World’s first nature-backed financial instrument

Single.Earth has developed a way to tokenise shares in land, in exchange for carbon offsets

Spotted: Venture capital group Single.Earth has developed a way for landowners to earn money for under-utilising their land. Their online platform allows forests, wetlands and other natural areas to generate income by being left alone – eliminating the need for their owners to sell their resources in order to turn a profit. Instead, owners are rewarded for preserving ecosystems.

Single.Earth works by tokenising privately-owned natural resources and areas of ecological significance. Companies and organisations can then purchase the tokens and thus own fractional amounts of the lands and resources. Importantly, investors also receive carbon offsets on their token purchases. 

Interested owners can enter their land in the Single.Earth marketplace, after which the company sends out biologists to assess the ecological value of the land, and then issues tokens based on this value. Investors buy the tokens and are given carbon offset credits. The tokens will increase or decrease in value over time, based on the value of the offsets, and can be traded like other commodities. Single.Earth also monitors the land using satellite and sensor data, to ensure quality is maintained.

Single.Earth Chief Executive Merit Valdsalu told Springwise that: “Once we’d figured out how to monetize growing forests locally, we realized that we had actually cracked how to heal our relationship with nature globally.” 

Single.Earth is demonstrating a unique way of using blockchain to earn money and preserve nature at the same time. At Springwise, we have seen a number of other ways to tokenise social goods. These include a parking garage that rewards people for not driving and a marketplace that rescues fabric waste from landfill.

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