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Re: Tito visits the United Nations!

June 16, 2023

I took a pitstop to the United Nations on Friday!

If you've been following the UN process on carbon removal, you may know that AirMiners signed two joint statements (1,2) with 100+ carbon removal experts and organizations. Led by the Carbon Business Council and Negative Emissions Platform, these statements supported the UN to keep the door open to many possibilities for carbon removal solutions,  focusing on durable carbon and moving away from stale categories like "natural" or "engineered".

Then a week ago the UN requested more input on the technical details of carbon removal, with only two weeks for feedback.

So on Thursday night, I was sitting at McDonalds in Zurich and heard about a UN meeting going on in Bonn, Germany. I said to myself "you know what I could get there!" I messaged the chair of the UN Article Six committee on LinkedIn and requested a meeting. Four minutes later she wrote back and said we can meet. Jason said "do it!" and off to Bonn I went!

Olga Gassen-zade, the chair of Article 6 committee, and Panna Siyag, author of UN Article 6, each spent an hour talking with me about carbon removal. They had different perspectives on carbon removal and it was great to talk it through face to face. Carolin from the AirMiners community rode two hours on a train to join the meeting with Olga!

Afterwards I took my notes back and shared them with our friendly neighborhood policy organizations, Carbon180, Negative Emissions Platform, Rethinking Removals, Carbon Removal Alliance, and Open Air Collective.

Here's my takeaways on the UN process:

• Policies like these do have implications all the way down to early stage companies like the ones that come through our Launchpad accelerator. Starting a carbon removal startup is hard, and having the UN rooting for air miners of all sorts can help.
• Rather than encourage everyone to write statements, I've been advised to take a targeted approach so as not to overwhelm the review process. So with that in mind...
• I want to highlight two areas to the UN - 1. carbon removal startups in the global south 2. the broad range of new solutions being explored (rivers, oceans, deep soil measurement, pit lakes, seaweed sinking, methane, and more). I've messaged 20 startup companies to submit comments about their experiences here. Rethinking Removals is leading a workshop with these teams to help them get their bold statements in.
• As an AirMiner, you get to see brand new types of carbon removal solutions emerging every week, from all around the world. It's a special perspective and I want to share this with the UN. I'm planning to submit a response on behalf of AirMiners about this, expanding on what was said in the Carbon Business Council letter.

I'll be posting a draft letter to the AirMiners #policy channel tomorrow (it's due in 6 days), so keep an eye out there. Or reply "yes" to this email and I'll send you the draft too. 

Huge appreciation for all the policy leaders that answered my constant emails and WhatsApp messages at all hours over the weekend including Erin, Chris, Gabrielle, Christopher, Delia, Glenn, and especially Helen from Puro who helped me get connected and grounded (and says I am now officially an Article 6 geek!). I also enjoyed chats with many AirMiners including André, Jack, Carolin, Sebastian, Ben, Shannon, Toby, Kunal, and Nick.

It's go time!

Tito

P.S. if you're inspired to work on policy yourself, whether in the US, EU, UN, or elsewhere I encourage you to check out job openings at these orgs: Negative Emissions Platform, Rethinking Removals, Carbon180, and Carbon Removal Alliance. Open Air Collective is the most grassroots, you can get started there today as a volunteer.

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