Mauricio Serna
Appearances
Planet Money
The habitat banker
So you need to understand how much you're going to pay your ranger. You need to understand how many trees do you need to plant. And you need to understand the administrative costs, the sales costs, the marketing costs. You need to understand all those costs.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
COP will be where we're going to see if companies are really willing to buy these credits and claim these results and add value to their companies.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
So my target was, okay, you need to go and sell this biodiversity credits mostly to anyone.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
Yeah, so we need corporate buyers who can buy a big bunch of these credits.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
I have Sunny Pictures Entertainment, I have PepsiCo, the Rockefeller Foundation.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
We are in a tough scenario where we will not do anything if we have tons of supply and no demand. We all hoped this was the other way around and that it was a problem of supply, not of demand. But it's just not.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
So my pitch is, so you have a big procurement process of palm oil here in Colombia and in other parts of the world.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
Yeah, so a lot of people don't understand the biodiversity world yet.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
So it's weird. And sometimes I'm like, what am I doing here? Who am I talking to? But on the other side, I'm like, these guys need to chip in.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
I was studying biology and I was actually studying how important tropical Andes is for conservation and how this was considered like a biodiversity hotspot. And that means that it has a lot of species per square kilometer.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
And I started pitching to my family, hey, let's build a nature reserve. And my family being really traditional, we're like, no way. I mean, you're not getting any money from that. This is not an economically viable project. So you're not, I mean, we're not doing it.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
It was a good idea. I mean, there were good intentions behind that project.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
I was looking on the internet and I don't know where, how, and Terrazos popped up.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
Maybe a little bit, but not really. I mean, many people were, and many people were like... Okay, you are selling your soul to the capitalism. But I think at the end of the day, what's important is that the money was well planned, was well used, and was delivering positive ecological outcomes.
Planet Money
The habitat banker
What we thought is that maybe the private sector needs an instrument to report on what's happening on the ground. And that's where biodiversity credits come along. It was a shot. I mean, it was like, let's try to make it work.