A design sprint towards radical transparency in landscape finance markets

Our proposal addresses the role of data and the interface between digital and natural systems, exploring notions of artifice and grounding within the growing marketplace for carbon and biodiversity credits. Within this growing industry traditional holders of wealth are seeking a value-driven and regenerative investment approach. We only have a short window to establish an effective approach to nature related financial disclosures, as such it is crucial to identify benchmarks of best practice and amplify underrepresented voices in the ongoing formation of this marketplace. The examples below explore aspects of the field of landscape credits. In each of these we ask is there an accessible route for the grassroots to engage with the technologies and data lifecycles required? And what proof is there, in the form of benchmarks and best practices, that these theories of change will be regenerative as opposed to extractive? Take the Regen Network, which issues landscape credits on the Ethereum blockchain. Highly stylised and written in the lingua franca of the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, a recent newsletter from the Regen Network references the sale of $129,000 USD of biodiversity credits to date on the network, just one of the available products on the platform. Examples of these projects include supporting indigenous led forest stewardship and protection of Jaguar habitats in Brazil. AI contextualises land-based labour in an accelerationist intermeshing of computational, human and non-human agencies. Platforms like Encore, Restor, EOS Lanviewer and Earth Blox service increasing demands for data. Widely criticised but well established frameworks such as REDD/+ are joined by frameworks such as the TNFD, the IUCN Peatland Code, and the Woodland Carbon Code in the UK. Issues of  quality control and standard setting in practice are key here to provide models of best practices. This is evidenced by the missions of organisations such as Oxygen Conservation in the UK, who are restoring a portfolio of sites across the UK via a consortium of investors aiming to purchase high quality carbon credits for investment and offsetting purposes.  Methodologies such as the TNFD’s LEAP are being piloted by 320 organisations, including 114 financial institutions e.g. sovereign wealth and pension funds. Within this space how are indigenous and grassroots voices remunerated for their vital work? Grassroots voices might include the membership of the Landworkers Alliance (UK) or the Junction Coalition (Ohio/US), where neighbourhood rain gardens are incentivised by green tax credits to reduce household water bills. Globally smallholders and grassroots organisations represent leading sources of knowledge and practice that are crucial to climate adaptation and mitigation. If the marketplace for credits is to be truly regenerative then how are these voices included and fairly remunerated for their labour? Each of the previous examples of the marketplace for carbon and biodiversity contain a sense of promise, but as this space forms what role will data ownership and sovereignty play in being able to speak truth to power? There are several major ethnographic elements to this challenge. Firstly, there is an undoubted separation between the habitus of individuals working in the Wealth Defence Industry and those working in the grounded sphere of regenerative work. Secondly, to work and provide solutions at a grassroots level, whilst trying to design solutions that are global in scope, must take into account a multitude of heritage as well as the prevalence of projects potentially inundated with multiple sources of stresses and uncertainties. Thirdly, an ethnographic perspective encourages design as a supporting activity, one led by the inherent signal vs. noise ratio of social and climate justice movements that are led by indigenous and marginalised communities and how these present as humanity's greatest source of strength and hope. 

This proposal intends to follow a process of ethnographically driven design research, leading to the realisation of an MVP for already in-progress geospatial data application where key technical challenges have already been overcome in several years of R&D.  Our hack aims to support landworkers and communities to interact with landscape finance systems with the specific starting point that these systems should be viewed as indigenous-first if they are truly to be reparative.  Notions of mastery over nature have repeatedly failed us, as such we take the view of Bruno Latour that design is now a process of “attachment, precaution, entanglement, dependence and care”, one that must be approached without hubris and with the people in mind. Taking the chance to learn from the skills and experiences of the Wealth Hackers Initiative, those working at the grassroots and those working in the current incarnation of the credit industry poses a unique challenge and opportunity. Our organisation has developed a range of tools and has ongoing conversations with relevant organisations in the UK and globally. Many of our core technical proof of concepts are close to maturity and require a push to be ready to pilot and work with people to disrupt this industry.  Namely our work is a full stack service architecture that supports multiple geospatial data sources to be gathered, collated and represented via a digital mapping interface built on top of the Cesium.js engine.  Our work is currently at TRL5 with all core proof of concepts integrations functional between API, database and UI. Our API has custom functionality within it to index IoT sensors that can measure water, air and soil to present accurate live and historical landscape data. We have integrated media and metadata sources to increase accessibility via smartphones and are able to index sources of satellite and GIS data. All of these sources are made interoperable within a uniform data schema. Our hack aims to run a design sprint that develops and implements this toolset through a process of ethnographic research, data architecture and financial modelling. This hack will ultimately inform a process of UX design that imagines the landscape finance market from the ground up, designed with the input and in the interest of grassroots, indigenous and unborn sources of agency in mind.  This sprint will result in a TRL6 prototype ready for field testing how we deliver a secure, accessible and equitable space with which to capture, collate and present socio-ecological data that is owned and monetised wholly by those working at the grassroots. Working alongside the Wealth Hackers Initiative would offer us a unique opportunity to inform this tool within a space held in a unique and pivotal moment by an assemblage of technical, financial and ethnographic expertise.

1. Carry out ethnographic research and interviews around the current crediting system with stakeholders from grassroots, financial institutions, researchers 2. Undertake a UX/UI prototyping process that supports a project data lifecycle that can document theories of landscape change, management and remediation that are geared towards radical transparency of supply chains 3. UX/UI process leads to a service design and launch of a wireframe application to support pilot program taking current work from TRL5 to TRL 6