Invest in startups like Terraformation alongside Climate Capital here.
Founders: Yishan Wong
Motto/Mission: Advancing the restoration of native forests by providing teams with the tools, training, and capital they need.
Year Founded: 2020
Stage: Series A
Location: Waimea, Hawaiʻi, USA
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Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
Yishan: Here’s the problem: how do you really solve climate change in the most low-risk, time- and energy-efficient manner? And what does that mean?
Too often, people think of climate change as a social or political problem. And so, they have political solutions for it, like “overthrow capitalism” or “decolonize the Global South.” Sometimes they even turn it into a proxy for their pet political cause. Those things may be worthwhile things to do politically, but climate change is a physical problem - it’s a problem of moving atoms: specifically, moving carbon dioxide from the air back into the land. And while any large-scale human action has political dimensions, the massive scale of the climate problem means that it is wise to first evaluate solutions primarily from the physical dimension.
Hence, the problem becomes “what solution requires the lowest unit amount of energy needed to move carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and back into the land?”
And after a lot of research and math, it turns out that planting a tree - or in aggregate, restoring native forest ecosystems - requires the least amount of energy (which, once humans are doing it, is ultimately expressed in financial resources) and has the benefit of being the least risky and most immediately scalable solution available to us.
So, we built a company to make that happen.
Climate Capital: What are you building?
Yishan: We do a variety of things to accelerate global reforestation. Everything we do is carefully selected to yield secondary consequences that drive forward the mission.
One thing we do is design and build infrastructure - basic things like nurseries and seed banks - and we help other people build and operate them.
Another thing we do is our own project work on the ground - collecting seeds, planting forests, restoring degraded land.
Finally, we run an accelerator program designed to train and equip other groups to do all the above, and in addition to that we help with fundraising.
All these things are designed to build capability, to show other people that it can be done, and inspire them to join us. There is no way a single organization can reforest the world. But it is very possible for thousands of organizations working in parallel, in a decentralized manner, to accomplish that goal!
One important thing I’ve learned is that humans are very memetic: if you do something important and everyone sees you succeed at it, especially if you create a thriving business doing so, they will copy you. We are the only startup in the world that is counting on having copycats.
Climate Capital: What is next?
Yishan: Our accelerator launched in 2022 with an initial cohort of forest teams in biodiversity hotspots in Latin America and Africa. Global reforestation is a collaborative effort, so we’ve worked in partnership with top conservation organizations such as WWF, the Nature Conservancy, and World Vision, receiving over 700 applications to join our accelerator in just over a year. In two years, we have expanded to five cohorts. This shows how many local teams are ready to do this work—but often lack the necessary resources, especially funding.
We’re already seeing the fruits of these efforts with projects like the Regenerative Development of Anlo Wetlands (ReDAW) in Ghana, which is on track to restore 2,300 hectares of native mangroves in a highly biodiverse protected area. This project alone will set in motion the sequestration of 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 expected over the project’s 40-year timeframe. Moving forward, we are looking to onboard an average of at least 12 biodiverse forest projects a year, partnering with community-led forestry teams.
We want to show that real-world progress can be made, starting immediately. A lot of climate plans are about talk and politics. This is a solution that is accessible to everyone, and we seek to be a practical example. We want to show people that whether they join us or strike out on their own, they can get started right away.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
Yishan: We believe that global climate change requires a multidisciplinary approach. It is a complex problem, requiring experts from dozens of fields to come together and collaborate in combining their expertise. We think of our company as a microcosm of that world, so we ourselves are a unique mix of foresters, scientists, technology experts, and creative communicators, working hard to learn how to collaborate well in the service of tackling complex and unprecedented challenges.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
Yishan: In the past, there has been a push to plant large numbers of trees as quickly as possible, which usually means planting monocultures. However, to get the maximum carbon drawdown and plant forests that are resilient to climate change, we need to prioritize biodiverse forest restoration. It’s been challenging for funders and investors in reforestation to shift from a tree-planting focus to biodiverse forests, which, while more effective, are also a longer-term and more expensive investment. We’re educating audiences on the true value of native-species forests over monoculture tree-planting and building the market for biodiverse reforestation projects that have multiple benefits for the community.
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
Yishan: There are a lot of lessons, but I’ll talk about the most subtle one I learned from my time in Silicon Valley working on hyper-scale systems. It is this:
When you are trying to solve a very big problem, you want to use the least amount of technology possible.
If you’re new to the tech world, or you’re outside of it, you may have fallen prey to Silicon Valley marketing, which generally says that our technology and products are magic, and that it will work every time you use it, and it will solve all your problems. Right? The marketing is very good.
Well, that’s not true. I actually work on that stuff, and technology is trash. Half the time, it will break right when you need it to work. Only after long periods of testing, debugging, revision, burn-in time, and stress-testing will you have a product that will always deliver when you need it.
Most people who have never worked on hyper-scale systems think “I will just take this one solution that works great, and I’ll duplicate it a million times!”
In practice, scale inevitably presents its own challenges. There will always be unanticipated issues that arise only upon reaching certain scales. There won’t be enough power. The components interfere with each other. There’s too much networking traffic. You encounter resource delivery or supply chain blockages. Previously acceptable defect rates became unacceptable. Don’t even get me started on the problems that arise because you now need a larger human organization.
Those problems are all solvable, but the key thing is: if the core technology you’re using also isn’t mature and completely reliable, you will be unable to differentiate between which problems are due to your technology being immature, and which problems are arising from usage at scale. This effect compounds exponentially, not arithmetically.
So, if you want to even have a chance at solving a hyperscale problem, you must avoid cutting-edge technology whenever possible and use the most reliable and tested components - this usually means technology that’s 2 or 3 generations removed from the cutting edge. You must be completely sure that your components are going to work exactly the way you expect them to, so that you can focus on solving the problems that come with scale.
And that’s why, given how complicated the climate problem is, our organization is focused on a solution using simple, reliable components - trees and forests - because reaching scale is a big enough challenge.
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
Yishan: Right now, we just need money to do even more. We’ve built an organization that converts money into forests.
We’re looking to connect with corporations, foundations, family offices and anyone who wants to invest in early-stage climate projects through our Accelerator or our portfolio of high-quality biodiverse native forests carbon projects.
In addition to project funding, Terraformation is always looking to form new partnerships with forest creation and restoration teams. We want partners who have scalable restoration models, who are interested in carbon credit financing, have ecosystem restoration experience, and long-term land access.
If you’re interested in supporting native reforestation projects with carbon benefits, please reach out to our Climate Impact team.
If you want to learn more, visit https://www.terraformation.com/!