Regenerate Yem (Ethiopia)

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

With dwindling high quality farmland, pasture, and forest resources available to people in the overpopulated highlands of Ethiopia, inhabitants must look to new frontiers and adopt new means of scaling landscape-healing regenerative food systems.

These new frontiers are the lowlands, below 1400m. The lowlands are historically uninhabited due to heat and mosquitos. Much of the terrain is steep. However, these locations enjoy greater abundance of water and intact ecosystems. It is inevitable that the lowlands will become inhabited. It is critical that the resource base in this more pristine zone is conserved and when possible, (as in soil, water, forests) regenerated.

As a special Woreda (state) in the SNNPR region of Ethiopia, Yem enjoys less bureaucracy and corruption than much of the country. It is also home to over 100,000 people, mainly subsistence farmers, who are now exceeding the carrying capacity of their land.

If funded, we will send a permaculture expert, Tichafa, to Yem, where he and hand selected cohort of 10 participant will build an ecovillage in the lowlands. They will begin the iterative process of landscape-scale regeneration: hand-digging proper terraces and swales, perennial plantings, managed grazing, all while growing a deeper understanding of what best suits the land, the wildlife, and the people.

Now is our opportunity to establish best-practices for conservation and regeneration, to leverage local knowledge, global expertise, technology, people-power, and the power of nature to ease human pressure on the highlands and clear a path for widespread regeneration in Ethiopia and across the world.

We will do our part to strengthen Cardano's position within the regenerative movement, first by showcasing real-world use cases for novel NFTs, and inviting experts in by giving them skin in the game.

Cardano is uniquely poised to become a major economic platform for the regenerative movement, for both commercial ventures like the fund8 funded 21st century Agri supply chain (ideascale.com) and for the current proposal, which serves a community of subsistence farmers with minimal formal economic interaction. Both the Business/NGO world AND Grassroots World are important to bring under the Cardano umbrella. We are here to support grassroots regeneration in the cradle of humanity.

We will get to the NFTs shortly, but first a Quick Primer on Regeneration: 

Regenerative Systems run on increased density of humans per acre, not greater acreage per machine. It is about nurturing soil life, not treating dirt as an inert medium for chemical inputs. It is about diverse, perennial-dominant polycultures, not monocultures. It is about closing loops within natural cycles on site, not ignoring externalized harms as they flow off-site. It has countless knock-on effects for carbon sequestration, groundwater, climate, biodiversity, health, livelihood, and not least of which: hope, in a world with less of it to go around.

To learn more about regen ag and investment, we recommend this video course from Koen van Seijen, host of the Investing in Regenerative Ag podcast and keynote speaker at our conference from February 2022.

We seek to empower enterprising subsistence farmers and herders to initiate a cascade of regeneration on the landscape, connecting an isolated valley in Ethiopia to a global community of collectors and supporters.

#1 Regen Leverage Point: Sun heat > Poo heat

With little remaining timber available for firewood, MANURE is burned as a source of heat instead of feeding the microbiome of the soil. The result: fertile topsoil that took millenia to accumulate is eroding away at an alarming rate. Alternative sources of heat must be used in order to return the cycles of life back to the soil. Solving the heating problem is a critical first step in making regeneration possible. Passive Solar Cookers are basically reflective bowls that concentrate photons onto a dark vessel or cooking surface. Thanks to the abundant sunshine in the region, these inexpensive heating devices offer a viable alternative. We have budgeted enough for materials to provide solar cookers for the ecovillage and some to spare for participants' families, but would love to sponsor more for the wider Yem community as it is perhaps the single most powerful tool to enable regeneration.

Solar Cooker Tokenomics: Beyond the scope of this proposal we are considering issuing solar cooker tokens. Fungible, Non or both, we are weighing the options. Either way the digital asset will represent a powerful real-world multiplier for carbon sequestration, herd density, wildlife habitat and food security.

