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<ul><li><keyword id="277759" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gowri-Shankar">Gowri Shankar</keyword> and his wife Sharmila have set up and run two organisations - Kalinga Centre for Rainforest Ecology (KCRE) and a non-profit organisation called <keyword id="2010968" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kalinga-Foundation">Kalinga Foundation</keyword> in <keyword id="839580" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Agumbe">Agumbe</keyword>, <keyword id="6354780" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="Karnataka">Karnataka</keyword>.</li><li>Shankar has rescued close to 400 king cobras and trained around 800 civilians across the country on how to ethically rescue snakes under his brainchild STORM programme.</li><li>While tracking a female cobra, Shankar inadvertently ended up tracking the male who ate the female that had the transmitter in her stomach.</li></ul><br />The idea of coming face-to-face with a tiny garden snake is enough to make most tremble, but for Gowri Shankar, a wildlife biologist with a passionate love for the <keyword id="396734" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="King-Cobra">king cobra</keyword>, it was an incentive to quit his job at IFB, a washing machine company and make a beeline for the rainforests of Agumbe in Karnataka.<br /><br />Shankar’s career trajectory is quite remarkable, mainly because, at that time, very little was known about wildlife conservation 20-25 years back. He quit his cushy job and joined Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), now called Karuna, as an animal inspector to rescue snakes. He moved on to Madras Crocodile Bank as an education officer under the mentorship of the famous Indian herpetologist and wildlife conservationist <keyword id="350280" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Romulus-Whitaker">Romulus Whitaker</keyword>. The calling from Agumbe came when Whitaker wanted to set up a field station there and needed Shankar to help him set up the field station and work with wild king cobras. He is now pursuing a PhD on king cobras from North Orissa University.<br /> <br />Gowri Shankar and his wife Sharmila have now set up and run two organisations - Kalinga Centre for Rainforest Ecology (KCRE) and a non-profit organisation called Kalinga Foundation. Anyone from a software engineer to a photographer or even an organic farmer can join the workshops held at KCRE and learn about and get up close and personal with the wildlife marvels of the rainforest. And the Kalinga Foundation has been set up as a research station primarily for science students where they can learn on-field techniques to make them better scientists.<br /><br />                                                  <div type="image" title="A STORM Chennai workshop" msid="81480037" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;A STORM Chennai workshop&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br /><em>Edited excerpts of Business Insider’s conversation with Shankar follow:<br /></em><br /><strong>What is it that fascinates you about the king cobra?<br /></strong><br />When I was young, I used to drop my sister at her college and go straight to <keyword id="130929" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bannerghatta-Biological-Park">Bannerghatta Biological Park</keyword>, Bengaluru, just to see the snakes. And that’s where I saw the king cobra for the first time in the enclosure. I think they’re beautiful, really massive snakes. I was so surprised to see such an enormous snake because earlier, I had caught cobras, rat snakes, and checkered keelback, and they all looked so tiny in front of a king cobra. I just fell in love with the animal.<br /><br /><strong>Tell us about your first experience with rescuing cobras and your interaction with the villagers in Agumbe?<br /></strong><br />When we started working in Agumbe, the villagers were understandably surprised to see a stranger from the city with a ponytail riding a Royal Enfield  Bullet in the village. But I started interacting with them. I asked them to let me know when they spotted a king cobra around and to call me if they needed any help. That’s how it started, and to date, I have rescued close to 400 king cobras.<br /><br />Villagers, particularly in and around  Agumbe, are very, very patient towards king cobras. King cobras and common cobras, in general, are considered a god and are worshipped. They’ll never kill or try to disturb the snake. That is the most significant advantage we had. <br /><br /><strong>What have you learned from the villagers about snakes? <br /></strong><br />People in the Malenadu region of Karnataka, where Agumbe is situated, have a lot of knowledge, particularly on king cobras. So, when I started working there and started interacting with the people, they told me many interesting facts like king cobras feed on other snakes and are even cannibalistic and feed on other king cobras, which was quite surprising. We already knew that this happened in captivity, but it was the villagers who gave us first-hand information that cannibalism exists among king cobras in the wild too. <br /><br />Also, the king cobra is the only species that builds a nest out of over 3000 species of snakes across the world. The villagers told us how they build the nest. In 2005 or so, it was thanks to a villager that we spotted our first king cobra nest. <br /><br />                                                  <div type="Youtube" id="WbfLC0C23gM" title="STORM (Scientific Training on Reptile Management) Chennai Edition" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WbfLC0C23gM/mqdefault.jpg"></div><br /><strong>Why don’t you tell us a little more about STORM? <br /></strong><br />In the past decade or so, people have been following snake rescuers on television or YouTube. And without any training or practice, they started attempting to capture snakes, inevitably getting bitten and sometimes also dying. So that’s when I conceived Scientific Training on Reptile Management (STORM) -  a comprehensive training program to teach people the right way to capture and rescue snakes. Now close to 800 people across the country are trained under STORM, apart from the Forest Department, Coast Guard, Fire Department, and Police Department. <br /><br /><strong>How many times has a snake bitten you?