Earthtrust decentralized validation

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Satellite monitoring and on the ground validation to document the last 10 years of land health for farm & forrest land to provide verification of success of on the ground activities.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

20+ years experience with satellite remote sensing, ML and AI. 20+ years experience working with farmers in developing countries, and 10+ years of digital product development experience and 20+ years of entrepreneurial expertise. Supported by local teams in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The problem

Land degradation is one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems and it will worsen without rapid remedial action. Globally, about 25 percent of the total land area has been degraded. When land is degraded, soil carbon and nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere, making land degradation one of the most important contributors to climate change. Scientists recently warned that 24 billion tons of fertile soil was being lost per year, largely due to unsustainable agriculture practices. If this trend continues, 95 percent of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050.

https://www.thegef.org/what-we-do/topics/land-degradation

Commercial agriculture is the most important driver of deforestation, accounting for 70-80% of deforestation worldwide. And to feed a growing population shifting to meat and dairy-heavy diets, agricultural production will need to increase by 25% by 2050.

WWF, Living Forests Report 2015 https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/forests_practice/forest_publications_news_and_reports/living_forests_report/

Today forest conservation or transformation to regenerative agricultural farming rely heavily on donations from companies, NGOs or governments to fund it. Funding through donations does not scale to have the needed impact on climate change. Alternatively projects such as for forest conservation or transformation to regenerative agricultural farming could be certified to remove carbon and thereby sell carbon credits to fund the forest conservation or agricultural transformation - but there exists no cheap way to be certified for carbon removal.

The process of starting up a project to be certified is today extremely expensive and not possible for small carbon removal projects. The minimum is estimated to be between $10.000-$50.000 just to be certified and continuously validated. For forest conservation projects, certification can cost over $100,000.

[Read more: Fees Gold Standard: https://globalgoals.goldstandard.org/fees/ and Verra https://verra.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Program-Fee-Schedule_v4.1.pdf]

The teams long term vision is:

[Read more about the vision here]

Challenges

Today the three largest challenges towards the vision and stopping climate change are: 

1. Knowledge on what to do to stop climate change. A lot of government and private research is done on how to stop climate change, but very little are converted into actionable items we can all execute on based on our situation and competencies. 
2. No financial feasibility because of certification industry. Today, to remove carbon from the atmosphere, you need to be certified by an industry player which can cost approximately 70% of all potential profit from carbon credit sales. [http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/Offsetting_with_CDM_credits.pdf]
3. No decentralized solution to support the change. There are no scalable solutions today to support the millions of people and organizations wanting to participate in removing the desperately needed carbon and no scalable solution for how they can prove and validate the impact they want to do. 

The proposed solution

This proposal’s solution addresses the above challenges by developing an open and free for the validators be it a person, organization or company to document and prove their effort for improving the environment and remove carbon. The revenue model will be based on companies paying for verified carbon credits. The solution will be part of multi layers of decentralized validation of the work done by the organizations through self-reporting, external validators, satellite earth health monitoring and expert reviews.

It is important to stress that all relevant data will be documented on the Cardano blockchain and made freely and openly available online to everyone to investigate.

In this proposal two different use cases will be supported. The first use case is focused on the health of forest conservation in Ivory Coast and the second use case is focused on farmland health in Ghana. 

We are excited about both use cases as they provide a great pilot locations including:

• An identified issue
• Local community members involvement 
• NGO engagement 
• Connection to companies wishing to mitigate their Carbon (providing a business model)
• Can then be duplicated to other locations

1. use case: Forest conservation health

In collaboration with The Forest Conservation Fund (https://www.fundforests.org/) who are today working with local partners to conserve the Tanoe Ehy forest in Ivory Coast for biodiversity and carbon removal, we will be building the solution, testing and proving the value of the solution. 

Here is a link to more information about the Forest Conservation Fund

Here is a link for more information about the project 

The first part of the solution will be based on satellite images which will be enhanced using AI and machine learning to calculate the health of the forest. Health will be defined by different metrics like; vegetation index, temperature, reflective spectrum, cloud cover and more.The technology and health metrics have already been developed and proven by our team member Yosef Akhtman over the last 20 years from experience within the remote sensing industry and as a university professor. The forest health results will be visualized and shared open and free online and documented on the Cardano blockchain.

