Erik Grigoryan is Founder and CEO of Environment Group. He also serves as the Special Envoy of Armenia on Debt-for-Climate Swap. He has more than 20 years of diversified experience in the public sector and international organizations combined with advanced education in environmental management, policy, and economics. From 2018 to 2020, he was Minister of Environment for Armenia, and Chair of the Interstate Ecological Council of CIS, National Designated Authority of Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, Political and Operational Focal Point of Global Environmental Facility, and UNFCCC in Armenia.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian and I’m very honored and excited to have with me my longtime friend Erik Grigoryan with us. He’s the CEO and founder of the Environment Group. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Erik.

Erik Grigoryan: Thank you very much and I’m very excited to be here to talk with you again. We talked a lot about the environment and [inaudible] climate previously. So I’m honored to be here and talk with you.

John: Erik, you have a fascinating and wonderful background. I was honored and, so excited to be with you when I was in Armenia last time. You took time out of your incredibly busy schedule to show me all around our beautiful homeland and talk a little bit about growing up in Armenia and how you fell in love with the environment and got into the kind of work and this wonderful journey that you’re on.

Erik: I remember all my career was connected with the environment. My education was with an environment. Of course, it was environment economics. So in that time I was in economics and in environment, but year by year, I become more close to environment and less maybe in economy, but I always say that it’s connected, it’s harmonized. Actually, it’s one of the biggest mistakes for the last decades, I will say, but the economy and the environment was recognized as an enemy, but they are working together. So you should consider it together. So, yeah, my education, I started my journey from the government. I was an intern, then I spent the years in an Armenian government, a leading specialist, senior specialist, head of division. Then I moved to IFIs, I worked for UNDP, I worked for World Bank and for some other institutions as well, then I returned back. I was an advisor to prime minister for environment, climate and related activities. Then I was a first deputy minister, then minister for a few years. A few years ago I left and for last few years, four years actually I’m with an environment group, the company that I founded and I’m working, very excited what we are doing because we become a company that’s not working only in our country or in the region, but in a global scale. So we have activities in different places.

John: Draw a little bit of parallel here. The minister of the environment of Armenia is like the head of the EPA in the United States and the head of the EPA of any other wonderful nation around the world. Talk a little bit about public private. Now you have this wonderful organization called the Environment Group. For people who want to find Erik and his colleagues, they can go to environment.am. But from 2018 to 2020, you were the minister of the environment. You were the number one person in Armenia. Talk a little bit about effectuating change on the public side and as a public sector official, and then effectuating change and for the better in the private side. How do they compare and which hat do you like to wear more?

Erik: Fortunately, when I took this position, I was very much aware of the problems because I spent many years as coming from them and I started as an intern. So many problems related to water, the mining, tellings, waste management, so whatever. There are so many questions I knew about this problem. Not only the problems but persons who were involved. It was the time that there was some corruption mechanism working there. Why this specific legal acts were developed to support this illegal logging, for example, or overuse of water resources. Unfortunately, I came at a time that I took a lot of reforms. So in my LinkedIn page, actually, it’s an article about 111 reforms that we did. It’s for water waste, electric vehicles, a lot of reforms. I would like just to mention one or two. For example, we made changes in legislation and made, too cheap actually to import electric cars, to support electric mobility. So we weighed the VAT, we weighed the custom duties, and importing electric cars to Armenia became very beneficial. Just not because these people are environmentalists, but it was economically too efficient to import. And Armenia became a leader, actually. Now you will go outside of the city, you will see so much electric cars that you will not see in any country in this region.

John: Really.

Erik: So it’s bringing a lot of electric mobility, increased our energy security because we don’t have any oil, gas or some kind of resources, but we have some renewables here. So it’s one of the reforms. I will say it was a really very good time to be able to do these reforms, not only again an electric, it was some reforms on a plastic, on a waste, on a water management. But again, being an environmental economist, I always saw this dilemma between economic and environment, because it was some understanding that if you want to care about the environment, you should be enough rich. And poor countries can’t consider environment problems before having some level of income. But this was one of, again, the biggest mistakes from the decades. You can see a lot of environment-friendly solutions are coming from private sector. The private sector is spending a lot of resources and R&D to find solutions that are economically efficient, but at the same time, environmentally friendly. LED lamps, it’s a very good sample. So when you are doing any kind of renovation, you are not thinking to buy an LED lamp because you are an environment guy.

John: Right.

