This World Economic Forum video outlines many uses of blockchain technology for environmental protection. The system created can also protect many local tibal communities vulnerable to resource extraction.
From Conquistadors to robber barons to oil and gas companies natural resources of tropical regions have been unsustainably harvested and exploited. It doesn’t have to be this way. We must prevent this.
Take for instance the Earth Bank of Codes initiative. This ambitious collaborative aims to assign every piece of biological data from the Amazon a digital fingerprint that is traceable by everyone all over the World. Whenever data are used or sold the transactions would be recorded on the blockchain. This would make it possible for all to trace who does what to Amazon resources and distribute benefits back to country of origin. If the Amazon becomes a base where knowledge is extracted rather than the raw materials economies can bloom even as nature is left to thrive.
Briefly, blockchain is the name for a digital ledger in which transactions are recorded chronologically and publicly. For those of you who are foreign to the concept and basic workings of the blockchain technology the Dutch state broadcaster VPRO documentary “The Bitcoin Gospel” may be useful as a primer. Blockchain technology has been heralded as the answer to a safer, fairer and more transparent food system. Many companies, from global food giants to start-ups, have begun to experiment with it including the multi-national coffee industry.
Native communities are striving to protect their lands in many regions of the World. Worldwide forest ecosystems are under intense pressure. Community driven protection is now seen as one of the most effective conservation strategies. One great example of a working conservation model is traditional community forests like the 48 Cantones of the Totonicapán, province in Guatemala where indigenous Maya Q’uiché government maintains a large protected area.
In 2015 the Kichwa tribe in the Sarayaku region of the Amazon in Ecuador who have been fighting oil companies who want to exploit their ancestral land sent a delegation of indigenous people were at the Conference of Parties Paris COP21 climate conference to project their voices to the World.
World Economic Forum has already began discussing ways to link Global Carbon Trading Credit system to protection of natural areas. The idea of carbon credits is to put a price on carbon reductions. Blockchain-based economical systems can be a valuable means to provide revenue for community based land protection projects such as the few mentioned above. Companies and individuals can be empowered to reduce or offset the negative or unavoidable impact of their business and choices on the environment. By placing a value on the ecosystems that support our planet, carbon credits incorporate the invisible costs of everyday choices and allow a sustainable market place to emerge.
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