Saving the World, One NFT at a Time: Carbon Collectible NFTs

“Truthfully, I wasn’t that impressed with bitcoin, but it was when the presenter started talking about the blockchain, that I saw that it was going to change everything,” Mark told me on a recent call. Where others struggled to understand the concept, or saw it simply as a ledger, Mark saw the potential to change the world.

The Problem with Carbon Offsets

The world of carbon sequestration (taking carbon out of the sky) is a complicated one. Let’s dive into the problem and how solutions look so far. Let’s imagine Company A. Company A manufactures something, and in the process it pollutes the air. The government says okay, you can pollute a little bit, but once you pollute too much, you have to pay a fine. Company A doesn’t want to pay a fine, so it wants to buy a credit against its pollution.

Now imagine there is Forest B. Forest B is owned by someone, and forests by nature suck carbon out of the air, and replenish it with oxygen. The owner of Forest B says hey, I have a bunch of carbon I’ve sucked out of the air. Let’s call it one carbon offset. If you’re one carbon offset over your pollution limit, you can pay me and I’ll give you credit for what my forest cleaned.

So Company A buys the carbon offset of Forest B, and it avoids a fine. This is called cap-and-trade, and it’s the way that carbon offsets work in California and much of Europe and the world. Sounds great — so what’s the problem?

A High Bar for Entry

Imagine for a moment that you own a forest, and you want to sell the carbon offsets that it is producing. Well, someone has to measure how much carbon your forest is sucking out of the sky. Once measured, you have to get certified. Sounds easy enough, but then you realize that this process is quite costly. According to Mark, it can take 3–5 years and upwards of $500,000 to get certified. If you’re a poor farmer in a developing nation, this bar for entry is impossible to achieve.

But why so expensive? Well, the certification organizations have to send surveyors out to these farms. They have to measure the farm’s size, and even down to the trees on the farm — measurements such as trunk size — to determine how much carbon these trees are absorbing. Then they have to go back and do it again some time later, to measure change in growth and to allocate offsets accurately. It’s a time- and labor-consuming process, and it’s not affordable for precisely those people who need it most.

So what do you do? Perhaps counter-intuitively, and the problem that Mark is fighting, is that oftentimes the poor farmers in these developing nations will cut down their own forests, or burn them down, in order to make more land for farming. These are subsistence farmers, after all, and if it’s between a forest you can’t monetize and having dinner on your plate, then the answer is obvious. So Mark came up with a solution.

Blowing Away Obstacles

“What if we can drive that entry cost, rather than being between upwards of 500K and 3–5 years, to costing $0 and being almost immediate?” Mark asks. It sounds too good to be true, which begs the question: how? Marks’ Carbon Collectible NFTs seeks to use 3rd party satellite imagery that employs advanced data analysis tools, machine learning, and AI, to measure carbon sequestration without boots on the ground. “With AI and machine learning algorithms, we can take this 3rd party oracle data and can come up with a very close figure for how much carbon is being sequestered. That changes the game.” With Mark’s propriety SatNav App, he can also segment a forest and automatically calculate and track these carbon offsets, all without stepping foot on a forest or measuring a single tree.

By approaching the problem this way, The Carbon Collectible NFTs can award offsets almost immediately, which can then be sold. What’s more, the carbon offsets being produced are not historical, they are offsets that are happening in real-time, and that project into the future as the forest keeps growing. This provides an excellent incentive for the local community not to cut or burn down this forest, which otherwise may have been at risk of precisely such destruction. It also means we have a fighting chance at making this planet greener and better. Mark summed it up perfectly: “The exchange of carbon offsets that are historical, such as in cap and trade, is fighting yesterday’s battle against climate change. We’re creating carbon offsets that project for years into the future.”

NFTs as the Missing Link

So where do NFTs come into all this? That’s where The Carbon Collectible NFTs has taken a unique approach. They have acquired the virtual rights to a forest in Ghana, and have used their satellite imagery app to segment this forest into square hectares of land. Each hectare has an NFT associated with it that will be for sale. When someone buys the NFT, they acquire the rights to the carbon offsets from that hectare.

So how does the local population benefit, you may ask? Mark is pledging that at least 65% of the profit from these NFT sales will go back into the community, into what he’s calling a Social Innovation Studio. This will serve almost like a venture capital fund that funds local initiatives on the ground in these communities. “Most of these communities have the solution to their problems figured out, what they’re missing is the funds; we want to provide those funds to empower those local communities to make those changes.”

Next Steps and Launch

As of this writing, Mark is in pre-launch and very close to getting this project off the ground. “We just finished up our most recent smart contract yesterday,” he said proudly, “And we’re just tying up loose ends to ensure a smooth launch.” Currently on his website you can find a waitlist if you’d like to take part in a pre-sale opportunity, which is open to the public. Check it out!

You can find more info at www.CarbonCollectibleNFTs.com.

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