We welcomed the Judges desire for information about how our solution differs from similar solutions on the market and strove to provide this information in our application, in the technical vetting questions and in the Q&A following our presentation by highlighting our Unique Selling Points and the technical differences.
In our application we understood that the technical differences may not be obvious to a non-expert. As such, in addition to describing the technology and leading with the points that make it different, we also state in the application section “What is your solution” that “In fact, the use of process models and methodologies to demonstrate causation mean that it is the only solution that meets the highest level (Tier 3) of the current draft European Union regulation on carbon farming.” as both a summary and a major differentiating factor in itself.
As detailed in our other comments however, the most unique of our Unique Selling Points is our team’s presence on the ground in the locations where we work, history of working in the region and contextual knowledge and deep relationships with the local communities.
As detailed in our application, this is also what uniquely enables us to bring online the volume of projects that is demanded.
During technical vetting we were specifically asked “How is your technology offering “lower cost” as compared to other technologies currently being pursued?” to which we gave details of our unique openness, transparency and requirement for optimised soil sampling at a much reduced cost, aspects of our solution which were praised by the judges.
During the Q&A following our presentation we had another opportunity to discuss how we differ and gave both a detailed technical answer and summary that others demonstrate correlation while we demonstrate causation.
It was reassuring to hear from the MIT judges that they had concerns about the complexity of carbon markets and the risks for inequitable distribution of benefits, that they felt that presence of a team on the ground in the locations it is working in is important, and that the technology alone cannot solve this problem without deep relationships with the local communities whose space is being surveyed.
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We felt that presence and relationships are so important that we used a significant amount of our presentation to judges raising our answer to this concern, which is what we see as Unique Selling Point, referring to our partners and history in the region during Slides 1 and 2 and during Slide 4 stating “Just as important as this technology, is our team. We have complimentary skills and experiences from across the region, from environmental peacebuilding to the full geospatial tech stack. We have experience working with underserved small holders and pastoralist communities in the Sahel. Ongoing monitoring is essential to provide the data they need to ensure project success but it has to be accessible, with C4D Communications for Development best practice. Our solution is designed to solve problems that we and our UN and other partners faced on the ground, such as the ecosystem work we are doing with IOM supporting refugees from Tigray.”
As written and said in the presentation, our team is primarily on the ground in the areas we are working in, with the presentation being given by team members who were in Europe at the time due to the internet connection being more reliable than in Darfur.
On the concerns about inequitable distribution of benefits, we believe that the importance of transparency that we highlight as one of the ways we overcome the described bottlenecks, is a powerful tool to mitigate this risk, as demonstrated in the region already by the use of GSM technology to enable farmers to know what rates are for their produce in markets long distances away. The other major risk of inequitable distribution of benefits which has been highlighted by Bloomberg recently is that communities do not benefit as credit value increases. This was addressed this in the presentation when raising NFTs as a way to ensure that increasing value of credits made its way back to the people who did the work in the first place.
In summary, we agree fully with the point made by Judges that "technology alone cannot solve this problem without deep relationships with the local communities whose space you are surveying. " and make a similar point ourselves in our application as a way of introducing what makes us different, as highlighted above.
It was reassuring to hear from the MIT judges that they had concerns about the complexity of carbon markets and the risks for inequitable distribution of benefits, that they felt that presence of a team on the ground in the locations it is working in is important, and that the technology alone cannot solve this problem without deep relationships with the local communities whose space is being surveyed.
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We not only share these views, but made similar points in our application in the section “How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?” in particular saying “To be successful, maximise impact and prevent reversals, activities must first and foremost be owned by communities.”
Highlighting the importance of community involvement and ownership in our application is a way for us to draw attention to what we consider to be our primary Unique Selling Point: our presence on the ground and deep relationships with communities. We raise this in the following areas:
In the application section “Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?” we state “Our focus are communities in East-Africa and the Sahel where we have direct on the ground experience and networks from over a decade of working in humanitarian emergencies and development.” In addition, during the Q&A we also made the point when answering the question about certification that the communities and local organisations were the final decision makers.
In the application section “How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?”, we state “Our team has experience in working in emergency humanitarian contexts and has networks that span the drylands of the Sahel and East Africa regions allowing our service to expand to meet communities precisely where this service is needed most.” We continue “we partner with local communities and organisations and provide assistance in the design and implementation of projects. To be successful, maximise impact and prevent reversals, activities must first and foremost be owned by communities. This is not just an ethical imperative, but there is also a solid business case for this and it is backed by experience. As such, this is not a top down exercise but a community led one.”
In the application section “What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?” we state “Our goal for the next year is to expand the pilot agro-forestry project with our partners in Kenya, commence a wetland regeneration project with our partner in Niger, and post-conflict peace-building regenerative pastoralism in Darfur”
And in the application section “How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?” we highlight our presence again stating “Our team has many years of providing third party MRV on social impacts on UN agency and NGO activities based on SDG indicators which we will use once projects commence.”
We were very pleased to read that the MIT judges appreciated the open aspect of our solution, and felt that we balanced the remote sensing and direct sampling aspects well.
As we lay out in the opening of our application and illustrated in the second slide of our presentation to the judges, the enormous market demand for CO2 removal credits already exists, in particular for credits resulting from projects located in developing countries, with positive SDG impacts and climate justice.
As we continue in our application, the potential supply is also there: the local communities and NGOs that we have worked with and partnered with over the past decade are just a fraction of the groups on the ground who are ready to implement Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Natural Climate Solutions, restoring degraded lands and pushing back the desert.
However, as we say in the section “What specific problem are you solving”, the bottle necks are a lack of confidence and the high cost of monitoring, reporting and verification.
Although the open nature of our solution is important as tech principle, it is also one of the ways we overcome the lack of confidence in data that is holding back large scale investment in NbS. The other is in deliberately avoiding the closed, opaque proprietary model in favour of creating technologies based on published, peer-reviewed research that is accessible to anyone.
This leads to the balancing of the remote sensing and direct sampling aspects which is in itself based on the results of over a decade of research by the University of Sydney, University of Edinburgh and Wageningen University to name but a few.
However, in our view although the technology is unique in its rigour and applicability, it is not the primary Unique Selling Point (USP) of SoilWatch.
For us, it is the experience and presence of our team in the areas where we work, and our deep connections with communities and partners on the ground that is the real USP, as detailed in the application sections “Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?”, “How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?”, “What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?”, and as detailed during slides 1, 2 and 4 of our presentation to judges. In our view this presence and relationships are the only way to not only ensure that data is accessible to those who need it most and that projects are successful, but also to ensure that outcomes are equitable.
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