What is the problem you are trying to solve with this idea?

Primary Problem: The prevalence of Alien Invasive Plants (AIPs) in riverine corridors in South Africa, specifically in the Ethekwini municipality of Kwazulu-Natal, which was largely responsible for the extent of the damage in the recent flood event of April 2022 in which over 400 people died, 40000 people were displaced and over $5 billion damage was called. Sub-problems: Disaster Prone Water Corridors and Flooding - The dominance of AIPs on and around the river banks cause destabilisation of the banks, and the AIPs typically have shallow root systems, causing them to be easily uprooted in strong water flows, causing them to fall into the water and cause blockages. These AIP blockages are compounded by solid waste that gets caught in the plant material, followed by silt. This causes damming of floodwaters which then bursts the river banks and flows into surrounding areas - often either agricultural or used for human settlements. In large flood events this causes major destruction. In urban areas the blockages from AIPs and solid waste block bridges and road culverts leading to flooding of built up areas and roads, often destroying this infrastructure. Mass unemployment - In a country like South Africa where there is mass unemployment - between 40% - 60%, and mass urbanisation, there is the opportunity to bring these two challenges together to ameliorate both.

Who are the users who will benefit from this idea?

1. The poor and unemployed would benefit from job opportunities derived from riverine clearing. 
2. Vulnerable communities living alongside waterways who would be exposed much less to flooding.
3. Farmers who grow crops close to waterways.
4. Businesses whose operations are close to waterways
5. Industries able to process invasive biomass into products. 
6. The state, responsible for damage prevention, control and maintenance, particularly resulting from flood damage. 
7. Citizens who could benefit from local government spend on new infrastructure rather than on repairs and maintenance.
8. All citizens who would benefit from functional riverine corridors that protect water sources, that are either abstracted or flow into dams.
9. The marine ecosystem that would be less polluted by solid waste carried down by waterways.
10. Mother Earth.

Describe your idea in detail.

 

Problem scope: The mismanagement of natural water corridors, with issues incited (largely) by the prevalence of alien invasive vegetation and solid waste. 

 

Paulo, Geoff & Ché sprinted on the potential of designing an incentive program to encourage the generative stewardship of public and private land with the specific goal of reducing the presence of alien vegetation and solid waste. The intended outcomes are: 

 

1. Functional riverine corridors
2. Healthy biodiversity
3. Protection against natural disaster (flooding, weak & unbound soil) 
4. Livelihoods development for interested participants (job seekers and entrepreneurs).

 

Proposed is a complex system of creating stakeholders for a fund to incentivise actors of all backgrounds to participate in the removal of alien vegetation and solid waste, especially in riverine corridors. 

 

Initial ideation: 

 

How can fiscal/credit value be issued to agents willing to invest time in removing alien vegetation (at scale)? 

 

Idea 1: Agents receive credit/tokens/fiat for every kg of alien vegetation removed. 

 

Counter Argument: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902. How does one prevent bad actors from planting alien vegetation for reward on removing them? 

 

Solution 1: In order for removed alien biomass to qualify for additional credit issuance, the vegetation must be replaced by indigenous plants. This step is also very important in maintaining healthy ecosystems.

 

Solution 2: Issuance of tokens/reward for alien removal is given on a weekly/monthly basis scaling proportionally to the land's healthy biodiversity rating. 

 

Counter to solution 2: How to keep the incentive program inclusive? i.e how does one ensure that the program does not privilege landowners? 

 

....

Ecosystem Overview: 

 

Any interested participant can participate in removing alien vegetation in return for credit issuance/fiat/rebate. 

 

Funding mechanisms: 

 

Green Bonds: Interested agents can invest in green bonds for long term return on investment. Returns are generated by following streams of revenue.

 

Green Credits: Organisations with high carbon emission levels can subsidise this initiative by purchasing green credits to offset their own carbon crimes. 

 

The City & Council: In the name of damage prevention, state custodians can provide an initial liquidity pool motivated by the prospect of damage prevention for future flooding. 

 

Altruistic donations - Those with the resources to donate can in the fight to diminish the impacts of the climate crisis

 

Outlets: The collected vegetation can be used by a variety of organisations - composting (large and small scale) as well as producers of fibre derived products. 

 

 

....

 

Tokenomics: 

 

The incentive can be designed in the form of a token/digital currency with a value anchored by a combination of the productive capacity of the participating agents and organisations, the current investment into the ecosystem, and the overall state of alien vegetation prevalence in given areas.

At the heart of this idea are two main aspects: 

1. A protocol for valuing the removal of AIPs and the replenishment of the land with indigenous flora. This protocol would facilitate the payout of tokens (exchangeable for fiat) to actors who successfully remove and replace AIPs in areas of priority. 
2. A system/tool-set of coordination to ensure proper and continued maintenance of areas with riverine corridors. This would involve monitoring mechanisms for private, council and tribal land in a way that is context-aware of the existing systems of stewardship for each area. Monitoring can be achieved through a combination of human assessment as well as various IoT toolings such as satellite imagery and soil monitoring. 

