- 3 Blockchain Projects Taking the Lead for Climate Action
- Blockchain Goes Green: 3 Promising Climate Change Initiatives
As the battle against climate change rages on, the integration of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain has taken center stage. Its decentralized architecture, ability to create temper-proof records, security, and transparency have paved the way for innovative approaches to climate action.
We’ll explore three promising blockchain projects tackling climate change, focusing on tangible outcomes and exploring how these initiatives leverage this technology’s intrinsic properties to foster trust, streamline processes, and enact real change.
1. Open Forest Protocol: Harnessing Blockchain for Reforestation
According to conservation.org, deforestation contributes approximately 11 percent of the entire global greenhouse emissions. OFP intends to change that by pioneering a transformative approach to reforestation. Developed by Swiss scientist Frederic Fournier and American web 3.0 specialist Michael Kelly in 2021, OFP is an MRV platform operating on the carbon-neutral NEAR blockchain.
OFP Vision & Mission
It’s simple – Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) forestation data comprehensively. By doing so, it seeks to address the inefficiencies plaguing the current forestation industry, such as slow systems, siloed information, and costly MRV mechanisms, among others. Through a decentralized approach, OFP will empower individuals, communities, NGOs, and governments to generate transparent, immutable proof of impact data, making the changes possible.
What Makes OFP Different
By enabling forest projects of all sizes to have such a backbone, OFP establishes a precedent for inclusive, scalable, and data-backed financing mechanisms. It operates on a Poof of Stake model, ensuring a decentralized agency for project operators. Every piece of data is quickly recorded using OFP’s mobile app. This data undergoes a rigorous verification process by validation and verification bodies VVBs to ensure the integrity and credibility of each reforestation project.
The Impact of OFP Initiatives
To date, OFP has overseen 71 afforestation/reforestation MRV projects worldwide, while 75 are in the acquisition pipeline. Fifteen of these active projects are seeking to sell Carbon Credits. The data of these projects, including their timeline and latest developments, are available online for anyone to see with the help of OFP Ecosystem Explorer.
2. dClimate: Revolutionizing Climate Data Management
dClimate is a decentralized climate information network. Conceived by the visionary minds behind Arbol, an innovative insurtech platform, dClimate serves as a decentralized marketplace. It helps farmers, businesses, and other stakeholders find, access, and utilize precise information about our planet.
dClimate Vision & Mission
The mission of dClimate is straightforward: to end industry stagnation and usher in an era of enhanced accessibility, lower costs, superior accuracy, and broader data coverage. As an open marketplace, dClimate embraces decentralization by utilizing Chainlink’s oracle network for retrieving climate data and validating skill scores on-chain. It intends to provide a common ground where data publishers, researchers, academics, businesses, and governments can collaborate.
The Strengths of dClimate
dClimate’s core strength lies in its collaborative ecosystem. The platform encourages innovation by inventing new data collection, modeling, application development, and product creation. Their DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) facilitates community-driven informed decisions that align with real-world needs. Then the accurate and accessible climate data can be leveraged to make informed decisions in areas like:
- Infrastructure development
- Community protection
- Water resource management
- Disaster preparedness
- Biodiversity conservation
- Agriculture, farming and Urban planning
dClimate Latest Initiatives
The CYCLOPS integrates high-resolution satellite imagery, geospatial intelligence, climate data, and advanced AI models to monitor global forest health transparently. This tool redefines MRAV for the carbon market, ensuring accurate and scalable data. Collaborating with Rainforest Partnership, dClimate is leading an education campaign for World Rainforest Day and COP28. This initiative also intends to implement digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRAV) for RP’s on-the-ground projects. Its partnership with InclusionBridge empowers underserved students with access to its data infrastructure, fostering real-world data science skills. In early 2023, 3 students utilized dClimate’s API and Marketplace to identify ideal sites for an onshore wind park.
3. Moss Earth: Carbon Offset and Climate Action Through Blockchain
Moss is a Sao Paolo-based climate fintech company that has developed a successful solution for the climate offset market. With a primary focus on Amazon rainforests, the company’s flagship product, MCO2, tokenizes carbon credits making them available on the world’s largest crypto platforms.
Moss Vision & Mission
The company intends to provide a secure platform for individuals and corporations to offset their carbon emissions effectively. By tokenizing verified carbon credits and making them available on Moss.Earth, Moss aims to preserve critical environmental assets, starting with the Amazon rainforest. Moss also actively forges on and off-chain partnerships to expedite the adoption of carbon credits and MCO2. Their notable partnerships include: Gol Airlines, Celo Blockchain, and KlimaDAO.
What is MCO2
Designed to boost carbon credit adoption and support certified local projects, one MCO2 represents one ton of CO2 saved. MCO2 operates on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 utility token. Each MCO2 token is supported by a REDD-compliant carbon credit sourced from the Verra registry. Currently, there are approximately 2.85 million MCO2 tokens in circulation, backed by an equal number of carbon credits.
Amazon Rainforest Projects
Moss is currently working on the ambitious $10 billion “Green Wall” initiative to thwart deforestation by splitting up parcels of the Amazon rainforest into 1-hectare lots and selling them as NFTs, Moss.Earth funds a 30-year preservation initiative. These funds cover patrolling, satellite monitoring, and safeguarding the protected area. In just one year of its release, Moss has collected USD 15+ million for the Amazon forest, helping preserve approximately 152 million trees.
The Future of Climate-Focused Blockchain Projects
Through these pilot initiatives, many projects like Moss demonstrate concrete outcomes such as reduced CO2 emissions and better transparency. Further innovations like fractionalizing verified credits and managing forward contracts on-chain will improve liquidity and scalability for carbon sequestration efforts. Blockchain is expanding its horizons beyond carbon markets. Alongside the development of digital climate databases as public goods, these advancements will pave the way for better global coordination, guaranteeing increasingly adaptable solutions for the ever-evolving challenges of climate change.
