In Conversation with Conor Gillespie

In the latest installment of the ‘How to Avoid Moving to Mars’ podcast series, David sat down with Conor Gillespie, CEO of Ecotone, a US-based company that champions a nature-kind way of farming, and a food system reimagined from the soil up.

David and Conor discussed private enterprise and ecological restoration efforts, with Conor sharing his career journey and emphasising the importance of understanding the corporate side of ecological restoration, while David expressed excitement about engaging with young professionals like Conor, who are driving innovation in the field. 

Can you elaborate on your career to date?

I started my career immediately out of college, my advisor led the ecological restoration department at university and I started interning in the summer, which made me fall in love with the ecology field. 

I then started on the operational side of ecological restoration and I realised as I got into management that I would benefit from more education in business. This led me to achieve an MBA with an emphasis on sustainability. 

I got back into industry management, managing a boutique stream restoration firm in the Midwest, which meant I was predominantly working on prairies, wetlands and upland reforestation projects. 

I then got the entrepreneurial bug and started my company, which I drove for three years. But, when the opportunity to become CEO of Ecotone came about, it was just too perfect to pass up. 

Can you tell us more about the work of Ecotone? 

We are a purpose-driven for-profit company. We work across ecological spectrum streams, wetlands, uplands and reforestation as both a project developer and an operational partner for project developers. 

We invest our own capital in developing our own projects and lead them from start to finish. We predominantly do that in the compensatory mitigation space and the nutrient reduction space. 

We do everything from land acquisition through to design permitting construction; so we're able to control the entire development chain of our projects. This gives us a competitive advantage within the marketplace because we have margin control across the value spectrum and can control quality. 

What is something you think is especially important in the ecological restoration field?

We need to remember that perfect should not be the enemy of good. There’s a tonne of good work happening in the ecological restoration space, but you can’t solve every eventuality under the sun. While ecological results mightn’t be perfect, they’re still driving progress. 

What are your thoughts on private investment into natural capital?

We’re starting to see a change in the way the market works. Rather than it being individual project developers involved, there are now national scale players looking to invest and be a part of the market. In this instance, these players would purely be asset holders, rather than involved operationally. 

Some people in the US are saying that this sort of interest from outside capital is turning the mitigation market into a commodity, and that this is detracting from the quality of these projects. I believe that even if the mitigation market does become commodified, this is a positive thing. It means the market is expanding as it should and driving the most competitive outcomes, which is essential for nature to recover at scale. 

Private investment into nature recovery is a necessity. 

Can you describe the diversity of ecological restoration across the US?

The habitat and ecological diversity is mind-boggling. Within the eastern United States, we work with our team to develop a site and how many credits we want it to raise. Often, our planned site is too big, and around three to five landowners would have to merge their sites to allow our strategy to come to fruition. 

In the west of the country, the parcels are huge. A 640 acre site would be easy to locate. 

What really drives scale is demand, and the most demand happens where there is most development. Therefore, you get lots of restoration happening in very concentrated areas. There are discussions happening about the areas that also need the restoration but don’t have the demand, and how we can challenge this disparity. 

Do you see an increase in interest from corporates looking to become nature positive?

Certainly, which is exciting because you can be more flexible in where you go to do those projects. 

There's been a lot of really great work out in the western United States, that is voluntarily driven by some of the larger corporations around water quantity, and they're doing a lot of great work to offset their water use. 

While regulation tends to drive more robust markets in the long term, a lot of times you see the voluntary come in first and set the stage for corporate responsibility. 

Who or what organisation do you most admire in this field?

There's a lot of influence from ‌ a lot of different people. I always go back to Yvon Chouinard. Patagonia was the early leader in business for good. What it has done to reduce its environmental footprint is phenomenal. 

I also admire the thought leaders who look at what we're doing as an industry and how we can do it better. This is not from a place of ego, but just to make the restoration sphere more successful with higher integrity.

Which innovations do you think are starting to move the dial on nature and biodiversity?

I’m excited about what technology means for our space. It will allow greater integrity in the market by validating the impact that work is having with on-site measurements and metrics that are done in real time. These can be uploaded to the cloud to create transparency and visibility within the market. 

Technology will allow us to reduce the cost of restoration, increase the integrity of it and make practices overall more efficient. 

What do you think is the single most important thing you’d like to see to contribute to reversing biodiversity loss in the US? 

We need to stop externalising environmental costs. Using the word “tax” is extremely unpopular, but by regulating companies and ensuring corporations contribute financially to environmental loss, mitigation can continue to help our planet exponentially.