Source: CoinGeek

According to WHO, between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 25,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.

Not to act like I really enjoyed my Biology teacher classes but do you know that climate change itself is a threat to human health? As a chemistry student, permit me to simplify a bit.

Climate change is what happens when the earth’s temperature continues to rise, thereby affecting our physical environment. The cause for this was commonly known to be due to changes in the sun’s activity, but now it is common knowledge that human activities have way more impact on climate change. Many activities carried out by humans cause emission of greenhouse gases which are harmful gases as they result in the ozone layer (the earth’s blanket) depletion. A common example of greenhouse gases is carbon monoxide which forms when carbon from the earth combines with oxygen in the atmosphere.

Now, how does blockchain fit into all of this? Like I earlier mentioned, climate change is bad for humans globally and is even worse for certain regions like Africa which is the “least able to cope with the negative impacts of climate change,” as quoted by Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of World Meteorological Organization (WM0) in an article written in September.

Since the advent of emerging tech like blockchain, visionaries have discovered that the issue of climate change can be helped. Even the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a whitepaper in April and the title is “Blockchain for Scaling Climate Action.” To summarize the 24-paged report, it is evident that blockchain can positively impact climate change amongst many other real world use cases. Hence, this article’s main aim is to spotlight projects that have built or are developing solutions to climate change using blockchain technology and how they are doing this.

Regen Network

Founded in 2017 by Gregory Landua and Christain Shearer, Regen Network is a blockchain project that basically tracks and incentivizes (rewards) ecological services to reverse climate change.

Regen Network has a main focus on agriculture by encouraging more addition of carbon to the soil because soil holds more carbon, thereby preventing it from escaping to combine with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon monoxide which is a greenhouse gas that causes global warming. By tracking and rewarding soil ecological practices (that adds carbon to the soil), farmers are more encouraged to take care of their soil.

Using the project’s native utility token - REGEN, people can purchase ecological credits. Ecological credits are credits for ecological benefits like biodiversity, agroforestry, holistic planned animal grazing, etc which can add more carbon to the soil and they are tradeable on the Regen Marketplace. In 2023 alone, two million new ecological credits have been added, as stated in the project’s official website. The Regen Marketplace is powered by Regen Ledger, a Proof of Stake blockchain developed with the Cosmos SDK.

Nori

Nori was founded in 2017 by Paul Gambill. It is a blockchain based project that focuses on carbon removal from the atmosphere. This project supports and incentivizes farmers’ efforts and practices that aid in removal of carbon from the atmosphere. So rather than prevent or reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere like Regen Network does, Nori is on a mission to remove billions of tonnes of carbon that is already in the atmosphere.

Nori encourages farmers to use carbon-capture farming methods that pull carbon from the atmosphere and “injects” back into the soil. Nori was originally built on the Ethereum blockchain (which is funny considering how much energy the blockchain previously consumed as a PoW network). However, in 2022, Nori raised $7 million funding round to migrate to Polygon. That was before Ethereum itself migrated to the PoS consensum mechanism.

Nori Marketplace is the project’s platform where people can buy tonnes of carbon. Buying carbon means buying carbon removal which indirectly means funding regenerative farmers who are seizing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it for years. Every carbon removal purchase is associated with a certificate showing buyers’ contribution to remove atmospheric carbon, it also shows where and when the carbon was removed.

Since its inception, 125,000 tonnes of carbon have been removed and $2M+ has been paid to farmers via Nori.

Plastic Bank

In May 2013, David Katz and Shaun Frankson founded Plastic Bank. It is a social blockchain based project that focuses on fighting ocean plastic pollution in underdeveloped countries. The pilot launch of Plastic Bank was in Peru in late 2013.

It is often overlooked, but accumulated ocean plastic wastes can affect climate change as they prevent the ocean’s capability to absorb carbon dioxide.

With this project, citizens in integrated countries are incentivized to collect plastics polluting their oceans. These incentives come in various forms of life-improving benefits like payment for school tuition, access to medical services, housing, etc. After collection, the plastics are processed and recycled to be sold for reuse. Termed as a social recycling movement, Plastic Bank believes this is not only an effort to stop ocean pollution but also to reduce poverty, hence the focus on underdeveloped communities. Think of the service of plastic collection as a currency to access important benefits as part of the SDGs.

According to the official website, 103,889,749 kg of plastic have been removed from the ocean across 585 communities. It currently operates fully in four countries: Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia and Egypt.

Plastoken, a child project of ToroNet focused on providing solutions to problems in Africa, is another project with a similar agenda as Plastic Bank.

Toucan Protocol

Toucan is a blockchain protocol founded in 2020 by Raphael Haupt. The team is focused on building a solution to scale climate action via a transparent and high integrity digital voluntary carbon market (DVCM). A digital carbon market is like an ecosystem consisting of platforms and marketplaces that aid in facilitating trading of carbon credits. For instance, the Regen Marketplace I earlier mentioned belongs in DVCM because carbon credits are traded on it.

Toucan encourages tokenizing and trading of carbon credits. These carbon credits are tokenized version of real world carbon credits. 20M+ carbon credits have been uploaded on the Toucan Protocol and over $4+ billion in carbon trading volume on the protocol.

Other blockchain projects focused on improving the adverse effects of climate change are:

Open Forest Protocol (OFP)

Filecoin Green

dClimate

Climate Trade

Wasset (launching soon)

Climate Collective

CO2 Council

Veritree

Moss Earth

Klima DAO

Uphold

And many more…

So while blockchain has been criticized to be unfriendly to the environment over the past years, it can still be used for the good of the environment and this is just one out of the many applications of blockchain technology in real world use cases.