Erik: But it’s economically efficient. This was an underestimation of the role of private companies before, but now they’re become more important, especially when we are talking about climate change and carbon, because most of the biggest companies in the world, they voluntarily pledge to become a carbon zero.

John: Right.

Erik: They are taking a lot of steps, they are spending a lot of resources. And if you will compare in the ground, not by paper, but in the ground, you will see that these private companies actually doing much more than some governments or some programs that we know, because the private are more flexible. If you will see now the role of the private companies, it’s increasing and increasing, and they are much more efficient, actually, when considering how much money was spent for some specific actions, it’s better to use a private company, for example, a forestation project or any other project.

John: Right. What year did you start the environment group?

Erik: I tried actually, I will say the capital that I gained during my 20 years working in government, working for IFIs, for UN institutions, my networks, everything that I gain, I try to bring to this company. If you will go to the website, you will see that we have an expert from all of the world. I mean, from Germany, from Slovakia, from South America.

John: Right.

Erik: All these people are the experts, colleagues and friends that I’ve worked with before. And we try to bring our knowledge there. There are different topics that we are working. For example, now we are developing deposit refund system for Armenia. This is the bottling when you are paying some small amount of money for plastic bottle, then returning back, then you are getting… Actually, we started another program for electronic waste actually. We developed the proposal for Green Climate Fund. It was approved and it was taught especially how to make a basement for recycling of solar panels and recycling of electric car batteries. So it’s quite different directions that we are working, developing illegal acts for secondary water use. But it’s one topic that we are very much involved, debt-for-climate swap. This is something that we worked for many years and it was one of my PhD topics back to 20 years.

John: What does debt-for-climate swap actually mean?

Erik: I will need to come with a very small historical background because it was a mechanism called debt for nature swap. It was developed in the 80s. It was a mechanism when the countries mainly from South America that has a problem with serving of debt. They were able during restructuring of their debts, some part of the money to spend for biodiversity, for environment. The philosophy behind this mechanism was that we have one globe, one urge. And when we don’t have enough money for developing countries to invest on environment, then they need to overuse resources, for example, cut more forests to sell it and to serve their debt, and if you go do some kind of swap, then they will be able to keep these natural resources. But all mechanisms that were developed starting from eight years, they had a one common philosophy that was a result of the dead restructuring. So problem with serving of foreign debt. The debt-for-climate swap, actually, the mechanism that we developed because it was developed by us. Five years ago, Armenia presented this mechanism in a general assembly during the climate summit invited by Antonio Gutierrez. They proposed to bring also obligations of predator countries to this mechanism. To be clear, from one side, developing countries need to serve their debt to the developed countries, the creditor countries. But from other side, creditor countries has a common obligation under climate processes, Paris Agreement, and climate convention to support developing countries up to $100 billion annually for climate adaptation and mitigation measures.

John: Okay.

Erik: So what we are proposing, I will bring an example on an Armenian case, but we are doing the same for other countries. I can explain there. For example, we have a debt to France, $140 million.

John: Okay.

Erik: France has his own obligation to support developing countries on climate that is annually $2, $3 billion. So what we are proposing then, let’s swap these money and spent internally on Armenia climate adaptation projects or mitigation. Particularly in this case we decided to spend some money on drinking water renovation system because of climate change, we have less water because of the temperature increase, because of reduction of precipitation. So we need to invest more because it’s not enough water for this.

John: Wow!

Erik: Then we will record and report to climate convention that this $140 million was provided by France and France will report that this $140 million was transferred to Armenia. But we added also some other components. For example, we have Veolia working in Armenia, that it’s a French company, that it’s operator of water systems. We will do this system, then the swap through the Veolia company. We added some corporate interests here. There are some other components that you are using different methods to argue that it’s a win-win also for creditor country. So generally the idea is just a platform. It’s a platform where two countries working together, negotiating and bilaterally happy to swap some money and instead of paying a support to the creditor, to spend internally on a climate adaptation and mitigation measures in country, but at the same time assuring that both countries will report that this money was a climate finance, that was obligation also for creditor country.

John: Who gets to report on the success of the actual mitigation that you did? For instance, with Armenia, you’re creating more water opportunities. Is Armenia reporting on that? Or is France or do both give the opportunity? Both?

