Dr. Jane Goodall On How You Can Join The Trillion Trees Movement | B-Well Together | Salesforce

Foreign. Hello.

Hello and welcome to another edition of Be well Together. Oh, my gosh. So Monday, Monday we kicked off Climate Week. And if there was ever a moment when we all needed to just pause and reconsider our relationship with the planet, it is now. And so today I literally, I have goosebumps. We have a repeat guest for Be well Together. Repeat. The incomparable champion for the planet, the voice of hope that we all need to hear and learn from right now, Jane Goodall. So Dr. Jane Goodall, the world renowned animal behavior expert, conservationist, author, activist, dame of the British Empire, and the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute. Yes, that Jane is with us. She is of course known for 60 years of groundbreaking work, including, of course, the studies of the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, and really just defining community driven conservation. Also joining us today is a personal friend and mentor of mine, Suzanne Divianca, the chief impact officer at Salesforce. So she leads our stakeholder strategy driving positive social and environmental impact across our company, our customers, our partners, our communities. She's of course been part of the DNA at Salesforce from the beginning, founding our 111 model of integrated corporate philanthropy. But wait, there's even more. We also have Julie Mourad today with us. Julie is the president of Salesforce's Earthforce Ohana Group, which is an erg here and she's going to help ask some questions too. So, wow, what a show. It's a great group of thought leaders today and amongst other things, we are going to talk about the importance of trees and how we can use trees to help combat climate change and how you can also get involved. So with that, I will turn it over to you brilliant ladies, Jane and Suzanne. Welcome to Be well Together.

Thank you. Thank you, Jody. What an intro. It has been quite an honor to get to know Jane over the last couple of years. Here we are in a moment of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, a crisis of leadership, and yet there remains the climate crisis. Part of what we do during Climate Week is look around the globe, look for leaders in the field, look for ways that we can solve problems together and really act in a swift and powerful way to help our planet. And for me, a great inspiration and what we can do, how we need to do it. I've learned a lot through Jane, so it's such a pleasure to be here with you. And we were saying off screen that we'll sort of start, we'll pick it up where we left off. And so we had the opportunity to Be together in Davos and kick off an initiative called One Trillion Trees. And it was an incredible day, incredible leadership came together to kick off this movement. So I'd love to hear from you a little bit, Jane, about why you engaged in this effort. We've set a goal to plant 100 million trees over the next decade. But I'd love for everyone to get a chance to hear from you directly about, you know, why is this important? Why is forest preservation, conservation, all of the work that you've been engaging in, why is it so important as it relates to combating climate change?

Well, thank you and it's great talking to you again too. It seems an awful long time since Davos. Anyway, I got involved in forest protection because of protecting the chimpanzees. That's their habitat. And of course it's the habitat for so many of these amazing creatures that live in the forest, animals and plants. And if you don't protect the habitat, then you can't protect the animals who live within it. And if you don't protect the biodiversity, you don't have a healthy ecosystem. And we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our well being. So becoming involved in protecting forests at the beginning meant you can't protect the forest while people living around the forest are living in poverty. So that led to our program to improve the lives of the people so that now, after many years, they have become our partners in conservation. And that's in six different African countries. So that's how I got involved. But you know, you talked about climate change, Jodi. It's a far greater threat to our continued existence to all life on planet earth than the COVID 19 epidemic. We'll get through that, we always do. And it's been terrible and we've lost lives and there's been economic suffering, but climate change, I mean, look at the world today. Fires, floods, destruction of forests and other habitats, melting ice, rising sea levels, terrible destruction wrought by hurricanes and typhoons, and of course our destruction clear cutting the forest. So it's not just to protect chimpanzees and animals living in it, it's to protect us. And of course, as everybody knows, I'm sure now everybody knows that trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the oceans do as well as, and trees give out the oxygen that we need to breathe. And so it's just from all aspects important to protect the forests. And I've always loved trees. I spent hours when I was a child and I can look out of the window and see that beech tree where I used to take my homework and read my books, to be up near the birds. And so for me, trees are living beings, and I got to really know them out in the rainforests of Gombe.