Ruminant manure is base fertility and, tragically, it is burned throughout the world. People need viable alternatives and the financial support to transition. We welcome anyone to please steal our idea for solar cooker tokens to deploy anywhere and everywhere.

NFTs

We will use NFTs as a tool to on-chain:

1. Background Information e.g. text from Tichafa describing his takeaways from a previous [failed] ecovillage project he was involved in in Ethiopia (p.s. it didn't fail bc of poor permaculture design)
2. Research e.g. text outlining current and historic Yem agricultural methods and elders’ accounts of the changing landscape.
3. Numeric Data: e.g. regular in-situ measurements of numeric variables such as water level in wells
4. Observational Data: e.g. a participant captures the first incidence of a dung beetle in the region
5. Significant Events: participants record an audio account of e.g. the behavior of wildlife around a newly constructed water catchment.
6. On-Site Actions: e.g. textual or photographic proof the construction of a swale or planting a food forest attributed to multiple wallets for all involved. 
7. Off-Site Actions: e.g. a haiku about Newman building the backbone of our Miro board. 
8. Hard Assets e.g. photographic proof of the arrival of Catalyst-funded resources such as raw materials for solar cookers on site.
9. Artwork: e.g. photos of art pieces such as Cardano Conks hand-etched by Philadelphia-based Ethiopian-American artist of e.g. dung beetles returning to the Yem landscape.
10. Cultural “Assets” that the Yem might wish to preserve and offer digital versions of (in various formats) to collectors. These might include music, art, stories, memories.
11. Personalities: e.g. artwork representing the participation of an individual in the project: both in Yem and abroad. *Team members will be issuing such NFTs to support their work on this project as they are not receiving Catalyst funding.

TBD: NFT minting platform(s). Considering:

• Full node for larger scale mints,
• SaaS products like NFT Maker Pro, CFactory, etc. for smaller/ongoing mints,
• Sales to be funneled through Yem Ethiopia Regenerative website to establish credibility and further engage our participants

Our philosophy around NFTs: These are purely collectible. We are keeping it simple: no smart contracts that might invite greater regulatory scrutiny. NFT don't represent Title to property nor ownership of hard assets. The information in the NFTs is not exclusively visible to the owner of the NFT. It is open for all to see. These NFTs are digital representations of aspects of the project that one can own.

A bit more on ownership:

• Who owns the hard assets: the shovels, the phones etc? Answer: The Project.
• Who owns the Project? Answer:
• Phase 1: For this initial funding round, Tegegne will be formalizing the Project as a legal Entity in Ethiopia. The Project will have limited Title to a portion of the land in the lowlands. It will own the hard assets for the duration of this initial phase. The participants will effectively be contract workers on the project.
• Phase 2 and beyond: while land cannot be "owned" by private individuals in Ethiopia, to the greatest extent possible we will give the Yem community sovereignty over the project after 6 months. They will take ownership of the hard assets and will continue to have responsibility for and reap benefits of the work the initial cohort performed.

While the project will be handed to the Yem community after 6 months, we have no plans to stop supporting their work. Quite the opposite: we plan to help them and others scale, replicate and seed similar projects throughout Ethiopia. When we acheive greater scale, we will need greater tooling to support that, and Cardano can continue to deliver.

DIDs and NFTs are small pieces of the Cardano toolset that are essential to the long-term success of this project and to regeneration projects of the future. Other tools include:

1. Oracles for uploading and verifying data e.g. from satellites/historic weather data etc to add credence to other observations, e.g. by other oracles or human-collected on the ground
2. Traceability in the supply chain flowing into and out of a regenerative project, and for larger projects: resource flow within the closed loop of the project, and tracking of would-be externalities.
3. DAOs and fungible tokens to empower individuals in DAOs to take collective action
4. ADA itself can be used to circumvent remittances to get funds directly to who needs them to do the work or alternatively to streamline inflow of to-the-people foreign investment through the necessary [on-chain] regulatory bodies of the host country.