Erik: It’s a whole mechanism are set under UNFCCC convention. It’s UN United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change. Countries have the annual reports reporting what was done, what is the situation, how much money was provided, how much was received. So all this reporting are there. This is a very important point because this is actually the difference between that for nature and that for climate that we are proposing. Because that for nature from 80s it was a result of a restructuring of that. That for climate spoke is an alternative innovative platform actually for two countries that working together and deciding how to you know spend that actually the money for adaptation, because everyone knows if you are not spending $1 now for adaptation, then after 5-10 years, you will spend 10 times more. So it’s very important to have this concrete. And this money is there, I mean, this is in our budget. It’s allocated to be spent to serve our debt. But once we decided and we agreed with France that let’s do this work together, we can immediately allocate it by local currency that is also one of the benefits of this swap instead of hard currency to spend the local currency and to start to do the work immediately. I talked about the water project but same now we are discussing with Germany on a reforestation project.

John: Let’s go back to the water project. So now you do this with France and Armenia and Veolia. Veolia is the private company, or it’s a publicly traded company, as you and I both know. So it’s really a wonderful bilateral public, but then also private partnership between a corporation and two great countries, France and Armenia. And everybody wins. France wins, Armenia wins, the people of Armenia win, Veolia wins, it’s more business for them. And now the water situation in Armenia gets better.

Erik: Definitely. And this is…

John: So they’re winning all around.

Erik: It’s a win-win.

John: My understanding from what you’ve just explained, Erik, is that you’ve taken the death for nature platform from the 80s and it’s a more evolved. It’s more evolved for the times that we live in that meets the world where it’s at now, where it’s all trying to, like you said, we’re trying to decarbonize the planet as fast as we can. So this goes towards the decarbonization and the improvement of the countries that are benefiting from this debt-for-climate swap. So the planet wins, the people win, the two countries win, and then also the company that’s executing the work also gets a win as well. It continues to do their good and important work.

Erik: I mean, I don’t need to add…

John: That’s wonderful.

Erik: That is what is actually important, and this is a very small part that I would like to explain when you are negotiating on that for climate.

John: Yeah.

Erik: And it’s that for nature’s fault. You already facing a problem with your debt, that was with Argentina, some other countries previously. When you are talking with your creditors, it may be some kind of goodwill or they will press with their conditions because you are debitor, you have a problem and there are some activities that you should take. When we are talking on debt-for-climate swap, actually this is the win-win. This is also very good for creditors because they have their own obligation to fulfill. There are some funds available, but they are so slow taking three years, four years to prepare a proposal, then you don’t have enough resources to work in a country. So it’s a really complicated situation. When we are talking about this $100 billion pledge that was under Paris Agreement that developed countries should provide, it was felt. It’s clear globally, it was felt. You will always see developing countries coming and saying, “Most of this money are credits and we are already over that. So we can take additional credits there.” And you will see from other side, from developed countries, from creditor countries, they will say there is not enough qualified projects that we may invest in this project. So then consider this mechanism as an alternative, innovative tool. Because we were talking about Armenia and France, but imagine the same may happen between Nigeria and Germany, between Benin and New Zealand, between any country, because I thought we started to work because I’m acting on behalf of my country. I’m a negotiator on debt for climate. But we have the Pacific small islands, 14 small islands, especially hurt after COVID, because most of the incomes were coming from tourism, so they were hit by different aspects. COVID, reducing of the incomes, and then they are the most vulnerable countries on climate change. We have to find money, but then you may come with this. It’s not only water or afforestation, it may be solar projects. I mean, the solar may be there. So any project that may help developing countries to receive some resources for climate adaptation. Why I am returning to adaptation? Because I believe that for mitigation, especially under article six of this ITM was, you may apply for a bigger companies to go to Apple, to Google and say, this is the reforesation area. Let’s do some project or to make a certified project and to try to sell it. But for adaptation is a little bit problematic to find resources.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Erik Grigoryan with us. He’s the CEO and founder of the environment group. You can find Erik and his esteemed colleagues at environment.am. Erik, now explain to me before we go into some of the other great projects you’ve worked on and are currently working on, explain to me environment.am and your role in the debt-for-climate swap. Are you negotiating the amount between the two countries? Are you then making sure that amount is given? And then are you then choosing the project that needs to get done? Are you doing that in combination with the host or the creditor and the creditee country, how are you choosing water? Who chooses Veolia and who gets the two countries to sit down and make this kind of deal? Does that all go through the environment group?

Erik: Yes, actually, I started with an Armenian case because I was in a cabinet, so I was the minister who initiated this process.

John: Yep.

