Re-Forest-ER

Mixed, tropical agroforestry has the potential to restore damaged ecosystems, provide food, energy and jobs for local communities and ensure financial profitability for its owners and operators while capturing vast amounts of carbon dioxide. The Re-Forest-ER platform unites various technologies including remote sensing systems such as radar satellite earth observation, cloud-based geographic information systems and AI  algorithms to process and comprehend enormous amounts of complex data. Re-Forester-ER leverages the latest advances in artificial intelligence and uses novel satellite and drone technologies to allow for global scalability in mixed tropical environments. The platform hosts various applications which are supporting decision-makers, field workers, firefighters, and local communities. This technology is enriched and utilised through community-based approaches to ensure the continued use, impact and growth of Re-Forest-ER.

Mixed, tropical agroforestry has the potential to restore damaged ecosystems, provide food, energy, materials and jobs for local communities and ensure financial profitability for its owners and operators while capturing vast amounts of carbon dioxide. A multistrata agroforestry system has the capacity of sequestering 2.8 tons of carbon per acre each year. In the case of Niger,  crop production increased by 500,000 tons per year under agroforestry practices.

The planning and operations of sustainable agroforestry poses an immense challenge since it usually relies on a few local experts who accumulated relevant knowledge and planting recipes over decades of work. While the publishing of research papers and training of new sustainable agroforestry practitioners is essential, traditional methods of knowledge creation, dissemination and implementation won’t suffice to tackle the pressing challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss in time.

For this, new tools and approaches like Re-Forest-ER are needed to generate and transfer more agroforestry relevant insights and scale them to better inform landowners and operators all over the globe for productive and sustainable outputs. The tooling is being co-developed with partner Arsari Enviro Industri and Willie Smits and is planned to scale globally within the next 2 years. 

To solve these challenges and unlock the potential of sustainable agroforestry practices worldwide, ARSARI and Space4Good teamed up to develop Re-Forest-ER.

Re-Forest-ER’s mission is to make an impact and natural resources measurable so knowledge can be accumulated and made explicit using drones, satellite data and artificial intelligence to monitor, predict and review changes in the system. 

To do so we develop a platform and supporting applications that help to map and track sustainable conservation work with the goal of monitoring activities and impact remotely while providing new insights for better decision making and rapid actions.

Starting on Arsari’s almost 200.000 ha operations in Borneo, Indonesia, we are developing, testing and training Re-Forster-ER involving the wider stakeholder ecosystem before scaling the platform and applications to different environments.

The Re-Forest-ER team is a consortium of leading technology and knowledge providers focusing on nature conservation, forest restoration, and sustainable agroforestry innovation for communities. It consists of Space4Good, a geospatial innovation developer using remote sensing and artificial intelligence to monitor complex ecosystems; the Masarang Foundation, pioneering restorative rainforest practises in Indonesia and led by Dr. Willie Smits; Arsari Enviro Industri, one of South East Asia’s leading sustainable climate solutions developers; and an additional supporting partner with the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the Liverpool John Moores University led by Prof. Serge Wich specialised in tropical rainforest ecology and conservation of primates and their habitats; and. 

Our vision for Re-Forest-ER is to combine sustainable agroforestry practises, including protected conservation areas, with an above-average return of investment to disrupt destructive economic and environmental paradigms and ensure lasting benefits for the environment, local communities, wildlife and financiers. 

The platform and applications will result in various benefits for all stakeholders involved in mixed, tropical agroforestry such as:

• Monitor and track operations

• Observe potential threats and opportunities

• Quantify impact and natural resources

• Rapid, data-driven planning and action

• Forecasting capabilities

• Provide transparency

• Increase operational efficiency

• Enable and empower local capacity building

• Scale and replicate your work into new areas and environments

Current communities are combating issues of unemployment, poverty and exposure to syndicate activities in relation to environmental crimes, such as illegal logging, land claims and poaching. Very often, these communities have little to no alternatives, which is where local development programs and Re-Forest-ER emerge as not only viable but essential solutions to sustainable economic reform in Indonesia and other mixed-tropical regions in Africa and South America exposed to similar hardships. The needs of these communities are well determined and understood through program development and implementation, hiring locals who stem from these regions and represent the above-mentioned hardships. Additionally, in-field validation, community meetings and enforcement involvement ensure that the solution itself is catering adequately to the local contexts. This approach will be determined and applied to the various contexts with local implementation partners at the helm to ensure that the same attention and integration is provided to projects beyond the pilot location as we scale. 

