What is the name of your organization?
SoilWatch
What is the name of your solution?
Community Centred Restoration
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Improve food security on the frontlines of climate change with tools that empower communities
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Nairobi, Kenya
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Belgium
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Healthy ecosystems are essential to manage climate risks, reduce socio-environmental conflicts, and ensure food security and supply chain security. On the front lines of climate change, agricultural land can be degraded but there are contextually and culturally appropriate nature-based solutions that reverse desertification, increase resilience to flooding and drought, protect coastal areas and increase food security, all while removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Funding for such projects is possible via carbon markets and demand for carbon credits from nature-based solutions is increasing due to changes in the market such as the beginning of ICAO's compulsory CORSIA system for airlines.
But this new financing is not funding adaptation or restoration of ecosystems to the extent that it could, and if it is, a large proportion is absorbed by consultants and monitoring organisations removed from the regions.
There are some solutions pushed for solving the issues of cost but their proprietary nature fails to solve the issue of trust around project outcomes and some of the techniques for scaling that look impressive to a venture capitalist investor far away from where projects take place serve to increase the disconnect between communities and projects, decreasing the likelihood of their success.
What is your solution?
We use open-source, high-resolution multi-temporal satellite imagery to monitor land degradation, biodiversity and biomass production at landscape level. We combine these with optimised field samples and bio-geochemical process models to estimate CO2 removals. Everything is based on published peer reviewed research. All this has resulted in our first project now being in the final stages of Verra’s recent VM00042 for agricultural lands having completed validation from the independent modeling expert. AI and Machine learning advancements are being further integrated to improve efficiency.
Crucially, we are on the ground carrying out training of trainers programmes and lead farmer training so that the essential sampling, including of biomass, is carried out by the local communities. This is combined with a variety of technologies used by the local communities and adapted from our experience of humanitarian emergencies. We call our approach Community Centred Monitoring, Reporting and Verification, or CC MRV.
But what does this mean in practice and related the problem?
It means that the costs of monitoring, reporting and verification are dramatically cut while the scientific rigour is maintained and, crucially, community ownership and trust is increased. Communitoes receive the support they need to shift to a more sustainable food system
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
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. However, our system has a global reach and we operate in Latin America also. These are small scale farmers and pastoralist and coastal communities in Kenya, Mali, Niger and Sudan who lack non-destructive opportunities for jobs and income, even when traditional practices or repurposing degraded land might support both people and nature in the long term.
However, the bottlenecks outlined above mean that they are currently underserved despite the massive potential funding from carbon markets. At the same time, overseas development aid budgets are being cut. The result is that livelihoods are becoming more precarious or being lost when possible solutions could be preventing this but go unfunded.
The increased transparency through the use of distributed ledger technology creates the means to ensure that the vast majority of carbon revenues go to the local communities and organisations carrying out the activities. Over a projected 30 year project lifecycle, this means an additional source of income in regions traditionally experiencing socio-economic neglect and deprivation.