Erik: When I left, our government decided that I need to help with the negotiation process. So I was appointed to be a negotiator on behalf of Armenia with creditor countries, with UNFCCC, with IFIs and institutions. Actually, it’s quite long. The steps when you’re deciding to work and then deciding with which country to work, because this mechanism is mainly working on bilateral public debt. It’s an easy one, because if you need to go to the private debt, it’s much more complicated. You can’t make more noise on this because it’s a debt negotiation. Non-correct word will be too sensitive for your private creditor also.

John: Right.

Erik: A lot of works that you are doing, you don’t need to, I mean, even if you want to come and invite all journalists and say, “We have such kind of achievement,” you can’t do it. So you are negotiating. Specifically projects or water or afforestation. We are looking at the priorities of creditor countries. So we know that France is much more interested in water, Germany is much more interested in forest and biodiversity, and we are trying to find the place actually and going with our arguments why it’s good for them because with Germany we’re saying, you have such a beautiful experience for afforestation. Within 50-60 years, you were able to do such a large afforestation in Germany. And if you will not pay a foreign debt but transfer this for afforestation in Armenia, then we will involve the German companies to come and to work on this project. And you will have also the private companies here. I mean, you are using whatever you can use. Do you know that we have a large diaspora in France, so [inaudible] before the election? So you are also using… There are so many components that you will need to use.

John: So, Erik, let’s be honest. I know you many years now. You’re a brilliant man. This goes way beyond dollars and cents. This also goes to the heart and soul of understanding what’s important to you, as you just said, the creditor countries and making sure you fulfill what’s really the mission and the DNA of that creditor country. As you said, Germany reforestation, not only do we have a large diaspora in France, but they care about water. So the dollars and cents is one part of the negotiation, but the emotional part and the peoples’ skills and understanding what’s important to who is absolutely important in these kind of negotiations?

Erik: Yes, also sometimes you may have a trouble when somebody from your government will use any non-correct word. It may be one word.

John: Wow!

Erik: It’s some kind of problems but some of the officials were asking the creditor country when you are going to do the debt forgiveness, and everything was stopped because there are so many Francophone countries, much lower GDP per capita. If you are talking about debt forgiveness or something like this, it will not help.

John: So this really is…

Erik: It’s a process, yeah.

John: Oh, so this is dollars and cents, emotional intelligence, but also at the end of the day, you get to lean on your 20 years of government experience. This is diplomacy at its finest. Every word has gravitas and every word that you choose in discussing it, announcing it, executing it is very important?

Erik: Yes. Because our activity, the environment group activity on debt for climate swap.

John: Yeah.

Erik: We’re hired by UN actually to help also Sri Lankan government.

John: Wow!

Erik: So for the last one and a half year, I’m directly working with Sri Lankan government and after 10 days I will fly also again, Columbus, but flying very often…

John: Explain that. You’ve shown the success in Armenia. Now, how many other countries are you doing this with? That’s the interesting part.

Erik: So we did a feasibility study for Pacific Sea. It is for 14 countries and making these mechanisms how these small island countries may benefit with their creditors. We started to work with Sri Lanka. We have now requests from one Central Asian country. We have worked with them. They started, they did some mistakes on negotiation process. And now we will try to help them with the activities.

John: You’re going to mend the fence. You’re going to fix that.

Erik: But it’s much more important that like five years ago, when we just started to use this mechanism, the word debt was even problematic to use. That’s why we named the mechanism innovative climate finance tool without using debt because we are receiving the delegations coming from World Bank monthly saying, do not touch that, whatever you want to do. But now actually there are 60 countries globally that are facing a problem with that and most of them are climate vulnerable. So if not today, but definitely tomorrow, this tool will start to work. This is an option that will help again win-win for creditors and debitors to implement the projects. But it’s not only climate projects. It’s also a very important part. When you are doing a large reforestation, it’s not only about environmental and climate. It’s also about social economic part because you are hiring a local people to do this work, it’s impacting positively. The same with the water project, the church project. So it’s also a big socio-economic component here. This is very important to understand. Again, we have some initial negotiations with some Arabic countries that are facing a problem with water and with debt. What is interesting is that IFIs like the World Bank or EBRD or IMF, they started to talk about that for climate swap. If you will go to the website, the IMF website, you will see even a policy paper developed by IMF saying that this is one of the mechanisms. But some few years ago it was unbelievable to have any kind of debt or climate swap in these institutions. It’s now important that you will give enough basement for two countries, bilateral, to discuss, to understand and to start to implement. Because again, it’s very important if you start climate adaptation projects now. Because when you have any problem because of climate change, and we see every month we have new records for the temperature, for this disaster or whatever there, then your losses are much more. So we need to start to spend money on a climate project and to try to do the decarbonization actually. Because it’s not just work, because for most of the people, these climate talks are still something far.

