speaker-0: Welcome to the first episode of Rewiggle. Today we are escaping to an island to meet a very special guest. This island is the largest of the Channel Islands with the most extreme tidal ranges in the world, boasting the sunniest spot in the British Isles. And today we're going to be speaking to one of the sunniest people from this iconic island whose vision and actions have truly created a global legacy of light. Andrew Mitchell, welcome to the show.

speaker-1: Hello Neha!

speaker-0: So for anyone who works in the environment sector and doesn't know who Andrew is, it's a bit like being a DC fan and not knowing who Batman is. Andrew is one of the most powerful change agents I know who spent his career translating between species, sectors, C-suites, and world systems. Andrew, people often describe you as an environmentalist, conservationist, entrepreneur, campaigner, innovator. What do you call yourself?

speaker-1: Well, I suppose a resilient optimist. I think it was Churchill who said that the definition of success was to go from failure to failure with increasing enthusiasm. And I kind of think that anyone who's been in the environmental movement as I have over the last fifty years has had to face that because y despite all our efforts, the problems with climate and nature's collapse remain.

speaker-0: Thank you. I I want to take the audience to the first day that I ever met you. It was my first day back from maternity leave. And I remember my then deputy director said, Come along, we're going to watch a round table on the financial materiality of nature risks. And I said, the markets haven't even wrapped their heads around climate. I mean, you know, how can we even begin to get them to think about nature risks? And I remember all it took was listening to one speech by you. To have me completely reverse my thinking and open my eyes as to just what I had been missing. And I remember that example that you gave, Andrew, of that company that had torn down a tropical rainforest and planted a palm oil plantation and then used that palm oil as one of its ingredients in chocolate. And then there was no reflection of that tropical rainforest in its financial statements. It was zero. And that just hit me because you know, I have a macroeconomist financial investment banking background, and I had never thought of how the value of that tropical rainforest could be zero. And you really opened my eyes. So you've spent your life thinking about the biggest systems on earth from one of the smallest places on earth, the island of Jersey. So how do you think being an islander has shaped the way you see the world?

speaker-1: Well, I guess when you live on a small island and you come to the edge and you look over the sea, you always have at least I did, a sense of unknown worlds. What lay beyond? What was out there that I couldn't get to? I was lucky enough to grow up in an idyllic mixed farm in Jersey. My father was a farmer. We were all recovering in a sense after the war and the occupation of Jersey. Everybody wanted a quiet life, and nothing could be better than to grow up on a delightful farm with pigs and chickens and cows. We had a whole lot of chickens, about 50 of them. They were called Sussex chickens. They were white with lovely red combs. And I my parents used to find me sitting amongst these chickens, aged about seven. And they said, What are you doing sitting amongst the chickens in the barn? And I said, Well, I'm trying to work out what they're saying to each other. And I thought that they must have thought, well, that's a little weird. I wonder what he's going to grow up and be. But I call it learning the language of chickens. I've found that in my life I've had to learn the language of science, learn the language of policy and politicians, learn the language of corporates, and finally learning the language of finance. So that sort of idea of learning these different languages has helped me to cross over from different worlds throughout my life.

speaker-0: So you started learning the language of chickens, which you made sound very easy, but I'm sure it's not. and then you went on to become a black belt at mastering the languages of policymakers and financiers and investment bankers, et cetera. And you often mention that we need a Google translate for nature. What do you mean by that?

speaker-1: Well, you know, these different worlds all operate in isolation. So the scientist doesn't understand the language of the politician. The politician doesn't understand the language of the scientist. And then you don't understand the language of the corporates. And believe you me, when you get to the language of a finance guy or someone who's an analyst, it's kind of gobbledygook to to someone who's a scientist. And I can illustrate that once with a one a little story when I was setting up The Forest Footprint Disclosure Program many years ago, back in 2009 or so. And I had in the room a bunch of scientists and a bunch of financiers, and we were all fiercely talking about the word impact. And the scientists, yes, yes, impact's really important. And the finance guys say, Yeah, impact's really important. And I suddenly realized they were talking about two completely different things. The scientists were all talking about impact on planet, and the finance guys. We're talking about impact on their portfolio. And actually, I said, stop. You're talking about different things. And and actually that's where we need to get this connectivity working, because the impact of the planet on your portfolio is something you don't measure. They did measure the impact of the planet on their portfolio and whether it might be more or less profitable, particularly through, say, climate impacts. But the impact of what they had in their portfolio on the planet was not measured at all. And today we call that materiality. And single materiality is what they use as an as the impact of the world on their portfolio. And double materiality is including the impact of the portfolio on the planet. And of course, it's ludicrous not to measure that, because it is that's where in these giant pools of money in pension funds and other, that's where the impact of money on nature is happening.

