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018 | Why Zoologist Andrew Mitchell Left the Forest to Save the Forest

Episode July 13, 2017

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Today we speak with Andrew Mitchell, founder and director of the Global Canopy Programme (GCP). A zoologist by training, Andrew realized that to save the forest, he had to leave the forest and enter the economic system that was impacting it. So he founded and runs GCP in Oxford and recently became a Senior Adviser to Ecosphere Plus, which is an impact investment group that funnels money into sustainable land-use. I caught up to him in May at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona. I first met Andrew at the 2007 climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, when I was just starting to learn about the impact that forestry and farming had on climate change and how our consumption patterns fit into that. I’d done some research on my own and then plunged into the deep end — jumping from technical panel to technical panel, and sleeping just four hours per night for two weeks.Andrew stood out from most of the other science guys because of his ability to communicate complex issues in simple ways — which is a rare skill. More importantly, his ideas have stood the test of time, while a lot of the simple communicators are oversimplifying or speaking from a position of ideology instead of science.As I mentioned, we spoke at the Innovate4Climate conference in Barcelona.