WEF Study Identifies 65 Ways Blockchain Can Address Environmental Issues
A joint study conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has identified a total of 65 existing and upcoming use cases for environmental blockchain applications. All information presented in the study was obtained from bibliographical research and a series of interviews with industry insiders.
According to the study, all 65 use cases can be grouped around six so-called “game changers”, which are the blockchain applications that could profoundly disrupt and optimize the systems which are most critical for solving the most pressing environmental challenges of this era, namely, climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean-health deterioration, air pollution, and pollution and water scarcity.
These game changers can be summarized as,
- “See-through” supply chains: Blockchain provides a way to establish immutable records of transfer and provenance that could enable end-to-end traceability of products. Such transparency allows the optimization of supply-and-demand management, building resilience and enabling more sustainable consumer choice, as well as better production systems and logistics.
- Decentralized and sustainable resource management: Blockchain can enable the transition to decentralized utility systems. Platforms could potentially use collected data on resource use (e.g., household-level energy and water consumption data from smart sensors), to allow for informed and decentralized decision-making, which could include advanced features like peer-to-peer transactions, optimal demand-supply balancing, and dynamic pricing.
- New sources of sustainable finance: blockchain-enabled finance platforms could help raise the trillions of dollars needed to finance a shift to low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economies.
- Incentivizing circular economies: blockchain could change the way we use, value, and trade resources, which could incentivize governments, companies, and individuals to discover new financial value from things that are currently discarded, wasted, or treated as invaluable.
- Transforming carbon (and other environmental) markets: blockchain-based token systems can be leveraged to optimize carbon (and other substances) markets, creating new opportunities for carbon credit trades.
- Next-gen sustainability monitoring, reporting and verification: blockchain technologies can fundamentally transform the way we report and assure sustainability and accountability, potentially helping companies to improve their performance, while allowing consumers to make informed decisions.
- Automatic disaster…
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