speaker-0: You started your career as a zoologist. How then did you actually learn the world of and the language of policymakers and financiers?

speaker-1: You know, I I guess I remember a a a a very special moment for me, which is what set me off on this track to be a Zuala, was when Gerald Darrell came into a little tea party and I was again about seven or eight years old, and he had a gorilla on his arm. And I looked up at this gorilla, quite a young one called Napolgo, and I had a little ice cream and a party hat on, and with one hand she took my party hat and stuck it on her head, and with the other hand took my ice cream and stuffed it in her mouth. And I suppose That was my first communications with an alien being. And now I'm not saying policymakers are alien beings or finance guys, but as a scientist, we we learn a lot about how the world works. And I I found working with finance people, you know, they often used to say, Well, we just we think nature and all of that stuff is really complicated. That's why we don't really want to deal with it. And by the way, can't nature wait? Because we're dealing with climate now. They like to treat nature as a kind of second class citizen. We're all busy doing climate, so can't nature wait? I said, no, nature can't wait because actually it might come back and hit you much faster than you realize, faster than climate, bigger than climate. CO2 is you can't see it, you can't taste it, you can't hold it. Nature. You're talking about forests. Landscapes, water, this was something that was real to everyone. Anyone who walks in a city or walks in a wilderness. You c you c you can be close to nature anywhere. And that made it much more tangible. But people hadn't described how this was a risk. They didn't see it as a risk. And that's why we needed something like the task force on climate related financial disclosure. I felt we needed a twin for nature, but no one had ever written it before. So

speaker-0: Very simply what the TCFD did and what DNFD did differently.

speaker-1: Well, TCFD, it was all about carbon, all about CO two and emissions. It didn't have anything to say about plastics in the ocean. It didn't have anything to say about microbes in the soil that are producing our crops. We needed something that covered the whole gamut of nature, the everything beyond carbon. That didn't exist, and people were terrified of it.

speaker-0: So so what was it that actually turned everyone's head around and made them look at nature differently?

speaker-1: I I I think the the emergence of COVID-19 as a nature-based risk around the world did help to open minds. but in particular, what was changing is that the scale of nature risk suddenly was becoming much bigger and and better recognized. So you've got major companies like Pacific Electric, a huge utility company in California, and there were massive fires. fire risk has becoming bigger and bigger every year. And in this particular case, the fire was caused by faulty electric cables in a forest. The forest was primed to burn. It did burn. It burnt massively. People were killed. Huge areas of of infrastructure of the electrics company were gone, but worst of all, they ended up in court with massive liabilities, the CO lost their job, the share price crashed. So this was the biggest chapter 11 in history. And suddenly, this suddenly turning nature into money risk, big time. And everybody starts to wake up when that sort of thing happened. It ricochets around markets. And then you start to think, well, where else could that go wrong? How often could this happen? And you start looking at it and the scale of it becomes really big. It's showing up in insurance markets too, where properties that are near fires or near coastlines where you get regular hurricanes or storm surges are almost becoming uninsurable.

