Summary
- Crypto environmental initiatives are offering specific solutions to some of the most recurrent environmental challenges.
- Crypto and blockchain are acting as an enabler to both top-down approaches, like carbon capture monitoring, and bottom-up schemes, many of which are community driven.
- For more information about the following stories, as well as use cases, visit the Impact Base.
Crypto and clean water
Climate change-related challenges are huge, complex and often interconnected. In many instances, they require a holistic approach involving many different stakeholders, from those on the ground to policy-makers, the private sector and philanthropists. The best solutions are frequently bespoke, taking into account local conditions and needs, and innovation is often key.
Reflecting this dynamic, Mercy Corps Ventures partnered with Atlantis DAO for a water pilot project in rural India. In the south-western Indian city of Chikmagalur, access to clean water is a growing challenge, despite the region’s reputation as a lush, coffee growing area.
The partnership sought to develop a decentralized peer-to-peer water network to improve access to clean water resources, while also offering those involved an opportunity to earn income through incentive schemes. Out of this emerged the Citizen App, which helps users coordinate such initiatives as buying water filtration and testing devices, offering access to information about water conservation, and selling clean water via the app, which used codified testing processes.
Although the pilot was relatively small, involving 3,859 smartphone users, the app’s users overwhelmingly agreed that clean water access had improved, along with community processes related to water management.
Crypto supports farmers
In a similarly targeted, but quite different scheme, DIVA Donate has sought to support small-holder farming communities in northern Kenya. Here, this type of farming provides income for more than 95% of rural families and accounts for approximately 90% of youth employment. Extreme weather events are, however, affecting this way of life, with an increasing lack of rainfall creating challenges for these communities.
The pilot used smart contracts to deliver early cash transfers to small-holder farming communities. This meant they could immediately benefit from these funds rather than suffering from the problems of the dry season before receiving support.
Smart contracts reduced transaction costs by 75% and transfer time by 90%. By the end of the pilot, more than half of those involved agreed that they’d been better able to meet unexpected expenses.
Crypto and blockchain improve inclusion
One marked factor often associated with environmental challenges is the lack of inclusion many of those who are most affected suffer. Cognizant of this, Open Earth is a non-profit research organization that develops open-source technologies for use cases that are environmentally conscious.
Barriers to inclusion come in many forms from funding barriers to navigating complex information, trouble accessing carbon markets, and even problems using fragmented data systems and trying to track area emissions.
Again, innovation is an integral aspect of Open Earth’s approach. Among its initiatives are AI-driven climate data tracking, climate accounting systems, developing ‘nature-based currencies’, which are digital currencies that derive value from ecosystem protection, marine ecosystem measurement, reporting and verification, and carbon pricing tools.
In a similar vein, non-profit, the Kulshan Carbon Trust, works to conserve and sequester carbon with local communities using natural solutions. With a grant from the Regen Network Foundation, the trust developed a biochar pilot that guided local knowledge in three of Washington state’s counties. This helped to reduce fuel usage, biochar construction and demolition waste, and was followed with the development of a biochar carbon credit through the Regen Network. Funds from the credit sales were distributed back through the Kulshan Carbon Trust to those who generated them.
Blockchain helps measure impact
One of the most sizeable challenges related to environmental work is measuring its impact. Assessing progress on everything from net zero targets to mitigation strategies requires some form of measurement and benchmarking.
Blockchain is an ideal tool to help address this issue, as carbon verification app, VIA, highlights. VIA uses consortium blockchain to help electric vehicle (EV) fleet owners track the fuel sources that are used to charge their fleet batteries. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify fuel mixes while protecting the owners’ privacy.
Reflecting its success, in 2023, the Government Information Technology Executive Council (GITEC) nominated VIA for outstanding achievement in “Advancing Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics” for the federal government.
Plastic pollution is a major challenge globally. The UN has estimated that just 9% of plastic is recycled, with much of it ending up in landfill, incinerated or as litter. Green tech company, Plastiks, is using blockchain to provide a verifiable, transparent system to support verify the recovery and recycling of plastic that recovery organizations have removed.
Once verified, the recycled plastic is minted as plastic credit NFTs, and are tradeable through the Plastiks marketplace.
As of April 2024, Plastiks had recovered 2,321,184 kg of plastic, the equivalent of 74 million 1.5-liter plastic bottles.
Outlook
What is striking is the degree of innovation and creativity that define these schemes. There is a lot of scope to use crypto and blockchain to address local, regional and global environmental challenges. But awareness-raising of what’s possible using these technologies is key to understanding their potential and developing projects more widely.
