NGO transparency

[IMPACT]

Intro:

Here are few helpful links for more information about Carbon Markets and their importance:

https://www-edie-net.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.edie.net/amp-news/8/Carbon-removal-markets-must-grow-exponentially-by-2030-to-keep-1-5C-alive--report-warns/

 www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/04/what-is-carbon-offsetting-and-how-does-it-work

 www.diligent.com/insights/esg/business-carbon-offsetting/

“as of October 2020, 163 companies from the Fortune Global 500 had publicly committed to achieving climate-related targets, with carbon neutrality the most common of these, cited by 91 companies.”

Carbon Markets and greenwashing:  

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-12/carbon-markets-draft-at-cop26-prompts-warning-from-activists

www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211111-carbon-offsets-a-booming-market-or-greenwashing

“Corporate carbon polluters plant trees to counter their CO2 emissions, but activists warn against greenwashing and say such afforestation schemes detract from the emissions reductions needed to combat climate change.” 

Many capital carbon markets lack transparency of what actually happened on the ground and “move” large amounts between financial systems and this is why too often the carbon offtaking market is associated with greenwashing.

MyCarbonZero Solution

“My Carbon Zero” inspires people and companies to take action against climate change. Each action counts and cumulative efforts will have cumulative results 

My Carbon Zero is being developed under the leadership of Scott Poynton (see more at the team) and The Pond Foundation (https://thepondfoundation.org/). The foundation has a model to help companies calculate their lifetime carbon footprint and take actions to mitigate it by reducing your Carbon and by supporting trusted projects.

The goal is to bring this off-chain project on-chain and use Cardano’s infrastructure. The reason to bring it on chain is to bring transparency to Carbon footprints and traceability of activities to mitigate it, leaving less room for “greenwashing”.  

Through the experience of Scott Poyton and My Carbon Zero we understand that one key challenge is the transparency and traceability of funding to NGOs and the impact on the ground. We chose to focus on solving it and have a more efficient use of funds and impact.  

Proposed Solution

The proposal goal is to build an MVP (minimum viable product) using the cardano blockchain that will enable NGOs to document the use of funds and carbon removal impact registry. This will then facilitate receiving funds from companies wanting to remove their carbon footprint by buying trusted carbon removal credits.

Our vision is to develop a Dapp and ledger that will focus on “boots on the ground”, what actually happens at the NGO level, what resources are received, how they are being used and finally what is the actual carbon impact on the ground.

As part of our collaborative efforts in Catalyst and Cardano, we have agreed with the Game Changer team to use and integrate GameChanger wallet and APIs to our Dapp to offer all the flexibility this wallet provides and also the trust and reputation this great product already achieved in the community and the ecosystem. (https://gamechanger.finance/). As part of this agreement we have their full support to collaborate to make this project a success.

The Veritree project is one example for a solution focused on tree planting verification using blockchain and it already showed the interest by the community for such a solution (over 1 million trees donated) and from companies such as Samsung who recently came on board planting 2 million trees. www.news.samsung.com/us/samsung-veritree-plant-millions-trees-fight-climate-change. 

The “NGO transparency” solution aims to provide a blockchain platform for every NGO dealing with carbon credit and carbon mitigation to be able to show transparency and traceability of funds and impact. Some example organizations will be tree planting, forest conservation and energy solutions.   

The platform could then be used to connect between the NGOs using the solution and companies wishing to mitigate their carbon emissions or connect to carbon financial markets.

While Veritree is focusing on solutions for their own projects, this proposals will develop a solution that could be adapted by any NGO and for various categories (not only tree planting) 

The solution creates Nation critical pieces of identity- registry- and financial infrastructure and a marketplace that will enable NGOs and connected people to increase their economic standards and empower a new way forward. Forest conservation is a key issue for poor nations and numerous tree planting projects are being launched to recover forest land and support agriculture, livelihood and even impact local weather ecosystems. Making sure resources will get to the projects is a key for the impact. Both need to be measured. 

