Flying Forests Origins
Mangrove Restoration in UAE
A Beta Earth Company
The Founders invented and built the first Tree Planting Drones, founded the first company, and launched a new global industry. Their first company, BioCarbon Engineering (Dendra Systems), and all those that followed them into the market, was designed to address the 2 trillion tree deficit in service to governments and large scale land-holders. But, these solutions don’t scale downwards. Land ownership around the world is highly fragmented, and 80% of private forested landowners don’t own enough land for a single days operation, locking them out of the environmental and financial benefits of restoration with this technology.
With Flying Forests, they started with a Fundamental Principle, “How might we equip and empower the other 80% with fair revenue sharing throughout the value chain?”
Flying Forests will advance global scale ecosystem restoration with emerging technologies:
Decentralized Business Model: We work with local organizations. We bring the technology, they bring their local knowledge, network, and TRUST. Together, we equip and empower local communities on the front lines of climate change.
Ecosystem Restoration is the Priority: We work with local ecologists to select multiple local, natural species to restore local ecosystems with diverse biodiversity. This can balance carbon sequestration and regenerative agro-forestry with healthy ecosystems.
Fair Revenue Sharing Drives Positive Outcomes: Resilience and Permanence is central to rebuilding biodiversity, restarting hydrological and soil nutrient cycles critical to downstream agriculture, and stabilization against landslides, floods, and other natural disasters. This depends on local inclusion and financial incentives to monitor and maintain beyond the restoration activity.
Local Social Uplift: Promoting local business development, job creation, and fair revenue sharing throughout the value chain ensures Local Social Uplift.
Innovation: We work with the best technology and business models to drive the best outcomes and continuously update and evolve.
Global Network: We created the Industry and have a global network of partners and communities we trust as we work to ensure that local community outcomes are always at the center of everything we do.
Founders
The Founders are globally recognized, award winning, serial entrepreneurs.
Dr. Lauren Fletcher
Dr. Lauren Fletcher is the inventor of Tree Planting Drone technology, founding BioCarbon Engineering (now Dendra Systems) in order to combat global deforestation with scalable solutions. His vision created an entirely new global drone industry. He is Founding Partner at the Beta Earth Venture studio and a co-founder of Flying Forests.
He holds a PhD (Physics, Oxford) and M.S. (Environmental Engineering, Stanford), and a B.S. (Engineering Physics, University of Nevada). He was a NASA Engineer & Scientist for 20+ years. He is a serial entrepreneur, founding faculty of Singularity University, and an advisor to the Desert Research Institute (Nevada). He is an LP at Oxonion Venture Fund and Savia Ventures. He has numerous awards, including as an Unreasonable Fellow and SOCAP Fellow.
Dr. Irina Fedorenko-Aula is a serial green tech entrepreneur on nature-based solutions and blue carbon. She is a co-founder of BioCarbon Engineering (now Dendra Systems). She is Founding Partner at the Beta Earth Venture studio and a co-founder of Flying Forests.
She holds an M.S. and PhD (Geography, Oxford). She is a member of Initiatives of Land Lives and Peace (Swiss-Based NGO), co-founder of Vlinder; and an expert on carbon credits and community development. She has numerous awards, including as a Nasdaq Milestone Maker and Re.Generation Fellow.
Dr. Irina Fedorenko-Aula
Partners and Collaborations
The power behind our Decentralized Business Model is to be lean at the top and build out major FTE at the local business unit, and with contracting local stakeholders in order to build out the local restoration economy. In the course of our work, we typically employ locally for seedball manufacturing and support.
As a social enterprise, our most important partners are the millions of local community members. We define our users as local communities depending on or benefitting from the environments we help to restore. As we build the Restoration Economy, we provide direct and indirect benefits for our local partner owners, employees, volunteers, governments, and institutions and organizations.
Our partners and collaborators represent global leaders in restoration technology and restoration project implementation around the world. We have an extensive list of partners numbering at least 2 dozen from governments to NGOs, corporate, Universities, and local communities.