speaker-0: What would you say to someone who goes, Well, if forests are flammable, just cut them down and then we've dealt with the risk? I'm being flippant here, but

speaker-1: you wouldn't be too happier if you were the water company downstream, would you? Because you need those forests to capture the rain and filter it gradually into the rivers. You know, rivers would end up full of mud and silt. The the populations downriver wouldn't have any water. There would be an absolute riot. Forests, they're not just sitting there doing nothing. They're doing a lot. And and nature is doing a lot. And so, you know, if you're in the drinks business, I mean I've just come from the lovely river in France. I th it's a big river. And I suddenly why is it so clear? Guess why? Because All France's cognac companies, Hennessy, Martel, all of these companies are along the riverbanks. They need clean water. So they make sure that it stays clean. And that shows that business, if it wants to, can actually work for conservation to keep a river clean. The next door river at Bordeaux, completely brown and messy, because no one was prepared to spend the money to keep it clean.

speaker-0: Very interesting example and a stark contrast. So tell us a little bit about what your vision was for the TNFT.

speaker-1: Well, I was thinking, you know, how can we really do something systemic that would change the movement of money? And I thought if we could create a common language on nature plus a reporting and disclosure framework for the finance sector on nature, we could change the movement of money fundamentally. And that means, first of all, providing a reporting framework, you know, a guidebook, if you will, for the finance sector to understand nature. find out where they're located and do something about it. And ultimately move capital away from doing bad things towards doing good things for nature. That was the ultimate thinking. Can we create a system where ultimately money moves away from destroying nature and towards preserving it? And the TNFD was the platform to achieve that.

speaker-0: It wasn't just about doing right by the planet.

speaker-1: No, no, not at all. I because I think, you know, I I have a pension. A lot of people have a pension. I didn't want my pension to be destroying nature. So I asked my pension fund, is my pl is my pension fund destroying nature? They have no idea how to answer the question. because they had no guidebook. And anyway, when you ask them the question, what are they thinking? They're thinking of birds and bees and butterflies and farmers. They're not thinking about Public electricity utilities, water utilities, they're not thinking about desalination plants, the construction industry, or the entire global food system. That's not what popped up in their mind, which they already have shares in. They just think of these trees and garments. So they didn't get it. So we had to give them the guidebooks that helped them understand. And that is what I think DNFD has managed to achieve now with nearly 780 major institutions worldwide using our framework, reporting on it publicly. I mean, that's huge. That is changing the movement of money.

speaker-0: You mentioned that the TNFT is a guidebook. So if you were talking to your pension fund today and if they had used the TNFT framework, what would they be doing differently? And how would they answer that question?

speaker-1: Well at least they'd be answered able to answer the question more clearly, because they would know, first of all, you have to map your portfolio. What kind of businesses am I in that might have a footprint on nature? And there is a tool for doing that called Encore, which was developed by UNEP and my research group in Oxford and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. So they created a way to screen your portfolio. But with the TNFD, first of all, you would find out where are all my investments located. Then you could assess, once you know where they are, what investments I've got, I can assess are they good or bad for nature. And we provide guidance for that. And then you can prepare and decide what it is you want to record. Now that means that there can be public scrutiny of those pension funds, which will make them more resilient. The most important thing is it's those pension funds ultimately will become more resilient because. The companies they're investing in are hugely at risk from nature loss. Once you begin to understand, like supply chains, cocoa coffee, all the commodities in our food system, there's a huge supply chain risk out there. Even our own security forces in Britain produced an incredibly detailed thought-through report in 2026 showing how the UK was so vulnerable to risks from climate and nature. particularly in its food system. And it it all of these things collectively have a have an impact, but it's not overnight. But by providing the guidebook, everybody has a common language. So we now we can talk about it, whether I'm in a shoemaking business or whether I'm in a fuel fossil fuel business or whether I'm digging holes for mining, we all understand what we mean by nature by using the TNFD. And there's a methodology there that we can all do together. And so that brings people together to understand the problem.

speaker-0: What motivated you to move beyond the world of conservation into the world of finance and public policy and investment and business and really take that on.

speaker-1: It's all about the money. It's the flow of money around our world that's driving us into extinction. And and therefore we need to change that. Everything else doesn't matter. If you don't will deal with what is driving it, then you're never going to win because there's this tsunami of money that's much bigger than anything conservation can bring to bear against it, or even governments. That's the global market. So we have to deal with the global market, and the global market depends on investors, whether it's banks lending money or pension funds. investing in companies. That's where this whole problem lies. it was a bit like looking at your garden in the summertime and imagine a sprinkler going round and round and round and you suddenly realize that the water coming out of that sprinkler is poisoned and your garden is dying. Well you can go run around with a bucket if you like, trying to catch the drips, but you'll never win. You've got to go all the way up that pipeline and get your hand on the tap. And that's what I tried to do. Nothing else mattered. We've got closer to the tap. We haven't changed it much, but the tap now is much more sensitive than it used to be.

