What does it take to protect one of Mexico's most biodiverse landscapes for 40 years?

In this episode, Alexander Watson speaks with Marta "Pati" Ruiz Corzo, founder and UN Champion of the Earth, and Laura P. Burke Pérez-Arce, president and carbon finance architect of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda (GESG), the organization behind the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, the largest socially managed protected area on Earth.

They talk about fighting highways and dam projects, building a locally adapted carbon protocol that actually works for smallholders, and why global standards kept failing communities like theirs. They also discuss the strategic alliance with OpenForests that brought geo-transparency and a new monitoring infrastructure to Sierra Gorda's conservation model.

This is conservation as it rarely gets told: stubborn, spiritual, deeply local, and quietly revolutionary.

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What happens when a search engine gives up its right to ever profit and puts every euro into restoring the planet instead?

In this episode, host Alexander Watson sits down with Christian Kroll, founder and CEO of Ecosia, and Pieter van Midwoud, Ecosia's Tree Planting Officer, just days before the company celebrates a landmark milestone: 250 million trees growing across more than 40 countries.

But this conversation goes well beyond the number.

Christian unpacks why he legally signed away his shares to a purpose foundation - making Ecosia unsellable and profit-free for individuals - and why he's now building Europe's first independent search index as a matter of geopolitical sovereignty. With US big tech dominance increasingly weaponizable, Ecosia may be quietly becoming critical digital infrastructure for the free world.

Pieter pulls back the curtain on what 250 million trees actually means on the ground: 80% survival rates, 2,000 native species, independent audits by botanical gardens, satellite monitoring, and a portfolio that deliberately keeps 50% of projects in the hardest-to-finance category because some ecosystems can't wait for a business case.

Together, they explore:

• How Ecosia's circular funding model reinvests returns from agroforestry and renewable energy back into restoration
• Why carbon markets alone will never solve nature finance and what stable, non-speculative funding actually looks like
• The parallel between the energy transition and land use: where regenerative agriculture is today, and what needs to shift
• What project developers need to know to connect with Ecosia's tree planting program
• Why eating less meat and switching your default search engine are two of the most underrated climate actions available right now

This episode is for nature project developers, corporate sustainability teams, impact investors, and anyone who wants to understand how technology and landscape restoration can work together, not against each other.