Besides creating new data, insights, and knowledge, we want to ensure that our outputs can be used by relevant stakeholders ranging from landowners, investment funds, corporates, financial institutions, governments, non-profit groups and communities.  To achieve this goal we will embed our work within sustainable tropical agroforestry practices to better ensure lasting benefits for the environment, local communities, wildlife, and financiers alike and move beyond destructive economic and environmentally destructive paradigms. Our work will result in intangible and tangible outputs all maximising social and environmental impact through co-creation and open innovation within green, local economies. 

Starting with Arsari’s almost 140,000 ha operation in Borneo and Sumatra, Indonesia, we’re developing, testing and training Re-Forest-ER involving a wide stakeholder ecosystem. The platform hosts various applications that support decision-makers, field workers, firefighters, and local communities with tailored, actionable information supporting and empowering their responsibilities. Direct and more immediate impacts include the protection of 50,000 ha of primary forest, the restoration of an additional 16,000 ha in wildlife corridors, ~5 Mt/year in CO2 emission reduction mainly through the replacement of gasoline by ethanol while generating a positive NPV for investors. It is important to note that a strong component of Re-Forest-ER focuses on preventing environmental crimes that threaten the agroforestry efforts and system health around it. In restoring and protecting forests adjacent to the agroforestry sites, a strong mission of Arsari. can lead to multiple positive externalities that generate social and environmental benefits outside of the exploited area, such as: 

• Ecosystem services (natural products, ecosystem control, indirect economic value) is estimated to represent up to 80% of the income of the poorest people in villages

• Reforestation and exploitation contribute to limiting fires

• Biodiversity protection, as well as carbon sequestration, further contribute to the value of the restored forests

Arsari and Space4Good started collaborating in December 2019. Currently, fire and deforestation detection is fully operational and in the testing phase. Deforestation prediction and biomass assessments will be fully operational and testing this year. In Q1 2023, Re-Forest-ER will be a subscription-based service to sustainable organisations in mixed-tropical environments worldwide.

Re-Forest-ER remote sensing and AI-enabled solution provide scalable and verifiable monitoring and data to track and understand ecosystem conditions, namely soil and forest health, restoration and agroforestry recipe recommendations, micro-climate and watershed monitoring, climate risk and biodiversity mapping, environmental crime detection and prediction, and carbon stocks for credit conversion and yield predictions for productivity in mixed-tropical forests.

Accordingly, Re-Forest-ER creates actionable insights enabling scalable economic opportunities for local communities, through non-timber forest products (NTFP) including fishing, timber, tourism, and regenerative agriculture in the likes of agroforestry, that are aligned with thriving and biodiverse ecosystems.

The Re-Forest-ER solution is in the pilot phase. Although a comprehensive solution under further development, the tooling is operational in the field and provides essential insights for the management of the location. More features are to come and further refinement and training will continue.

We are planning to be at the forefront of technological innovation in the context of remote sensing and AI  with the biggest novelty being the end-to-end integration of all into a solid workflow. To our knowledge, this has never been attempted before by either academia or industry. Therefore, we are positively surprised and grateful for the MIT Solve opportunity for giving us the platform and attention to realise our plans.

The choice to rely on remote sensing technologies is its possibility for modular solutions meeting varied requirements in different ecoregions and user groups. We envision a triage system in which a basic information layer is being provided by free, public satellite earth observation monitoring. This can be complemented through commercial satellite imagery and drone operations based on the particular needs and objectives of various stakeholders, such as agroforestry by land operators, supply chain managers, carbon crediting and ecosystem services assessments by local governments. In this sense, Re-Forest-ER is a game-changer in providing comprehensive land and project management and mitigation insights to better ensure productive harvests, optimum land use in balance with sustainability and conservation efforts, and a shift to technologically enabled resilience building for local communities and other stakeholders. The generated, novel insight about one of the most complex ecosystems in the world, in turn, will unlock new possibilities for other entities, therefore, catalyzing broader, systemic change among all stakeholders.

Currently: Initially 2000 people living within the location bounds, with the spillover impact of this job creation reaching around 10,000-15,000 people. 

1 year from now: 55,000 to 60,000 new jobs

5 years from now: Projectected servicing of 500 sites with at least 50,000-100,000 individuals per site. 