<br /></strong><br />I've been bitten by numerous non-venomous snakes that don’t count; otherwise, I've been bitten by three venomous snakes - a pit viper, a cobra, but my worst bite was from a king cobra. I’m one of the few guys in the world who has been bitten by a king cobra and survived. <br /><br /><strong>Did you have the anti-venom?<br /></strong><br />No, that’s the thing. We don’t have anti-venom for the king cobra, so the chances of dying from a bite are relatively high. But I think I survived because king cobras are one of the best snakes, and they don’t intend to bite you. They give you enough warnings. They tell you, ‘look, I don’t want to bite you. I can kill you in 20 minutes, but that’s not my plan’, but they don’t know what I’m doing, right? I’m trying to rescue it, but it doesn’t understand that. So this was an accident. Luckily I didn’t give him a chance to inject or pump enough venom into my hand, and I reacted fast. There was swelling in 20 minutes. I was hospitalised for three days. I almost died, but luckily I survived thanks to that king cobra who didn’t mean to bite me and didn’t inject its entire venom — that’s like 5ml or 6ml of venom — into me. He was kind enough just to give me a little dose.<br /><br />                                                  <div type="image" title="Rescue operation underway" msid="81480056" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Rescue operation underway&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br /><strong>Tell us a little bit about this radio telemetry study that you have conducted on king cobras.<br /></strong><br />Radio telemetry was initiated in 2008 by Mr.Whitaker and the team. This was the first time ever radio telemetry (a tool to track the movement and behaviour of animals) was done on a king cobra right here in the Western Ghats in Karnataka. So we were all very excited, but we didn’t know what to expect.<br /><br />Unfortunately, within 30 days, our female king cobra was eaten by a male king cobra, which is quite rare, and the locals helped me gather that information — we knew king cobras fed on other snakes, but this was a male feeding on the female after mating with her.<br /><br />Fascinatingly enough, though we were tracking the female, we ended up tracking the male instead, who had the female in his stomach because the transmitter was in her stomach.<br /><br />Another interesting thing about this male king cobra was that it was a translocated one that had moved 15 or 20 kilometres to see what happens if they are moved from their home. So this guy wanted to go back to his home. He travelled a lot, and we think we figured out for the first time that a king cobra can travel up to eight kilometres in one day.<br /><br /><strong>Are they territorial?<br /></strong><br />We are yet to figure that out, but we think they’re not territorial unless it’s a breeding season. If there’s a female, the male will guard her because he wants to mate with her. <br /><br /><strong>When you were facing off with the king cobra, have you quietly wished you were sitting safely in that washing machine company?<br /></strong><br />Not for a single second. You won’t believe it, I was in the hospital for three days after having survived that bite, and my hand was still swollen, and I said I want to go home. And while I was heading back to my field station, I received a rescue call. With my swollen hand, I went straight to rescue king cobra before. Till today, I will sit in front of a king cobra the whole day without getting bored. <br /><br />SEE ALSO: <br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/tata-tryst-with-e-grocery-starts-with-a-billion-dollar-acquisition-of-bigbasket-heres-why-it-could-be-a-sweet-deal-for-both/articleshow/81478849.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">Tata’s tryst with e-grocery starts with a billion dollar acquisition of BigBasket – here’s why it could be a sweet deal for both</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/kalyan-jewellers-will-be-going-up-against-titan-but-remains-sceptical-jewellery-business-can-ever-fully-go-online/articleshow/81478749.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">Kalyan Jewellers will be going up against Titan but remains sceptical jewellery business can ever fully go online</a><br />

This king cobra researcher is happy to endure a lethal bite or two for the sake of his passion

Climate Action 15: 2024's top global innovators powering green solutions