The second part of the solution is on the ground knowledge. Team members from The Forest Conservation Fund’s local partners and community members will be equipped with a smartphone app for documenting key activities, data points and documentation. Part of the solution is to develop a first compliance framework for the data needed to be collected to validate the earth health results from the satellite. Data could be forest vegetation documentation, historic documentation on forest changes, biodiversity documentation, future expected forest changes and validating irregularities in satellite earth health results. The data collected by the The Forest Conservation Fund will be documented on the Cardano blockchain and be part of calculating the final earth health result which are open and freely available to everyone.

2. use case: Farmland health

For the second use case we are collaborating with the NGO The Pond Foundation (https://thepondfoundation.org/) and consumer food company WhatIF Foods (https://whatif-foods.com/) who are currently building new regenerative agricultural supply chains within northern Ghana for supplying bamboa groundnut to produce plant-based milk and noodles to the US market. The collaboration will enable us to work closely with farmers on the ground in Ghana supported by The Pond Foundations team members. 

PPT presenting the project

More details about the project

As the previous use case described above, the first part of the solution will be based on the satellite earth health technology which will need to be fitted to measure farmland which is in the process of transitioning from traditional farming to regenerative farming. The goal is to be able to document the health improvements of the soil and any other findings openly and freely available to everyone online to see. 

The second part of the validation of the lands health will be done by the Pond Foundations team members using a smartphone app. The exact data to be collected will be investigated within the proposal but core data points like; land boarders, crops, farming practices, farming progress, identities etc. are expected to be important.

More info on the general project here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pFIlHzkOQOsRZGTTo4MQIk1sM6bAGtTMolr25Y1PC5c/edit#

Value for customers and users

The goal of these two use cases is to lay the groundwork for proving social and environmental impact through radical transparency. Every expert, journalist, government, NGO, entrepreneur and interested person will be able to have free access to the same foundation of knowledge.

The customers of the solution will have a free way to prove their good work to the world and become compliant to sell carbon removal credits generated from their project. Users of the earth health data will for the first time have free access to data on the health of the earth and live projects.

Through those solutions companies mitigating their carbon will be able to analyze past performance of the projects and ongoing impact of their support. This transparency could lead to supporting more impactful projects and adjusting projects which does not have impact and reducing the “green washing economy” to an impactful one. While Cardano being the center datapoint for the validation.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The solution will create a massive amount of awareness around the Cardano blockchain and the Cardano community by creating the first fully transparent solution for measuring the health of the earth and enabling everyone to take action to stop climate change. 

The solution addresses the challenge within the following areas. Increasing the CO2 sequestered by enabling more organizations to start removing carbon and proving it. Stop unintentional damaging habits by farmers when growing their crops in a traditional way and start to sequester CO2 by using regenerative practices. Scaling and supporting forest conservation will not only sequester more CO2 it will also preserve the forests’ biodiversity and uphold local environmental ecosystems for local farmers.

By showing the soli health over the last 10 years leading to transparency and traceability of soil health and forest conservation that will be crucial to continue and support projects which are making an impact and evaluate projects which are not. It will help to channel resources and efforts in an effective way and will be essential for nation governance systems which is a key part of the challenge setting. 

The solution will also have the potential to bring end-consumers and on the ground farmers and forest conservation projects closer to each other. This will eliminate the need for today's middlemen who take 60% of the profit from carbon removal credits as well as for crops with the existing agricultural food supply chain.

In many developing countries which is a prime focus for Cardano, agriculture is the prime occupation and land health has massive implications for local solutions that are connected to:

• Marketplaces
• Nation governance systems - New governance systems for nation-states
• Environment - Solutions that help to solve environmental issues
• Many others - agri supply chains, carbon markets, micro finance, government subsidies for agriculture

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Challenge 1: The satellite technology for this proposal have already be proven, but because it relies on ingestion and assimilation of heterogeneous multi-modal environmental data from multiple sources and data providers who could update or change their offering reliability could be a risk which has to be taken into account by carefully planning of performance monitoring and maintenance mechanisms.

