Green Accountability Tech Accelerator
Financial Accountability for Indigenous Nature Stewards with Savimbo
Welcome back to our latest series on the teams behind the first cohort of the Green Accountability Technology Accelerator. Four teams joined us in May 2024 to develop tech-enabled tools that enhance citizen oversight and decision making in climate finance and climate action. Today, we’re speaking with the co-founders of Savimbo, Drea Burbank, Fernando Lezama, and Hector Jhony Lopez, about collaborating with Indigenous communities and building digital tools for financial transparency in the Colombian Amazon.
Climate Collective: Who is Savimbo? Tell us about your team.
Drea Burbank: Savimbo is a social enterprise created by and for Indigenous Peoples and local communities to directly access climate markets. Our team is composed of individuals deeply connected to these communities, bringing together a wealth of knowledge and experience to address the unique challenges they face. We aim to provide transparent and equitable solutions that ensure Indigenous communities receive the support and recognition they deserve in the fight against climate change.
Climate Collective: What are you building? Tell us about Kapital and how it came to be.
Drea Burbank: We’re incredibly excited about Kapital. There is virtually no transparency in climate markets regarding how funds are distributed to communities, leading to numerous issues and conflicts. Certifiers simply aren’t equipped to monitor or verify payments at the community level.
Kapital was designed by Savimbo’s Indigenous co-founders, particularly Fernando Lezama, who has spent over 20 years working with hundreds of Indigenous communities and their leaders. He identified the problems with group payments and envisioned a solution to reduce friction within communities once funds from climate projects arrived. To our delight, Kapital has proven to be effective in addressing a much broader global problem: enhancing transparency and trust in climate finance.
Fernando Lezama: For many years I worked with traditional medicine, ancestral knowledge, and the vision of Indigenous cultures, looking for solutions to protect the jungle. We have a laboratory to develop practical and timely solutions with this ancestral knowledge and provide resources. We’ve seen that [financial] resources go to governments, but never go to communities that are the ones protecting the jungles. Today, thanks to technology, we are developing electronic tools so that communities can protect water, trees, and the jungle.
Climate Collective: What opportunities does this unlock for Indigenous communities?
Hector Jhony Lopez: The importance of this tool is that the [financial] resources are going to arrive in the communities. The community together with the assembly will define where the resources go. For example, if it is intended for a school or an ecological trail, all of this will be defined and managed with the communities.
The goal is for these resources to be managed in the right way, ensuring that they are well invested and reach their intended destination. If the resources go through the central government, they can be lost to intermediaries. The communities [in the jungle] have the capacity to redistribute financial resources to the best possible investments.
Drea Burbank: The coolest thing about Kapital is that it enables communities to demonstrate their financial accountability. For instance, if a community receives a payment as large as $20,000 or $80,000, they can use the distribution data from Kapital to showcase their good financial management practices to larger NGOs or government funders. This transparency can attract more significant institutional development capital, opening up new opportunities for growth and sustainability.
Climate Collective: Tell us about some of the risks and challenges you are facing in the development of Kapital, and how you are addressing those. What do Indigenous leaders think about this?
Drea Burbank: The biggest technical challenge we face is that most Indigenous communities we work with don’t have bank accounts. We work diligently to help both women and men in these communities open reliable bank accounts with stable banks. Additionally, we provide education on how to avoid predatory lending and other negative side effects of becoming banked for the first time. It’s a crucial step in ensuring that communities can effectively manage their funds and benefit from the transparency Kapital provides.
Fernando Lezama: Throughout this process, we have worked with Indigenous communities in many parts of the world. With these different tribes, we have created a society of leaders who have many concerns. Speaking in a common language and philosophy is one main challenge, because the worldviews of the peoples are very different, and each community has different values and a different way of seeing things. Some say that they come from the stars, some from the rivers, others from the forests. To work together effectively, we stay focused on the worldview that nature is one for all peoples and communities, otherwise we slip into a very generalized debate.
Climate Collective: What motivates and inspires the team at Savimbo to build tools that enable Green Accountability? How are you achieving this?
Fernando Lazama: For us, this is a form of life. I have been taking care of territories in order to drink clean water and be in the woods. It is a great desire to have such a high quality of life in the jungle. That is why we want to take care of it. I feel very happy to be in the jungle and drink clean water with my hands.
Drea Burbank: We love the jungle. Everyone at Savimbo is deeply in love with nature, which extends to a love for the people who live in, and care for, tropical forests. These communities understand their environment on a profound level. This deep connection to nature and the people who protect it drives our commitment to developing tools that promote Green Accountability. We achieve this by working closely with Indigenous leaders, leveraging their insights and experiences to create solutions that are both effective and culturally sensitive.
Climate Collective: What do you need to take this to the next level? How can others get involved?
Drea Burbank: We are looking to expand the blockchain reporting component of Kapital. To do this, we need a stable and responsible Layer 1 (L1) blockchain partner interested in collaborating on this next step. Additionally, we require more funding to make the software available to groups beyond those directly affiliated with Savimbo. Although the code will be open source, we want to develop a secure Application Programming Interface (API) integration and release it as a standalone product that integrates with QuickBooks and international banking software.
If you are interested in partnering or supporting our efforts, please reach out to us at ops@savimbo.com. Together, we can enhance transparency and accountability in climate finance, ensuring Indigenous communities receive the recognition and support they deserve.
Hector Jhony Lopez: With great faith, we are working with an entire team and coalition — from the mountains, to the satellite antennas that we have in communities, to Drea, to the jungles — so that we can be heard by the inhabitants of the Colombian Amazon and other countries that accompany us. This is the voice that we send out to the world so they hear us, see us, and understand that this is the way to take care of Mother Nature. That is what we are working on, that is the importance: to leave natural resources to future generations.
Note: The elements of this interview conducted with Hector Jhony Lopez and Fernando Lezama were held in Spanish and translated to English with the assistance of Drea Burbank and Ana Velástegui.
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About Climate Collective: Climate Collective is an innovation network made up of start ups, investors, scientists, and non-profits putting digital technologies to work for climate and nature at scale. Since 2021, Climate Collective has granted over $4 million towards early-stage tech development, research, and community building for nature and climate action. Learn more at www.climatecollective.org.
About GPSA: The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) was established by the World Bank’s Board of Directors in 2012 to expand opportunities for civil society and governments to work together to solve pressing governance problems and improve development outcomes. Its “collaborative social accountability” model facilitates engagement of citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) with public sectors to promote transparency and accountability of government policies and services and improve their performance and responsiveness. The Green Accountability Technology Accelerator is part of the Green Accountability Platform, which the GPSA launched at COP28 to develop an ecosystem of CSOs creating green accountability and supporting citizen action across the climate finance agenda. This includes a global knowledge platform on green accountability managed by WRI, Huairou Commission and SouthSouthNorth. Learn more at https://greenaccountability.org/.