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/12-amazing-archaeological-discoveries-of-2022-that-explored-humanitys-past-2022-12">Archeologists</a> beam lasers from the sky to unearth ancient settlements hiding in plain sight.</li><li>Lidar uses laser pulses to penetrate dense vegetation, revealing human-built structures underneath.</li></ul><p>In recent years, archaeologists have turned to lasers in order to unearth previously hidden ancient civilizations.</p><p>A laser technology<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-lidar"> known as lidar</a> — short for<a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/lidar.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Light Detection and Ranging</a> — beams tens of thousands of laser pulses per second from planes or helicopters at the ground below, penetrating through thick, deep forest canopy. That provides researchers with data to create three-dimensional maps by digitally removing the vegetation, revealing human-built structures underneath.</p><p>Researchers have found hundreds of structures in areas <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/08/01/1191071151/maya-city-ocomtun-lasers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">once thought</a> too inhospitable for human habitation. The aerial views help them understand how far these cities and villages stretched, which archaeologists <a href="https://archive.archaeology.org/1007/etc/caracol.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found difficult</a> to map before lidar. </p><p>From a Maya city to complex villages deep in the<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/graph-shows-deforestation-the-amazon-bolsonaro-vs-lula-2022-10"> Brazilian Amazon</a>, here are six previously unknown civilizations that were discovered through state-of-the-art lidar technology.</p><h2>Maya pyramidal structures in the Yucatán Peninsula</h2><div type="image" title="A gray lidar image of an ancient Maya site archaeologists named Ocomtún on the Yucatán Peninsula" height="673" width="898" msid="103294639" hostid="261" sizebytes="94368"></div><p>About 40 miles inside the dense vegetation of the Balamkú ecological reserve on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, researchers found the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/archaeologists-found-remains-ancient-mayan-village-mexico-2023-6">remains of a Maya city</a>. </p><p>Based on pottery archaeologists found at the site, Maya people probably inhabited the city between 600 and 800 CE and perhaps earlier. Over about 123 acres, the city center contained 50-foot pyramidal structures, plazas, stone columns, and altars, according to the <a href="https://inah.gob.mx/boletines/descubren-antigua-ciudad-maya-campeche-la-nombran-ocomtun-columna-de-piedra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2023 study</a>.  </p><p>"Architecturally, it was truly massive," archaeologist Ivan Šprajc told the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230704-ocomtn-a-long-lost-maya-city-that-was-just-discovered" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BBC</a>. "So, it's clear this must have been a politically important center."</p><p>An estimated 6 to 8 million Maya people live throughout the Americas. Thus, the culture never disappeared, but Šprajc said such archaeological finds can help scientists understand what led to "a drastic demographic decline" by the 10th century. </p><h2><strong>A hidden 2,000-year-old Maya civilization in northern Guatemala</strong></h2><div type="image" title="Example of structures found with LiDAR." height="2590" width="1650" msid="96666798" hostid="261"></div><p>Using laser pulses, researchers detected a 2,000-year-old Maya civilization in the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin region of northern Guatemala with nearly 1,000 archaeological sites.</p><p>From their topographical maps of the area, they determined that the civilization consisted of more than 417 cities, towns, and villages spread across 650 square miles. They published their findings in 2022 in the journal<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ancient-mesoamerica/article/lidar-analyses-in-the-contiguous-miradorcalakmul-karst-basin-guatemala-an-introduction-to-new-perspectives-on-regional-early-maya-socioeconomic-and-political-organization/31075DFA8ADBAA5E7C7320CA6DB93E5E" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Ancient Mesoamerica</a>.</p><p>The settlement had dozens of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zq6svcw/articles/zbqyy4j" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ball courts</a> and 110 combined miles of elevated limestone-and-clay causeways that allowed ancient Mayas to travel over wetlands and between different sites. </p><p>"They're the world's first superhighway system that we have," Richard Hansen, the study's lead author, told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/world/maya-civilization-causeways-lidar-discovery-scn/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN</a>.</p><h2><strong>Nearly 500 long-lost Maya and Olmec ceremonial sites in Mexico</strong></h2><h2><div type="image" title="A map and lidar images of nearly 500 ceremonial complexes in the Olmec and Maya regions of Mexico." height="750" width="1000" msid="103294640" hostid="261" sizebytes="63378"></div></h2><p>In 2021, researchers published a <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=66d193c76bdcd0a95b51fd95dddfbb6c43fd3e064e2e216d6efb8d1b483e7be9&amp;postID=63adde6e722a682d406b08c8&amp;postSlug=ancient-civilizations-that-were-hiding-in-plain-sight-2023-1&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41562-021-01218-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> detailing how they had <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/laser-mapping-technology-uncovers-lost-mesoamerican-ruins-mexico-2021-10">used lidar to uncover</a> 478 Mesoamerican sites they estimated were between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.</p><p>The sites are spread across a 32,800-square-mile area in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz, where the Olmec and Maya civilizations flourished.