstanding of how these projects affect indigenous lands um so we're now finally starting to pick up some steam been partnering with Dr Kelly Keane here for the last four and a half years we've we've met right off the bat on how to help messages as I mentioned you know I did not have a background as an attorney coming into this so uh working with Dr Kane has helped me understand this industry uh and how to navigate within the areas that we think tribes can really help move this type of work forward so with all that being said at myself I'm going to enter let Dr Kelly Kane introduce himself and then we're going to jump into who we are what we do and how we message and engage with indigenous communities throughout North America

thanks Brent good morning all um afternoon and evening to and joining us from around the world that's terrific um Kelly Kane I was at the professor of environmental science and management land use planning at the University of Wisconsin uh for 28 years at the River Falls campus and in the last seven years of that tenure I was director of Campus sustainability as well as uh co-founding director of the Saint Croix Institute for sustainable Community Development which was a think and do tank on campus for faculty staff students stakeholders from around the region nation and a fair amount of international work as well uh I left there in 2014 and took Saint Pro Institute into private Consulting doing corporate Community institutional Consulting and then in 2016 rolled out like o2e l-i-c-o-2e doing business as locally invested carbon offsets so the idea of how do we monetize carbon offsets and local economies just like we do food energy art beer whatever whatever might happen to be because the the degree the the economic impact of carbon offsets on a planetary basis that were not being sequestered if I can use that word in local economies uh was a great opportunity so I rolled that as a public benefit Corporation and not too long after that Mutual attorney friend the mine and Brian's introduced us and uh it has been it's been a busy four and a half years and especially the last two years uh feeling like we're strapped to a rocket um which is which is really good there's there's much to be done uh so with that I would turn it back to Brian thank you for that introduction Kelly so again the national Indian carbon Coalition we were created by the Indian Land tenure Foundation as well as the inter-tribal agricultural Council so those two non-profit organizations have been working with indigenous populations for a combined 50 years a lot of history a lot of good work being done by those organizations and they came together to create the national Indian carbon Coalition because at that point in time approximately in 20 2011 a lot of tribal nations were getting approached by for-profit developers trying to get tribes to enter into the California cap and trade program or what we call the compliance market and there was a lot of issues with tribes participating in that Marketplace so the my boss at the Indian foundation and the other organization the inner travel agriculture Council said we need to create an entity to help educate tribes move them along the path and make determinations as to whether these projects are beneficial or what we like to say in the best interest of Indian country or that specific tribe so we look at the carbon sequestration projects as economic development opportunities to protect and preserve tribal natural resources rather than extractor exploit over history over time a lot of Natural Resources have been removed from tribal lands because that's the easiest quickest way to derive revenue for those tribal communities and that's where we see a lot of the for-profit developers coming in and looking at how they might be able to exploit those natural resources for the benefit that do not necessarily go back into Indian Country so again we want to protect and preserve land ownership reduce climate change by conserving those natural resources and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions

so historically have been some of the biggest issues we call it tooken crook uh our lands have been stolen through broad theft uh or through Federal action um and so what we're trying to ensure is that we have beneficial beneficial opportunities for the tribes themselves to make the decisions over their land bases uh a lot of times especially specifically the United States as well as in Canada the federal administrations or the governments make decisions for the indigenous peoples on their lands a lot of times those indigenous communities don't have a lot of say as to how certain actions are taken we're seeing a big change in how lands are being managed in the Indian Country Now um so it's been a great opportunity on seeing indigenous communities being able to have these decision-making authorities over their natural resources and of course we want to make sure that their healthy natural resources there's a lot of issues with health issues in Indian country between diabetes and heart disease a lot of times we relate that to the loss of our environment

so some of the benefits that we look obviously is going to be Revenue generation no can we derive some Revenue by keeping these natural resources in the ground um and then what will we use though that revenue for putting it back into our communities uh preservation of trouble and ownership not only preservation of the land ownership but also the acquisition trying to acquire more lands as I mentioned my tribe to Oneida Nation where are 65 000 acre reservation uh just outside of Green Bay with again portion of the city limits with inside the reservation lands but the tribe only owns a fraction of that land uh within their reservation and a lot of it is owned by outside individuals that are non-tribal members um and so trying to reacquire lands within the exterior boundaries of their reservations is a big goal for our my parent organization the Indian Land tenure Foundation as well as for the national Indian carbon Coalition promotion of land stewardship and I should even say sustainable Land Management putting in more sustainable management practices onto those lands to ensure that we are protecting and preserving those land bases greenhouse gas emissions and then which Dr Keane will talk about here in a little bit uh promotional soil Health ecological diversity water and air quality which we are calling our co-benefits that uh match and align with the development of carbon sequestration projects

so some of the things that we do at the national Indian carbon Coalition again is to educate and work with tribal communities leadership staff and membership to make sure that they understand what these projects entail because they are complex it takes a long time the development process if I were to get a tribal Nation to say as of today right now that we want to move forward with the development of a carbon project it takes approximately two years to do so so that's going to be an issue that we see in Indian country is just the timeline of trying to make these decisions to get the projects up off the ground because in specifically in our tribal communities we do have elected officials in which we have to campaign and run political processes so you have to run for office you have to get elected I'm in every tribe is different there's 578 tribal nations in the United States every tribe has a different process on how they elect their leaders in My Tribe it's every four years and we have 11 tribal council members that then get reelected and obviously not every time um well all of those people make it back into their positions so you're continually having to educate the leadership as to what these projects entail as people come and go in and out of office so again it just takes some time to work with leadership staff and membership we have what we call General tribal councils in which every member of the tribe has the right to vote at our general Tribal Council meetings and we have the ability to pass resolutions to guide the direction of what our government and our elected officials move forward so we want to ensure that not only has leadership informed as to what these projects entail but membership because they do have a large say in how these projects are developed and created

