Kwaxala - Indigenous Forest Regeneration Cooperative
Description
Rosalind Marino:
"Kwaxala is an indigenous forest regeneration cooperative taking a different approach to nature protection that goes far beyond carbon credits.
Rather than focusing on energy production, they are concerned with the preservation and stewardship of what we already have. Remember that marsh? We agreed that it has a value. And the question is: how can we invest in that value? Kwaxala is making that a possibility.
Most land used for logging, oil drilling and fracking, and other resource extraction is government owned and often in contradiction with recognised Indigenous land rights in the area. Companies own or buy the permits and right to extract resources from that land, without buying the land itself. Kwaxala is working to buy those same rights, but rather than using them for extraction, they are securing the right to protect and regenerate the ecosystems threatened by extraction. This legal guarantee of preservation, in an area previously at genuine threat of extraction, is then used to generate carbon offsets each year which can be sold to corporations meeting their net zero commitments.
This rich dataset then provides detailed provenance for both the particular offsets generated by the protected ecosystems and for the long term investments in the ecosystems themselves so that there is detailed visibility into the health and stewardship of the ecosystem.
Kwaxala offsets not only represent sequestered carbon, but also a wider range of monetized ecoservices such as biodiversity protection and ecosystem preservation alongside positive social outcomes such as Indigenous equity and reconciliation. This enables them to command a premium market price per tonne. Additionally, by enabling capital investment directly into the organization holding the right to regenerate, they provide a new way for investment funds to flow into the asset value of the protected natural ecosystem, generating much needed upfront capital to establish these protected areas and counterbalance the extractive economic pressure to destroy the area.
But how do we ensure that the land is well taken care of? Here Kwaxala is using overlapping datasets to build a picture of the ecosystem and its health. Working with Indigenous land stewards, who are also the principal shareholders in Kwaxala itself, they are developing the metrics needed to monitor and support the wellbeing of the particular ecosystems. For some situations, that might be the water and air quality; for others, it might be the presence of indicator species; for many, it will be the conglomeration of multiple data points, collaborating to tell a story. This rich dataset then provides detailed provenance for both the particular offsets generated by the protected ecosystems and for the long term investments in the ecosystems themselves so that there is detailed visibility into the health and stewardship of the ecosystem.
To collect, manage, and maintain this data — and to share it with community members, government regulators, and investors — they are investigating the development of a distributed platform, built on Holochain. Building on Holochain in this case ensures that control of the data isn’t managed solely by the organization claiming to be protecting the ecosystem, but is rather distributed between all stakeholders. With data provenance baked in, it is also easy to track exactly what agent adds any particular piece of data. This combination of verification and distributed storage of overlapping datasets allows for a high degree of trust to be developed, and holds the organization itself accountable.
...we start to see the potential for a new regenerative economics to be developed. Based not on extraction, but rather the regenerative value of all ecosystem activities."