At most recent estimates by a UN climate science panel, experts stressed the potential benefits of natural solutions to combat global warming, particularly land -based mitigation.
At report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that even if current national climate commitments were met, they would not effectively limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
The world is facing at least 2.2 degrees C if not more, without drastic action, the report said.
While fossil fuels have been identified as a major cause, there is a consensus that properly managed land use sectors, including agriculture and forestry, can contribute to reducing emissions, removing and storing carbon dioxide.
The land use sector contributes about 25 percent for emissionsbut could contribute twice this amount to reducing emissions.
Through land reclamation and the use of integrated land management techniques, academics say, the ever -increasing trajectory of global warming will be reduced, and benefit biodiversity and ecosystems.
There is no point in restoring damaged land – about 25 percent of the world’s land area.
Here it is Open Forest Protocol (OFP), an innovative open source blockchain -based platform, aims to make a big difference, closing the gaps that now make accurate and transparent measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) a challenge.
The app, which is web-based is designed to provide capacity for small farmers, land users, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments and other stakeholders to measure and verify carbon in their land in order to recover payments based on results.
The use of blocks creates a transparent and secure means of storing information, which cannot be changed or altered.
“This is intended to be a community-based project where different groups of people can see the data, and then if validated by the community, it will be a blockchain system so that the data is transparent,” OPF founder Frederic Fournier said in an interview. on the sidelines of the COP26 UN climate talks in Glasgow last year.
“This is the first step – the second step of the project is that we will increase the capacity of MRV to provide access to government finances for projects that do not have access.”
Eventually, the idea would be to create a standard system for creating carbon credits for trade in the voluntary carbon market based on MRV, he said. accuracy is important if the credit is to be sold or exchanged as an offset for government or corporate emissions.
Demand is increasing exponentially as states and companies struggle to offset emissions while trying to reach targets.
Nowadays, reforestation efforts are often hampered due to lack of data accuracy, making it difficult to determine whether it reflects the status of trees in the landscape.
Last month, OFP, which partnered with the World Center for International Forestry and Agroforestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF), signed an agreement with Ivory Coast to work with local communities and non-governmental organizations to reclaim and restore 5,067 hectares of damaged forest land in the Gorké forest area.
This is one of 15 projects undertaken to date.
Users can monitor a web interface in the dashboard that displays a list of jobs, assign field agents to specific projects, check data if it has been collected from the field, and check back. Afterwards, the data can be sent through the dashboard for validation in the blockchain community – an open third party.
“This is a different approach,” said Radoslav Dragov, who oversees business development and fundraising at OFP. “It’s a community-based, open-source, low-cost approach that makes it a game changer-we’re trying to break down silos and create something that uses new technology and can empower people from around the world. Planting trees that are good for the environment, but also have to reap the rewards .
“It is important to note that this approach does not preclude consideration of the value of forests as natural assets in addition to augmentation around carbon and climate,” added Fournier.
Most reforestation projects currently do not have access to carbon funding if they are smaller than 1,200 hectares, based on an overall analysis Verra reports for dates and discussions with projects trying to become Verra certified, said Dragov and Fournier who are hopeful that through OFP, tree planting will lead to more carbon financing, which will lead to more plants.
“Nature -based solutions can reduce emissions by up to 33 percent,” Fournier said. “Nature-based solutions are not the only ones, but they are certainly one of the best ways to tackle climate change.”
The company, which has 25 employees, is headquartered in Geneva, but also has an office in Austin, Texas and is expanding its presence in Nairobi.
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