⛔Lack of Transparency and Trustability

Greenwashing is one of the most critical issues to address in our collective efforts to create a world that works for all life. Greenwashing is talking the talk without walking the walk when it comes to sustainability and impact. The world has passed the point of no return in terms of the climate crisis, and so it has become socially expected for individuals, companies, and institutions to care about their environment and demonstrate that care through action. Unfortunately however, often the actions that are taken are the absolute minimum required for some company to appear responsible. The standards are incredibly low, and we see this play out, for example, when a company will spend X dollars to plant Y trees, and offset Z carbon, without having any real idea of whether or not those trees are really being planted, surviving, and creating that impact. The carbon offset markets are shrouded in mystery because of the disproportionate focus on appearance over impact.

For example, an independent review of Verra, the world’s largest and leading standard for carbon offsets, has revealed that over 90% of their projects do not represent genuine carbon reductions.[5] This is a major problem, with companies like Disney, Shell and Gucci relying on Verra to certify the validity of their offsets. Presently, there is no way for these companies to have transparency into the nature of the offsets that they are buying, or to trust that they are genuine. In fact, given these appalling statistics, it is only reasonable not to trust what the market is selling. These are “phantom credits" because they are not actually connected to real world carbon offsets in the way they are meant to. Successful carbon markets need to provide transparency into the specific projects that carbon offsets are being sourced from to create the trust that is desperately needed in the market.

Lack of scalability

There is a small number of carbon offset projects of very high quality, where trees are actually counted and impacts can be verified; the issue is that these sorts of projects are not very scalable with the currently available tools. Often, we rely on forest engineers to go out into an ecosystem, count trees by hand, and run calculations to estimate the state of an entire forest. This manual approach is expensive and not nearly scalable to the extent that is needed for us to meet our climate goals. They also rely on central bodies, such as government forest services to organize, fund, and operate. Large costs, insufficient capacity and corruption risks make the system unsustainable for scaling.

To meet the increasing market demands, a successful system must enable growth without exponential increase in costs and complexity of operations. Leveraging technology seems to be the best way to reduce friction, such that a solution becomes easily replicable without significant logistical requirements and enabling collaboration in large networks based on trust-less technology. Our solutions at Eco30 are decentralized, allowing any capable individuals to participate so long as they meet the standards of the system. We also leverage scalable technology such as drones and computer vision, which can efficiently and precisely count trees at much larger scales than is possible with the manual human approach.

Perverse Incentives

Fundamentally, systems are oriented to optimize for what is measured directly. Often we are forced to create a proxy for our real goals based on what can actually be measured, rather than what we are actually trying to accomplish. CO2 is one such proxy; in our attempt to ameliorate anthropogenic impacts on our environment, ecological devastation, and a destabilizing climate, we have to look at what we can actually measure and quantify to create incentives and drive impact. CO2 is one of many greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change, and measuring CO2 offsets is one way for us to measure and reward positive practices. The problems come in when we see misalignment between our proxy measurements and our real goals; these problems are rampant in the CO2 offset market.

For example, tree planting is one of the most positive environmental activities that we can engage in; it restores habitat, offsets CO2, stabilizes soils and improves overall quality of life. However, within the world of tree planting, we have many choices: we can plant trees that are quick to grow and can be cut down for timber, we can plant trees that are native to a particular bioregion, we can plant trees in monocultures or diverse intercroppings. We can plant trees from seed, by hand or with drones, or nurture saplings in a nursery and plant established starts. And once the trees are planted, do we water them? Do we care for them? Do we ensure they have everything they need to grow into maturity? Depending on the perspectives we take, we may answer these questions differently, and this helps to explain the behavior we see in the world today.

Often the companies responsible for these large scale tree planting efforts earn money based on the number of trees they plant, so they are incentivized to plant more, even if the survival rate is lowered. It seems clear, when considering how to stabilize the climate, offset the most CO2, and restore the most habitat, that we need to ensure we are planting the trees that belong to a particular bioregion, and caring for them so they last and grow overtime. However, we have created systems that financially incentivize much more short term approaches. CO2 offsets are too often awarded simply for initiating a project, counting existing trees, or planting a certain number of seeds - allowing bad actors to fill out paperwork that justifies their rewards without doing the hard work to ensure long term survival. We need to incentivize long term care for additional trees to maximize impact over time.

Cynicism and Apathy

These corrupt actors, poorly designed systems, and misaligned incentives have caused serious cynicism and apathy in the carbon offset and sustainability markets which need to be addressed. As individuals, managers of companies, and others who are driven to make the world a better place, it is difficult, if not impossible, to invest earnestly in carbon offsets given the current state of the market. The well justified mistrust that potential carbon offset buyers have in the systems that exist, claiming to create positive impact, has led to inaction by a host of would-be-do-gooders, who are looking for a reliable way to turn their dollars into impact.

Once we prove without a shadow of a doubt that we are able to create the impacts that end consumers are looking for, we will be in a position to ameliorate the cynicism we see today and break the spell of apathy that is plaguing humanity currently. We envision a world where individuals feel empowered to make a real difference through actions as simple as deciding to plant a few trees today at the cost of a cup of coffee.