by Kevin O’Hara
Last week I was in Phoenix for Trellis GreenBiz. I’ve been noticing a shift in our conversations over the last few years, and this event made it clear that it has crossed a threshold. The energy was still high. The rooms were full. The side conversations were lively. But the tone has evolved.
This didn’t happen overnight. The shift has been building quietly for some time. In Phoenix, it felt undeniable.
For a while, forest restoration was fueled by loud ambition. Everyone loves trees because the change is visible. You can see it, you can measure it, you can even hug it! The ambition around trees matched that energy: big pledges, bold targets, lofty timelines.
And that ambition mattered. It moved capital. It built momentum. It brought new partners to the table. But ambition alone doesn’t redesign supply chains or reduce wildfire risk.
For a long time, the questions I was asked at GreenBiz sounded like this:
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- How do I plant a tree for every item I sell?
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- How much carbon can we offset with a planting project?
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- What type of tree do customers want to see the most?
Those questions reflected where the market was. They helped draw attention and funding toward forests.
But the questions I’m hearing now are different:
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- Where do trees make the biggest urban cooling impact?
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- What are the full co-benefits of restoration beyond carbon?
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- How do we rethink supply chains so forests, water, and wildfire aren’t afterthoughts, but design criteria?
That’s a meaningful evolution. It’s a shift from transactional thinking to systems thinking. From counting trees to designing for resilience. From offsetting impact to reshaping operations.
In Phoenix, that evolution was visible everywhere.
I heard it in conversations with Nathan Truitt from American Forest Foundation and Ben Wilinsky from Arbor Day Foundation about family forest owners and supply chains. Families and individuals collectively own the largest portion of America’s forests, and connecting them to programs like the Family Forest Carbon Program can help scale carbon markets to strengthen both climate outcomes and rural economies.
In discussions with Julie Moorad from Salesforce and Oriana Raabe from Pentair about water, infrastructure, and corporate responsibility. More than 65% of the nation’s freshwater originates in forested watersheds, making forest conservation as much a water security strategy as an environmental one, especially for companies and communities facing increasing drought and infrastructure stress.
In exchanges with Chen-Chen Tung and Nijia Zhou from Amazon about procurement realities. Procurement decisions determine which landscapes are pressured and which are protected; when sourcing standards account for forest health, biodiversity, and wildfire risk, supply chains begin to reinforce, rather than undermine, long term resilience.
In perspectives from Ryan Whisnant at Martin Brower, Dee Siegel at Wells Fargo, Linda French at JPMorganChase, and Ian Shelledy at Walton Family Foundation about capital and risk. Capital markets are increasingly recognizing that forests influence everything from wildfire driven asset loss to water scarcity to regulatory exposure. Investing in restoration is not philanthropy, but risk mitigation and long term value preservation.
Different sectors. Different levers. Same direction.
Another theme that surfaced repeatedly: we need solutions that can be replicated.
Not every answer needs to be flashy. In fact, the next phase may belong to approaches that are practical, durable, and grounded in real economics. Solutions that can be copied again and again across landscapes and balance sheets. I’ve found myself asking a different question lately: how do we make nature finance boring again? Less theater. More integration. Less announcement. More execution.
Nature-based solutions are entering a more mature phase. The question is no longer whether they belong in business strategy. The question is how to design them so they scale across regions, across sectors, across supply chains.
That’s the work ahead.
At Forests Plus, our focus is on helping make that integration possible by bringing the right partners together, aligning incentives around priority landscapes, and helping move from conversation to implementation.
GreenBiz this year didn’t feel like a pep rally. It felt like a working session. And that’s a very good sign!