00:00Our next guest here, joining us on set, is Pascal Asselin.
00:03Hello, thank you so much for being with us.
00:05Thank you.
00:06You're a co-founder of Morpho, make the planet green again.
00:10That's what Morpho wants to do, and quickly.
00:12How so? How are we going to do this?
00:14Exactly, exactly. We could summarize like that.
00:18So, the objective is to restore forest ecosystem at scale.
00:21And so, how do we do it?
00:22The first step is that we constitute these seed pods in which we put seeds, nutrients.
00:28Don't move your hand, we're going to see what they are.
00:30Yeah, exactly. Can you see it now?
00:32Yes.
00:32Yeah, these are small ones in which we put the seeds, we put nutrients, we put fungis, we put bacteria,
00:38with everything to constitute a small ecosystem in it.
00:42And we take these seed pods and we put them into drones, into planting drones.
00:47And this drone will disseminate with high speed and accuracy,
00:51because we can plant up to 50 hectares per day with one drone,
00:55compared to one man who can plant traditionally one hectare per day.
00:59Yeah, so that's a lot.
01:00After that, of course, when we plant the forest, we need to monitor to make sure that the ecosystem
01:05that we restored is actually growing, following the biomass, the biodiversity that is growing,
01:10and then the carbon that is being stocked by all these ecosystems.
01:14Is there any steps you need to take before you actually plant the seeds?
01:19Yeah, of course.
01:19We need to understand the ecosystems in which we will deploy the project.
01:23So the first step is to go on the field, understand the soils, understand the economic,
01:28the ecological conditions, context of the project,
01:33to make sure that the project that we will deploy will still be there in 100 years.
01:38The forests you managed to regrow, are they durable?
01:42Yeah, of course.
01:43So they're durable.
01:44The first aspect of our forest is the biodiversity.
01:48So we plant from 20 to 80 different species, from herbaceous, herbaceous to trees.
01:53So that is a real forest ecosystem.
01:55We never say we plant trees, we plant forest ecosystems.
01:59Okay.
01:59So that's the first aspect.
02:01So many different kind of trees.
02:02Exactly.
02:02Many different species.
02:04And of course, we take care of the people, the local communities, who live with this forest.
02:08Because if you don't take care of that, two years later, your forest will be burnt.
02:12And that's, of course.
02:14So you need to involve all the people living around this forest,
02:17from the seed collections that we'll put in the forest, to the preparation of the soils,
02:21to the manual planting, because we always reserve some parts of the project to the local communities,
02:27to the field monitoring in which we work with them.
02:30It might be a stupid question, but how long does it take to regrow a forest?
02:34So for us, the operations, we take 50 hectares per day.
02:37So that's the plantation time.
02:39But then you know that your forest will be viable after three years.
02:44Three years only.
02:45Yeah, exactly.
02:46And you know, and you already have like trees, like two, three meters high.
02:49And then the real forest will be there for after like 20 years.
02:54Okay.
02:54How much does it cost to regrow a forest?
02:57Yeah.
02:57So I won't answer to this question, because you have so many different...
03:02It depends on the situation.
03:04Of course, of the soils.
03:05If it was like a mining site, if it was agricultural, pastoral lands, so many different aspects.
03:11But my question is, would it be cheaper or more expensive than using a traditional method?
03:17Yeah.
03:18So the idea is that we want to scale these reforestation activities.
03:22And so to scale, you need, of course, to cut the costs facing that.
03:27And we are with this technology.
03:29You don't need to make a nursery from two to six months.
03:32So you don't need all the people involved for that.
03:34And then we plant only in one day 50 hectares with one drone.
03:38So, of course, we can cut a lot the cost of every project.
03:42So it makes it really more cost effective.
03:44And so the more you plant, the cheaper it's going to get.
03:46Exactly.
03:47In time, obviously.
03:49What are the world needs in terms of reforestation?
03:53So there's one billion hectares already ready to be restored.
03:57One billion hectares.
04:00Without impacting human activities.
04:02So agriculture, urbanization are not involved in that.
04:05And the UN said we need to restore them before 2030.
04:09But today, the pace of reforestation is five million per year.
04:13We should be at 100 million.
04:16Okay.
04:16But there is, facing this five million, you have 10 million deforested hectares.
04:20Okay.
04:20So now the balance is negative.
04:23Yeah, exactly.
04:24Where have you been working?
04:25With what results?
04:26Yeah.
04:27So we started in French Guiana, where I grew up.
04:29So that was our first market.
04:31And next to French Guiana, you have Brazil, which is a huge country with huge needs and this tropical forest,
04:37where we already deployed three projects.
04:40And we deployed already two projects in Gabon as well, Central Africa, in which we'll have many opportunities as well.
04:47And how many hectares or acres have you planted there?
04:51Yeah.
04:52So we've planted 500 hectares already in these different areas.
04:56All the areas.
04:57Yeah, exactly.
04:57Do you have any new projects in preparation?
05:28Yeah, sure.
05:29So we can work with private companies, we can work with NGOs, we can work with states, governments.
05:35And so we have different types as well of customers.
05:37For your perspective, for the way you work, do you use artificial intelligence?
05:42Yeah, of course.
05:43In what ways?
05:44So we have two ways.
05:45The first one is from the pre-analysis of our projects.
05:49So we deploy a drone to get images of the projects to understand the ecosystem and to define a plantation
05:57schema.
05:58That's the first step.
05:59And then the main part of our artificial intelligence is on the monitoring to understand from aerial images how does
06:07the forest is growing.
06:08So how many trees are growing?
06:11How much biomass is growing?
06:13What kind of species?
06:14So to classify these trees and to understand how much carbon is being stocked by this forest.
06:19And for that, we use computer vision applied and we apply it to machine learning.
06:24Well, thank you very much for your time and good luck in your project because I think we all need.
06:29More forest in this world.
06:31Thanks so much.
06:31Let's head back to the main floor now.
06:33Time for Inside Viva Tech.
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