Treetracker Impact Token Platform

Rural farmers often find themselves at a crossroads: already facing extreme poverty and the brunt of the climate crisis, they must decide between further degrading their land and putting food on the table for their families. Local reforestation programs may exist, but there is no industry standard on tree growth monitoring, payment for services or measurement of tree survival rates. Trees are being planted, but not cared for through adulthood - a model we call “plant-and-forget.” Greenstand’s Treetracker solution provides reforestation projects with the tools to map and monitor their trees, keep track of tree growers, and verify grower payments. Our tech stack includes the Treetracker mobile app, an online Web Map, a dashboard for project managers, and the digital Impact Wallet system where each tree’s environmental data is valued and stored. We strive to support human-powered reforestation and eliminate the need to sacrifice local ecosystems to make end’s meet.

While millions of dollars are being pledged to plant trees, little is truly known about the results of these efforts and most often social considerations are excluded. Restoration markets lack access to a service that can increase the value of their work through standardization and verification. Furthermore, there is no technical service available that functions as a ground-truthing mechanism and additionally links these verified efforts to consumer markets to obtain sustainable financing. 

Greenstand plays a critical role in turning pledges into verified impacts. Thousands of users and millions of trees are pouring onto our platform. We are verifying these efforts at the per-tree level and turning them into digital assets that can be sold to produce project funding. By ground-truthing these efforts and offering a pay-to-grow model to these planting organizations, we are creating sustainable income opportunities for populations that need it most and filling a massive gap in the restoration models. 

In Indonesia specifically, millions of smallholder farmers are living in extreme poverty. Agricultural skill sets are widespread, but against a backdrop of forest degradation thanks to decades of commercial logging and cultivation of oil palms, there are few economically sustainable opportunities for Indonesian farmers to restore their lands. As the climate crisis intensifies, these vulnerable communities are subject to erratic farming conditions, yet green technology that can help them adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change is both cost prohibitive and inaccessible to those without basic digital literacy.

Our target beneficiaries are the millions of subsistence farmers who live in extreme poverty, primarily women and underserved communities in Indonesia or nearly any community undertaking tree planting restoration efforts. Our Treetracker app is created to be accessible by first-time app users with little to no digital literacy. App design prioritizes images instead of text whenever possible to make this opportunity accessible to people of any language or literacy level around the world.

Project managers, often from local CBOs & NGOs, are trained on how to use the back-end of the Treetracker platform, providing them with basic technological literacy and an understanding of the processes that make the Treetracker model possible. Village Champions, which can be reforestation project managers or a delegate thereof, are responsible for each project’s mobile phone and charger. Individual farmers borrow this phone to track their trees, and their payments are distributed accordingly.

This open-source solution is prepared to serve millions of rural subsistence farmers anywhere around the globe who are living on less than $2 PPP a day. Beneficiaries receive repeat financial compensation and the plethora of co-benefits that come from restoring degraded landscapes. By creating a direct link between growers on the ground and consumer markets, we are creating a circular economy of green jobs that can easily be made available to the most marginalized and least served populations around the world.

Millions of smallholder farmers in Indonesia are facing extreme poverty, rampant deforestation, and a dearth of “green” economic opportunities. They are effectively forced to degrade local ecosystems to keep food on the table. Without access to green technology that can inform, verify, and unlock funding for reforestation projects, these farmers are practically powerless against the multinational corporations who fund deforestation.

Greenstand’s Treetracker is the solution to these issues. To increase use of the platform in Indonesia, we plan to partner with local reforestation organizations and seek out volunteer software developers from the area, ensuring that local knowledge is ingrained into all of our efforts in the country. The sustainable income earned by growers will allow them to pull themselves and their families out of extreme poverty, and the digital literacy gained by project managers will help prepare them to direct larger projects or move into other professions that rely on similar technology. The Treetracker is designed to ensure that nobody is left behind in the transition to a clean, tech-based economy.

Sebastian Gärtner (sebastian.gaertner@greenstand.org)

Greenstand’s Treetracker is rare in offering a tree tracking technology that focuses on the socioeconomic wellbeing of tree growers. It is unfair to expect farmers to plant and care for trees long-term without offering them compensation for their hard work. Therefore, reforestation projects utilizing the Treetracker app can upload proof of planter payments to increase transparency to consumers. This is how our pay-to-grow program is starkly different from plant-and-forget funding models that are widely accepted as the reforestation status quo today. 