To explore what else the future holds for Cardano x Regeneration, visit Tyler’s blog post from regenseed.io about using Cardano to regenerate the American Prairie with the mighty Bison. A thought experiment about rancher DAOs, Virtual Fencing, Oracles, Satellites, Mega-Herds and much more which he hopes to turn into a Catalyst proposal in a future fund.

This project in Yem is just the beginning of what we believe will be a fruitful relationship between Cardano and the grassroots Regenerative movement. We are here for the long haul, and here to onboard and support the people we need to join the Cardano network so that together we can create the greatest positive impact.

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

From the campaign brief: 

“...Practical innovations offered on tackling the unique challenges faced by the continent. A clear roadmap that points to increased adoption.”

TACKLING CHALLENGES: While the challenges around food aren’t unique to the continent of Africa, much of the continent is facing acute threats to food security. If funded, our proposal has the opportunity to create a model for the integration of local regenerative food production X global network through 3rd-generation blockchain technology that can be replicated throughout Africa and the world.  

INCREASING ADOPTION: Because of political issues, corruption and the skepticism of those in a country that has been exploited many times and which has historic struggles with corruption, the initial goal of IOG to onboard regular Ethiopians (beginning with students) has been slow to materialize.  Our proposal, if funded, will initially onboard only a small cohort of new “identities”, however it will create an incentive for others to follow suit and onboard their DIDs so they may access 1) the financial support of members of the Cardano network and 2) the open-source intellectual property gathered via this project that will enable them to hit the ground running (after modifying for local nuance) on their own regeneration projects.

We feel that this proposal aligns with the goals of Cardano and will assist IOG, the Cardano Foundation, and the community to meet our collective goals for the region: putting power into the hands of people to make meaningful, positive change.

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

Falsification: The success of this project rests on the interest of individuals from around globe desiring to have a stake in a project in a place so remote they will likely never see it in person. E.g. when someone purchases an action-based NFT representing a water catchment, they want to be as sure as possible that the swale exists and that those who say they participated in constructing it did so when and where they said they did. There is no way, with this budget, to invite third-parties with established trust to audit what is going on on the ground.  

We mitigate the risks of potential falsification of actions and data by incentivizing truthfulness and disincentivizing lies. How do we do that? We don’t have all the answers right now. But it seems that it’s critical that participants have long-term skin in the game. There is skin in the game from the perspective of growing food to help their community avoid famine, and the skillset and toolset that comes with that. There is also an opportunity to give them financial skin in the game in the form of scarce “personal NFTs” (described in the first [IMPACT] section above) that potentially accrue in value as someone takes on notable roles in the project.  

RE: Site Audits: While it isn’t feasible to audit each action, it is possible to have trusted third-parties with reputations on-the-line visit the site at a later date for purposes of documentation and auditing. Who might these trusted third-party/parties be? We don’t know yet, but it feels like the kind of thing the wider community should weigh in on and not something to leave to stakeholders in the project, including the Team behind this proposal.

Other risks come with the territory: political instability, war, and local corruption are all-too common in Ethiopia. To mitigate this risk, we have chosen the location Yem, a special Woreda without layers of bureaucracy and leaders who answer directly to the people.

Failure to design and execute permaculture properly means a lot of human and oxen calories are burned without the reward of future surplus calories. We have put our best foot forward by onboarding Tichafa, someone with beyond-sufficient credentials for the position. But we must also strive to onboard other regenerative design experts to weigh in from afar.  

Unsuccessful participants: Regenerative systems are complex: they take a lot of patient observation, creative thinking, knowledge, skills and also a lot of hard physical work to get off the ground successfully. So, Tichafa must be selective in forming the initial cohort. To help him attract individuals with greater skills and potential, we decided to offer a stipend to participants, so that the opportunity isn't passed up for paying positions in the city. Additionally, we feel that "hiring" the initial cohort makes clear what the expectations are.