um obviously we want to be unbiased and independent if we state that we are a trusted resource for Indian Country we want to make sure that as a non-profit organization that the information that we are providing to the tribe is for one owned by the tribe itself at the end of the day and making sure that any information that is shared with us that they retain that ownership and then provide this information so that they can make informed decisions we use web mapping and satellite imagery to develop these type of systems um again with the different areas of how tribes are on the technological Spectrum there's been all kinds of different uh analysis of land bases so there's been some times when I've run into a tribe that has a department of transportation map that they have a physical map of the borders of their land base just outlined in a red pencil and then there's been some that we have very sophisticated GIS programs that can drill down and give us every single bit of information on that parcel throughout history so our goal at the national new carbon Coalition was try to make sure that we at least level the playing field with tribes and provided electronic mapping or tribal Nations that did not have that GIS capability and that was an issue that we ran into early on and just something that we weren't expecting to engage with the tribal nation and for those leaders in that staff to not have a great grasp as to what their landline actually were um so came out and rolled out a program we are actually working with one of the largest uh travel uh tribal colleges and universities in the nation right now Haskell out of Kansas uh we're developing a GIS program for tribal students to learn more about web mapping GIS systems and develop a career path and get an education in that to bring them into Indian Country work for their respective tribes then that's part of the education and guidance that we're looking at how do we engage with the youth how do we engage with other organizations Dr Liang and I had met with an entity called Rising voices of a few weeks ago which is a tribally based entity for Native American Educators and students so hopefully we develop that relationship a little bit here further as we move along in those conversations because it's an extremely important that tribal youth understand the opportunities that they have available to them as this type of work is being done in Indian country and finally aggregation of carbon projects this is of a dream I would say it's very difficult to get multiple tribal Nations to work together due to historical trauma with one another at points in time so it's uh it's a little bit of a hopefully it will work out in the future right now it's been a heavy lift trying to get multiple tribes to work together with one project

so quickly how do these projects work as I mentioned earlier it's approximately a two-year process from once we get Tribal Council approval to move forward so our first step is that we develop a carbon assessment feasibility study I work with outside third party developers to get this work done their trusted resources we've vetted them we've worked with them multiple times they worked with some some of these organizations had worked in Indian Country previously which is important to us so that they understand how to engage with the tribal Community with tribal leadership so we develop a feasibility study to determine whether or not the project would actually be economically viable um when we look at force-based lands we state that there has to be a minimum of three thousand acres in order to be able to do this we specifically look at American carbon Registries improved Forest management protocol we do all the analysis on the front end to ensure that again that the project is going to be economically viable and a revenue generator for the tribe so once we get into the approval process uh after we get done with the feasibility we go back to the tribal leadership we make a recommendation obviously the recommendation is usually to move forward assuming that the project is economically viable I mean that's when the heavy lift starts so there's a lot of verification certification that has to be completed we have to hire a outside third party forced inventory crew that is knowledgeable on tree inventory or carbon there's not that many of them that we have run across in the United States there's a couple again that I do trust um and have bringing them and engagement with them on the majority of our projects but it takes time so they physically have to put boots on the ground we go out into the woods we measure the trees um do a bunch of different data collection um and then they go back into their office and have to clear the data and make it presentable to the developer so we then start working with the carbon project developer the developer is adhering to the protocol parameters again I mentioned the ACR improved Forest management protocol so the developer is extremely well versed in that protocol and the needs on how we have to adhere to it um some of the issues that we run across are just ensuring that we are creating additionality on our projects and by developing additionality we focus on creating extremely conservative baselines taking the very minimal Harvest requirements that that tribal Nation May able to do um so we're starting to call it Coda versus wada like what what a type of landowner do versus what could they do because we're starting to see a lot of buyers excuse me a lot of buyers are more interested in the well what would you actually do rather than what could you actually do um because uh a lot of the original projects that were developed five ten years ago were just taking every single tree they could include in the project even if that tree could never technically be harvested so there's a lot of questioning going on right now in the industry and we are trying to ensure that our projects are developing the high quality high integrity carbon credits by utilizing these extremely conservative baselines so once we get through that process with the course inventory team and the developer we then have to hire a third-party independent verification organization um and there's a whole slew of those types of organizations but then they come back go on to the lands re-measure all of the trees in conjunction with the forest inventory team to make sure that for what the trees are actually there and that the measurements are within a certain parameter of allowances per the protocol so we have to say you know this tree was measured at 50 feet high and three feet round uh you know that then the verifier goes in the woods and checks that tree that specific tree that the inventory team did to make sure that their measurements are accurate and you have to have both a verifier and the force inventory team there together to discuss any discrepancies so far we have not had any major issues with that surprisingly but I have have heard some horror stories from some of the verifiers where they go into to the woods and the measurements are extremely inaccurate and not even anywhere near what the forced inventory teams have done previously so that finally leads us then uh to the next stage where we're looking at the verification and registry review so after we go through the forced inventory the developer data and development and then third party verification we have to send all of that information to the registry itself there are three Registries that we have been focusing on Vera American Carpet registry climate action Reserve there's a couple other ones that we have not yet engaged with gold standard red plus uh and I guess plan Vivo we have worked with out of Scotland a little bit um but we have to send those to that information to the registry they go through all of our data to make sure it's accurate clear and concise um and that again takes approximately another six to nine months um and then at the end of that process there's a there are credit certification so once the credits are certified we can begin selling those credits on the open market some of the issues that we run into with indigenous communities is that they want to have a lot of say over who acquires the carbon credits that are generated under lands so for instance we are working with the Fond du Lac Panda Lake Superior Chippewa Indians outside of Duluth Minnesota and that tribe has said we do not want to sell to any oil and gas or any organizations up and down that that distribution chain so it gets rid of any sort of pipeline organizations any sort of refineries and obviously any sort of oil generated or fossil fuel producers which I'm totally comfortable with it just I then have to go out there and find organizations that adhere to the cultural values and environmental values of that tribe which makes it a little bit of a heavier lift so far there's been a strong interest in the credits we've developed on that project we are in the process of of currently selling them we wanted to make some announcements yesterday for indigenous people's day but ran a time what some of the buyers of those credits that we had sold to just through having to having to go through the the legal process with each one of those entities to review all of the contracts and all of the legal terms for the acquisition of these credits so again that takes time for that process to occur and then what we have is the monitoring reporting and verification of the project over the duration we specifically focus on the voluntary carbon Market which is a 40-year duration as I had mentioned early on one of the reasons why the national Indian carbon Coalition was created was because tribes were enrolling projects in the California cap and trade market which was a hundred year duration um and then some tribes had some issues and concerns with the duration of those projects so we started focusing on the voluntary Marketplace which allowed us to enter projects with a 40-year process

