<p>What does it take to protect one of Mexico's most biodiverse landscapes for 40 years? <br /><br />In this episode, Alexander Watson speaks with Marta "Pati" Ruiz Corzo, founder and UN Champion of the Earth, and Laura P. Burke Pérez-Arce, president and carbon finance architect of Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda (GESG), the organization behind the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, the largest socially managed protected area on Earth. <br /><br />They talk about fighting highways and dam projects, building a locally adapted carbon protocol that actually works for smallholders, and why global standards kept failing communities like theirs. They also discuss the strategic alliance with OpenForests that brought geo-transparency and a new monitoring infrastructure to Sierra Gorda's conservation model. <br /><br />This is conservation as it rarely gets told: stubborn, spiritual, deeply local, and quietly revolutionary. <br /><br />🌿 Subscribe for new episodes of Beyond the Canopy, the podcast exploring the most innovative approaches to ecosystem restoration and impact-driven investment.</p>