How Does it work?

Credible and efficient land assessment - Thanks to our proprietary science-based global models called the Digital Twin, which harnesses Earth's observation data, geospatial engineering, and machine learning, we can credibly and rapidly evaluate the ecological value of a landowner’s property without large upfront costs. Using the land risk and impact assessment tool, we prioritise and work with lands under higher threat of destruction. We then timestamp the assessment results through blockchain technology and mint tradable MERIT tokens to the landowner in the amount reflecting the ecological value of the land. Read the science white paper here.

Making nature protection easy and profitable for lands of all sizes - Landowners receive MERIT tokens, i.e., revenue, ex-post for the mapped ecosystem services provided and biodiversity hosted by their land. We constantly monitor the forest canopy cover of the land, and the landowner is paid only if the nature on the land is preserved. Landowners are not required to make any long-term commitments, but they must avoid clearcutting and are expected to abide by the responsible harvesting practices (Appendix 1 of Landowner terms) set out by Single.Earth for as long as they are engaged on the Single.Earth platform. Landowners are not required to take additional action to improve the provision of the services (e.g., improve CO2 sequestration) beyond business as usual. Our global models evaluate the state of existing nature instead of only considering the additional action taken by the landowner, so the barriers to entering the market are significantly lower compared to carbon offset projects

Enabling everyone to protect nature to unlock a transformational change, including individuals, businesses, and authorities, as part of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals.

By focusing our efforts on impactful lands where MERIT revenue is able to delay or avoid harvesting, the contributors can make an impact by incentivising landowners to preserve the ecosystem services and biodiversity hosted by their lands as an alternative to harvest. We work towards solutions where MERIT tokens can also be used as payment for goods or services or held as an investment.

To find out the full mechanics of Single.Earth's solutions, check out the full light paper.

Who can join? What are the requirements?

Currently, we accept landowners with at least 3 hectares of mature forest that are located within European Economic Area (EEA). Read more about it here.

Who will own the land once you join Single.Earth?

The landowner keeps full ownership over the land. We're not tokenising the forest itself, rather the ecosystem factors and work that it does in real time.

Why did you go beyond carbon offsetting? Why did you not use a system that is already there?

Carbon offsetting or the additionally stored carbon is just a tiny fraction of what nature is doing. Even if we describe the forests of the entire planet in terms of carbon offsetting, we are neglecting a large part of what nature is doing. Carbon offsetting projects sometime cut down old forests to replant with new ones because young trees sequester a lot more carbon. That is a really stupid thing to do. So we want to give something that makes more sense to keep the forest alive rather than cut it down. Carbon offsetting also completely neglects biodiversity, which is a huge factor in nature conservation.

Nature is doing so many things that haven't been described before. We believe that the nature that exists on the planet doesn't have to be described as a carbon storing machine. We can't just optimise nature to suck carbon out of the atmosphere - what we have to do is describe nature's role and how much it can actually take - how much greenhouse gasses is it is able to absorb, how much raw material extraction is able to sustain. Looking at the market, we see everyone trying to add additional carbon credits, but nobody has actually defined the market itself. So what we want to do is define the market itself and then if we want to expand the economy, like building something that emits more greenhouse gasses - we in turn expand nature's sustainability. We need to utilise what we already have.

What is a Digital Twin?

We're using a historical timeline of the forests on Earth, along with measurements of carbon sequestration according to the biomass generated. We build upon that while also accounting for the biodiversity.