Yeah, nobody doesn't like a tree. I think that's one thing I also love about them is it's a bipartisan issue. It's every age, every gender, every culture is connected to a tree of some sort. And there's such beauty in them from a biodiversity standpoint and a mental health standpoint. Really, here I sit from talking to you, Jane from Northern California. It's been incredible year of wildfires here. Over 3 million acres have already burned. Oregon, Washington. I've heard the smoke soon will be to you in Europe already. Just last week, we had a day that blocked out the sun for the whole day. And it was the most eerie day that I've ever witnessed in my life. And I wonder, you know, one thing that I'm always so. It's always such a pleasure to be with you because you always come from a place of hope and from inspiration. And I wonder, I'd love to hear that message from you about what can we be hopeful about? What can we learn from from all of these disasters, and where can we find hope and inspiration in this moment?

Well, I think you've asked several questions in one there. But the hope from the disaster, the hope from the pandemic, is that people are realizing we brought that on ourselves by our disrespect of the environment and our disrespect of animals. And we need to have a new relationship with the natural world, a new relationship with animals, a new green economy. So that's what comes out of the pandemic. But when we think, you know, when I flew over Gombe National park in 1990, it was a tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills. Hills that in 1960, when I began, were part of this great forest belt that stretched across Africa. And by 1990, bare hills as far as you could see, except for this tiny little precious jewel of Gombe. And it was because there were more people living there than the land could support. Too poor to buy food from elsewhere, struggling to survive, farmland overused and infertile. And then we began this program to improve their lives, to curry, we call it. And in a very holistic way. There's no time to go into that. But as a result of that, working with the people, not telling them what to do, asking them, what can we do to help you? And they have the wisdom. They know when they cut down the trees on a steep slope, it's going to be terrible erosion. But if you're really poor, you're going to cut down those trees to get a bit more land that you can use because your farmlands become infertile. And so we realized we had to alleviate poverty today. Fly over Gombe, you will not see bare hills. That's the magic. Nature is amazingly resilient and people are beginning to understand. Like the move for urban tree planting is growing and people understanding trees, as you said, they improve mental health. They actually make it cheaper for the city councils because they don't have so many mental health problems. And the trees regulate the, the climate and the rainfall in the city. They provide shade, the roots stabilize the soil, you get less flooding. So, you know, people are beginning to realize trees are important and that is step number one to protecting them. But the important thing to realize here is tree planting, which I think we come onto in a minute. You talked about the trillium trees, but it's going to take a long time for the little trees we plant to get big enough to absorb the appropriate amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So that's why right now it's desperately important to protect the remaining rainforests of the planet and the woodlands, because, you know, we've lost over half from the beginning and this is terrible, it's dreadful. So, you know, but the hope is we've learned, we're doing something about it, there's a greater awareness, and that's what gives me hope. Anyway, people are beginning to understand. And you realize a lot of what's gone on is ignorance and this disrespect of the environments because many governments and many corporations, they've got tangled up in this materialistic lifestyle. And it's always the bottom line. And how can you have unlimited global economic development on a planet with finite natural resources? And that includes the forests and the trees.

Yeah. And it makes me think of a statistic, an alarming statistic that is the equivalent of 27 football fields of forests are cut down every minute around the world. And that conservation is just as critical as it is new planting, I think, about the decimation of the 3.3 million acres here in California. I know we've got to plant the right trees, resilient trees, back in the right places. And yet equally important is the conservation and restoration of what we have to. Your point, and you published recently with Marc Benioff, our CEO, an op ed in Time magazine. And one of the things that you were talking about in that op ed was how, you know, just like Covid is disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations around the world. What have you seen in your many years around the intersection of environment and social issues? Why should we take a systemic approach to this? And how did trees intersect with people's livelihood? You talked about it a little bit, but I'd just love to hear some more stories from your experiences.

Well, it was all my years in the rainforest that taught me about the interconnection of all living things. And this means that poverty and climate and protection of the environment and animals, they're all interrelated. And thinking about this disparity between the wealth. Some people have way too much money. They don't need it all. Fortunately, more and more people are beginning to use that extra money to help make the world a better place. But there's still a huge gap between the haves and the have nots, which leads to a lot of anger, actually. But already, as you said, talked about improving the lives of the people living around the forests so that they understand that protecting the forest is just as much for their future as for the wildlife. And so, you know, again, that's education. And so the interconnection. Let me come back to the city for a moment. I said that there's more tree planting, urban tree planting, but you go to your average city, especially in the U.S. i think, not sure about everywhere else. Well, the UK as well, actually, for sure. And you find you go to the affluent quarters and it's green, there's trees, there's birds singing. You go to an area of poverty, the disadvantaged people, there ain't no trees, it's concrete. And so they've done experiments that show when you green part of an area of high crime. They did this in Chicago. The crime level dropped as compared with the place where they hadn't greened it. And so of course, they very quickly greened the rest of it. And that was a lesson which is must be taken up. And planting trees in disadvantaged areas of big cities I think is a really, really important thing that we should be doing. And when it is done, it truly makes a difference. You talked about people loving trees and having a connection with trees, but if you live in a concrete jungle where there aren't any trees, you can't make that connection. And so you start off disadvantaged.