The solution is already working on a small scale today within mycarbonzero.org, which will be responsible for driving the effort forward and bringing it to NGOs. Using this experience and bringing it to the Cardano blockchain, it gives an opportunity to build a robust and scalable solution.

In addition, this proposal is highly related to the role of the Cardano blockchain to “make this world better for all” (cardano.org) and the focus on developing countries. It is part of a bigger scheme of providing tools for transparency and traceability of impact and it could be an important use case for Cardano to support and impact developing countries.   

By using the SDG tool in the section below one can see the relevance and importance of such a project for key stakeholders and nations in relation to UN SDG and organizations.

There will be challenges on the way to success, here are some:

Challenge 1 - NGO focus.

It will be a challenge to build a solution that will work for every NGO since they are all the same. The goal is to make it simple for NGOs and users and therefore we will need to narrow the focus to start with, to be able to build something that has the right balance between context and general purpose. After succeeding within the area of focus we can expand. 

Challenge 2 - Business model

To grow and scale, we will need to prove and improve the business model which is today, on the buying credit side, based on the corporate social responsibility budget. This will be part of the ongoing work in the next 6 months. Our goal is to generate revenue so we can sustain the growth. There are growing resources targeting carbon credit and mitigation and we will explore various models for it. 

Challenge 3 - Partnerships for scale

Partnerships with leading companies have the risk of the speed of implementation and priorities. We need to find the right motivation and process to make these partnerships effective.

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap:

The focus for MVP 1 (and for this proposal) will include the following:

• A ledger registring funds for carbon removal and documentation of carbon removal.
• Smart contract that controls the amount of carbon to be removed, when it has been removed and document the removal towards all stakeholders.
• Wallets (GameChanger based) for stakeholders to control and monitor progress of funds and carbon removal.

Simplified solution diagram:

(Diagram can also be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DdOD6YJospKINMVfsWhsJE4Z_me3pjfDKMpTN78J2SI/edit?usp=sharing)

In the above diagram the following is happening:

1. Company A want to remove their carbon footprint and pay NGO to do it.
2. The amount of carbon needed to be removed is send to the MyCarbonZero smart contract. (Manually done through validation from The Pond Foundation)
3. Carbon tokens are created within the smart contract.
4. The NGO do the work of carbon removal and document it to the smart contract
5. The smart contract transfer the carbon token to Company A’s wallet for proof.

Each stakeholder have an interface to follow the process.

MVP 1 (3 month)

Month 1

• Project initiation and project plan
• Core team setup and partnerships
• Concepts and ux initial sprint 
• Interviews with 3 NGOs
• Interviews with 3 companies mitigating carbon footprint
• Initial technical design

Month 2

• Technical infrastructure model
• Smart contract design
• UX/UI design sprints
• Stakeholder ecosystem design
• Feedback from NGOs
• Feedback from companies mitigating carbon footprint
• Initial product development

Month 3 

• UX/UI design sprints  
• Feedback from NGOs
• Continued product development
• GameChanger wallet integration
• Ledger
• Smart contract
• Tokens
• User testing with NGOs and companies
• Presenting to 10 companies and evaluating the business models 
• Defining and planning MVP 2

MVP 2 (not part of this proposal)

Further development with MVP 2 will include further development of both ledgers to develop a multi layer accounting solution. 

4-7 month MVP 2:

• Ecosystem mechanism design
• Token economics design
• Stakeholder workshops for extended decentralized solution
• UX/UI design additions and improvements
• Continued product development
• Development governance structure
• Continues testing with all stakeholders
• Investigate possible sale of SAFT(Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) to raise capital from community
• Promote MyCarbonZero web3 through the partners and The Pond Foundation network.
• Test the business model - i.e. payment for the report, the yearly fee for the platform
• Evaluate collaboration and Integrating to an existing carbon marketplaces and carbon removal platforms.
• Develop full business plan

Through MyCarbonZero.org there are already vetted and trusted projects we can start collaborating with when designing the solution.