Challenge 2: The local validators working with the forest conservation communities and the Ghanian farmers, are not able to document the data needed for proving the land conditions and therefore the carbon removal effort. We believe this is unlikely since we have already spoken to the local validators who have interacted with the farmers and communities on multiple occasions and they are very cooperative.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

The proposed solution

The solution developed within this proposal will build upon the work already done by our team member Yosef Akhtman and his company Gamma Earth focusing on remote sensing. As well as the work done in the previously fund 8 funded proposal “NGO transparency” (https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403633). 

This proposal’s main functionality is:

Web interface

1. Browse the two projects
2. Browse collected data on the ground
3. View the remote sensing result
4. View the overall “health” of the land
5. View the overall “health regression/progression” over last 10 years

Satellite image technology

1. Ingestion and assimilation of satellite imaging data
2. Regularization, masking and removal of clouds and cloud shadows
3. Ingestion and assimilation of climate data
4. Health indicators evaluation pipeline

App for data collection

1. Login with wallet
2. Select project
3. Submit progress report (based on initial compliance framework)

Compliance framework

1. Initial framework for validating forest conservation
2. Initial framework for validating farmland health

Ledger

1. Document forest and farmland health
2. Document on the ground data related to the two projects
3. Document changes in land health in the last 10 years
4. Document ownership of land

Planned milestones

The focus of the proposal is on proving the value of the functionality and technology and less on making the products design and wide adoption. The project is planned for 4 months with the following main activities:

Month 1

Project initiation and project plan

Team and partnership

Define forest conservation and farmland use cases

Initial UX design sprint for app and web interface

Start compliance framework definition for forest conservation and farmland

Start satellite technology development

Month 2

Continued satellite technology development

Technical solution design

App ux flows

Web interface ux flows

Start app + ledger development

Month 3

Continued satellite technology development

Web interface development

App development

Ledger development

User and stakeholder tests

Month 4

Finalize product development app + web interface + ledger

Live user tests with Forest Conservation Fund team members in Ivory Coast and with The Pond Foundation team members on farmland in Ghana.

Core product usage metrics

First version of continued project and product development.

Deliverables

Deliverables will be in the form of working prototypes for each of the areas.

1. Web interface
2. Satellite technology 10 years analysis of results
3. App for data collection
4. First compliance frameworks for both project types
5. Ledger for documenting the data - available to all
6. Project summary & learning as a Cardano use case

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

The project is a collaboration between various organizations. Here are the details: 

Forest Conservation Fund

FCF is a not-for-profit Foundation, aiming to decentralize conservation by empowering local communities and private sector actors to protect forest under their control. We are registered in Switzerland with staff in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and are governed by an independent Board of Directors and an expert Grants Committee responsible for approving projects based on strict quality requirements.

Involvement: The Forest Conservation Fund will be responsible for finding local communities for testing the solution for forest conservation.

Link: https://www.fundforests.org/

The Pond Foundation

The Pond Foundation is a non-profit organization funded by Scott Poynton and dedicated to driving change for good. It exist to guide people and organizations on the journey to reconnect with themselves and drive extensive earth-serving action. For more information :

• The Pond Foundation : https://thepondfoundation.org/
• My Carbon zero program : https://mcz.thepondfoundation.org/

The Pond Foundation has been commissioned by WhatIfFood for the project in Ghana and has been operating there for the last 9 months. 

The foundation is also part of an important related fund 7 funded proposal, the Cardano Carbon Footprint: cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385045 through which the team is well engaged with the SPO community https://www.climateneutralcardano.org/ as well as www.Cardano4climate.com community.

Scott Poynton, Sustainability Lead

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. 

Involvement: Leading the project within Ghana and enabling access to stakeholders of the supply chain.