The Re-Forest-ER vision is to combine sustainable agroforestry practices with the above-average return of investment to disrupt destructive economic and environmental paradigms and ensure lasting benefits for the environment, local communities, wildlife and financiers alike on a global scale. In addition to job creation, the efforts enabled by Re-Forest-ER also contribute to enhanced infrastructures, medical and education facilities, as well as sporting and cultural locations. 

Additionally, it is important to consider compounding benefits, such as ecosystem health, enhanced air quality, carbon sequestration, water management and biodiversity that contribute to the vitality of the system at large. 

Our success will be measured both on a scientific and applicability scale which will directly contribute to our impact goals. 

On a scientific level, we aim to strengthen the understanding of rainforests with the use of remote sensing, AI and contextual knowledge. The creation of improved and new understandings will allow researchers, governments, and industries to quantify and appreciate ecosystem services to consequently protect them. Furthermore, new datasets and methodologies will be developed to further enhance scientific research.

On the applicability scale, we want to ensure that outputs can be used by relevant stakeholders ranging from landowners, investment funds, corporates, financial institutions, governments and activist groups. By embedding these outputs in the context of sustainable agroforestry paired with conservation areas we believe we found an impactful way to protect biodiversity and forest health while creating green, local economies in a long term and sustainable fashion.

Our customized method has been operational since 2019 and has successfully detected over 573 deforestation events (2 years) and 112 fires (1 year) in the 200,000 hectares of Mixed Tropical Forests monitored in Borneo, Indonesia.

The Re-Forest-ER team is a consortium of leading technology and knowledge providers: 

• Arsari Enviro Industri: 38 full-time employees 

• Space4Good: 10 full-time staff, 9 Interns; 5 freelancers 

Supporting Partner: 

• Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU): School of Biological and Environmental Sciences have a faculty of 27 staff. 

The Re-Forest-ER team is a consortium of leading technology and knowledge providers focusing on nature conservation, forest restoration, and sustainable agroforestry innovation. It consists of the Masarang Foundation, pioneering restorative rainforest practises in Indonesia and led by Dr. Willie Smits; Arsari Enviro Industri, one of South East Asia’s leading sustainable climate solutions developers and Space4Good, a geospatial innovation developer using remote sensing and artificial intelligence to monitor complex ecosystems comprised of a team of dual experts in both technologies (radar, remote sensing GIS, full-stack development) and sectoral knowledge (Forestry, agriculture, disasters, and infrastructure planning). Space4Good currently holds 2 PhDs, and 8 MSc accredited team members with over 40 years combined experience. Additionally, we have support from the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the Liverpool John Moores University led by Prof. Serge Wich specialised in tropical rainforest ecology and the conservation of primates and their habitats. We understand the value of failing fast and early for making the best use of the available resources to come up with a viable solution to tackle a complex problem. This learning applies to us and of course our partners and customers as well. In combining our respective strengths in this purpose-driven proposition, we inspire each other to go beyond the status quo and set a standard for the future. We are committed to spending our time and resources in making our dream a reality and have an immense drive, creativity and expertise to achieve this and share it with the world.

For the moment our team has all the expertise we need to develop our concept, refine, and launch our approach. Each of the participating organisations further has an extensive network in academia, governments, NGOs and corporations to reach out for ad-hoc support if needed. In case we identify a significant and strategically important segment throughout the competition that can’t be addressed through our skills and experience, we shall aim to onboard additional team members and/or organisations with the necessary expertise.

As mentioned above, Arsari Enviro Industri works with local communities to involve their local experts and insights into the development of the solution FOR the community and Space4Good, is a highly diverse team with equal gender balance and 12 different nationalities which allow us to easily engage with international project partners and customers all around the world. It is important to mention that Space4Good is located in The Netherlands, The Hague, and incorporated as a social enterprise according to the B.Corp Standard. By this, the company positions itself impact first, funnelling any revenues back into innovation and impact projects and partnerships to better ensure and facilitate diverse and sustainable momentum for impact. 