Example projects:

https://www.huskventures.com/

https://www.durrell.org/wildlife/rewildcarbon/

https://trilliontrees.org.au/

https://www.veritree.com/

8 -12 months - product launch

Focus on revenue generating business and marketing activities and ongoing product improvements to reach product market fit.

Deliverables MVP 1:

• Web interface for NGOs to:
• Manage their NGO identity
• Register their projects
• Document funds used on projects
• Smart contract for handling token creation and token routing.
• Technical solution diagram
• Qualitative analysis of companies and NGOs solution feedback
• Video demo of the solution

KPIs MVP1:

• Work closely with 3 NGOs
• Discuss with 10 companies
• Collaborate with 3 companies

KPIs MVP 2: (not part of this proposal)

• Work with 5 NGOs
• Collaborate with 10+ companies
• 100k Carbon removal credits with transparency
• 1 Millions USD with traceability  
• Initial revenue

Within 24-36 months we envision the opportunity to work with 30-50 NGOs and 100s of companies using the service in a network structure. Every NGO joining the program will also become part of a network of allied companies for mutual promotion of all the companies that already support its activities, as the solution will demonstrate higher transparency. We estimate the potential to reach millions of carbon credits being processed through the system and 10+ millions of USD within next 3 years.

For this first phase, we choose to focus on MVP 1 for the NGOs to connect to the “boots on the ground” activities. 

The majority of the funds will be dedicated to the product development that will be managed by Alex and his team. We calculated the budget across a period of 3 months. We envision: 

Budget:

Project lead & NGOs - USD 1750 x 3 months = USD 5250

Lead companies and business - USD 750 x 3 months = USD 2250

Lead Product & UX - USD 3000 x 3 months = USD 9000

3 x Developers (USD 3000 each per month) - USD 9000 x 3 months = USD 27000 (Team is based in Argentina)

Development lead - 1000 x 3 month = USD 3000

Infrastructure and other platforms costs = USD 2000.

Total budget: 48.500 USD

Scott Poynton, project lead, - a social & environmental leader https://www.scottpoynton.com/about-1 

Scott is a real social and environmental leader for the last 30 years. He created an NGO named The Forest Trust (currently www.earthworm.org) and his estimated positive impact is for about $ 2 trillion of supply chains and millions of hectares of forest. He is now on his biggest mission to mitigate climate change. 

Scott is already involved with the Cardano community. He presented at the Catalyst sustainable goals event: Cardano & Climate Change:

(00:30:18 Corporation, Trust and Blockchain, Scott Poynton). He is also part of an important related fund 7 funded proposal, the Cardano Carbon Footprint: cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385045 

Magnus Edvard Nielsen, product and UX lead https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnusedvard/

Magnus is a product lead with 10+ years experience in building technology products, teams and companies in both B2B and B2C. He has a strong focus on lean methodologies; build, test and learn to stay close to customers, new market trends, increase product quality and speed of development. A Strong passion for web3, complex digital products, getting from “zero to one” and building a sustainable future for our planet.🌳

Yoram Ben-Zvi, companies and business model lead - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

20+ years of business experience working with technology companies (strategy, partnerships, investors). In recent years, Yoram is focused on combining impact and business. 4 years ago he left his comfort zone and worked for 2 years for an NGO Earthworm.org focusing on sustainable business models across agriculture supply chains. Yoram is very active in Catalyst as a CA, successful proposer, and at Cardano4Climate. Yoram is part of the AIM team and is involved with the Catalyst SDG tool cardanocataly.st/proposer-tool-sdg/#/ (which is included in the proposal process) and the Catalyst alignment to SDG research. 