so what do we need when we develop our feasibility study we need the inventory data the course management plan growth and yield data and the mapping of the targeted lands so again it's just getting this information from the tribe itself there is some publicly available information in which we can gather this data but mapping of the targeted lands is is the hard part so the the tribe again with example for Fond du Lac they have 44 000 Acres of forested lands after going through with what we call the uh carbon committee or our carbon sequestration project development committee with a long name uh we ended up deciding that 8 200 Acres made the most sense for that tribal Nation uh they did not feel comfortable enrolling all of their lands into a project which again I am I'm totally fine with I want the tribe to be comfortable as to how they are developing their projects because they are the ultimate decision makers in this process um so having to go through all of that uh Community meetings and and work group meetings and then presenting to leadership on what we felt made the most sense for that tribe and so that's part of the the process that we have to go through um to ensure that again staff leadership and membership are comfortable on moving forward so what do we get out of here we get the natural resource density as I mentioned we have to go in and physically measure all of the the land base with the forced inventory crew within that Define that defined project boundary um and what we get out of that we get the reduction rates um and the minimum Acres that we can develop on that with that lamp base so as I mentioned a couple times we have we have worked with tribal Nations and Indigenous communities from Hawaii to Alaska we're doing our first Outreach with first nations in Canada and we have one into many many issues that's to why indigenous communities will not enroll in these types of programs so after a few years of not making very much progress as Kelly had mentioned earlier the last two years have been like a rocket ship prior to that it was trying to redefine our messaging trying to figure out where the hiccups were for tribes that were trying to enroll in these projects what their questions and concerns were and why they were not entering into projects um again there was a lot of a lot of for-profit developers out there that were pressuring tribes to enroll every single acre of land that they could into a project um and it just rubbed tribes the wrong way um so it rather than trying to even figure out if something would work uh the conversations just turned into we don't want to do anything at all we're not going to engage we're not going to discuss this just leave us alone you know we don't want to have a conversation as to whether or not these might even be beneficial for our lands so we engaged with the nature conservancy uh just before the pandemic hit at the end of 2019 the beginning of 2020 to try to help develop the tribal land conservation initiative is which we call it and this is where we focus on specific benefits for the tribes that we thought addressed a lot of their concerns and made the most sense so the national Indian carbon Coalition we act as the project proponent only on the voluntary carbon Market space and that is because of the 40-year duration so again voluntary Marketplace it's 40 years for the project on the compliance Market space or the California cap and trade program it's a 100 Year duration and some tribes just were not comfortable with that again elected officials have four-year terms um at the most a lot of times it's between two and three years so the elected officials were just not comfortable enrolling their tribal lands in a project that could take up to a hundred years if they were only going to be in office for a two-year time frame or a four-year time frame so there was a lot of concern over that duration in which why we started focusing on the 40-year uh 40-year opportunity under the voluntary Market the national league government Coalition covers The Upfront costs for all those third-party developers again I said it was a two-year process there's a cost over that duration to develop the project it usually runs a couple hundred thousand dollars uh and more depending upon the size of the project so we are raising dollars so that we can cover those costs once carbon credit sales occur then those funds are reimbursed back to the national Indian corporate Coalition so we can do the next project but we also need some of those funds to help with long-term management so we contract uh with the tribes for that entire 40-year duration so that we're always there with them as staff changes as leadership changes um that we at least have a background and understanding as to why the decisions were made to develop these projects in the first place and to help the next staff members the next leaders understand the benefits of these projects so we wanted to be there for that entire four-year duration now I personally won't be there for that 40 years but I'm hoping that my predecessors and our staff after will be able to help those tribal Nations manage those projects for the long term

um we do all the Contracting with the third party Consultants as again mentioned as a tribal attorney that was one of the roles I did uh when I was in House Council was uh was did all the contract review and negotiations and that just takes a lot of the workload off of the other attorneys that are involved in this process specifically that are engaged by the tribes and then gets the decision-making process away from Tribal Council because for the most part if you need to have a contract approved it has to go through the executive branch within the tribal Nation um and it just takes time so to consolidate that workload and then consolidate those timelines because we've already as I mentioned been working on these projects for multiple years we want to try to move it along as quickly as possible now credits will not be sold for less than ten dollars of credit on the voluntary Market we put that in there as a minimum to make it a conservative number right now I'm getting 15 to 18 dollars a credit for the projects that we are currently selling credits for On the Open Market space we expect that value to rise over time so we just used ten dollars as a placeholder to keep expectations low uh for the tribe but internally we believe that we can generate at least 15 a credit if not more as we move forward here and then the big one is that the tribes have some say as to who purchased the credits so again I would walk in to engage with the tribal Nation say you know I have these buyers lined up I get calls from Shell and Exxon and BP and TransCanada and Enbridge all the time and I can go to the tribal nation and Leadership and say Hey you know these guys are interested do you want me to sell your credits to them and you know 99 of the time it's better to know so then I have to go out and try to find other buyers for the credits um that we can call social responsible organizations like the Amazons Microsoft's Disney's of the world that we engage with uh to see if they'd be interested in purchasing these credits right now I want to say there's um we have our our three of our our projects in front of meta Bank of America and Canada Post are three of the big organizations that are currently vetting our projects