</p><p>"It was unthinkable to study an area this large until a few years ago," Takeshi Inomata, an anthropologist with the University of Arizona who co-authored the study, said <a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-10-ancient-ceremonial-sites-southern-mexico.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in a press release</a> at the time.</p><p>The finding helps archeologists connect the two cultures. The dates of construction and similarity of certain structures suggest that an Olmec site, San Lorenzo, provided inspiration for some Maya monuments.   </p><h2><strong>61,480 previously unknown structures hidden under the dense Guatemalan jungle</strong></h2><div type="image" title="LiDAR laser technology yielded a remarkable discovery in Guatemala’s forest: ancient cities with more than 60,000 structures." height="533" width="800" msid="96666802" hostid="261"></div><p>In<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau0137" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> 2018</a>, researchers explained how they used laser technology to map Petén, Guatemala, where Maya people once lived.</p><p>They discovered 61,480 long-lost roads, foundations for houses, military fortifications, and elevated causeways. They all date back to 650 and 800 CE, during the<a href="https://www.marc.ucsb.edu/research/maya/ancient-maya-civilization/classic-period" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> late Classic period</a>. </p><p>The researchers estimate as many as 11 million people could have lived in the interconnected cities.  </p><p>"Seen as a whole, terraces and irrigation channels, reservoirs, fortifications, and causeways reveal an astonishing amount of land modification done by the Maya over their entire landscape on a scale previously unimaginable," Francisco Estrada-Belli, an anthropologist at Tulane University and co-author of the study, said in a<a href="https://news.tulane.edu/pr/unprecedented-study-confirms-massive-scale-lowland-maya-civilization" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> press release</a>.</p><h2><strong>81 earthworks, including fortified villages and roads, deep in the Amazon rainforest</strong></h2><p><strong></strong></p><div type="image" title="amazon mound" height="1080" width="1920" msid="96666804" hostid="261"></div><p>In Brazil's Mato Grasso region, <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=d316bcb5e97235177320dfb7d3db009fc10f446a819db007d2f8cf84a9586e02&amp;postID=63adde6e722a682d406b08c8&amp;postSlug=ancient-civilizations-that-were-hiding-in-plain-sight-2023-1&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41467-018-03510-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">archaeologists using</a> lidar found<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/archaeologists-found-previously-undiscovered-settlements-in-the-amazon-2018-3"> evidence</a> of 24 sites with 81 earthworks, which included interconnected roads and fortified villages built on mounds.</p><p>They believe the structures may have supported a complex civilization with up to 1 million people between the years 1250 and 1500 CE.</p><p>Some of the geoglyphs, as archaeologists call the sites carved into the Earth, were up to a quarter of a mile across.</p><p>Hundreds more sites may be hidden in the jungle in a "continuous string of settlements," Jonas Gregorio de Souza, the paper's lead author, told<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/satellites-reveal-ancient-civilization-beneath-the-amazon-rainforest-1522162800" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> The Wall Street Journal</a> in 2018.</p><p>"These people were combining small-scale agriculture with management of useful tree species," de Souza told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/03/27/archaeologists-discover-81-ancient-settlements-in-the-amazon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Washington Post</a>. "So it was more a sustainable kind of land use" than current land-clearing practices.</p><h2><strong>A wide-ranging ancient civilization buried in the Bolivian Amazon </strong></h2><div type="image" title="This screenshot from a lidar-based 3-D animation shows the layout of Cotoca, a primary site in an ancient Amazonian urban network. Raised causeways radiate in different directions from platform mounds, pyramids and other structures." height="810" width="1440" msid="96666805" hostid="261"></div><p>In what is now Bolivia, lidar revealed the hidden ruins of 26 Indigenous settlement sites, 11 of which were new discoveries, that thrived in the Amazon rainforest more than 600 years ago.</p><p>"Our results put to rest arguments that western Amazonia was sparsely populated in pre-Hispanic times," researchers wrote in the journal<a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=cf791a5f8faa2e3a25d1da877bdbebc505f20432b9010eb15dd40f00e875cbf7&amp;postID=63adde6e722a682d406b08c8&amp;postSlug=ancient-civilizations-that-were-hiding-in-plain-sight-2023-1&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41586-022-04780-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Nature</a>.</p><p>People from the Casarabe Culture created canals, stepped platform buildings, and 72-foot conical pyramids, which occupied an area of approximately 1,700 square miles between 500 and 1,400 CE. The lidar maps helped the researchers see how the spread-out settlements fit together.</p><p>Heiko Prümers, a co-author of the study, theorized that the Casarabe may have left the settlement due to lack of rainfall. "We know that there were severe droughts in the Amazon regions several times in history," he told <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lost-cities-of-the-amazon-discovered-from-the-air-180980142/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Smithsonian Magazine</a> in 2022. "That might have happened to this culture as well." </p>