Alex Pestchanker, product lead https://www.linkedin.com/in/apestchanker

has 20+ years of experience building Digital Products and Companies. He has a dual background, on one side a Solutions Architect and Developer (Cloud, Blockchain, C#, .NET, Java, Angular, DevOps) and on the other side a Company Builder and Advisor, building high-performance teams to deliver products that customers love (Customer Development, Agile, Lean, Design Thinking). Alex is also a professor and public speaker, helping to build common knowledge around Digital Transformation, Exponential Organizations, and Abundance. Linkedin: 

Within Cardano, Alex is an active community member, helping now to build the LATAM ecosystem, performed as Community Advisor in F6, with high ratings on his assessments, and won a fund for his co-proposal Proposals Mentors Marketplace ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/369749-48088 )

Developers - Alex will manage the development team with existing devs residing in Argentina. We also have other developers we are collaborating with and that can support the project on a consultant basis.

Product support: Cardano AIM (Assembly Inspiring Masses) brings together active Catalyst Community members to design and build tools that support the community. Some examples: include the popular voter-tool (https://cardanocataly.st/voter-tool/#/), the Community Advisor Tools (CA and vCA-tools) (https://cardanocataly.st/ca-tool/#/ & https://cardanocataly.st/vca-tool/#) as well as the Community Landing Page (https://cardanocataly.st/). AIM continues to focus on developing the best services and tools for the benefit of the Cardano community.

Community network support: Cardano4Climate.com (C4C) community includes overs 200 members and growing. C4C is organizing weekly meetups and monthly events and collaborating with multiple impact communities (i.e. climateneutralcardano.org), companies (i.e. veritree, cardashift) and the Cardano companies (IOG, Emurgo, Cardano foundation). 

Research and media support: SustainableADA.com team is focusing on research and communication of impact projects on the Cardano blockchain spreading the word of the work and impact of the Cardano ecosystem.

[AUDITABILITY]

The project will be in full transparency with the community and all documentations and reports will be available on Github as well google drive. Once the solution is available we share monthly reports including the deliverables and KPIs mentioned at the above section. Below are some more details.   

• Documentation of technology flow
• Analysis of companies and NGOs feedback
• Monthly progress reports containing:
• Team status
• Features build
• Stakeholders engaged
• Product usage numbers
• # NGOs
• # Projects created
• # Carbon removal credits
• # App usage
• # Smart contract usage
• # Tokens created

Definition of done would be when an NGO can use the solution to document their carbon removal and show funds used on an open ledger. For Cardano it will be an additional use case how the blockchain can support nation building dApps with clear impact on the ground. Providing transparency and traceability tools will be essential to improve efficiency on the ground and more resources dedicated to projects and the local communities. Just like the case of Veritree and the research work done to show that Cardano footprint is low, this proposal provides another solution that could be attractive for external businesses to come on board to Cardano. (Fund 7 funded proposal related to Cardano carbon footprint calculation cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385045)

Showcasing the dApp and having NGOs and companies onboard will be an initial key step for this phase. Phase 2 will then continue with further development onboarding more NGOs and companies as well as validating the revenue model.

This is a new proposal

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

SDG subgoals:

13.1 Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries

13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning

13.b Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities

15.3 By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world

15.9 By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts

15.a Mobilize and significantly increase financial resources from all sources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems

15.b Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all levels to finance sustainable forest management and provide adequate incentives to developing countries to advance such management, including for conservation and reforestation

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

13.2.1 Number of countries with nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies, national adaptation plans and adaptation communications, as reported to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

13.2.2 Total greenhouse gas emissions per year

13.b.1 Number of least developed countries and small island developing States with nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies, national adaptation plans and adaptation communications, as reported to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

15.3.1 Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

15.a.1 (a) Official development assistance on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; and (b) revenue generated and finance mobilized from biodiversity-relevant economic instruments

15.b.1 (a) Official development assistance on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; and (b) revenue generated and finance mobilized from biodiversity-relevant economic instruments

#proposertoolsdg