and then getting into a couple of projects that as I mentioned we do have two Market Fond du Lac band of Lake Superior Chippewa uh these Revenue gen these Revenue numbers are extremely low right now because we did price point that at the ten dollars a credit uh we're gonna generate approximately 437 credits over 10 years on the 8 200 Acres this project came to Market in June of 2022 so we begin the development in May of 2019 and it took a little bit longer just through the pandemic to get this project to the marketplace we're also working with the Kiwana Bay Indian Community they are located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan this is on 16 500 Acres we're going to generate a few more credits than we were at Fond du Lac which again is going to be a little bit higher of a price point I think we are now at around 13 million in Revenue to be generated for Q and A Bay as we move forward here um again due to the price points of the credits um and then our last one that we mentioned in this presentation is with the Mississippi band of Choctaw Indians obviously they're in in the state of Mississippi in the United States uh this is going to be on 26 000 acres and we're looking at generating around 24 to 26 million dollars in revenue for the tribe so we have entered and engaged with a handful of more tribal Nations native Hawaiian organizations Alaska native villagers and corporations and again as I mentioned we're starting to do our Outreach to First nations in Canada um so we're as we engage with these tribal communities we have to make a determination as to what type of natural resource base each tribe has because not all tribes have these large forest-based lands to develop these types of projects um so what we're trying to do at the national Indian carbon Coalition is look at what the natural resources that specific indigenous Community has possession or of an ownership over that land base and develop a project around there so that could mean that we're looking at grassland-based projects or that we're looking at row crop type projects or grazing or pasture land type projects So currently we're rolling out new protocols new programs new initiatives looking at different opportunities dependent upon what the travel natural resource base is not just specifically focusing on forest-based projects just in the industry itself there's some concerns over forest-based lands due to the Natural forest fires that are occurring especially in the Northwestern part of the United States so there's been some emphasis on developing grassland-based projects because if there is a natural disaster a lot of that carbon is still sequestered into the ground those Grassroots remain and then regenerate so it helps get the carbon out of the air or into the ground a little bit faster compared to a forest fire that could decimate entire regions and entire projects which we have seen occur um with a few tribal nations in the Northwest part of the United States so there's a lot of different movement a lot of different opportunities that we are seeing for indigenous populations uh in North America how they develop these projects we've been fortunate enough at the national Indian carbon coalition to receive a few federal grants from the United States Department of Agriculture currently we have two grants that we are operating under one to develop a co-benefits tool as to what these projects uh have actually help with other areas as the soil air and water quality and then we do have a second USDA Grant in which we are looking more at soil-based Carbon projects how do we Implement more sustainable management practices into agricultural lands in Indian country looking specifically at rural crop and grazing lands in the United States right now there's a big Push by tribal communities to reintroduce bison onto their lands so we're starting to see a lot of tribes grazing more bison getting bison herds established and in doing so the intent would be to develop a carpenter project on those grazing lands in which where the bison are located to help derive at additional Revenue stream so we see multiple different opportunities with some of the grant funding that we've received how do we engage with tribal Nations how do we help protect and preserve those Natural Resources by placing uh sustainable management practices onto those land bases and then going through the process to derive revenue from those practices and ensuring that the revenue that is being generated goes back into the community to develop other redoable energy projects do Energy Efficiency projects weatherization of homes acquisition of land you know whatever opportunity that we can think of uh to truly address climate change because as I have added tribal Elder and leader tell me in the past we see climate change affecting our tribal lands on a daily basis we don't have the ability to Simply pick up our lands and move them to a different area of the country now this is where our homes are this is where we've lived for Generations we have to be able to adapt to climate change and we need to be able to start doing it now and we need to start utilizing the tools and the toolkit that are there for us and that includes the development the placement of carbon sequestration projects on their lands so you know we we're a non-profit organization I don't have a big skin in the game except that we're trying to ensure that you know we're addressing climate change but for the revenue generation aspect of it my goal is to ensure that the majority of those revenues go back into the indigenous communities hands so that they can utilize it for the benefit of their Community um and ensuring that the third party verifiers developers Forest inventory Crews that we work with on understand and have the ability and capability to work with tribal Nations because it's not always easy and I want to make sure that those organizations have the best interest of Indian Country at heart at the end of the day so that's a short version of who we are at the national Indian carbon Coalition some of the work that we're doing with indigenous communities in North America um most recently I was a team of one along with Kelly as a consultant and now we do have a new staff member on board Susan wachon who I had worked with when I was with the Ho-Chunk Nation as of two weeks ago so Susan's on the call today learning a lot of things that you guys are hearing about because we have not yet had a chance to meet in person since she got brought on board so it's been Fast and Furious as Kelly mentioned trying to figure all this out as we move along uh not only are we looking on the development of these projects but setting policy not only at the state or federal level but at the United Nations level uh we participate in some uh the voluntary government Market Integrity initiative uh through the expert Advisory Group where participate in some other uh Workforce and task forces that are developing puzzles policy at a worldwide level especially with our engagement with the nature conservancy and their large for-profit organizations um my statement is I believe that indigenous communities can be a leader in this industry because of specifically the United States and Canada we have ownership of our lands and we have large swaths of territories and natural resources that we can protect by developing these projects and push other landowners in our regions to move forward with us as well so with all that being said I appreciate your guys's time today I'm going to pass it over to Kelly to talk specifically about our co-benefits tool how we are developing this tool which would be we believe one of the first to analyze this type of data um and figuring out how we might be able to develop yet an additional Revenue stream by creating a coal benefits tool so Kelly I'll pass it over to you great