Lasers revealed 6 ancient civilizations that were hiding in plain sight

For YPO member Subra Eassuwaren, CEO of tea and spice export company Eswaran Brothers Exports (Pvt) Ltd, humble beginnings are not just myth; they are part of his legacy.<br />
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The company was founded in 1943 by Eassuwaren’s grandfather, VTV Deivanayagam Pillai. Born in 1919 in South India, VTV was orphaned at the age of 12, moved to (then) colonial Ceylon, began working as a shop boy and through hard work and a dedication to spirituality, became the leader of one of the most respected trading houses in Sri Lanka. This family lineage of dedication to work and higher self is at the center of what makes the company successful today.<br />
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“In 2007 when we were trying to map out the core values and principles of our company, we talked about how my grandfather practiced corporate social responsibility. At the time, it wasn’t going into annual reports – looking after people around you was just what you did,” says Eassuwaren, who joined the YPO Colombo Chapter in the South Asia Region in 2013.<br />
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“We decided to make this one of our key selling points and build on the idea of responsibility which led to us to becoming the most sustainable tea company in the world.”<br />
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Most tea plantations are monocultures, the cultivation or growth of a single crop or organism. Monocultures can take a toll on the earth, upsetting the local ecological balance by eradicating the natural plants and animals, which feed each other the chemicals and minerals required to thrive. Eliminating this natural cycle from an ecosystem requires artificial fertilizers, used to boost crop yields at a great expense to local biodiversity.<br />
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In direct opposition to this are Eswaran’s plantations, with their commitment to protecting the environment for generations to come through a dedication to ecological design, engineering and integrated water resources management.<br />
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In order to achieve this, the company set themselves targets to ensure they were improving their indicator species; the more types of plants flourishing, the better likelihood of attracting a variety of butterflies. If frogs are alive and well in the soil, it means the water is relatively clean, and the more dragonflies in the ecosystem, the better it is doing.<br />
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Eswaran’s recent efforts to “water footprint” their tea products led them to focus sustainability endeavors not just on operational water usage, but water usage throughout the supply chain. Eswaran Brothers studied their grey water – the volume of water required to dilute pollution, green water – the amount of water incorporated into the product, and blue water – surface water or water taken from ground in order to mitigate environmental impact.<br />
 <br /> Eswaran Brothers achieved a major milestone in December 2010, when they became one of the first tea companies globally, and the first company in Sri Lanka, to achieve CarbonNeutral certification for their product, <keyword id="3168322" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="tea-so-tea">Tea so Tea</keyword>. A Fair Trade, <keyword id="3168323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="carbon-positive-tea">carbon positive tea</keyword>, made as sustainable as possible by using only biodegradable materials and inks, offsets your personal footprint with every pack you buy.<br />
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“We call it ‘cradle to grave,’” says Eassuwaren. “The tea leaf is plucked, we make it, package it, ship it and place it on a shelf where somebody buys it, makes the tea then throws it away where it decomposes and creates carbon dioxide.”<br />
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Eswaran Brothers have partnered with the Conservation Carbon Company and Rainforests Rescue International to institute the Hiniduma Conservation Carbon Programme, which will grow endemic forest trees to protect against fragmentation, eventually reversing the process of centuries of deforestation.<br />
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“We studied a handful of farmers’ lands and then gave them trees to plant, both cash crops and forest trees. In order to qualify for the program the farmers had to come to training with us where they learned the benefits of organic farming, and the importance of biodiversity.”<br />
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Eswaran Brothers’ dedication to impact the environment has led to the creation of a product that, itself, speaks the language of positivity.<br />
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“Tea is a plant that only benefits the people and the environment around it,” says Eassuwaren.<br />
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The seven principles Eswaran Brothers base their business on, read simply enough:<br />
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Determination<br />
Hard Work<br />
Honesty<br />
Courage<br />
Love<br />
Patience<br />
Spirituality<br />
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One would be hard-pressed to find many businesses that not only adhere to these doctrines, but create a product that steeps their customers in them as well.<br />
