The DLT Science Foundation and the HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund announce initiative to standardise climate markets reflecting 500 million tons of carbon

The DLT Science Foundation and the HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund announce initiative to standardise climate markets reflecting 500 million tons of carbon

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Joined by ALLCOT, the West African Alliance on Carbon Markets and Hedera Ecosystem Partners, DLT Earth intends to bring transparency to climate markets

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NEW YORK — September 27, 2023

Today the DLT Science Foundation (DSF), alongside The HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund, ALLCOT, and Envision Blockchain announced DLT Earth, a global grant program for researchers to investigate and improve reporting and methodologies used to track and mitigate climate change.

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Over the next several months, DLT Earth will work with its partners on a series of initiatives to enhance the quality and trustworthiness of sustainable finance, climate projects methodologies and verification, sustainability markets, and ESG reporting initiatives. 

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To achieve this, the DSF will lead an open hackathon for the digitisation of sustainability methodologies and for policies enabling Digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification. The DSF will additionally fund 5 fellowships in the Global South to support cutting-edge research in sustainability and climate projects. These fellowship grants will align with the HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund goals, in the mission of bringing the balance sheet of the planet to the public ledger. The goals include; making climate finance auditable, digitising and open sourcing methodologies, scaling validation and verification, discovering a global climate asset price, and making ESG reporting credible.

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In the Hedera ecosystem, a series of partners and digital public goods, funded by both the Sustainable Impact Fund and the Hashgraph Association Innovation and Enterprise Programs, are supported by a series of partners, which will also participate in the initiative including Evercity, Envision Blockchain and Tolam Earth.

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Pending review from a global panel of scientific and climate experts, research outputs as well as digitised policies and methodologies will be applied to more than a hundred carbon credit, biodiversity, and other climate projects. Collectively they will generate nearly 500 million tonnes of carbon credits under management by ALLCOT impacting 200 communities around the world. All projects will be managed on the Hedera Guardian, an open-source platform that provides auditable, traceable, and reproducible records for digital environmental assets. This onboarding to Hedera Guardian will occur over a period of several months.

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"We are honoured to be leading this important initiative to modernise climate and carbon markets, leveraging the powerful transparency technology of blockchain to do so,” said Dr. Paolo Tasca, co-founder and chairman of the DSF. “By giving people and organisations greater visibility into emissions trading, we can help create a more sustainable future for our planet."

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“We’re excited to launch the DLT Earth initiative in collaboration with DSF. This effort should further our understanding of the impact of emerging technologies in enabling communities to participate in the sustainability economy,” said Wes Geisenberger, VP of Sustainability and ESG at The HBAR Foundation. “We’re very pleased that DSF has chosen to align fellows to study the goals of the Sustainable Impact Fund, as well as develop open source methodologies via the Hackathon ahead of COP28.”

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“The initiative seeks to transform the landscape of climate mitigation by ushering in a new era of transparency and accountability. Current methodologies have left us with limited verifiable data and inconsistent success stories, our mission is to bring digital innovation to the forefront. By leveraging and embracing digital solutions, we're paving the way for a future where carbon markets gain the credibility they deserve, enabling organizations to join hands with credible projects worldwide and drive meaningful climate action”, said Alexis Leroy Founder and CEO of ALLCOT.

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“The DLT Earth initiative provides a unique opportunity for study of critical issues to our climate, by academic fellows in the global south. Engaging scholars from local universities is key to sustainable development,” said Ousmane Fall Sarr, Coordinator of the West African Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance. “This initiative provides an opportunity to build capacity and engage projects that happen across West Africa, which are leveraging innovative technologies on Hedera.”

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The initiative’s aim is to completely revolutionise how carbon and climate mitigation commitments are undertaken and evaluated. Current methodologies for gauging the success of climate mitigation projects are often analog and vary in their validity and verifiability of the results. Further, very few of these approaches have been digitised and made available for other projects to evaluate. This leads to limited verifiable data on the success of these initiatives, and often difficulties in consistency of reproducing success stories by organizations looking to scale climate action. In bringing both financial and ecological audit trails to the public ledger, using the Hedera Guardian, this initiative allows for improved credibility in ESG reporting as companies look to engage with credible projects around the world to improve climate action.

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The DLT Science Foundation is the organising body for this initiative, hosting the methodology digitisation “hackathon” as well as a fellowship initiative for climate research. The HBAR Foundation serves as a technical and advisory partner, provisioning grants, in addition to its support for the open source Hedera Guardian platform. ALLCOT will onboard its 500+ million carbon credits portfolio to the platform. 

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The West African Climate Alliance (WACA) will join as a partner, and the entire project will use the methodologies from the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, digitising the approaches aligned with the one developed by the UN Climate Change secretariat. Swirlds Labs, Envision Blockchain, Tolam Earth, and Evercity join as hackathon and digitisation partners.

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About the DLT Science Foundation (DSF)

The DLT Science Foundation is an international non-profit organisation committed to the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT). Our mission is to help create a more equitable society - one that fully utilises DLT and related web3 technologies. We seek to accomplish this by fostering an open, sustainable innovation ecosystem of developers, fellows, and leaders. Together, we will ensure our world reaches its fullest potential, powered by blockchain technology. Alongside our grant program for academic institutions, DSF also issues original research, engages with policymakers, and develops initiatives with web3 leaders. Learn more at dltscience.org.

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About the HBAR Foundation

The HBAR Foundation supports the creation of Web3 communities built on the Hedera network, by empowering and funding the builders developing these communities. The Foundation's six funds - focused on the Crypto Economy, Metaverse, Sustainability, Fintech, Privacy, and Female Founders - each support communities within those areas, and the interconnectedness enables applications to participate as part of a larger ecosystem. 

The collective power of these funds enables entrepreneurs, developers, and enterprises of all sizes to tackle some of the world's largest problems, and create and control their own economies, all built on the Hedera public network. Whether you're building something new or migrating an existing EVM-based application and community, the HBAR Foundation is here to support you. For additional information, please visit https://hbarfoundation.org/

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About ALLCOT

ALLCOT is one of the companies with the longest track record in the fight against climate change in the world, with more than 14 years of experience (2009). ALLCOT works with communities, organizations and governments around the world on climate actions to accelerate the transition to Net Zero.  ALLCOT's goal is to impact the 2030 Agenda, especially the Climate Action SDG through projects and solutions with triple impact: environmental, social and economic, using four lines of action: Sustainability strategies, Project development & implementation, Capacity building and Advocacy.  Learn more at allcot.com. 

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