as as Brian um reinforced we're we're working at as fast of pace as we can go with extremely complex sorts of projects and that complexity from a carbon sequestration standpoint is only part of that the complexity really begins to grow when we think about what the cold benefit opportunities and really Necessities are around those carbon projects so we think about it from a Paris Accord standpoint uh basically 2030 is tomorrow we are out of time uh as we think about how slowly organizations at every level evolve in order to meet this challenge uh we we are working on a sense of urgency and at the same time against the complexity of the project so one of the grants that uh Brian mentioned with the USDA we received in 2020 to create a web-based tool for co-benefit uh metrics and valuation with the idea that we would ultimately be able to take that co-benefit model turn it into a protocol and be able to commoditize that in the voluntary Market So Not only would there be carbon Revenue but there could be Revenue based on the coal benefits which we typically when you think about it in a hierarchical sense think of it in terms of ecosystem services so water biodiversity air quality that's soil Health Etc but we also talk about it in terms of the social cultural services that are then derived in from a tribal perspective are part and parcel to tribal spiritual fulfillment uh and is and as we think about how the world is recognizing the carbon dilemma that we are now in there is also the recognition and you find it in the in the literature and and presentations across the world we have to solve biodiversity walking hand in hand with those carbon projects so what we are doing is to take the United Nations Global compact for sustainable development goals the 17 sdgs as they are oftentimes referred to and re put it rewriting the sub metrics for each of those goals from a North American tribal perspective when you look at those sdgs they are written in a very qualitative subjective sort of way predominantly and they are and with all good intent I mean they're written from an international perspective and we recognize that from a North American tribal perspective there are we would like to get far more specific in terms of the impact on North American tribes so in rewriting those the metrics for those sdgs and putting real numbers around benchmarking of what happens to water both surface and subsurface what happens to biodiversity both land and and water-based what happens to air quality what happens to soil health and then being able to uh quantify those and eventually put in which is where we are now beginning to put economic values around those Benchmark metrics that can literally enhance the price that we are able to get for the carbon credits so the idea that core a corporation wants to buy those credits and we can present them with uh hard data around the ecosystem and social context of that project which then rolls uh almost seamlessly let's see zero seven done almost seamlessly into their sdg or gri Global reporting initiative metrics that they're reporting in sustainability impact reports on an annual basis that sort of thing so we we spent the first 15 months of that Grant looking under every Rock so to speak to find any existing model that we could build upon rather than recreating the wheel so to speak and through our connections at Arbor Day who had done some initial work in this area but had not taken this to where we were wanting to go uh we were put in contact with a contractual vendor for our GIS model uh that we are now in the past three months uh we are now at the point of getting ready to provide a beta review of those for major stakeholders um in this initial model uh which we're calling the tier one data so it is data that is Reddit yeah not that's not always readily public available but it's it's publicly available data that the tribes would not find of concern from their own confidentiality and sovereignty perspectives putting together the initial tier one model and then are now in active we've already been through negotiations but getting ready now to provide this initial tier one model to the National renewable energy lab commonly referred to as inrel uh in Colorado where there is an existence what is known as a tribal energy Atlas so if you've got an in dig up tribal energy Atlas under inrail you'll you'll see that there's already a very strong database around the energy potential that tribes have around the country and we are getting ready to Now integrate the carbon in a wide variety of the co-benefits into that model over the next several months uh which should we think will be available for some public review in the first quarter of this of this next year we are so it's not just the ecosystem services but from a social cultural perspective it is what ultimately happens not uh just to the water biodiversity air soil but then what happens from a socio-cultural perspective on behalf of the tribe so we look at it one of the easiest ways or one of the most important ways is from a subsistence Hunting Fishing Gathering perspective because as Brian referenced traditional diet is extremely critical to individual and Community Health and those in those tribal communities and so what happens to subsistence Hunting Fishing Gathering as far as populations of critical species both land and water as well as plant medicinal and otherwise uh that the end reinforces traditional diet which reinforces individual and Community Health which impacts Community Health economics in terms of delivery delivery of health services so all of that is being put into sdgs as we have talked about and then we're also using the sdg model as a way as Ryan talked about there are some Corporation corporate buyers who uh we want to make sure that when Brian takes those to a tribal governing board that we can literally demonstrate that they are not only committed to science-based targets and committed to sdgs and or gri which is heavily mapped to that but they can actually that they actually have

um evidence of high performance in that regard so that it's not just fluff so to speak uh then we're creating a tier two model which will be privy only through national Indian carbon Coalition that will be used specifically with those tribes but starts to bring in data uh around each of the tribal reservations who wish to participate that would not be available uh in the public realm but that are critical to the kinds of decisions uh that the tribe needs to to make in this regard