John: Sure.

Erik: They are not considering that it’s something important. But when you are in agriculture or in any sector that directly connected with the temperature the water availability, then you can see already. The world is not the same as it was 10 years ago definitely and you need to adapt, otherwise you will start to lose your tourism, your agriculture, because all the sectors are vulnerable to climate change.

John: What is the the future of debt-for-climate swap, or as you say, this innovative financing mechanism, is the environment group going to be doing this? Do you feel, not only in Sri Lanka, but how many other projects do you think over the next five years you’re going to be involved with? You’re working with World Bank, you’re working with the UN, obviously you’re working with various countries. Is this going to only accelerate because of the success that you showed in France and Armenia?

Erik: Yes, it will be accelerated because it seems a simple tool actually. There’s no big complicated processes because when you are doing any kind of debt restructuring through Paris Club is so complicated, you need to go to talk with all other debitors that creditors have. To receive any kind of agreement that will take years, 10 years, 5 years of negotiation. This is what we are trying to do, simplify our process as much as possible. Creditor happy, debitor happy, private entities are happy, they can sell something, it was reported, everyone is happy, then let’s start doing it. It’s not a matter of one or two countries on a debt serving problems, it’s 60. So if you can work with one or two to do some kind of prolongation or to do some repayment period coming a few years later, you can do it with one or two or three countries. But with 60, you can’t do. We should consider that, climate change is real and we don’t need actually to find the benefits because of climate change. For example, to consider I’m in agriculture in European Union, give us more money coming from European Institute Commission or we are farmers or we are here or we are vulnerable. It’s really a problem. We need to solve it. We see that the temperature is changing much faster than it was proposed. Just yesterday, it was the new data coming with World Meteorological Organization. It’s already 156 [inaudible] the degree of increase. It’s much higher than we were proposing by Paris Agreement to try to limit in one and a half. And this is changing all the process. For example, if you are in agriculture and you have the temperature of heat for one day 40 degree. It’s okay, the plant may survive, but when you have 10 days in a row, you need to change something. Again, this tool is giving the chance to spend the real money now on adaptation measures and on mitigation, of course.

John: Erik, you’re the CEO and founder of the Environment Group. Again, for our listeners and viewers, to find Erik, and all his great colleagues at the Environment Group, please go to environment.am, environment.am. What’s the future hold for, which direction is the Environment Group going now? Are you excited about the opportunities? Is it growing beyond your expectations? And what are you most excited about as we are now going into the middle of 2024 and all the things that are going on right now currently with regards to decarbonizing this great planet that we live on?

Erik: Actually, when we started, COVID came immediately, then we had some tragic problems in Armenia because it was worse at some time. It was not a good time for beginning, but anyway we started to grow up and I’m very happy with our partners. I said we are partnering with larger IFIs and the UN institutions. But I see coming from developing countries, the company that is coming from developing countries and knowing the real ground problems in developing countries, because in many cases, it’s not a problem with the finance because a lot of support money is flowing to developing countries. But when you don’t have enough knowledge and experience, you don’t know what to do, how to spend it, and then your results are lower than expected. So I see our role actually to support developing economies to be much more prepared on any kind of, for example, negotiations. So we are negotiating on behalf of debitor countries in any case, not on behalf of creditor countries, to assure that they will have a more solid argument, because you need to understand. I mean, if you know that your creditor has his own obligation and they can’t actually fulfill it because of some problems, you can go and negotiate on this scale. Otherwise, you are just going and asking for money, as you know, the goodwill or [inaudible]. It’s not good to use such kind of wording, but yes, you need to understand your strong arts also and it’s a common obligation of all nations on the climate and the environment. So I see our role actually. I’m very happy that we started to work not only in my country but also in some other countries helping mainly the governments, but we are very open to help the companies, industries on carbon related activities. We developed the carbon accounting soft that will help the companies to account their carbon footprint. So, it’s very wide so the depository fund, the plastic, the water waste, but the climate and the carbon related activities are primary expertise.

John: So you created a software to track people scope one, scope two, scope three emissions?

Erik: Yeah, it’s not for the people but it’s for companies.

John: Companies, right.