Food insecurity outside the community: As supporters of the Yem community we must be honest about what potential risks we are opening them up to when they are growing lots of food, with herds of animals, valuable farming tools, and if we’re really stretching: individuals worth ransoming…. The location of the project is available open-source, it is possible for people in-the-know to show up pushed by desperation to take what they can with violence. While remoteness offers a level of protection, there is no way to be sure this cannot unfold. It is our duty to listen to the concerns of their community, relay potential risks to them, and together formulate an appropriate plan to secure valuables and protect individuals, if it is of concern to them. 

Finally, we are pushing real people to adopt digital identities which could theoretically be used to extract data from, surveill, and otherwise harm participants. We must insure that the Cardano DIDs that we require for participation are 

1) adopted with full informed consent

2) include only personal information that is necessary at this stage

3) only share that personal information with parties explicitly stated

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

1. June 30 2022 (Proposal Finalization)
2. 
   
3. July-August 2022 (Assess QA)
4. Choose the right NFT platform(s) OR define specific criteria for community can assist us in determining the ideal platform.
5. Hold a virtual meeting with the Team and stakeholders/officials in Ethiopia (open invite to IOG and CF :)) to present the plan and preliminary feedback from PAs. 
6. If we are near the top of the list of PA scores for the challenge, we will consider sending Tichafa and Tegegne to Yem before catalyst funds are available. Tegegne can self-fund his own travel if need be. If ADA is on the moon by then, Team members can self-fund Tichafa and [fingers crossed] get reimbursed come funding time. Or we will ask the community for support and pre-maturely assetize some of Tichafa’s IP to sponsor his travel. We would also need a reduced budget for hard assets. Why the rush? The Rainy Season in the region ends in August-September and with it the ideal window for regenerative activities like water catchment and tree planting. Ideally Tichafa would arrive by the third week of August. 

1. September-October 2022 or earlier (Post Funding or earlier)
2. Purchase of hard assets from abroad.  
3. If Tichafa and Tegegne are not yet in Yem, they will hurry there: Tegegne with light-weight hard assets like Phones for participants in tow. 
4. Tegenge will meet with 
5. Yem leadership and introduce them to Tichafa
6. Government officials and attorneys to formalize the project and provide legal protections.
7. Thought leaders to present the idea
8. Hard Assets from abroad purchased and shipment → Addis coordinated.
9. Hard Assets from Addis purchased and shipment → Yem and → Site Location coordinated. 
10. Tichafa, Tegegne and Yem communities meet in Yem. Explain the project, inform of potential risks, benefits, and requirements.  
11.   Tegegne hands over smart phones and trains Tichafa and interested youth in the uses of phones (set up wallet, set up ID, take picture, record audio, send file, receive transaction…)
12. Tichafa gathers information about the landscape from locals.
13. Tichafa presents the project, accepts “applications” and selects the initial cohort for the to-be ecovillage in lowlands. These will be a balance of males and females in good health and at least one person showing technological prowess as tech issues will arise.
14. initial cohort onboarded with
15. Tichafa surveys the lowlands with the cohort and selects a main site for the village before returning to the community.

1. Project Phase 1 Training (Month 1)
2. Tichafa and cohort gather supplies and return to the site
3. Tichafa and cohort build lodgings
4. Tichafa begins Permaculture Design training on-site along with early earthworks, plantings, 
5. Tichafa and Cohort document, record, photograph, etc any relevant actions/events/data/findings/ideas to the Team to mint NFTs.  
6. Team begins minting NFTs and offering for sale for Ada.
7. Project Phase 2 Implementation (Months 2-6)  
8. Continued earthworks, plantings, crop management, livestock management, planting management, observations, data collection, information sharing, NFT minting, community-building (in cardano).  
9. Project Phase 3 Assessment (April 2023)
10. Receive and mint any remaining findings from implementation phase
11. Receive final reports from cohort re: experiences
12. Issue tokens to subsidize continued work AND/OR a second catalyst fund is in the works.
13. Looking Ahead after fund9 funds are out the door:
14. Replicate the same project in lowlands around other communities 
15. Design cooperative and compepetitive interactions between projects to accelerate adoption of regenerative systems across Ethiopia.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Travel