so that would be the short story on that one

and I'm sorry we didn't we don't have any slides of that project yet we are we are keeping that um until we're ready to roll that out on a public basis there's no doubt in our well we know that there are others in the market uh around the world who are pursuing co-benefit metric development and recognize the potential value of that being brought into the marketplace so we're we're being um being fairly we're keeping it under wraps uh until we're ready to roll it out on a on a public basis and so thank you for that Kelly it's been extremely interesting going through that process of development of that coal benefits tool I know we're starting to see more action in this space again what the creation of new marketplaces uh Kelly and I work closely with the organization called B carbon that was developed out of Rice University in Texas we just seen at climate week a few weeks ago Salesforce came out with thorough Marketplace so we're starting to see a lot of different activity a lot of different organizations trying to find their role in the carbon world one of the other things that are starting to come to fruition are the consolidation of many of these different partners we're seeing developers being acquired by organizations that uh are looking at development of of carbon projects for their own benefit we're seeing large private Equity firms buying Brokers and developers to join into one big team um and so we're just trying to figure out in our area what makes the most sense who to partner with where things are going to be trending I think a few months ago there was an article that stated currently in the voluntary carbon Market space that the value of the entire Market is between 20 and 30 million dollars and they're projecting this to be a 30 billion dollar industry by 2030 so there's just so much interest in what's occurring in this Arena um not only in North America but worldwide and then getting indigenous communities again worldwide engaged into these marketplaces because in a lot of different spots in the world looking at Australia with the Aborigines or in New Zealand with the Maori and a lot of work done in South Africa and South America you know there's engagement with with indigenous communities but then not a lot of that Revenue that's being developed out of these projects go into that tribal or indigenous Community um I know there's a project right now that as getting beat up a little bit by one of the Developers because the original credits sold for around four dollars a credit well now the credits are worth again 15 to 18 a credit so that indigenous Community is saying well where's our money because you only gave us four dollars a credit when it was developed five years ago and now it's worth x amount of dollars um and that's one of the things that we're trying to ensure that we engage with an indigenous Community is that we have those conversations on the front end this is how these projects work and again one of the reasons why I like the voluntary Market space um not only do that 40-year duration but there are also some other benefits specifically that you sell your carbon credits on an annual basis so every year credits are being developed for that project and then every year I can go out and find a buyer for those credits as the values of them of those carbon credits increase over time so we believe that this is a long-term strategy for tribes again to protect and preserve their natural resources but also to derive revenue from those resources to do other types of projects we think and believe strongly that the co-benefits is going to be a big opportunity for tribal communities because there are marketplaces that are starting to come online at looking at selling the co-benefits themselves or cold mingling them with the carbon credits to derive an additional value uh Kelly had mentioned Michael Tui we have since created Taiko Tui tribal invested carbon offsets so with the Fond du Lac Panda Lake Superior Chippewa project it's based in the state of Minnesota we're looking for buyers in that region of those carbon credits uh so for one of the buyers is the University of Minnesota itself that's supporting that project but we want to engage with organizations in those Regional areas within that state uh to help support these projects because we all know that if you keep a dollar within that travel Community it's going to recirculate through that uh entire region more often than trying to support a project overseas or in the global self so there's a lot of opportunity there's a lot of different spaces that you can work in right now to try to see what makes the most sense for the communities that you guys are engaged with um but it's ensuring that what we talk about is walking hand in hand with one another we see so many organizations walking on the same road but nobody's working together and that's what we're trying to develop is those close relationships with these other outside organizations like The Nature Conservancy Arbor Day Foundation American Forest American Forest Foundation we're part of the 1t.org stakeholder Council now they're starting to develop a Central American branch of 1t.org org so there's a lot of opportunities that we see worldwide to engage with and participate in these types of conversations because we need everybody on board to figure out how to address these issues I don't necessarily want to say that carbon sequestration is the solution but it is one of the tools in the toolkit and we have to be able to utilize it to the best of our advantage right now so that we can get indigenous communities to participate and have more of these types of conversations we we don't see climate coordinators or sustainable climate managers within indigenous communities currently that's going to be an area that we feel uh that there's going to be a big need here in the coming years to help tribes understand how these how climate changes is affecting their land base and how to better plan for it in the future so again that's some of the short story of the things that Kelly and Susan and I have now been working on over the last few years uh it's been it's just been remarkable from again the original want to shut this whole thing down after six or nine months because I just kept getting yelled at by everybody to where we are now where we're engaging with again organizations like the voluntary carbon Market initiative ecosystem Market Service Place Consortium bipartisan policy Center uh Arbor Day Nature Conservancy what Wildlife font I mean this it's been amazing to see where we've come and then now we're trying to build out this aspect of it what Dr Liang on the educational side and the data collection because this is all a need to make these projects successful I'm engaging the underserved populations the Native American Youth the indigenous Community youth to lead uh in the very near future here after all you guys go through your programs and start working in this industry uh I mean this is where it's it's trending and this is the direction that we've seen it go I've only been doing this for five years Kelly can tell you he did it for 28 years at the University being a former Professor himself to see how far we've come along in the last few years that we've been working together so I appreciate all your time yaco is uh thank you and my traditional language we're here for any questions you can take our email and telephone information if you want to follow up one-on-one afterwards we got we're here to figure out how to solve these issues together

great thank you very much doctors fancy Penn and Kane so we're moving on to q a session so uh if you have questions I already got three questions in Q a button uh so if you click on Q a button you can post your questions there or if you prefer to speak yourself you can raise hand and we can enable your speaker so uh before q a session actually let me quickly remind you that if you like to uh join our white paper out of this webinars uh please click on the survey Link in the chat uh somehow if you don't see the chat message in the chat box let me quickly share my screen and share my email address it's aota purdue.edu so this is the message I sent in the chat box if you don't see it you can send me a message email and I can send you the link so yep uh we would appreciate if you can do that and in let's move on to q a so the first question we got uh to Brian how do you ensure a preliminary funding for the first steps of the project in advance is it external or somehow a part of the tribal budget assignment well originally I made a bunch of promises that I made my boss keep because I said I can't get these projects up off the ground unless we tell the tribes that we can cover the expenses so we found some dollars to be able to do this and then started fundraising off of the back end so far we received uh we're trying to create a five million dollar rebuilding fund and I think I am at about 2.4 million that we've raised over the last 18 months there's been a lot of strong interest in this the beauty of it though is that it's a revolving fund so if a project costs three to three hundred fifty thousand dollars for me to get up off the ground um and once we start selling the credits that funding goes back into that revolving fund to build on the next project um and we use some investment techniques to be able to not to have that money working for us as it's it's being sitting in those accounts so it was a it was concerning for the first few years uh because yeah I asked my boss if we could cover a couple hundred thousand dollars in expenses and he's like if this is what you need to get a project done then just do it and we'll figure it out as we go along that's one of the Beauties about working for a small non-profit um that has the opportunity to be flexible uh and so it's been it's again it's been Fast and Furious and we're we're getting the job done um but sometimes it's been a little bit concerning as to where the dollars are going to come from and now I'm finally at the stage where we can support a dozen to 15 projects at any one point in time

thank you and the next question we got we've been getting a lot of questions from another anonymous attendee do you see currently a momentum that could lead to further collaboration between tribes for inter-tribal big projects again it's a large goal aggregated projects are very difficult to get tribal communities to work together and that's uh it's just due to the history of tribes tribal Partners um even in the state of Wisconsin There's 11 tribal Nations within our state but we're all from different backgrounds so my tribe the United Nation we originated originated in New York state and then we relocated to Canada and then finally in the Green Bay Wisconsin area in which a different tribe gave us our land base that was originally from this area and so sometimes we have those conflicts with one another just because we are not truly on our traditional lands our lands were given to us by another tribe and you have those conflicts that point in time however you know for the greater good those conversations are being had you know what we would like to see eventually is large land-based projects working together with some of these smaller land-based tribes because they don't have the capacity to do so especially what we see in California in Washington state and Oregon in so specifically the Northwest is getting a handful of these smaller land-based tribes to partner with a big tribe that has a large land holding so that everybody can participate in the marketplace and derive some Revenue so I I think it's coming it just takes time as all as always one of my big statements when we're talking with tribal Nations is that we've been here for time on Memorial we're going to be here for Temple Memorial however when we talk to Kelly his statement is you know 2030 is right around the corner we don't have time to wait so we have to balance that uh conundrum when we're developing these projects thank you the next question is for Kelly so how will you deal with possible conflicts between different SVG interests that are difficult to monetize with for example the more clearly monetary of some of these carbon project offsets

