Dorjee Sun

At 31 years of age, Australian Dorjee Sun is one of his nation’s young achievers. Right after graduating from his double degree in law and business, he made a fortune developing websites for social networking and legal industry recruitment. Since then, his boyish charisma has impressed powerbrokers from Davos to DC. But Dorjee isn’t simply another slick entrepreneur: rather than sinking his funds into the next moneyspinning investment, he’s putting his cash and his reputation on the line in an effort to save the planet.

Through his business relationship with Steve and Terri Irwin’s Wildlife Warriors, Dorjee learns that many of Indonesia’s unique endangered species - particularly the orangutans - are on the brink of extinction. Indonesia is tagged ‘world’s worst’ in forest clearing, chopping down and burning 300 football fields’worth of rainforest every hour. Disturbingly, new studies show that the devastation of Indonesia’s forests has made it the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide – exceeded only by the USA and China. As the world wakes up to the severity of climate change, the need for real solutions has never been more urgent.

Using expertise gained during the dot-com boom, Dorjee sets up a fledgling carbon trading company, Carbon Conservation, and develops a scheme based on ‘avoided deforestation’. His plan is that farmers and companies should be paid to protect the forests instead of clearing them to plant cash crops. The funding comes from trading the carbon stored in the forests on an international exchange, like stocks or shares.

Dorjee explains, “When forests are degraded and trees are cut down, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. ‘Avoided deforestation’ is the concept in which countries are paid to prevent deforestation that would otherwise occur. Funds come from industrialized countries seeking to meet emissions commitments under international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. “Policymakers and environmentalists alike find the idea attractive because it could help fight climate change at a low cost while improving living standards for some of the world's poorest people”.

However, considerable scepticism surrounds carbon trading: is it a real solution, or just another way of commodifying and exploiting the environment? Ecologists and social justice organizations remain wary of the dubious virtues of a conservation scheme that seems to have come directly from Wall Street.

To raise the carbon finance, Dorjee travels from his home in Sydney to the jungles of Sumatra and Papua, gaining the trust and support of the local political leaders. The Indonesian Governors of Aceh, Papua and West Papua sign an agreement giving Dorjee the exclusive right to trade the carbon credits represented by their vast forests.

Journeying onward to the USA and UK, he pulls together a team of experts and inches toward his goal: a $100 million forest protection fund, to be supported by investment powerhouses, respected institutions, and political superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger. His assets are a reputation as a savvy young millionaire, one prior success in the industry, and a network of powerful friends, including environmentalists, politicians, the powerbroker Paul Wolfowitz, and Wildlife Warrior, Terri Irwin.

A major hurdle in the process is the exclusion of avoided deforestation from the Kyoto Protocol. Dorjee attends the climate change conference in Bali to push the case for including forests in the roadmap for a new protocol to commence in 2012. The stakes are high at the UN conference and much is riding on the ability of world leaders to reach consensus – for Dorjee, the forests, and the planet.

If successful, Dorjee’s company, Carbon Conservation, will be responsible for shifting millions of dollars from big polluting nations into Indonesia, thereby protecting the endangered ecosystems and their inhabitants. The pressure on Dorjee to deliver is enormous, and he’s losing sleep over his commitments. If he can pull off the deal - arguably the biggest conservation scheme in history - he will be a hero to the governors… and a very rich man.