Erik: Because the larger companies they don’t want to say give more information on companies outside to calculate their footprints because if you calculate cargo footprint you know a lot about companies, so they are much more interested in carbon accounting softs. So they will put the data, we’ll receive the results and then to disclose this, they not give the very detailed information because it’s very much connected with the businesses. We worked with a German company, a software company, to develop this soft and again trying to sell it mainly in Arab countries, but yes, those are the issues. Plus, we are also looking for specific reforestation projects to be certified and to be sold in international market as an ITM.

John: And the more software that you’ve created helps these companies be more transparent, where historically there was opaque information and no one was sharing anything. This is to help get more information out there?

Erik: Yes, especially in our region, there are a lot of obligations coming. For example, if you are exporting something to European Union, there are some certain amount, some certain type of products. It’s even regulation by the European Union called carbon border adjustment mechanism. It says that you need to provide a carbon accounting. If you are emitting more than the local European companies, you need to pay every tonne of CO2 according to European Union prices, that it’s very expensive, like €100 per tonne. So yeah, it’s a lot of mechanisms. I mean, if you don’t want to do this carbon accounting, it’s already here. Carbon accounting will become a part of your accounting.

John: Let’s switch topics for a second, Erik. How is our wonderful and beautiful homeland country, Armenia, doing with regards to decarbonization? Are you happy with the progress there? You talked a little bit at the top of the show about the amount of amazing EV cars that are now going throughout Armenia. Are we doing a good job with keeping up with our obligations to decarbonize Armenia?

Erik: Yes, this was one of the reforms that we initiated to waive any kind of taxes and custom duties for electric mobility.

John: Yeah.

Erik: It was just booming in Armenia. So it’s the highest level of the electric car use in the region. It’s very common. So I am personally driving an electric car and I’m very happy with this one. But specifically in this region, it’s very booming on electric mobility. But years ago, we announced that we are going to double our forest cover, forest cover of Armenia. We were fortunate to start in that time because we were able to request some international support to do forest landscape restoration mapping of Armenia. We have now the places that are available for afforestation and this is a large project. Also, there are some other processes going like electrification of transport. Like Yerevan municipality just announced that the next 250 buses will be electric one. So yes, we are still keeping this below our commitment because by national determined contribution of Armenia, we will have 40% less than we had in 1990. We are still there, but because the economy is growing very fast, so the emission is still growing. But when we are comparing with the GDP increase and the CO2, it’s decoupling. So we are using less electricity. So CO2 emission because renewables are growing. Now we have more solar than any other sources. Yes, the solar is booming really in Armenia because it was a very good condition for private companies to invest. So we just started a 200 megawatt project in Armenia. It will be built by a Mirati company, Masdar. It’s the biggest…

John: Sure.

Erik: …well company, probably they are now the biggest in the world. I don’t know. So yes, those are the booming and again it’s very important to understand that economically is more efficient to be environment friendly.

John: Right.

Erik: Because always your environment and climate arguments are weaker than economic, financial and social argument. But once you can combine them and say that it’s economically efficient, but it’s environmentally friendly, then it’s it’s starting to run, you don’t need any additional measures to support like with an electric car. No one is giving any kind of additional support. People are just buying because it’s economical.

John: It just makes good sense?

Erik: Yeah.

John: Listen, Erik, you are always welcome on the Impact Podcast. I just get so jazzed when you talk about all the new things that you’re working on and making the world a better place. For our listeners and viewers to find Erik Grigoryan and his colleagues at the Environment Group and all the great work they’re doing, please go environment.am. Go to environment.am. Erik Grigoryan, you’re not only a great friend, but you are just an inspiration to me every time I’m with you, every time I listen to you. I’m just so grateful, not only for the time you took tonight, and it’s nighttime in Armenia when we’re taping this, it’s daytime here in Fresno, California, but I’m not only grateful for the time you took to spend with us today on the Impact Podcast, but I’m much more grateful for always knowing that you make the world a better place.

Erik: Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here. I learned a lot from you, actually. Why Armenia now started this electronic recycling? Actually, it’s because of you. Why we started to develop the basement, the legal acts or whatever, it’s because of you. So we are both in the environment and I believe that whatever we are doing in this sector is not for today or tomorrow, but it’s for our generation. This is right to do actually.

John: Thank you again, Erik. Please come back on the show. Please continue to share the great journey that you’re on and the important journey that you’re on and the journey that the environment group is on. Because like I said, you and your colleagues on a regular basis make the world a better place.

Erik: Thank you. All the best.

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