I think uh I understand what they're trying to get at I mean the the curb the value of the carbon uh is whatever the market will bear from a capitalistic standpoint the voluntary carbon Market or the the co-benefits as I think this obviously that this is getting at or are they run from easy to monetize to very difficult to monetize uh so for example if we're talking about the impact of a of a forest carbon project or aggressa and uh carbon project on water both surface and subsurface one reference point and it's just one and we're that's what we're now doing is sipping through how are we going to what are the most critical metrics and what are the valuations that we can apply to this based upon defensible uh existing markets and or totally new processes so for example around water if you're familiar with the Bonneville environmental Foundation uh who has been trading water credits for some time now those credits trade at four dollars per uh water Credit in a water credit is basically a savings uh or an impact of one thousand gallons so it's a matter of us uh being able to field measure and verify that what is what's the impact on Surface and subsurface water quantities quality is a whole nother topic um that that we could use as a reference or we could use the BFE uh water credit as as a credit for per thousand gallons here's the positive impact that that horse is having and at four dollars a credit uh if we're adding a hundred thousand gallons to uh subsurface water as a result of that here's what that would be worth in the marketplace from a biodiversity standpoint that's it gets more difficult uh so as we think it I mean it comes down to here in the Upper Midwest the the primary fish species of interest for many of the tribes is walleye so the question becomes what is a walleye worth well depending on who you ask but it has very different connotations in the grocery store here's the per pound value that you would have to pay uh for a walleye from a tribal perspective it goes Way Beyond just uh uh 16 ounces of walleye fillet that that you have for availability because it is so social socially culturally and spiritually attached uh to to the tribe's well-being when when we look at that and one of the areas of spending a lot of time in right now is so if if we're able to regain on uh the benefit of subsistence Hunting Fishing Gathering that the traditional diet within a particular Community dramatically is able to improve and the health of the community is able to improve uh there are ways to back into those numbers based upon how much money is the tribe currently having to spend uh or individual tribal members having to spend in terms of health care as a result of not having had a benefit of traditional diet to suddenly that traditional diet improving their health circumstances which can we can back into on on from an economic standpoint so I to I'm not sure that I'm exactly answering um the question as it's intended but that's where I would start thank you next question is for Brian uh it's coming from russio uh thanks for the presentation I was wondering if you know or contribute to the local communities and Indigenous peoples platform run under the unfccc and she's putting the link here

I think we are a part of that pretty sure that we have provided information and responded to some of the calls out in that platform it's pretty nice yeah we had a meeting a few months ago but again with pandemic everything kind of gets jumbled up um in Zoom calls on a daily basis but it has been it's been Fast and Furious uh making relationships with a lot of different indigenous organizations throughout the world over the last nine to 12 months

thank you that's very exciting the next question from a Mitra can you clarify the third party qualification in context to carbon sequestration after the ground zero monitoring whom to address foreign

so for the third party verification in the development of specifically when we're looking at improved Force management projects through the American carbon registry that third party verifier and we we use Ruby Canyon that's who we've used for our first hand follow projects there are organizations based on the California um and so they are a integral part of the process they analyze all of our data that the developer and the force inventory team have developed to ensure that we are adhering to the protocol requirements under the registry so there are there is going to be discrepancies and the good thing is is that our first inventory team is especially knowledgeable in carbon credit creation and their Forest inventory so we have not seen big discrepancies between the data developed between the forced inventory crew and the third party verifier so my first experience was I went into the woods with these with these teams and it was amazing because the port inventory guide goes out there and they pick random plots and he says okay these are the 15 trees that we that we measured on this plot and the third party verifier team comes in and says all right well I'm going to measure all these trees again and they better be within this uh allowance and it was like point three percent of what the height width diameter of that tree would be and they had to as boots on the ground they had to go through the information right there and figure out if there was any discrepancies and for the most part our forced inventory team data uh was accepted by the third party verifier um again there's an expense to that it takes time but in order to ensure that we are developing these high quality high integrity carbon credits that the registry is going to approve and certify we want to make sure that we're putting this data and this information together to ensure that the marketplace is going to be viable because that's some of the issues that we've seen over time with the original projects generated 10 15 years ago by organizations like The Nature Conservancy are getting beat up now because of how the process was developed back at that point in time and it's ever changing and ever evolving and what we're trying to do is utilize the most stringent standards that we can come up with internally with our organization and with our developer because we don't want to be scrutinized five ten years from now so it's a complex long-term process with many different factors that are taken into consideration as we develop these projects um because the buyers are looking for high integrity high quality projects you're not going to get an organization like Amazon to buy credits from you if you're just having willy-nilly data being developed that are the minimum standards are set by the registries okay thank you I would chime in just really quickly I mean we're seeing the race between the uh very stringent field data collection that Brian's talking about that's that is in parallel with technological development around AI remote sensing Etc in order to uh cut costs and be faster and limit uh the amount of of infield complexity uh but when as Brian's pointing out when Bloomberg News or Wall Street Journal uh comes out with major criticisms of projects calling in to question their integrity that's what is really driving us and B carbon is also the newest non-profit registry in the market that Brian referenced is is basing its future very strongly on uh strong field data collection in order to calibrate those remote Technologies