In addition, Greenstand is committed to remaining non-competitive in the reforestation industry. The Treetracker was created as an open-source project intended to complement any reforestation project globally. We regularly work with our planting partners to build custom web maps and advanced integrations that meet their demands. In short, our solution is scalable and replicable for practically any reforestation project in the world. 

The idea to track trees is not novel. But a platform that tracks trees for the shared purpose of creating more resilient environments and creating socioeconomic opportunities for farmers is. Based on our experiences in other regions, once we are more established in Indonesia, we expect the Treetracker to gain exponential interest from other local reforestation groups in the country.

The core components of the Treetracker tech stack are as follows:

• TheTreetracker mobile appis used by tree growers to take geotagged photos, or “tree captures,” of the trees they plant and care for over time. 

• Once the data has been captured by the app, it is then uploaded to the Admin Panel through a data pipeline and into a verification platform, where each individual tree capture is verified and assigned an ecological value. The Admin Panel also provides access to the grower information and the organizational details.

• The Web Map displays verified trees on a GIS based platform. This feature allows planting organizations to confirm placement and survivorship of every tree planted.

• After verification, each tree capture can be minted into a digital Impact Token encapsulating all the information needed to claim the impact. Through the Impact Wallet, investors and consumers can buy, sell, and trade the created Impact Tokens. This element of the technology helps projects generate sustainable funding and compensate their growers.

• The forthcoming Tree Value Matrix defines the ecological and social impact of each Impact Token to create fungible units. The higher trees are valued through the value matrix, the higher the potential cash payout is to the growers.

Our theory of change is based on 2 primary activities: 1) tree growers using the Treetracker platform to receive payments for restoring their lands and 2) the Greenstand team verifying their environmental stewardship on the backend. These activities yield more ecological data, more trees in the ground, and more income for tree growers when compared to typical reforestation projects. Tree data is vital for tree planting organizations to understand and display their impacts to potential funders. Planting and growing more trees allows for ecosystems to become more resilient to climate change, thus protecting communities from costly natural disasters. By paying people to grow trees, we believe that local mindsets will shift to value living trees more than those cutdown for economic gain. In conjunction with the sustainable income tree growers earn using the Treetracker, local communities are able to reach economic stability that does not depend on degrading natural resources. Our vision is a world where even the poorest humans can pull themselves out of extreme poverty by planting and growing trees.

As of November 2021, Greenstand has verified over 76,000 tree photo captures in India and Indonesia, uploaded by about 170 unique Treetrackers. Our goals for the end of 2022 and 2026 are as follows in India & Indonesia:

End of 2022:

• Track 150,000 trees

• Support the employment of 300 Treetrackers

• Mobilize 30 local Village Champions to disseminate Treetracker trainings & engage community growers 

• Identify candidates for urban projects 

End of 2026:

• 2 million trees tracked

• 1000 planters using the Treetracker app

• 150 Village Champions disseminating Treetracker lessons

• 10 successful urban projects 

In other geographic regions, we have found the most success when we have local Village Champions available to assist reforestation projects with technical support and liaise between growers and the Greenstand team. Our goal is to tap into local networks of restoration practitioners who already have knowledge of local ecosystems. By providing green, inclusive opportunities for tree growers to earn a living, we are setting ourselves apart from other reforestation projects, as well as other sources of income that are harmful to the environment. As we continue to make meaningful connections with reforestation projects regionally, the Treetracker opportunity will naturally spread and more reforestation projects will approach the Greenstand team. Already we’ve faced an overwhelming demand for Treetracker expansion as the opportunity has gained notoriety in the restoration technology space. We expect this momentum to lead to exponential scaling of the Treetracker platform across the region.

At Greenstand, our “success” is based on social and environmental data that we receive through the Treetracker platform. 