Makes me think of two things, you know, as I've been learning from you and others, about forestry and the importance of conservation and trees. There are also great water filtration systems. I mean, they are so multifaceted and in high poverty areas. They also not only do they provide great natural water filtration, they provide shade. They provide, again, this sort of back to this mental health. And it makes me think about, you know, I'm always looking for, what can we do more of, how can we engage people to take action through this program and through other programs. Friends of the Urban Forests is a great organization here in the US I'm not sure if it's global, but I know there are equivalents globally which, which really do what you're saying, which go out into urban areas, work deeply with cities and plant trees all over. And there's great opportunities to volunteer through organizations like that. So I would encourage people to check that out. I'd also encourage people to go to1t.org, which is the website for this effort, which really is an umbrella effort. It's not a net new effort. It was bringing together all these incredible organizations to see, say, how can we put the wind in your sails and really create more scale faster? So lots of opportunities@1t.org to engage and get involved. And the last thing that I'll ask you, Jane, before we go to Q and A is the work that you've done with young people. So I love everything you've created with Roots and Shoots. I'm wondering how it's going for you in a digital environment. You and I got to go in Davos this year and hear some of the incredible young people that are really taking action in this area. And I'm so inspired by this next generation, and I know you are, too. Can you tell us a little bit about Roots Shoots, how it's going, how people can get involved?

You'd have a hard job stopping me talking about Roots and Shoots because these young people are my main reason for hope. You know, this generation, okay, they've learned about it, they're more aware, and it's because of that. But somehow they're rising to this crisis, all these crises in a quite extraordinary way. And I think it's because we are educating them better and empowering them to take action. So Roots and shoots began in 1991 in Tanzania with 12 high school students. And it was because they'd lost hope. They didn't have much hope for the future, even back then in 1991. And they said we compromised their future, and there was nothing they could do about it. Well, we have compromised their future. We've been stealing their future. We are still stealing their future today. But I didn't agree that there was nothing that could be done. So you know this expression, think globally, act locally? Well, to be honest, I'm sure it's the same for you, Suzanne, and probably everybody listening. If you spend a lot of time thinking about the global problems, don't you get depressed? Because I think you have to. And that's why people lose hope and feel helpless. So twist it around. Think globally, act locally. No, act locally. Okay. I can't solve the problems of the world. None of us can alone. But is there something I can do in my community? Yes, there is. And young people have different passions. Some want to do something about the plastic. Some want to plant trees. Some want to go and volunteer in animal shelters. Some want to raise money for the victims of hurricanes in Puerto Rico, for example. And so what began with these 12 high school students in 1991 is now in, I think it's 68 countries. It's growing all the time. It was in others. And then a tiny little group and the leader goes away or something. But the seeds have been planted, even though there isn't an active program. But right now, definitely active programs in 66 countries. And I think it's more growing all the time. And they choose their own project. It's grassroots. Maybe we should say tree roots. And between them, though, because of this interrelationship, they need to choose a project to help people. A project help animals, A project help the environment. And through this, as they develop their programs, talk about them, roll up their sleeves, it's about taking action.

Yeah.