thank you both uh next question from weiko Liu is that a good idea to use the sequence sequestered carbon biomass as bioenergy

that's it's I guess I would say it's dependent upon the area of the country that you're located um or the world because in the northern United States we have a lot of tribes that are operating on propane and to get off of propane we would recommend using a woody biomass fuel source so what do you pellet creation installation of Woody biomass boiler systems we do have some tribes in northern Minnesota that have implemented those systems to help Heat their tribal Administration buildings their tribal Health buildings their police departments um and their health facilities so you know tribes for the most part have you know a large footprint uh within their community on buildings and utility usage and we want to make sure that we're trying to utilize as few fossil resources as we need to so transitioning to a woody biomass boiler system has been done often obviously we want to look at other types of fuel sources as well you know solar wind geothermal you know tribes are exploring all those opportunities we have another initiative we're trying to get up off the ground which we're developing tribal resiliency hubs utilizing multiple different microgrid systems and and energy development sources so that tribes become energy independent and energy self-sufficient as we see climate change natural disasters affect communities we want to make sure that we are resilient um and goes all the way back to kind of Kelly's thing for a question earlier you know Food Distribution Systems are a concern in Indian country because a lot of tribal nations are in rural areas we we rely upon a lot of processed foods and we want to make sure that we have those healthy organic products in our tribal communities so there's a lot of different avenues that we can utilize in this Revenue that's being generated from the carbon projects looking at resiliency hubs looking at Food Distribution Systems food sovereignty energy independence energy cells efficiency I mean there's a whole gamut of opportunities that tribal Nations can participate into better be prepared for climate change but also to help their tribal communities

thank you moving on to the next question from Mojo it's a little bit long let me read it there has been a lot of skepticism criticism regarding carbon offset one major concern is that carbon credits divert resources from long-term climate actions the other is that the supposedly captured carbon is not actually captured how does your Collision deal with these issues namely that's the Collision reinvest the profits from carbon credits backed into climate adaptive Forest management if yes how much and secondly how does the Coalition ensure that the carbon off is not just greenwashed the carbon is actually captured which she says uh you uh previously answered the second question so if you can address the first question it would be great and that's a very complex question with a lot of different moving pieces and parts in there because obviously we would talk about additionality we've been talking about height developing high quality high integrity carbon credits by adhering to the most stringent standards now that's a question that we engage with tribal leadership staff of membership all the time um to make sure again that these projects are the best interests of the tribes in analyzing the data that makes the most sense again uh like with Fond du Lac 44 000 Acres of forested lands the for-profit developers are like you know you need to enter every single acre of forested lands in the project because we want to make money this is what the for-profit developers are trying to do and I can come behind and be hey let's figure out what makes the most sense for you guys which is why we settled down 8 200 Acres of forested lands so that the tribe is comfortable in enrolling and developing these projects in which they see makes the most sense for them the interesting part for me with Fond du Lac was that wild rice is a very integral part of cultural food diets in northern Minnesota Northern Wisconsin um and so by being able to develop a carbon sequestration project on forested lands of why around their wild wise bed Lakes helps protect that natural resource and that cultural resource for the tribe even this past year the while rice Harvest was considered to be poor because of climate change the the there was not as much rice that was normally generated in past years um and we truly believe that heating of the water the water temperatures are rising it is producing lower yield on those crops so we have to figure out how to protect that land and by keeping our Trees close to the water's edge to provide shade is hopefully going to help with lowering the temperature of that Lake on that the water on that Lake over time so there's multiple again different factors different considerations to be taken in the play when we're trying to develop these projects and then again on the back end avoiding that greenwashing statement you know that's the last thing that we want to be scrutinized in the media from budberg to the guardian to what we just saw with the Wall Street Journal um I know Arbor Day Foundation was just dinged for a project that they created about eight years ago uh you're looking right plus I mean so we're and I think the buyer of those credits was Disney so I mean there's a lot of organizations that are getting raked through the mud right now and this is the this is the gamut that we run when there's these higher of a dollar amounts being developed in the industry that's up and coming like I mentioned 25 million last year to 30 billion in eight years I mean there's going to be a lot of different players that are in this industry that do not have the best of intentions to actually address climate change so we're trying to ensure that the projects that we are developing with the tribes that we engage with are adhering to the most stringent highest standards so that we can go out and talk to those organizations and say work with us we're developing these projects that will not uh be greenwashing that will address true additionality and yeah we want a higher price point for our credits because we're benefiting an indigenous community in your region so it's a it's a heavy lift there's a lot of things that are going on um on trying to figure out what makes the most sense again as an attorney my statement has been we develop a law we create a law and then we amend the law to make sure that it works efficiently and effectively we have not necessarily seen that in the carbon world where we implemented policy the policy has not truly changed that much over time and we're going through that process currently which I do believe that indigenous populations can be a leader in that policy change so long answer to that question because there's a lot to unpack there but we appreciate your guys's time and you know feel free to reach out and have and ask any questions that you want to um and we'll try to respond accordingly because this is it's an interesting topic we're excited to be in this workspace but there's there's uh a lot of movement afoot and a lot of change occurring

thank you uh so we have a few more questions but unfortunately it's about the time uh it has been a very nice talk uh any unanswered questions I recommend you reach out to doctors van State Penn and Kane uh if you have burning questions I think they shared their contact information already so uh thank you very much for joining and I would like to remind that we have the survey in the chat and so if you're interested in the white paper please fill in that survey and I will hand it over to Dr Liang for a closing remark foreign

I would like to thank today's speakers and all the participants who have joined in the webinar today and just wanted to give a quick reminder to all of you present here still as I mentioned earlier today was the beginning of the webinar series and we have the next upcoming webinar on October 25th from 10 to 11 30 am EST and additional information is posted in the website sciencei website and in the Flyers sent to you in your respective emails so stay tuned everyone and please feel free to reach to either of the science I.T members if you have any questions any doubts so thanks everyone and have a good rest of your day thank you