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Winner of the Junior Chamber International 10 outstanding young Sri Lankans of 2011 award for the environment, the Eswaran Brothers were the recipients of the 2012 Responsible Business category of the Social Pioneer awards organized by the United Nations, Global Compact and were highly commended in the prestigious United Kingdom Energy and Environment Awards.<br />
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“There’s a long way to go and we are bumping and learning along the path,” says Eassuwaren. “But the idea is to create something that only does good.”<br />
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(The author of this article is Deborah Stoll from Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). This article first appeared in Impact Insights, the newsletter of YPO’s Social Engagement Network that connects more than 4,500 like-minded members around philanthropic issues.)<br />

Beyond Organic: The Business of Fair Trade, Carbon Negative Teas

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Carnegie Peru carbon mapping project</span></p><p class="caption">The Carnegie Airborne Observatory and crew above a remote section of the Peruvian Amazon, a place of untold carbon stocks and biological diversity.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Stanford University scientists have produced the first-ever high-resolution carbon geography of Peru, a country whose tropical forests are among the world's most vital in terms of mitigating the global impact of climate change.</p>
<p>Released July 29, the 69-page <a href="http://cao.stanford.edu/?page=home">report </a>to Peru's Ministry of the Environment could become a tool itself to battle rising temperatures, offering unprecedented data for the creation of carbon offset programs. It is complete with vivid 3-D maps that pinpoint with a high degree of certainty the carbon density of Peru's vast and varied landscape, from its western deserts and savannas, to its lowland forests, to its soaring Andean peaks, to its lush eastern Amazon rainforests.</p>
<p>The maps also reveal in sharp detail what's missing: large swaths of once carbon-laden jungles now stripped bare by the extraction industry. Many of Peru's gold, copper and silver mines operate legally; many of them do not. Environmental <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gold-mining-destroying-peruvian-amazon-2013-10">devastation</a> is often the result.</p>
<h2>A country-wide survey</h2>
<p>The report represents two years of intensive aerial surveying by Greg Asner, of Stanford University, and his team which operates the <a href="http://cao.stanford.edu/?page=cao_systems">Carnegie Airborne Observatory</a>.</p>
<p>The observatory is actually a twin-engine turboprop Dornier 228 filled with more than $10 million in the latest short-wave and infrared sensors. Those tools can scan up to 100,000 hectares (240,000 acres) a day at a density of just one hectare (2.4 acres). At that level of precision, the data reveal not only the height of the trees below, but also the individual leaves on each tree as well as the chemical activity in all those leaves.</p>
<p>Asner's team sampled 16 million acres of ecosystems within Peru's 320-million total acreage. Those samples were scaled up to a country-wide map using field plots and existing satellite imagery. In the map below, the colors indicate how much carbon is stored above ground. The scale goes from blue - zero carbon -to dark red in the highest areas.</p>
<p>The report found, for example, that 53 percent of all Peruvian carbon is stored in one large Amazonian region - Loreto, followed by Ucayali and Madre de Dios (26 percent combined). Here's what that looks like:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Carnegie Peru carbon mapping project</span></p><p class="caption">The first high-resolution map of the above-ground carbon geography of Peru.  This map reveals both the natural controls, such as precipitation, temperature and geology, and where the carbon is stored in every hectare of the country.  It also shows the negative effects of human activities, especially deforestation for gold, oil palm, fossil fuel extraction, cattle ranching and agriculture, on the amount of carbon stored within the country.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Carbon pockets aren't the only thing this map showed. Illegal gold mining is one of the most destructive forces in tropical regions. In this 3-D imaging example from the map, vast landscapes devastated by gold miners (the blue swatches) leave almost no forest in their wake:<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Carnegie Peru carbon mapping project</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The map is so detailed it can even see individual farms. The Carnegie Airborne Observatory imaged this fragmented Amazonian landscape. The largest trees, and thus the highest carbon stocks, are shown in red. Blue areas are cattle pastures harboring extremely low carbon stocks, with the small exception of the individual, smaller trees remaining in the clearings. You can see how big of an impact these cattle pastures can have on the environment:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image"><p class="source"><span>Carnegie Peru carbon mapping project</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<h2>Why make a map?</h2>
<p>Asner's report emphasizes its underlying motivation and connection to climate-change mitigation: if global markets are going to value carbon at a competitive rate as an incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, countries like Peru will need to know with great certainty how much carbon their forests contain when it comes to negotiating prices for carbon offsets.</p>
