\n<\/p>\n
Healthy conservation land does a vast deal more than store carbon, says Holdfast Collective executive director Greg Curtis, who has cofounded a new company to make the full value of nature \u201cvisible, verifiable and financially useful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utilizing sensor hardware and a structured data feed, the newly launched company, Landseed<\/a>, has developed a model for measuring ecological outcomes that goes below the canopy to gather data on far more than just carbon sequestration. With these outcomes, the company, which also includes co founders Alex Roessner and Eric Dinerstein, hopes to create a financial market around conservation and give those running the projects a self-perpetuating revenue stream.<\/p>\n Nonprofit Holdfast Collective,<\/a> where Curtis has spent the last four years, owns 98% of apparel and food brand Patagonia. Curtis tells AgFunderNews<\/em> the motivation for Landseed comes from his time spent with Holdfast Collective\u2019s conservation partners and \u201cseeing how difficult it was for the conservation partners to raise money, which creates a lot of risk for them.\u201d<\/p>\n At its core, he suggests, Landseed is about measuring ecological activity, not simply estimating it.<\/p>\n In order to do that accurately and efficiently, projects need infrastructure that can capture a comprehensive picture of what\u2019s happening on the ground, says Curtis.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s already a lot of satellite data that you can pull from different providers that give you a great overview of what\u2019s happening from the top down,\u201d explains Curtis. But to accurately measure the entire picture below the canopy requires sensors on the ground.<\/p>\n Enter Eric Dinerstein, a noted conservation biologist who spent 25 years at the World Wildlife Fund as its chief scientist and who has\u00a0developed optical technology that tracks the presence of biodiversity in a given area.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThese sensors essentially would be deployed in a mesh around the landscape and communicate that data back to the conservation organization,\u201d says Curtis.<\/p>\n The sensors record every 10 minutes, detecting the presence (or lack) of wildlife species, moisture levels, relative humidity, and water temperature, weather condition, soil moisture, and fresh water quality, in addition to monitoring soil carbon.<\/p>\n For now, the technology is primarily visual, but Curtis says plans for simultaneously measuring settings acoustically are in the works, too.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything has really changed quite rapidly in the tech space, so we\u2019re able to build it and with more product features at a much more favorable cost point,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n The sensors comprise what Curtis says is the first layer of Landseed\u2019s model, called the Earth Pulse Node.<\/p>\n The second Layer, Earth Credits, is the resulting credits minted from the ecological data gathered by the sensors. It\u2019s a similar concept to carbon credits: Landseed verifies the outcomes, the conservation organization owns the credits and can sell them on voluntary markets.<\/p>\n Buyers of those credits would be companies and possibly municipalities \u201clooking to protect their natural resources,\u201d says Curtis, who adds that for businesses, they are \u201cmore holistic than just looking at carbon emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n Other potential customers include foundations and private philanthropy organizations, he adds.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is opportunity for the chief investment officers of those types of foundations to put a portion of their endowments into this asset class or other nature-based financial asset purchases.\u201d<\/p>\n Curtis emphasizes that Landseed does not own the credits and will not have a part in the actual selling of them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important thing with this vision is to facilitate and usher in a market based on financial nature-based financial assets,\u201d he explains. \u201cIn order for us to do that with integrity, we really need to be focused on the quality of the products themselves, rather than a business based on trading the products.\u201d<\/p>\n A third and final layer to the Landseed model is what Curtis calls Earth Signals. This is a structured reference-data feed Landseed will license to various markets including insurance, capital, and conservation research.<\/p>\n Landseed recently received a $400,000 \u201csocial impact\u201d investment from the Richard King Mellon Foundation<\/a>, bringing its total funding to $500,000.<\/p>\nBoots (and sensors) on the ground<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u2018More holistic\u2019 than carbon capture<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u2018A new commodity class\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n