How we operate

What separates Tellus from other project developers is that everything we do is infused with the same boots-on-the-ground ethos: a pragmatic, action-oriented approach that values immediacy, hard evidence, hands-on involvement and tangible results. We’re relentless executors who’ll use every tool available to cut through the noise and get the job done.

We keep our core team small, preferring to leverage our large network of trusted domain experts as required. This reduces noise, enables us to adapt quickly and ensures we always have access to experts for any task on a wide variety of projects.

We’re also driven by the desire to build a legacy - impactful projects that will outlast us all. We’re trying to restore and protect natural ecosystems so they last forever, and this has an important influence on how we operate.

Guiding principles

Since we’re building for the long term in complex and dynamic environments, we place a lot of value in our guiding principles - they help maintain alignment over the long term, mitigating mission creep and strategic drift.

Healthy nature

Our north star at Tellus is to rapidly protect and restore nature at scale. That means amplifying the functions of natural ecosystems to produce the most broadly beneficial, scalable and resilient solutions to the world's multi-faceted environmental problems.

There’s an ongoing debate about the ‘best’ way to measure the health of a natural ecosystem. We operate on the principle that ‘healthy’ means an ecosystem can sustain itself and the communities living in and around it via its own organic functions. Understanding and optimising the locally unique mechanisms which make this possible requires a deep understanding of environmental science, ecosystem services, social science and conservation strategies. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution because every ecosystem is different, so we’ve learned to use many environmental-assessment tools and technologies, and know how to measure and work with a very broad range of quantifiable indices:

  • Ecosystem services

    • Primary productivity levels

    • Carbon sequestration rates

    • Natural pollination rates

    • Pest & vector-borne disease levels

    • Habitat connectivity & rates of habitat fragmentation

  • Climate regulation

    • Temperature patterns & anomalies

    • Precipitation patterns & anomalies

  • Biodiversity

    • Species diversity, richness & evenness

    • Presence of indicator species & invasive species

    • Population trends of key species, especially IUCN red-list species

  • Land health

    • Soil quality & fertility

    • Soil erosion & desertification rates

    • Deforestation & reforestation rates

  • Water health

    • All the myriad water quality indices

    • Groundwater recharge rates

    • Changes in water levels or flow rates

  • Air health

    • All the myriad air quality indices

    • Greenhouse gas concentrations

  • Economic health

    • GDP, unemployment, etc.

    • Energy production & consumption

    • Extent of land protection

    • Rate of land usage by type

    • Levels of illegal activities

Healthy ROI

More than anything else, the long-term sustainability of our projects depends on an alignment of incentives whereby we only win when our partners win. This demands that we take advantage of the most advanced technologies, tools and methodologies, and take a data-driven, scientific approach to everything we do:

  • Modelling & forecasting

  • Feasibility & risk assessment

  • Fiscal management

  • Project management

  • Supply chain management

  • Operational excellence on the ground

  • Impact measurement & reporting

We also know from first-hand experience how time consuming and resource intensive it is to cut through the jargon and layers of information from third parties when sourcing and scoping high-quality environmental projects. One of our top priorities is to make it as easy as possible for our partners to make high-quality decisions about how to deploy their capital. To this end we strive for transparency, thoroughness and clarity in everything we do.

The specific goals may vary, but all our projects are guided by quantifiable north-star metrics of ROI and measured against regular milestones. For private-sector clients our projects represent a high-value asset, but for natural-asset owners it’s often their entire livelihood, so we manage performance with the same level of rigour you’d expect in any other high pressure and high performance environment.

Healthy local communities

No human endeavour is sustainable unless it sustains the livelihoods of the people who bring it to life.

Environmental projects that prioritise social and economic co-benefits command a premium on any sellable assets (like offset credits), and for good reason. Far beyond any emotional appeal to the investor or consumer base, healthy local communities are the single most important criteria for the long-term sustainability of any environmental project because they’re the strongest practical bulwark against many of the greatest threats to success

  • Stakeholder buy-in

  • Land-tenure conflict

  • Lack of local ecological knowledge

  • Unemployment

  • Regulatory shift

  • Corruption

  • Cost-effective labour

Our foundational principle is to prioritise the health of local communities before all else, which we achieve by building strong, personal relationships with all local community representatives, governments, NGOs, investors and operational partners - one of our greatest strengths is that we know the right people in all the countries where we operate. Beyond this we know we need to provide education, training, new jobs and health services, and to invest in local culture.