TREEdano: Regenerative NFTrees

[IMPACT]

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Context

In Cameroon just like in most countries of the Central and West Africa regions, rare tree species are cut down and exported on a daily basis by several multinationals companies with no real and effective solution to replace them. This same behavior can be observed within local farming communities that either use the wood from the trees for their furniture or sell it without worrying about replanting the forest. Most farmers tend to focus on short term fruit producing trees and cash crops that will provide them some profit within a reasonable amount of time.

Awareness around these trees is very limited and there aren't really programs at school focusing on providing appropriate education to youth in order to reverse this destructive behavior.

This, among other reasons, is what motivated us to start developing a pilot project in 2021, on a 3+ hectare plot of our land. We are making sure we focus on multiplying those almost extinct tree species and also bringing awareness and education around these destructive actions and how they could be reversed. Our goal is to replant a food forest that incorporates fruit trees, and specialty wood trees.

We have so far identified the following trees:

1 Sappeli

2 Mahogany

3 Padouk

4 Ébène (Ebony)

5 Doussié

6 Bossé

7 Bubinga

Solution

We often hear that companies planted a certain number of trees to help offset their carbon footprint etc. but what we will be doing is allowing you to "adopt a tree" and actually see how that tree grows. You will be able to purchase an NFTree that will correspond to a specific tree on our farm and will be given access to certain information about that tree including pictures and/or videos so you can see as it grows. You will have access to the tree's unique story, and we will be setting the building blocks for the traceability solutions we plan to implement for other produce on our farm. The NFTree will also give you a voice in how the tree is handled (within our core principles). There may be options to do something like a tree paste (to protect the tree bark) for example.

Our solution will consist in several phases in approaching this issue. In a general sense, we want to associate each rare species tree we grow on our farm to an NFTree.

In the first phase, we will travel to areas of the East region to meet with communities commonly referred to as "Pygmies" and start a conversation with them. We will focus on gathering information about the most rare and highly demanded trees available. Each of our actions and experiences will be captured through (videos, images, text, and audio) which will serve as a starting point for each NFTree dynamic story. We will acquire information on the sprouting and care process for each species and document everything in the NFTrees. In addition, we will gather information about each species such as local name, seed availability season, any special history around them and more.

The second phase of the project will consist in returning to the areas we visited before at the appropriate time of year to collect either the seed or the seedling and condition them into a special area of our current tree nursery.

During the third phase, we will implement a TREEdano minting policy on Cardano that will allow us to mint NFTree(s) for each tree in the nursery making sure to attach the appropriate documentation specific to each tree. All images, audio, text, video, or stories (according to the local context) will be captured. This process will be dynamic in the sense we will be able to link future stories and actions to whatever we initially create**.** We will conclude this phase by transplanting the tree and making sure they are given a unique DID and their geographical coordinates are captured.

The revenue generated from selling the NFTrees will then be used to expand the nursery by planting more trees, and also will be used to benefit local communities that provided the seeds and/or seedlings.

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The end goals of this project are at the core of a serious problem facing most countries in central Africa. We intend to bring awareness about the disappearance of rare trees in school, vacation camp and in farming space. The learning trough gaming we help us bring this at the national level and organize competitions with prizes

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The one risk we are working on is missing the the seed cycles. In order to mitigate it, We have made a lot of contact already in villages near our farm and are working with some of them already on available seeds.

[FEASIBILITY]

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We have a step by step approach to implementing our idea and we plan on getting it done as follows:

Step 0: Research (Trips in the deep forest, surveys, information gathering…etc)

Step 1: Acquire and condition seeds

Step 2: Extend our current tree and plants nursery to include rare species

Step 3: Create a dynamic NFTree for each tree and start documenting (image, audio, video, text …etc ) on each action taken on the tree, focusing also on the role it plays in communities.

Step 4: Plant the trees in a our syn-tropic farm system

Step 5: Create NFTrees on the Cardano network

Step 6: Implement a go to platform to educate on disappearing trees species

Step 7: Build a module for managing minting and donations.

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Total Budget: $27,000

• Research & documentation: $1,000
• Trips Logistic && Coordination: $3,000
• Seeds and Seedling (Acquisition and conditioning): $9,000
• NFTree Developers motivation: (3 x $250 x 12 months): $9,000
• Marketing: $2,000
• Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web School Program: $3,000

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Cameroon Wada Hub Trainers & Coordination:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gi_gdGeZuk66eh4zGHcRXNPGkEAV_l_9/view?usp=sharing

Manfo: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (F#, Haskell, Elm), Multilingual (French, English, Italian, Ngiembo)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicienfotiomanfo1642a479

Nkalla: Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (Haskell), Mathematics teacher (Education Systems Engineering), Multilingual (French, Italian, English, Mbo)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/didier-junior-nkalla-ehaw%C3%A9-2a40a463

Arcel: Senior Software developer in Closure 7 + years experience, Project manager, Multilingual (French, English, Medumba)

https://linkedin.com/in/kamwa-f-a-raulain-959208ba

Megan: Wada Cameroon Hub Co-Lead, Central Africa Coordination Lead, Wada core team (Education and Event Lead), Math & Physics teacher, bilingual (French & English)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-hess-5b853292

Wada network of resources: Wada is a resource sharing network connecting people all over Africa and the Diaspora to IT, human, and financial resources to make dreams come true.

https://www.wada.org

Wada devs & marketing team

[AUDITABILITY]

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• Research documentation published on GitHub within 3 months post funding
• 30 Rare species seed/seedling collected within the first 6 months post funding
• 1200 seedlings growing in our nursery within the 12 months post funding
• White paper published and minting platform finished within 18 months post funding

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• Planting (minting) 30000+ rare tree species on our farm withing the first tree years of launch
• Launching a rare tree seed / seedling commercial operation
• Onboarding farmers, schools and public institutions into our vision

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This is a brand new proposal