• Tichafa Transport to and from Ethiopia/Zimbabwe (1 round trips) $2000
• Tegegne Transport to and from Norway/Ethiopia $900
• Travel and subsistence to woreda and government offices for land title, etc. $1000

Administrative

• Planning meetings w/ leaders, identifying suitable land for the project. $500
• Stationery. $200

Farming etc.

• Seeds, seedlings, cuttings, planters etc. $1000
• Farming/HorticulturalTools (shovels, garden forks, hoes, rakes etc) $500
• Solar pumps $2000
• Solar cooker foil and adhesive (with some to spare for wider Yem community) $500
• Livestock (2 draught oxen or horses) + 2 cows or 4 goats $1000
• Construction Tools:: $500
• Total Shipping: $1500

Wages

• Tichafa Consultancy (at 120 USD per day for about 30 days) $3600
• Cohort Stipends: 10 x 4500 birr (ethiopian currency) / month x 6months= 45000 birr = $5400*
• with this money, participants are expected to purchase their own staple food rations, so the first two months stipend will be made available up front. afterwards, monthly.

Technology

• 10x economy smart phones: $800
• 5x solar chargers: $100
• Website/hosting/domain $300/yr
• Server infrastructure for $300/yr
• 1.3xx - 2.5 Ada per NFT minted x 200 NFTs $500

Tyler, Tegegne, Kevin: $0. See NFT section above in “[IMPACT}... proposed solution”

$22600

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

Tichafa Makovere

Role: Tichafa will take his extensive experience and knowledge and live with and work alongside the initial cohort of ten Yem farmers and herders in the ecovillage to put permaculture design to work. He will on-chain relevant experience and findings from discussions of elders and experts in and around Yem. He is committed to the success of the project over the long term and hopes to return annually to further grow a network of collaborating/competing ecovillages throughout Ethiopia.  

Background: Tichafa has led multiple permaculture projects and trainings in Ethiopia and throughout Africa. He is probably the most sought-after native Permaculture educator on the continent. He has firsthand knowledge of failed and successful permaculture projects and is eager to make permaculture stick in a way that is meaningful in this advanced stage in his career.  

Tegegne Tefera 

Role: Tegegne has relationships with local leadership and government officials necessary to secure the necessary approvals for the project to proceed. He will continue to work with Ethiopian officials and attorneys to procure the necessary access, titles and protections as the project evolves beyond this initial phase. He will present the project to thought leaders and potential partners within the country and amongst the diaspora. 

Background:Tegegne grew up in a region just over 100km from Yem, and has an inside scoop on the challenges of the region and the opportunities that exist for Cardano in the country. He studied permaculture under the tutelage of Tichafa. For over 20 years of he has lived in Norway and worked as a Marine Engineer in the shipping industry, dealing with extensive environmental standards and technical solutions. 

Tyler Case

Role: Tyler has taken the lead on developing and writing this proposal. Through the lens of this project in Yem, he hopes to further understand the relationship between Regenerative systems and 3rd generation blockchain and to cultivate symbiosis between these two extremely complex and rich "ecosystems." He will introduce the project to regenerative/permaculture experts outside Cardano, and hopefully onboard some into Catalyst to.  

Background: For 8 years, Tyler has owned and operated Mycopolitan, a gourmet mushroom farm in Philadelphia, USA. He holds a B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior from Columbia University ‘07. He writes the blog regenseed.io and hosted the February 2022 Cardano4Climate Regenerative Agriculture Conference, which invited several important thought leaders into the Cardano community. 

Kevin Dubienski

Role: Kevin joined the Team in order to provide technical expertise and creative development in the domain of Cardano NFTs. He also brings his experience leading a successful permaculture project in Ethiopia.  