 

In essence, the prevalence of alien invasive plants in South Africa is dire, and there is a huge unemployed and able population who, given the right incentives and coordinated accordingly, could successfully remove the alien invasive plants and restore a biodiverse and healthy, flood-resistant ecosystem.

The tokenomics initially described above can be seen in a more formal manner between the text below and the diagram attached. 

 

Actors and Tokenomics

Community Projects

A community can define and instantiate a project. In order to be instantiated a project needs to meet criteria and become verified. This criteria includes:

1. Can the work done / value contributed to the project be verified ?
2. Does the work done / value contributed to the project serve the global environment ?
3.  

Once a project is verified, it can start issuing credits and bonds.

Community Currencies

Verified projects can issue credits to actors who participate in the achievement of the goals of the project. Actors are rewarded with credit for their contributions to the project and can exchange this credit for fiat via the project’s reserve.

Green Bonds

In order to generate a reserve for credit holders to exchange with, projects issue green bonds to private actors interested in investing in the long-term success of the project. The investment of these actors goes into the the project’s reserve wallet and is returned with ROI at the agreed upon points specified in the bond.

It is important that the bonds are relatively long-term, as the incentives must coordinate long-term exchange in general. This is primary in addressing climate change and designing green instruments to channel wealth towards climate action. Lastly, the ROI is generated through the sale of green credits, explained below.

Green Credits

In order to generate ROI for the green bonds described above, another exchange needs to take place. This happens in the sale of green credits. Green credits are similar to carbon credits. They are tradable certificates that enable a holder to be exempt to a certain degree from climate regulation.

In summary, once a project is initiated and verified it begins issuing credits to actors who participate in the project’s initiative. It is also begins to issue green bonds to investors. Once an actor has been issued credits for work done the actor can redeem the credit for fiat from the network’s reserve, which is funded by the sale of green bonds. Credit that is redeemed becomes eligible for sale as a green credit to organisations who are failing to meet carbon regulation.

What are the most important benefits of this idea?

1. Income streams for the unemployed. 
2. Healthy biospheres free of damaging and supplanting alien invasive plants
3.  Robust, immune-optimised riverine corridors.
4. Incentive for education and management practices around local biospheres.
5. Risk and damage reduction of future flooding. 
6. Green Industry opportunity 

What resources do you need to implement your idea? How do you plan to get them?

 

Primarily, funding is required to initiate this project. Funding enables access to two main resources: 

1. Effective and experienced team members to design the project and manage its implementation. These members include engineers, systems modellers, researchers, designers and operations managers.
2. A liquidity pool to form the initial reserve to enable immediate issuance of credit. 

 

Do you have a team to start the idea? Describe the members and their profiles

Ché Coelho - Lead Engineer and Designer 

 

Luci Carlyle-Mitchell - Lead Researcher and environmental advisor

 

Ross Eyre - Systems Modeller  and Designer

 

Further Roles: 

 

Operations Manager - Someone to manage the team and implement operational steps 

 

Community manager - Someone to engage with communities who are using the protocol 

 

What are the implementation phases? What are the dates of each phase?

The first phase and alpha of the project will involve designing the protocol as well as working with a prospective community to ensure the protocol meets the requirements of that community to successfully implement an instantiation of the ecosystem. This will be ready within three months as the protocol development is underway and an interested and suitable community has been identified and approached, as well as a third-party organisation who will be assisting the community with management. 

The second phase will launch the protocol with the above-mentioned community. This will include the project issuing community tokens as incentive for actors to participate in the removal of alien invasive plants, as well as issuing green bonds to create the reserve for actors to exchange tokens for fiat. 

Following the success of the previous two stages, the protocol (which is essentially agnostic to initiatives providing that they serve the global environment and do so in a quantifiable way) will be adopted by initiatives all over the world. 


 

What is unique about your idea?

Primarily, this idea aims at unlocking value. This value is the labour that exists, particularly in countries with high youth unemployment rates, which is essential for many aspects of climate action, such as removing alien vegetation. 

The labour is there (A very large unemployed, youthful and physically capable population). The demand for labour is there (the need to remove alien invasive vegetation). What is missing is an effective strategy of coordination for this demand and supply. 

This idea creates a protocol that bears a closed loop of value exchange to enable the the introduction of the demand for labour and the the (dormant) supply of labour. 

In which region do you have the initial implementation planned?

The initial implementation of this idea will take place in the Ethikwini Municipality of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa where an existing project centered around  the removal of alien invasive plants has expressed strong interest for partnership. 

Do you have the knowledge and technological means to make the idea come true? Describe them

I am an experienced software engineer with years of project management under my belt. My work is centered around designing effective incentive structures for projects and ecosystems. 

I am incredibly passionate about grass-roots movements and the power for people to coordinate effectively for the betterment of society and the environment, given the proper tools of coordination. 

 

I believe I am sufficiently capable and driven to initiate and carry forward a project as described above. 

Describe your economic plan to maintain your project over time.

The economic protocol described above aims to create a system of value exchange that supports itself. This is not to be mistaken as a claim that the ecosystem produces money from nowhere. Rather, the ecosystem produces value for multiple groups of actors in a way that unlocks incentive for funds to be channelled from certain actor parties to the broader ecosystem, in return for value. For a closer illustration, please consult the diagram attached above.