Nature Data Alliance – Call for Partners and Capital

Dear Nature Supporter,

Dear #COP27 and #COP15 Attendee, Bezos Earth Fund , Marc Benioff , Environmental Grantmakers Association , European Environmental Bureau , Environmental Funders Network , European Climate Foundation and Speakers of Countdown to CBD COP15,

In early 2022, 100 technology and service providers working on conservation and restoration came together to form a coalition, the Nature Data Alliance (“Alliance”).

We would like to invite you and your colleagues to participate in person or virtually for the official Alliance launch at the NOAH Conference Zurich, on the 6th of December 2022.                 

The Alliance is developing an open access digital platform featuring natural capital and MRV infrastructure. The aim is to provide market access to a curated portfolio of selected data providers and best in class project developers to allow the measurement, protection, and integration of nature-based solutions (NbS) into our economies and societies.

The Nature Data Alliance is collaborating to develop solutions needed to empower NbS projects in scale and quality, globally.

Our members have more than three decades of experience in supporting NbS including remote sensing, biodiversity, agroforestry, agriculture, carbon, oceans and rivers, travel, community led conservation, native restoration and sustainable forestry.

We are excited to go beyond carbon offsetting, focusing on creating transparency standards that share impact and real-world change. Our systems will be able to define and prepare thousands of high-quality projects, ready for financing. Our goal is to develop, finance and monitor NbS projects that are implemented in close and respectful partnership with Indigenous and local communities, businesses, and governments. Our ambition is to distribute on average 85% of the created value to the involved communities and other local stakeholders.

Indigenous and local communities are the cornerstone of NbS. They operate on the ground, providing proprietary data to quantify impact across all natural habitats. Our goal is to empower thousands of “nature stewards” with a broad array of highly complementary data tools, services, and market access.

Transparency, trust, and respect of local rights and the Paris Agreement are the prerequisites for ecosystem services. Corporate commitments can be converted into long term carbon credit contracts when a continuous tech monitoring system is installed. One objective is to enable upfront securitization of carbon credit cash flows

With the help of technology and continuous monitoring, we remove the underlying financing risk from remote ecosystems.

Carbon sequestration, as well as other socio-ecological impacts of NbS projects will be monitored through the Alliance continuously. In Suriname (nation-wide), Kenya (Mount Kenya) and Spain (Mediterranean Sea), the Alliance is already executing its first pilot projects.

The Nature Data Alliance and its pilots will present at the NOAH Conference Zurich on the 6th and 7th of December. The NbS transparency platform explorer.land, a member of the Alliance, will feature 30 high integrity NbS projects on a new stage at the NOAH Conference called “explorer.land NOAH Project Stage”. The projects are highly curated and will be monitored by the Nature Data Alliance to transparently assess and verify impact. Corporate and financial investors are invited to meet the project developers and discuss funding options. It is the first time a conference features such a highly curated NbS project portfolio on stage.

Nature Data Alliance Product Roadmap

• Indigenous People Land Rights: document land tenure rights transparently (e.g. Cadasta)
• Standardized Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) and Alert Systems: solar powered unmanned airplanes (Skydweller), drones, sensors, and satellite AI systems
• Biodiversity Data: bring measurability and transparency to the global biodiversity sector by aggregating datasets (incl. eDNA, MRV, cameras and satellite) and collecting on-the-ground data from Indigenous and local people through mobile apps and sensors (e.g. Cybertracker and Rainforest Connection) in line with scientific methodologies
• Land Rights Database: increase land ownership and transaction disclosure for all stakeholders
• Digitization: project filing directly into online databases with structured data fields. Shortening the carbon credit time to issue once community sign off has been obtained. Large scale tropical forest tree recognition
• Forest Standards: include High Forest Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries into the mechanism to incentivise them for keeping their carbon sinks and biodiversity healthy. Initiatives like the Green List (IUCN) can receive data from the Alliance to complement their existing activities
• Project Scaling: AI support for generation of NbS projects implemented by local people
• Distributions: higher, direct, and transparent payout to local communities and Indigenous nature stewards
• Backend Integration with Ambitious Corporate Climate Actors: more than 4,000 businesses around the world are already working with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), with 1,400 net-zero commitments. We will encourage the co-design of NbS projects with local and all other relevant stakeholders supporters from the beginning
• Financial Market Access: assist scalable regenerative forest and nature projects to access finance from corporates and impact-focussed investors through data-driven intelligence and efficient transaction tools (e.g. Xilva)
• Securitization: upfront funding to refinance expensive debt and NbS project development.

With the Nature Data Alliance we can bring holistic measurement to ESG goals and finally ramp up project volume. The Nature Data Alliance is open to discuss with responsible corporations and financial institutions how carbon credit securitization can become a leading natural capital financing option.

We are inviting you to join the Nature Data Alliance Launch Event and view the 30 projects on the explorer.land NOAH Projects stage in Zurich on the 6th + 7th of December 2022.

Registration

Attending in person: https://noah.swoogo.com/

Virtual: Youtube stream to follow the launch event on the 6th at 11am CET https://youtu.be/jNIHWNPAnUo  (there will be a recording made available after the event)

Contact us for media enquiries, partnership, funding and interest to join the alliance: https://www.noah-conference.com/nature-data-alliance/

Please find more information on NOAH Conference, Explorer.land and in the appendix. We are looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you in Zurich or on We Don't Have Time .

Sincerely,

The 100 Founding Members of the Nature Data Alliance