Background: is the founder of nftseed, a niche NFT project growing within the Cardano ecosystem. He’s the lead permaculture designer for HOPEthiopia & HOPErwanda where he’s designed, and established perennial plant nurseries, and trained many in the ways of permaculture, reforestation/rewilding, and business. He keeps his head down 14 weeks a year, working in the lake, and managing a team of coworkers and friends. Previously, he was senior partner of a web 2 studio focusing on sales funnels, workflow optimization, and educational content. In the off season he gardens, brews, cures, cryptos, and volunteers. 

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

short answer: probably.

We don't plan to or want to be reliant on funding from catalyst for an extended period However, the Yem are subsistence farmers, and regenerative, perennial food systems take years to establish, so there isn't a clear path to a commercial product that would draw in traditional investment. We must do our best to develop intangible products beginning with collectible NFTs to support the project before it is capturing value from surplus on its own.

We do hope that we can bring value to Cardano through this project via onboarding a novel use case, as well as active users and experts, while adding to the demand for supporting infrastructure in Ethiopia that will facilitate more cardano activity over the years. So, in so long as "Cardano" is our greatest [capitalized] stakeholder, we will continue to return to the Catalyst well if it will help us do more good work.

[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?

1. #of Unique DIDs onboarded (transacting with funded wallet)
2. Total $/Ada value in NFT purchases and % of that going to Ethiopian wallets (active participants on the ground). 
3. Attendance at open meetings and Youtube engagement of recorded meetings (views, comments, dwell time).

Beyond the scope of the proposed project, we would like to incorporate long term data on

-well water levels

-satellite data filtered to track changes in markers of regeneration on landscape such as tree cover, duration of green growth into dry season, etc.

-calories/acre

-protein/acre

-soil organic matter (carbon sequestration)

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

At Month 6: We've documented greater diversity and density of wildlife- which indicates the health of the same ecosystem that humans rely on for sustenance. We would hope to see a landscape with the markings of well-designed human effort all across it: swales collecting rainwater increasing groundwater and decreasing erosion. We would hope to see the great majority of plantings successfully rooting and thriving into the dry season. We would hope to see greater regeneration of grasses and forbes in areas with managed-grazing of cows and goats. Most importantly we would hope to see participants excited to continue the work and others eager to join them, which more than anything would show that we were having success.

Simultaneously, we'd hope to see a community for the projects NFTs growing. not only speculating, but eager to learn about regeneration through direct engagement and encouraged by the positive impact their purchases have gone on to support.

In Yem: Ideally, success looks like this project expanding from 10 Yem permaculturists subsidized with food rations to, after 3 years, 1,000+ Yem living in the lowlands, generating enough food for themselves plus surplus for the rest of the community or commercial product. Simultaneously, thanks to regenerative practices spreading throughout the community and widespread adoption of solar cookers, the soil in the highlands will become more fertile, resistent to erosion and capable of feeding the population for generations to come.

Beyond Yem: We would love to see similar methods (both on the ground and on-chain) supporting regenerative projects all around Ethiopia, Africa, and the world.

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

We submitted an early and very rough version of this proposal defined as "In Reserve" from the beginning in Fund8.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

Tyler's thoughts about when a decentralized, first-principles type of ecosystem adopts the UN's SDGs unexamined... Sustainable Development Goals are Everywhere — regenseed.io Main Takeaway: If WE are pushing power to the many, WE will play the role of the UN and so WE should examine the SDG's and -together- make them better = Cardano SDG's.

That said, with some subtle but highly consequential edits/reframings, the UN SDG's will be "good enough for now."

I'm seeing direct alignment with UN SDG's:

#2,3,6,12,13,15

And indirect alignment with:

#1,4,5,8,10,14,17

If we're counting, that's 13 out of 17. Transitioning to regenerative comes with many perks for society.