<p>"Peru's minister of the environment can make very good use of this information," says <a href="http://www.bluemoonfund.org/who-we-are/staff/enrique-ortiz/">Enrique Ortiz</a>, one of Peru's leading conservationists and a senior program officer with the Blue Moon Fund in Washington, D.C., which supports global environmental projects. "It is a good proxy for creating mechanisms to reward good action, like which areas need to be protected and how to manage carbon trade. It also shows us where illegal mining is taking place, and that's important, too."</p>
<p>Asner and his Carnegie scientists used the airplane observatory to map Panama's carbon stock a year ago. But he says his maps of Peru are far larger and more accurate with potentially a broader impact.</p>
<p>"These maps suddenly place Peru at the very forefront of the challenge to combat climate change," says Asner, whose 2013 <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/greg_asner_ecology_from_the_air#t-479638">TED talk</a> on his aerial research has 522,000 views. "It's a sea change in capabilities. It will enable the country to use its carbon stock as a tool for engaging the international community to slow the rate of deforestation and forest degradation through conservation."</p>
<h3>The importance of Peru</h3>
<p>When it comes to the global environment, it is difficult to overstate Peru's importance. Its Amazon jungles are deemed among the most biodiverse on earth in terms of tree, plant, animal and bird species. It also has the world's fourth-largest store of tropical forests, behind only neighboring Brazil, the Congo and Indonesia. Critically, tropical forests soak up and store carbon emissions from industrialized countries. In doing so, they are an irreplaceable line of defense in slowing the rate of rising temperatures due to global warming.</p>
<p>The Carnegie report also comes at a critical time for Peru. While still largely poor, <a href="http://www.andina.com.pe/Ingles/noticia-wb-perus-economy-stands-as-top-performer-in-latam-515920.aspx">Peru's economy</a> is the fastest-growing in Latin America in part because of the prevalence of mining for minerals and drilling for fossil fuels. Those industries, which flourish as trees fall, helped put Peru at the top of <a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0626-amazon-deforestation.html">another list</a> - a leader among Amazonian countries in deforestation rates. The country lost some 400,000 acres in 2012.</p>
<p>To keep its economic growth rolling, the Peruvian Congress stunned environmentalists by <a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/new-peru-law-weakens-environmental-safeguards/2014/07/20/174b2448-0fc3-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d_story.html">passing a law</a> on July 11 that reduces the authority of its Ministry of the Environment. The new laws could make it easier for mining and drilling activities to increase in forested lands, and make it more difficult to add additional protected land to Peru's large inventory.</p>
<p>"Despite making good steps in regards to both economic growth and environmental protections over the last 20 years, these new laws show a lack of consistency and add doubt regarding the direction we are going," says Pedro Solano, director of the influential <a href="http://www.spda.org.pe/ver-directorio.php?id=3">Peruvian Society for Environmental Law</a> in Lima. "Our environmental policy is still strong, but now <keyword id="6358883" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Politics">politics</keyword> will dictate more decisions."</p>
<p>All this comes as Lima is preparing to host in December the 20th annual Conference of the Parties <a href="http://www.climate-leaders.org/climate-change-resources/india-at-cop-15/unfccc-cop">(COP)</a> of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The COP culminates in Paris in 2016 when the group will seek binding international agreements akin to the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997.</p>
<p>In Lima, policy makers at the COP will negotiate amid the pressure of another looming deadline - the scientific community's consensus view that widespread efforts to reduce carbon emissions must be implemented in the next 10 years to limit predicted global temperature increases to around 3 degrees F. If not, far worse droughts, hurricanes and sea-level rises than we're already experiencing are anticipated in the next 50 to 75 years.</p>
<p>In such a context, the Peruvian carbon maps created by Asner and his team take on a heightened importance. He says the maps can help place a competitive value on carbon, which he believes is the best, and possibly only, hope to keep large tracts of tropical forests intact.</p>
<p>"I'm going to the COP as a delegate and I'm going to give these maps to everyone I can," Asner says. "The negotiators need to see the truth about what they have to lose and what they have to gain."</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Tropical forests: stand or fall?</h3>
<p>As I wrote for National Geographic <a href="http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/14/the-promise-of-redd-giving-tropical-countries-a-choice-in-whether-to-decimate-their-forests/">NewsWatch</a>, one of the cruel ironies of climate change is that countries that ring the equator - most of them poor and eager to develop - possess a valuable asset in fighting rising temperatures that can they only monetize if they destroy it: their tropical forests.</p>
<p>These lush, dense woodlands are incomparably important to our lives on earth. They pull greenhouse gases from the air and store them, thus slowing the rate of global warming. They play a powerful role in the water cycle, thus creating clouds that make weather around the world. They harbor and sustain the majority of the earth's biodiversity, thus providing shelter and habitats to countless species of wildlife and plantlife. And they provide these vital ecological services to all of us on the planet for free.</p>
