#42: Ralph Chami (Blue Green Future) – How Much Is a Whale Worth, Dead or Alive?

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Here is a link to get more information about The Ocean Age Walk & Talk and join the waitlist.

Ralph’s bio:

Ralph Chami is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Green Future and Rebalance Earth. He spent 25 years at the International Monetary Fund, most recently as Assistant Director, before turning his focus to valuing living nature as an asset class. His work, which puts a financial value on the ecosystem services provided by whales, elephants, seagrass, mangroves and forests, has been featured at TED, in the Financial Times, National Geographic, the New York Times, and on CNN. He is the recipient of the 2024 MadBlue Five Oceans Award and holds a PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Timestamps:

The Ocean Age Walk & Talk - Link to join the waitlist

00:01:10 - Introduction: Ralph Chami 

00:02:10 - Ralph Chami sharing his early passion for music

00:04:17 - The whale encounter that changed everything “before 2017” and “after 2017”

00:05:20 - Building a model to estimate the economic value of whales’ carbon capture

00:09:30 - Fertilising, another unknown ecosystem service provided by whales 

00:13:15 - How wrong incentives completely alter the true value of whales 

00:16:00 - Telling the story of whales and elephants as natural assets with Fabio Bergonzi

00:18:15 - Seagrass and Carlos Duarte’s marine ecology insights

00:19:05 - More living entities that provide valuable services for free

00:22:05 - The fallacy of the current system which ignores planetary boundaries

00:24:40 - From valuing extraction to rewarding the preservation of living things

00:27:00 - Seeing the intrinsic value of nature can make for a better future

Useful Links & Resources:  

The Ocean Age Walk & Talk - Link to join the waitlist

Ralph Chami on LinkedIn.

Blue Green Future: Website, LinkedIn and YouTube. 

Get in touch with The Ocean Age's host Fed DeGobbi on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ or by emailing directly at [email protected]

The Ocean Age Podcast is edited by Nebojsa Lešević. Sarah Carpenter and Giulia Leanza are our research assistants. The show notes for this episode were produced by Cecilia Bombonato.

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