It's not just demonstrating and demanding change. It's actually. It's actually getting out there and, you know, working your butt off. They go out there, and one of the things they're doing and have been doing for the past several years is planting trees. And so we're working out a way that we can actually gather up all this information and add it to the IT network. Because over the years, they have planted literally millions of trees. And sometimes it's little villages. In Tanzania, one little village they were planting, I think it was 500 trees. Just one small school in one tiny village. And they look after them. And so, you know, they're learning agroforestry as well. And the young people around the world, I don't know what it is, but they give me so much hope. They're so inspirational. They tackle something, and they get out there and they really, really work. And when people think all this is great, they want to get involved in the program you mentioned, Suzanne, or in roots and Shoots or JGI. You know, we have a website, Jane, goodall.org or rootsandshoots.org and it doesn't have to be any of our programs. It can be something else. You've heard about where trees are being planted or forests are being protected. And maybe you can't plant trees, but maybe you can make a donation. And every single little bit that people can do now is going to help. And my goodness, if this planet ever needed help, it needs it now. And to help it, we've got to alleviate poverty. We've got to do something about the unsustainable lifestyles of the rest of us. And we've got to realize right now there's 7.2 billion people on the planet and we're already using up natural resources in some areas faster than nature can replenish them. And it's estimated in 2050 there'll be 9.7, closer to 10 billion people. So what's going to happen? All these people rising out of poverty, which is what we want. They all want to emulate the unsustainable lifestyles that weren't. You can't blame them. Why shouldn't they? So it's got to be a different mindset. And I think it's the young people who get it. And really, in the affluent societies, they are trying to reduce their carbon footprint and they are working on their parents. So again, that's why I have such hope for them, for us, for the future.

I agree. I've never seen a generation like this act as swiftly and powerfully, not only the Greta Thunbergs of the world, but so many young people all over. And I love when you tell me stories about how leaders and you meet government officials all over the world and they say, I was in Roots and Shoots when I was a child and it's really had impact on so many people. And I would really encourage everyone that's watching to check it out, see how you can get involved, see how you can engage your own children if you have them. So thank you for that message. I'm going to turn it. Julie, over to you to see if we've got some questions from the audience.

Great. We do indeed.

A couple questions coming from our Earthforce employee resource group, which is over 9,000 employees at Salesforce committed to environmental justice and responsibility. So excited to have you here today, Jane. One of the questions I think that we saw across the board is as people come to understand how urgently we have to act, what advice do you have for individuals who want to have the greatest Impact?

Well, I think, you know, the most important advice is that every day a person lives, they make some impact on the planet. You can't live through a day and not make some sort of impact. And so, as people become aware and become better educated, an important thing is making the right choices every day in what you buy. What do you buy? Where was it made? Did it harm the environment? What are you going to eat? And I think it's important to say here that I think everybody knows that these CO2, these green gases, we've got to reduce our emissions from fossil fuels. We know that. We know we need green energy, clean energy, renewable energy. But the other thing which is having a huge impact, which many people don't even want to think about, is people are eating more and more meat. I know there's a trend now in US and Europe to move away from it, but people don't understand. It's not just the cruelty of these intensive farms, which is horrendous, by the way, and one environment which can lead to a zoonotic disease, a pathogen jumping from animal to human. It's happened many times in these factory farms. But in addition, the impact on the environment, clearing habitats to grow the grain, fossil fuel used to get the grain to the animals, animals to abattoir and the meat to the table. And they're all producing methane, which is a very, very virulent greenhouse gas. Fortunately not as common as CO2. And so, you know, eating less meat, these are the little things you can do each day. Less meat or no meat, but less meat. We don't need masses of meat. And this is an important thing here. It's actually bad for us because we have the gut of a herbivore, which is meant to food go through slowly. It's very long to get the last nutrition out of some of these grasses and leaves that aren't that nutritious. But then the carnivore gut is much shorter. They want to get rid of the meat before it putrefies in the gut. We have a herbivore gut and we're causing the meat to go through and that's, I think, leading to a lot of our diseases.

That's really helpful, Jane, thank you. I know you've given us some food for thought today, pun intended. And I'll turn it back over to Jodi to close out the session.

Thank you.

What an amazing, inspiring discussion. Jane. I would be remiss if I did not ask, is Mr. H anywhere around you? Is he here with me?

Yes.

Yes.

Brilliant. Hello, Mr. H. And JGI sells baby Mr. H's, by the way, so everybody can have their own Mr. H. It's brilliant.

It's absolutely brilliant. So, listen, I want to just close with one of the thoughts that Jane shared with us today, and that was about hope. Nature is resilient, and we are resilient, and we are more resilient with trees, physically, emotionally. So I think if we can all just take care of each other, then we really will be well. So get out there, go to1t.org get involved and make this Climate Week matter. Thank you for joining us again today. And we'll see you again on our next edition of Be well Together.

Bye. Bye. Bye.