System metrics include:

• Number of verified tree captures in the system

• Number of Impact Tokens created

• Number of Impact Wallets containing Impact Tokens 

• Number of planting organizations and countries they operate in 

• Number of individual Treetrackers using our system

• Number of Impact Token bought & sold

Social impact metrics include:

• Number and amount of payments made to tree growers and verified by Greenstand

• Frequency of repeat tree photo captures, which lead to repeat payments to planters

• Qualitative data, such as tree growers being able to pay their children’s school fees after tracking trees with Greenstand and app feedback

Environmental metrics include:

• Ground-truthed reforestation monitoring data from 6 continents

• Our forthcoming Tree Value Matrix, ascribing value to trees based on factors such as ecological appropriateness (native vs. invasive species), contribution to local biodiversity, and carbon sequestration potential

• Tree data, such as species, age, growing techniques, and survival data

Our primary challenge is mapping out a complex dynamic between humans and the environment.

Our superpower is to value ecosystem services and put that value directly in the hands of smallholder farmers so they can sell it. This requires extremely complex and advanced technology to collect, amalgamate and tokenize tree growth.

Our biggest barrier in solving this is not having enough full-time leadership to guide the compilation of tools that can enable us to scale the minting and sale of Impact Tokens from the most remote and underserved communities. We have hundreds of thousands of tree images arriving on the platform from all over the world and are faced with both technical and operational challenges to keep up with the flow of data and needs of our users and integrators.

The challenge of dealing with exponential growth and an ever increasing need for data surrounding the impact of each tree is expected to be our primary challenge for the years to come as we anticipate unprecedented growth.

We plan to continue developing the tools and the team required to solve these challenges. To do so, we will continue to sell services and fundraise to support a full time core team. We will also continue to perfect the effectiveness of our powerful open-source community driven model.

We foster relationships with reforestation organizations and other CBO’s in Indonesia. We typically seek out at least one ground operations specialist to act as a Treetracker liaison between Greenstand and our ground partners.

In rural projects, each org purchases mobile phones and nominates a “Village Champion” to be responsible for the technology. Village Champions trains communities on how to use the Treetracker & shares the phone among growers. 

We continuously update the Treetracker to enhance functionality in low-connectivity edge networks to ensure the most rural and underserved communities can access the Treetracker pay-to-grow opportunity/. 

With the correct systems, technology and players in place, this model will enable hundreds of millions of people to earn incomes by directly engaging in land restoration.

• Open-source community of 675+ global contributors over project lifetime 

• 7 person Board of Directors offering professional project guidance 

• 4 executive leadership positions supported by 5 key personnel

• 6+ development contractors hired to accelerate tech stack at this time

The leadership team listed below, in conjunction with key leadership personnel and hundreds of volunteers, drives Greenstand’s mission. Our success working exclusively remotely, even in the face of COVID-19 challenges, speaks volumes to the resilience, commitment, and perseverance of this team. 

Ezra Jay, Founder & Executive Director pioneered the organization in 2015 while living in East Africa as a humanitarian bush pilot. While there, he lamented at the destitution of smallholder farmers living in nearly devastated lands and determined to link environmental restoration with economic benefit to local farmers.

Sebastian Gӓrtner, Vice President of Programs, has been with Greenstand from the beginning and functions as our local Tanzania representative. He is involved in strategy, vision, community development, and project management of the organization. 

Zaven Arra, Vice President of Engineering, guides the technical development of Greenstand’s platform. He holds degrees in both computer science (B.S.) and environmental science (M.S.) and brings more than 20 years of experience in software engineering and systems architecture. 

Tabitha Kelly, Vice President of Operations, manages Greenstand’s ongoing operations with special attention to finances and communications. Her educational background is in Natural Resource Management with a Master’s in Nonprofit Management.

Greenstand does not unlawfully discriminate internally (in its administrative and program operations) or externally (in its recipients of services) on the basis of race, political orientation, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, national or social origin, ancestry, economic or social status, place of residence, marital or family status, veteran status, health status, or mental or physical disability. The Treetracker tech stack has been built as an open-source project by a global community of over 675+ individuals. Contributors of diverse backgrounds and life experiences are what makes Greenstand special; all you need is stable WiFi and a willingness to learn. When Greenstand is able to hire, we strive to elevate existing volunteers or hire contractors from underserved talent pools, such as developers from low-income nations and previously incarcerated individuals.

• Networking among technology and reforestation circles 

• Utilizing new contacts to scale and improve our work in India and Indonesia

• To share the pay-to-grow opportunity as widely as possible!