Links: https://www.scottpoynton.com/about-1 

For more information please visit:

https://adifferentway.life/

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Yosef Akhtman, Technological lead

Yosef is a technologist and founder with in-depth expertise in Remote Sensing, Environmental Monitoring, Geo-Information Systems, and Machine Learning. He is the founder of Gamma Earth, a research company founded in 2020 and focused on development of advanced Earth Observation and remote sensing technologies for applications in environmental monitoring and precision farming. Previously, he founded and led Gamaya – a Swiss startup in the field of precision agriculture, where he led the development and commercialisation of an integrated digital agronomy solution based on a unique combination of hyperspectral imaging, data fusion and artificial intelligence. 

Involvement: Leading the satellite technology development and system architecture

Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akhtman/

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Magnus Edvard Nielsen, Product Lead

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.

In June 2019 traveled to Indonesia for research on Indonesian farmers within rice, coffee, coconut sugar.

From 2017-2021 Leading the innovation team, at one of the biggest PaaS companies within digital supply chains named Tradeshift. The innovation team’s two focus areas were decentralized technology and environmental sustainability.

Involvement: Leading the product strategy and design

Links: www.linkedin.com/in/magnusedvard/

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Yoram Ben Zvi, business models lead and connect to the Cardano ecosystem

20+ years of business experience working with technology companies (strategy, partnerships, investors). In the last 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. 

Yoram was working on a related project in Indonesia for one year with Earthworm.org together with Magnus and understands the opportunity and the importance of impacting the agri supply chains  

Involvement: coordinating ecosystem and business model development.

Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

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WADA, local support lead and feedback for localization of technology

WADA gives voice and access to people of African heritage and interest by providing the tools to reimagine new socioeconomic models in a way that reflects local cultures, values and future aspirations. Although our focus is on Africa, WADA is an all inclusive organization structured to provide seekers with providers. This is done with a focus on decentralization, self-organization and distributive governance.

Involvement:

WADA has team members based in Ghana and northern Ghana nearby the project. The WADA team will help to design the solution and validate the solution is suitable for the local market as well as with relevant connections. 

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Time management

As team members are presenting multiple proposals in this fund as well as in previous funds here is an explanation regarding the time management:

• Sustainability lead - multiple collaborators and will grow as needed
• Magnus: 20% time on the project focusing on leading the product to fit the use case and strategy
• Yoram: here is a link for an explanation of workload management. Overall for this project, Yoram will serve as an admin and business/marketing coordinator
• Yosef: Technical lead and management of development teams. All proposals have very strong synergy from the technological stand-point. Actual development will be carried out by external dev teams as detailed in the proposal. The size of dev teams is flexible and will be adjusted depending on the number of projects being funded. Such structure allows for effective management of multiple complementary projects.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes. We are building a decentralized product with different dapps to support multiple use cases within agricultural supply chains and environmental conservation. The product will benefit greatly with support from the greater Cardano community.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

The team will be committed to report the progress throughout the project. We will report progress on a monthly basis covering the following KPIs:

• Team general status
• Features progress
• Satellite technology
• App
• Web interface
• Ledger
• Stakeholder feedback
• Product usage numbers
• # NGO users
• # Forest conservation progress reports
• # Farmers progress reports
• # CO2 sequestered
• # App usage

All documentation will be share online though Google Drive, Youtube or Github.

Satellite data and on the ground data will be made openly available online thought the project. 

Final report and use case analysis will be available to the community 

For the high potential interest of the project we will also coordinate an open session presentation inviting the community, IOG and CF.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success for the project will be when both use cases within the proposal have been supported by the satellite technology and the validators using the app to document, fully transparently, the work done on the ground and thereby proving the regression or progression in land health and the amount of CO2 sequestered. The goal of the dual layer validation is to prove a scalable model for land health calculation and enabling everyone to start earning an income from carbon removal.

The success will lead to further development of the model and offer the platform to environmental projects and government systems to be able to generate more resources effectively. 

We also wish to prove that those projects are scalable and have a business model so we can continue and grow the usage and impact. 

Using an open ledger on the Cardano blockchain that will lead to transparency and traceability of projects statuses that could lead as a use case for channeling resources in a more efficient way to environmental projects worldwide.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal is related to two previously funded proposals:

• 21 century agriculture supply chains - research https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403695
• NGO Transparency focusing on carbon related initiatives: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/403633 

Sustainable Development Goals (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

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