Rob de Laet — Co-Founder

Short bio Rob de Laet: Dutch, born 1956, world traveller, serial-entrepreneur, built an international eco-tourism company with partnerships in seventeen countries, philosopher, climate activist, rewilding a damaged part of the Brazilian rainforest and working to avert the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest by strengthening the biotic pump over the area. Co-author of the book ‘Cooling the Climate - How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years’ As a principal member of the EcoRestoration Alliance and fellow of the Global Evergreening Alliance, Rob is developing the Cooling the Climate project together with Peter Bunyard and others, to reverse the climate crisis fast, working from the Lovelockian Gaia perspective to restore the Earth’s metabolisms through the restoration of the water cycles and regeneration of the biosphere. Three tipping points need to be averted right fast to avoid wholesale civilizational collapse: the dieback of the Amazon Rainforest, the collapse of ocean biology and the collapse of Arctic Sea ice. This can be done if the world wakes up and acts at the speed and scale needed. For the first tipping point, Rob designed the ARARA digital-financial platform and project to scale forest protection and regeneration. A well-structured tropical project, valued across a full basket of PES that include carbon, water, soil, air, biodiversity, cooling and equity can realistically target $500/ha/year, when finally counting the total impacts of regeneration and protection what are there. This way we can make a sustainable future investable again. WhatsApp: +55 71 992617846 Email: robdelaet@yahoo.com, robdelaet@coolingtheclimate.earth

Stackforce AI infers this person is a leader in Environmental Sustainability and Climate Strategy.

Location: Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Experience: 33 yrs 4 mos

Skills

Project Management
Sustainability
Business Strategy
Leadership

Career Highlights

Co-authored a book on climate stabilization.
Led innovative projects to restore the Amazon rainforest.
Founded multiple successful travel companies across 17 countries.

Work Experience

Arara.Earth

Project Lead (10 mos)

Cooling the Climate

Project Lead (2 yrs 2 mos)

Self-employed

Co-Author of Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years (6 mos)

Global EverGreening Alliance

Researcher (3 yrs 5 mos)

Fazenda Holandesa

Rewilding and reforesting private valley in Brazil (16 yrs 2 mos)

Shoestring Travel, Koning Aap, Happy Trails.

Founder and CEO of series of travel companies (11 yrs 2 mos)

Freelance

Travel Guide Writer (5 yrs 11 mos)

Education

Philosophy at Utrecht University

Bachelor's degrees in Philosophy at University of Amsterdam

at University of Amsterdam

Rob de Laet

Co-Founder

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands33 yrs 4 mos experience

Most Likely To Switch

Key Highlights

Co-authored a book on climate stabilization.
Led innovative projects to restore the Amazon rainforest.
Founded multiple successful travel companies across 17 countries.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a leader in Environmental Sustainability and Climate Strategy.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Project ManagementSustainabilityBusiness StrategyLeadership

Other Skills

Digital-financial platformAgroforestryEcological outcomesSatellite monitoringEcological creditsEcosystem restorationClimate stabilizationPartner alignmentFunding managementGovernment engagementBusiness DevelopmentTravel ManagementEntrepreneurshipGreenhouse GasGlobal Warming

About

Experience

Arara.earth

Project Lead

May 2025 – Present · 10 mos · Brazil · Hybrid

ARARA -> Amazon Regenerative Agroforestry & Restoration Alliance
ARARA is a digital-financial platform that connects technology, finance, and nature to restore the Amazon rainforest at scale before it reaches its tipping point of irreversible dieback. The platform is built to empowers thousands of smallholder farming families and dozen of Indigenous nations across millions of hectares of Amazon rainforest to transition from deforestation to regenerative agroforestry. First 1.1 mio trees planted, several projects ready to roll.
How it works: Farmers and Indigenous land stewards are onboarded through franchised ARARA Shops. AI-powered satellite monitoring - using Google AlphaEarth embeddings, NASA GEDI lidar, FarmTree atabase and Treekipedia's LEAF algorithm trained on millions of species records. THis verifies every tree planted and hectare restored in real time. Smart escrow contracts release capital only upon verified ecological outcomes, creating tamper-proof accountability between nature and finance. Verified ecological credits are tokenized into standardized, tradeable assets that service loan repayment and attract institutional capital.
Why invest: Returns are performance-linked and de-risked through dual insurance mechanisms and verified ecological credit flows. The model is designed to transition from catalytic public funding to full private-market sustainability: regeneration becomes investable, extraction becomes uneconomical.
Key partners, endorsements, applications: ASHA Indigenous federations (30 nations, 35M ha bioregional plan), Gaia Amazonas, Buckminster Fuller Institute, OpenForests, FarmTree, Silvi, Google (AlphaEarth), NASA (GEDI lidar), Treekipedia. Endorsed by Carlos Nobre, Brazil's leading Earth System Scientist: "ARARA offers a dramatic and large-scale solution to the global climate problem."
Seeking: Early-stage investors. Nature · Finance · Technology. More at arara.earth

Digital-financial platformAgroforestryEcological outcomesSatellite monitoringEcological creditsProject Management+1

Cooling the climate

Project Lead

Jan 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 2 mos · Brasília, DF · Remote

Co-author & Project Lead — Cooling the Climate | Amazon Tipping Point Prevention
Co-authored Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years (Ethics International Press, 2024) with scientist Peter Bunyard, presenting a science-based blueprint to stabilize global climate through large-scale ecosystem restoration rather than carbon reduction alone.
Leading Phase 1 of the Cooling the Climate project, focused on averting the tipping point of Amazon rainforest dieback, a collapse that would disrupt rainfall patterns across an entire continent and accelerate global climate breakdown. In order to operationalize this we designed the ARARA digital-financial platform.
Responsibilities span the full project architecture: aligning partners around strategic goals, overseeing funding and communications, managing the development of a digital-financial platform to mobilize and deploy restoration capital, and engaging governments, Indigenous leaders, and international donors.
The scientific foundation: forests are not passive carbon sinks but active climate regulators. Through evapotranspiration and the biotic pump, the Amazon recycles 60% of its own rainfall and drives atmospheric rivers across South America. Its loss is irreversible on any human timescale.
The goal: demonstrate a replicable model for funded, community-led forest restoration - scalable from watershed to continent.

Ecosystem restorationClimate stabilizationPartner alignmentFunding managementGovernment engagementProject Management+1

Self-employed

Co-Author of Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years

Apr 2023 – Oct 2023 · 6 mos

Have developed myself into a climate scientist and solutioneer to solve the climate.

Global evergreening alliance

Researcher

Oct 2022 – Mar 2026 · 3 yrs 5 mos

Fellow and consultant for large scale regeneration projects in the tropical zone

Fazenda holandesa

Rewilding and reforesting private valley in Brazil

Jan 2010 – Present · 16 yrs 2 mos · Ubaíra, BA · On-site

I still own this 200 ha area where I rewilded and reforested removed rainforest. Right now I am focusing on creating awareness on how to resolve the climate crisis.

Shoestring travel, koning aap, happy trails.

Founder and CEO of series of travel companies

Jan 1996 – Mar 2007 · 11 yrs 2 mos · Amsterdam Area · On-site

Built a network of travel companies in 17 countries in one decade with several hundred employees. Sold the core company in 2007 to Swiss tour operator Kuoni.