We’re Expanding Planting to Kenya!
We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded our verified planting into Kenya! This new location comes with higher levels of verification, support, and monitoring on the ground, while the rest of the story, including the mangroves, poverty alleviation, and the pricing, stays the same. With the help of our new planting partner, EarthLungs, and our verification partner, veritree, we are continuing to create employment opportunities for local people, restoring habitat for organisms, protecting coastlines from tropical storms, and sequestering atmospheric carbon.
In Kenya, we will have increased verification because we will be receiving daily reporting from EarthLungs who use advanced on-the-ground monitoring technology. The activity of every planter is monitored using a GPS device to log their planting path. Aerial inventory audits are performed at random intervals post-planting. These audits are directly synchronized through the blockchain infrastructure to ensure that no centralized interference has taken place. Real-time edge detection devices are equipped with stereoscopic cameras and LIDAR to allow planting managers to capture massive amounts of data quickly. This data is encrypted and directly sent through the blockchain network for transparent results directly from the field. This technology is used to count the amount of newly planted trees in a given area, determine the density of the plot, living status, and estimated height and age. Satellite imagery is used to determine species composition, vegetation stress, carbon estimates, and land use/cover change. All of this information is then verified and validated by veritree staff.
Having even higher standards of verification and receiving more granular data will help us achieve our goal of distributing tree IDs for every single transaction on our portal, which can be passed on to your customers. We will likely have more updates on tree IDs by mid-2023. And don't worry, we will still continue to monitor the trees on the ground in Madagascar, and occasionally plant there, too.
More frequent reporting also means more content available to you to message and leverage your planting. You can check out the first round of content from Kenya in your Client Impact Portal under Tree Content. We will also be updating the Public Dash to reflect this change once the first planting occurs in Kenya.
Local communities in coastal Kenya are dependent on the mangrove ecosystems for employment, livelihood, and nutrition. Over the past several decades, to support rapid urbanization, these mangrove forests have been cleared and converted into other land use. This destruction of an important ecosystem caused the loss of critical habitats for many organisms and threatened the livelihoods of the already impoverished local communities, pushing them further into poverty.
With your support, we will be restoring these mangrove forests in Kenya. We are working together to empower the impoverished coastal community to break the poverty cycle. Mangrove estuaries are rich in biodiversity, and restoring them will provide fishing grounds for local people. This action helps to create additional income streams, which also includes sustainable harvests from the mangrove forests. We are still employing local people to plant and monitor the trees, creating well-paying jobs and stimulating the local economy. The restored forests will also help to stabilize coastlines, acting as a vital line of defense to protect the land and the communities during tropical storms.
If you are one of our partnered brands, please be sure to update any language on your site to include Kenya as one of your planting locations.
And if you have any questions about this change or need any support please contact Anna at anna@ecodrive.community. We look forward to continuing to work with you to take climate action and create positive change!
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