Pachama is a climate-tech company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite data to generate, verify, and monitor nature-based carbon credits. Using remote sensing, Pachama observes the earth to create more accurate models for measuring and monitoring the carbon stored in forests over time. The company's mission is to increase funding for effective reforestation and conservation projects that sequester carbon, enhance biodiversity, and benefit local communities worldwide.
Challenges: forest conservation and carbon credits
Deforestation is severe in tropical forests in South America and Africa. Forest fragmentation, climate change, and atmospheric pollution threaten forest conservation. Additionally, there are challenges related to forest management, such as a lack of consensus-oriented approaches, inadequate investment, and insufficient participation of local communities and other stakeholders.
Another significant challenge is the lack of funding for forest conservation and restoration efforts. Forest conservation and restoration need to earn a return sufficient to meet investor needs. This requires making the case for finding sources of financing that can reorient the decision-making process towards conservation and restoration.
Climate change poses a significant threat to forest conservation. The impacts of climate change include melting permafrost, worsening storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels, which contribute to coastal erosion, subsidence, damage, and loss of forests.
Reforestation projects that generate carbon credits are one of solutions to these challenges of forest conservation. Reforestation projects generate carbon credits by sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the growth of trees and other vegetation.
Carbon credits are certificates that represent quantities of greenhouse gasses that have been prevented from entering the atmosphere or eliminated. Carbon credits can be sold to businesses and individuals seeking to offset their carbon footprint.
However, it is essential to measure, monitor, and verify (MRV) the carbon credits generated by reforestation projects to ensure their legitimacy and accuracy. Monitoring is the process of measuring the total quantity of carbon taken up by trees. These measurements are done according to strict guidelines set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and must follow methods set out by the UN’s Clean Development Mechanisms. On-the-ground measurements are costly and time-consuming, so scientists rely on measurements from a sampling of trees, typically in randomly located plots, to estimate carbon in entire forests.
Transparent and standardized information about the carbon credits generated by reforestation projects must be provided to investors. The information must be immutable and openly accessible. The carbon capture potential of reforestation projects should not be reported per tree planted, as this ignores limitations at the forest ecosystem level. Instead, the carbon capture potential should be reported for the entire forest ecosystem.
Verification involves ensuring that the MRV process is accurate and trustworthy. Third-party verification is conducted to ensure that the MRV process meets the highest accounting standards for the most trustworthy results. Verification reports are conducted periodically, and the costs depend on the third-party.
Pachama Technology
Pachama uses AI and satellite imagery to provide automated and trustworthy monitoring reforestation projects without imposing large up-front costs to landowners, thereby lowering the barriers to new forest offsets and delivering a more accurate product to offsetters. Pachama is building the infrastructure to support the functioning of carbon markets by providing vital transparency and accountability. They remotely verify projects to ensure they follow international standards for carbon credits.
How does Pachama accomplish this?
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