Pests, invasive species, and biological (PIB) threats are on the rise.
Why? You guessed it — climate change.
Higher temperatures are exacerbating the spread of crop-munching pests, waterway-clogging marine species, and disease-laden insects. Indeed, PIB risks are some of the fastest-growing and most costly in our climate-altered world. A recent paper in Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation even says they are on a par with storms, floods, and wildfires — increasing by 702% from 1980–1999 to 2000–2019.
And yet, PIB risk solutions are massively undercapitalized, and often overlooked in the adaptation investment universe.
Will Everill is on a mission to change this. He’s the founder of UpRoot Capital, a new climate adaptation VC and angel syndicate targeting early-stage companies that help customers detect, monitor, and control PIB risks amidst the changing climate.
In this episode, he breaks down the emerging DX (diagnostic) and RX (control and remediation) technologies looking to tackle these threats and save agribusinesses of all stripes from biological catastrophe.
He also maps the climate mechanisms driving PIB explosions. These include warmer winters — which allow pests to overwinter and reproduce faster — and shifting wildlife migration patterns. He illustrates the impacts with vivid examples: mountain pine beetles killing 100,000 square miles of North American forest, spotted lanternflies spreading across US cities and orchards, beds of zebra mussels blocking waterways, and ticks expanding into Europe and the UK to spread lyme disease.
As one of the only investors explicitly focused on PIB as an adaptation category, Will also talks candidly about the challenges building a market that doesn’t yet have a common language. This starts with educating investors on the size of the opportunity — and getting start-ups to realize “adaptation” is a category that can open wallets.
For those curious to learn about one of the great, overlooked investment frontiers in adaptation, this is a must-listen episode.
🔗 Learn more about UpRoot Capital HERE
📰 Read Will’s newsletter, The Adapt, HERE
Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
🎙️This Podcast Is Free…But Making It Sure Isn’t!
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We talk about:
👉 UpRoot Capital’s thesis of investing in early-stage DX and RX technologies tackling the fast-growing global threat of pests, invasive species, and biological (PIB) risks
👉 How climate change exacerbates PIB threats and why their impacts are vastly underappreciated by investors
👉 How PIB risk cuts across sectors from agriculture and forestry to public health, infrastructure, tourism, and logistics, creating a large but fragmented market opportunity
👉 The challenge of category-building in adaptation, and the hard work educating founders and investors on PIB as an exciting investment vertical with tremendous upside potential
👉 UpRoot’s early focus areas, and how Will sees the fund evolving
Thanks for listening!
Louie Woodall
Editor
