– our first question: Can you tell us a tried and tested secret recipe? How do you manage your everyday life?
A lot has happened since. In the world and in our lives. Since then, Sonja has founded Alliance4Europe, a platform to surface media manipulation and defend pro-European movements, and Martin has founded SYSTEMIQ to help design and build an economy that is consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Both have grown wonderfully in size and impact so that we have taken new bearings by founding The Landbanking Group. A modern version of a ‘collabora- tive Familienunternehmen’. Sonja and I are founders, the six children are co-invested, supporting and on fire. That may be the answer to your question – getting ourselves behind a mission that is relevant to the world is what kept us going as individuals, as a couple and now as a family.
But now regarding that new project: The Landbanking Group. Please give us an overview!
The Landbanking Group aspires to be the first company where everyone – land stewards, businesses and investors – can open a natural capital account. To that end, polygons of land are assessed based on novel technologies, then verifiable claims are established to turn ecosystem outcomes into tradeable assets. This will allow them to drive land restoration and protection with real financial backing and a long-term outlook, while simultaneously helping turn investment portfolios and companies nature-positive, as well as allowing individuals to contribute to ecosystem restoration. This is critical and overdue: We are experiencing a twin system crisis as climate change and biodiversity loss are reaching critical thresholds. They force us to run two parallel revolutions: We need to rid the industry and energy sector from emissions and waste, and we need to restore nature at a planetary scale. Both are critical and mutually reinforcing. The first is underway, the land-use revolution is further behind whilst being just as critical.
What does this look like in practice? Can you give us an example?
Three examples that keep us busy right now: Example 1, a coffee producer has shifted to agro-forestry systems and can now sell nature-positive coffee where every cup of
coffee sequesters more CO2 than it emits and increases biodiversity. That is an attractive consumer promise, but it requires affordable verification and financing of a land conversion process that takes 5-7 years. Example 2, an asset manager wants to offer assets as long-position in nature- positive outcomes. This improves ESG portfolio ratings and attracts responsible investors. We are helping to design, monitor and trade a forward-product in biodiversity, carbon storage and soil improvements. Finally, example 3, a bank wants to understand the long-term value of land of their farmer clients which in the age of droughts, floods, pests and forest fires is best approximated by its ecosystem vitality. All of these require a modern version of a landbank. That’s what we are trying to build.
Do you have an important message to the alumni?
A WHU education is precious and a real privilege. Less owed to our superior talent but to the benign circumstances into which we were born, a golden age with the dividends of peace, globalization, open-ended resource access and stable political systems. Now that none of these are a given any- more, our WHU diploma is not just a ticket to prosperity, but a reminder that we owe our successors the strive for a world that can offer similar opportunity to incoming generations.
Sonja & Martin, thank you very much for the interview!
