Saving the Planet: Reforestum x Flyingcarpet Network
Using proof-of-observation to secure carbon offsets and support global reforestation efforts.
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Over the past several months, our CEO Julien and the Flyingcarpet team have been working closely with our friends at Reforestum. We’re now proud to announce the details of what we’ve been working on.
Introducing Reforestum
Reforestum is platformising reforestation by connecting people, cities and businesses and incentivising them to work towards reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Since 1950, 350 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide has made its way into the atmosphere while 8 million square kilometres of rainforest has been decimated.
Rejuvenating the world’s forests is one of the most cost-effective ways to tackle climate change. However, although concerns over climate change have never been more pronounced, organisations that seek to tackle the issue still face a myriad of complications and hurdles when it comes to supporting effective, accountable reforestation initiatives.
Reforestum is also tapping into the growing carbon offset market, in which organisations purchase carbon offset certificates in order to comply with statutory (or, in the case of the voluntary carbon offset market, moral) obligations that arise from their own carbon emissions. Organisations that support reforestation projects on the Reforestum platform will receive carbon offsets directly from the projects they back, which are more transparent than other offsets currently on the market because they are secured by Flyingcarpet proof-of-observation models.
Perhaps more importantly, by removing the number of middlemen between the organisation and the actual carbon offset, Reforestum is building a meaningful connection between the environment and organisations, as well as the local communities that make reforestation projects possible.
Where does blockchain come in?
Currently, the carbon offset market is rife with double-selling, a lack of transparency, and poor oversight as to how funds donated to reforestation projects are disbursed to local communities. Reforestum is turning to blockchain to remove these existing pain points.
The platform will convert forests in the real world into cryptographic assets that function as tradable forestry shares, called Reforestum Forest Tokens (RFT). RFT holders will receive carbon offsets proportional to their holdings. Since each area of forest will generate a finite number of RFT, which in turn contain carbon offsets, double-selling these contained carbon offsets will be impossible.
Furthermore, since RFT transactions are recorded on-chain, Reforestum will be able to provide organisations and environmental watchdogs with a level of transparency that is far superior to anything that is on the market today. The journey that money on the Reforestum platform undertakes, from the moment that an organisation supports a project to when that organisation receives a carbon offset contained within RFT tokens, is entirely traceable.
By hardcoding the mechanisms by which capital injected into the Reforestum ecosystem is allocated among local communities and project developers into smart contracts, the platform reduces the scope for corruption, crafty accounting and legal trickery — all of which drive up the cost of current reforestation efforts.
Enter Flyingcarpet
The Flyingcarpet Network is the geospatial layer for the decentralised web and incentivises data scientists to build machine learning models that extract insights from satellite imagery.
Since Flyingcarpet models are rigorously tested and then stored decentrally with on-chain proof, they are both verified and tamper-proof. This makes Flyingcarpet models excellent for continuously analysing geospatial data inputs, whether they relate to a Brazilian coffee farm, an ongoing construction project or, indeed, forests.
Geospatial and biomass data relating to Reforestum projects will be analysed by Flyingcarpet models in order to periodically monitor projects and measure their total carbon offset (and therefore quantify their economic value) and hash these insights on-chain (proof-of-observation). This will provide end-to-end traceability and accountability for all participants on the Reforestum platform.
Information gleaned by Flyingcarpet models will inform Reforestum as to how it ought to attach rights and benefits — such as all-important carbon offsets — to RFT tokens. This will radically cut the present costs of carbon offset certification. Flyingcarpet models can also inform capital allocation by inputting analytics directly into smart contracts that release funds to project developers, local communities or workers when certain milestones, such as biomass targets, are met.
Looking forward
Flyingcarpet is providing a critical piece of infrastructure for Reforestum and we are deeply excited about what the future holds for this partnership. If there is one thing that Devcon 4 made clear, it is that the blockchain community is hard at work at building widespread use cases. Leveraging blockchain in the fight against climate change is certainly a step in this direction.