MIT Solve perfectly aligns with our current and intended work on rainforest conservation and regenerative agriculture for all sustainable decision-making for conservation and ecosystem services. We will be using the latest remote sensing and artificial intelligence technologies to detect and map biodiversity and forest conditions. We will then combine it with local knowledge and expertise to make the findings applicable and valuable in the context of nature conservation and local economies. MIT Solve will enable our mission, raising awareness of our work, and access to interested parties and financing. Not only this but also allow us to form new partnerships, attract much-needed attention on this important topic and connect us with financiers sharing our vision of disrupting destructive economic and environmental paradigms and ensure lasting benefits for our environment, wildlife and sustainable, local economies globally. Ultimately, The MIT Solve mission to leverage technology-based solutions that help communities restore, sustain, and benefit from resilient ecosystems is also that of Re-Forest-ER.

Re-Forester-ER will be set up as a joint venture social enterprise allowing for partners to contribute and participate in its future success. The primary support needed to bring Re-Forest-ER to market is attracting additional funding sources. To do this, strong business modelling, financials, and branding will be a sure-fire way to attract adequate investment to a much needed technological application. Furthermore, we want to partner with local knowledge leaders and like-minded organizations in other ecoregions to understand and incorporate particularities and respective datasets. For this, access to data sets and validation entities will be essential to strengthen the algorithms, but also create collaborative avenues for Re-Forest-ER client base development. Once the platform and service are being developed we would like to work with local distribution, marketing and capacity building organisations to ensure the adoption and correct use of Re-Forester-ER. This will also further our understanding of local legal and regulatory structures to best leverage for collaboration and capacity building. While our group has a proven track record in research and operations, we would like to leverage the MIT Solve community to bring attention to our work and consequently help us to find the best partners and set strong foundations for resilient business and impact for ecosystems.

As mentioned above, perhaps different from other participating teams, Re-Forester-ER already comprised a diverse set of partners sharing the same goals and mindset while bringing in different expertise and experience and networks. Combining the potential of an internationally operating corporation, a purpose-driven non-profit, a world-renowned university and a rapidly growing startup led to a thriving ecosystem of creativity, wisdom and action. Throughout, we are open to partner with new, like-minded and like-hearted organisations while also bringing in our wider networks from each respective organisational team member. 

Referring to that of MIT Solve, we see added value in partnering with data acquisition entities, and global organizations looking to support and leverage technologies for social and environmental impact, namely: 

• World Resource Institute 

• Insurance entities 

• Researchers 

• United Nations Environment Programme

• Rabo Partnerships ( keeping in mind we are already associated with Rabobank carbon bank initiative) 

• Rainforest Action Network (RAN)

• The Nature Conservancy

We are also open to exploring synergies and note Inga Alley Cropping, Xilinat,  ISeeChange, and Bambara Milk. The current network is so impressive, that any further recommendations would be appreciated. 

At the moment, however, the most obvious partnership needs are related to investment and eventual distribution while further is likely to emerge. Besides partners, we of course will be working together with potential users and customers to identify new/additional requirements within other regions, perform pilots and build up a pipeline of future opportunities. 

Space4Good has worked with conservation organization ins the Sargasso sea to monitor fishing vessels and correlate satellite radar and GPS data to monitor routes of vessels even when they go dark. The aim of this work was to be able to better monitor activities and cross-reference with local fish populations, mitigate illegal fishing of protected species in protected areas and hold those accountable for breaking laws. 

The re-Forester-ER solution holds a feature component for 1. deforestation detection and prediction aimed to maintain current carbon stocks, and 2. biomass assessments for both carbon stock calculations and even sequestration projections to better enable planning and advisory/recommendations for carbon sequestration. Space4Good has also championed this work with Rabobank for smallholder agroforesters in Africa and South America and deploys this within Willie Smits and Arsari's broader projects as well. 

Re-Forest-ER itself relies heavily on the use of AI and data processing for impact. The solution employs machine-learning artificial intelligence to automatically evaluate and assess big data for monitoring, alert systems and reporting. This automated process visualizes past and current data and the respective insights in the portal and even goes on to trigger alerts to be sent via social media to operatives in the field and via email. The only way for this solution to have the impact it has intended to deeply rely on the capabilities of AI for timely, expansive and scalable insights for decision-makers and stakeholders. 

Re-Forest-ER and Space4Good see great value in incorporating blockchain technologies in systems like these and are investigating this for future integration. Our current use of big data, drone technologies and LiDAR, AI and algorithms that best analyse these data streams posture us well for the award in the innovative, proactive and informative nature of the solution. It is also important to note that Space4Good works on projects other than Re-Forest-ER that could also apply. https://www.space4good.com/portfolio