The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has picked four project proposals across Latin America and the Caribbean for an initiative seeking to find innovative ways to use digital assets to promote biodiversity conservation and climate change action.
The bank, via its innovation engines IDB Lab, Natural Capital Lab, and LACChain, chose candidates from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago from the 86 submissions answering last year’s call for proposals under its Digital Tokens for Biodiversity Challenge, IDB announced on Wednesday.
“The selected proposals will initiate the design of their projects to become eligible to receive IDB Lab financing and develop their innovative models in the four countries mentioned,” the IDB announcement said.
“They will also become part of the IDB Group’s network of global innovators to respond to the needs for the conservation of natural capital and biodiversity in our region.”
One of the winners was Colombia’s Terrasos, which is already involved in generating biodiversity credits that are sold on the blockchain-based ClimateTrade and XM platforms.
Under the IDB programme, Terrasos will work to improve traceability and transparency of conservation efforts using tokenised biodiversity credits, according to the IDB.
Another winner, Ecuador’s Fundacion Futuro, will seek to offer monetary incentives for landowners for conservation and restoration activities, including by involving communities in DAOs – decentralised autonomous organisations – an organisation model common in the Web3 space that lets all stakeholders make and vote on policy proposals.
The Cropper Foundation plans to use digital assets to drive agricultural sustainability and improve access to capital and credit for smallholder farmers in Trinidad and Tobago.
Finally, Peru’s Nature Services aims to integrate blockchain functionalities and interactions between actors on a digital platform in order to structure incentives and recognise behaviour that benefits biodiversity and conservation, the IDB said.
With this initiative, the bank hopes to contribute to increased ecosystem conservation and restoration efforts in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
IDB Lab is the bank’s innovation laboratory, while the Natural Capital Lab has been established to increase financial innovation in natural capital.
LACChain, meanwhile, is a global coalition, led by the IDB, dedicated to supporting the development of blockchain technology across the region.
In total, 86 projects from 21 countries applied under the initiative, and the bank selected the winners “based on the degree of innovation, its social impact, scalability potential, financial sustainability, technical capacity of the organisation, and the probability of execution of the proposals”, it said.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
*** Click here to sign up to our weekly biodiversity newsletter ***