speaker-0: I love that example. The tap has a lot more filters now and it's created a lot more awareness about where the poison is coming from. But I don't just want to end on a doom and gloom note because I know one thing that has been a common thread across your entire career has been resilient optimism. So despite the fact that you haven't been able to calibrate the money machine in to 100% in nature-positive directions, what continues to give you hope?

speaker-1: I mean, if think about it, nature has run the world for a billion years into the glory we see today. And we've been running it for about a hundred years and we've run it into the ground. So what gives me faith is that nature has the answer.

speaker-0: If I had to ask you, you know, where you see the next economic revolution sort of tr trending towards, what do you what do you feel it would be? Because we had the industrial revolution that was built on fossil fuels and carbon. What do you feel this next economic revolution will be underpinned by?

speaker-1: Well, I I think it's gonna be a the nature tech revolution, because when I look for answers as to how we can run our world better, I tend to go back to the drawing board and look at nature. For instance, let's take something like a circular economy. The best example you've got of a circular economy is a tropical forest. You go into that forest, you will find the largest living things in nature and the smallest living things in nature, all working in competition, all united by growth, you know. Governments always want growth. There's plenty of growth going on in a forest, but it's a closed system. It's not linear growth, which is the model of more that we've been sold by capitalism. That linear system does not work. And you can see that in nature, it bends that into a circular economy. So how does a rainforest work? Well, it sips energy from the sun, solar panels in the form of leaves. It creates energy by creating sugar in those leaves. And then it creates, as I say, this giant system. Everyone's got a role to play. Big businesses, small businesses. But at the end of the day, there's no waste. Everything is recycled. And in the color of the rivers, they're clear. We can find lessons there. And what's fascinating is to see just how as it happened 30 years ago with climate. A booming industry began in all kinds of things like transport, aviation, also in insulation for our homes, just Changing these systems to produce less carbon. We're going to see that happen in nature as well. It's already beginning with bioplastics, huge billion-dollar industries there, shoes that are made of mushrooms that you can toss in the compost heap, bottles of water that instead of hanging around for hundreds and hundreds of years, you can throw in the sea and they will dissolve. All that is coming from nature tech and it's growing very, very fast. So we just have to understand that better, and that's where. The exciting part, the opportunity part is going to be over the next couple of decades. It's a win for all of us.

speaker-0: Absolutely. Andrew, thank you very much for your time and for joining us on Rewiggle.

speaker-1: Thank you.

speaker-0: So the top three rewiggles for me were number one, rewiggle risk pricing. A forest can be worth zero on a balance sheet until it becomes a source of wildfire, water crisis, or supply chain shock. Number two, rewiggle capital allocation lenses. The TNFD gives investors a way to map, measure, and manage financially material nature risks that otherwise lie hidden inside business models and portfolios. So the TNFT generates decision grade data to guide more informed and risk-aware capital allocation. Number three, re-wiggle your growth model. A rainforest's greens, right from its leaves to its lichens, act as solar panels, turning sunlight into growth, reusing waste as nutrients while generating no waste footprint of its own. The opportunity here is to translate that logic. Into new technologies, products, and investable businesses. So the big rewiggle for me is: nature isn't just something to protect, it's a risk system to price accurately, a resilient system to learn from and invest in, and a blueprint to inspire the next wave of innovation. Thank you for listening to Rewiggle. If something you heard on the podcast has made you pause, And rethink how you would partner with nature. Follow ReWiggle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and YouTube. And if you know someone who is actively rewiggling how they work with nature, building solutions, shifting systems, or turning ideas into action, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at rewiggle at gmail.com because the best conversations don't really end when the episode does. They stay with us and sometimes they change what we do next.