<p>But these forests routinely sit atop lucrative troves of fossil fuels or minerals. Or they cover land that when cleared can be used for cattle ranching and palm-oil farming. Often, the governments in these countries, staring at high poverty and unemployment rates, chose revenue over conservation.</p>
<p>When that happens, a double whammy occurs. What was once a carbon sponge becomes a sieve. When trees fall, they release their carbon. Global deforestation contributes an estimated 17 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, remarkably on par with the combined fuel burned in cars, trucks, trains and airplanes, according to the <a href="http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html">EPA</a>.</p>
<h2>Converting carbon to dollars</h2>
<p>Asner believes that the high-resolution carbon maps he is producing can play a crucial role in changing the economic dynamic in tropical countries. If you know how much carbon is locked up in your forests and vegetation - in Peru's case, his report estimates the amount at 6.92 billion metric tons - you can better place a value on it. And choose conservation over development.</p>
<p>"All the data Greg (Asner) is generating is being converted into knowledge about the carbon cycle," says <a href="http://college.wfu.edu/biology/people/faculty/silman/">Miles Silman</a> a tropical biologist at Wake Forest University who contributed field data to Asner's report. "And that knowledge is being converted into how we think about remediating global climate change. We do that by converting carbon into dollars. We allow countries and enterprises to make an investment or get paid to keep forests standing."</p>
<p>Asner picks up the thread: "The truth is, carbon is now worth about $6 a ton on the voluntary market. That's pretty low. It's worth so little because there is a huge uncertainty based on where the carbon is and how much is there. By offering really precise details about the amount of carbon in Peru and where it's located, it has a chance of being worth a lot more."</p>
<p>Economists speculate that when carbon returns to or exceeds its <a href="http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/3350123/Asset-Management-Macro/Carbon-Markets-Keep-Multiplying-but-Do-They-Work.html#.U9KDYfk7uSo">peak value</a> in 2006 of $32 a ton, and when carbon offset policies take hold as a vital international strategy in battling climate change, countries like Peru will be rewarded for protecting their forests instead of allowing them to be plowed under.</p>
<p>But such international strategies involving carbon offsets are far from reality. Among the best hopes appears to be REDD, the slow-moving, decade-old U.N. program of "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation."</p>
<p>There is both a supply and demand side to REDD. On the supply side, countries like Peru must show how much area they are saving from deforestation and prove that the land will remain protected. On the demand side, industrialized countries that exceed their annual agreed-upon carbon emissions must be ready to pay countries like Peru for the land it's preserving in return for carbon offset credits.</p>
<p>But the financing mechanisms and national emissions caps to make REDD work do not exist.</p>
<p>"We want to push this ahead in Lima (at the COP) this year and try to get a (global financing and emissions) agreement next year in Paris," says <a href="http://www.edf.org/people/chris-meyer">Chris Meyer</a>, a expert on REDD policy with the Environmental Defense Fund. "To do this, we need to improve our ability to measure carbon stocks and density, and Asner is at the forefront of <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> in creating new technologies to provide these measurements."</p>
<h3>Will it help?</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.whrc.org/about/cvs/abaccini.html">Alessandro Baccini</a>, a remote sensing scientist with Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, says that while national carbon maps have been produced before, the technology used by Asner and the Carnegie team allows for greater precision and accuracy.</p>
<p>"What is really important is the level of information that a country like Peru now has access to," Baccini says. "It's very enabling. It helps Peru really understand its landscape and understand the very best data out there for policy purposes - if they want to use it."</p>
<p>Ideally, Peru will use these maps to steer development and extraction away from areas of highest carbon density; ideally, it will be rewarded by the industrialized world with carbon offset investments for doing so. Ideally, Asner's high-resolution maps in Peru - which cost $1.2 million in private funding to produce - will be replicated in other countries dense with carbon-bearing tropical forests to help bolster the global carbon market and conserve more tropical forests..</p>
<p>"What's important now is to ask: what will they do with it?" Baccini says. "Will it change the game? Will it open the eyes of the (Peruvian) government so that they say, "Gee, we can't cut down these forests, look at how much carbon we're losing."? We'll see."</p>
<p><em>Justin Catanoso is an environmental writer based in Greensboro, N.C. His reporting is sponsored by the <a href="http://tzercenter.org/project/south-america-peru-global-warming-rainforest-cloud-forest-ecosystem-research-greenhouse-gas">Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting</a> in Washington, D.C.</em></p>

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