🌎 Learning to Value the Jaguar 🐆

15 Oct

Jaguar, safe and relaxed, by Himesh Kumar Behera

Summary:

Taking an Indigenous-led approach, the Biocultural Jaguar Credit system is a transparent ecologic-economic model that looks to reward those who protect and steward the Amazon.

Using Regen Network’s blockchain technology and the indigenous leadership of Fundación Pachamama and the Sacred Headwaters Alliance, the project is piloting the model this year with the Sharamentsa community.

And this is only the beginning.

The Problem(s)

1. The Amazon reaching tipping point

Persistent deforestation has seen roughly 17% of the Amazon deforested. Researchers suggest that if that number rises to 20-25%, the Amazon is likely to be propelled into a process of desertification. As a key player in the lungs of the world, and the guardian of 10% of the worlds biodiversity, the loss of this habitat would have catastrophic impact across our social, economic and ecological systems.

2. Funding this Catastrophe

As many have pointed out, there is a finance gap when it comes to protecting nature. While $44 trillion of economic value, representing more than half of the world’s GDP, is moderately or highly dependent on nature, there is $7 trillion in subsidies currently fuelling industries that degrade nature. Though estimates suggest we need between $800-950 million annually to halt biodiversity loss by 2030, we currently are managing only $78 billion to $143 billion.

3. Failure to reach the frontline

Today, 80% of the world's biodiversity is protected by indigenous and frontline communities. Yet, of the money spent on conservation, on average only 1% reaches these frontline communities. We are not only are we failing to provide the scale of funding required, we are failing to direct it towards those actually doing the work – work that very literally affords us our ways of living.

4. Frontline community catch-22

For many of the indigenous communities protecting the Amazon free of charge, trade-offs are daily. Population growth in communities leads to a significant increase in pressure on forests due to the need for resources, mainly food and forestry. Population growth in communities leads to a significant increase in pressure on forests due to the need for resources, mainly food and forestry. In addition, externally there are constant threats such as bribes to allow road building, illegal mining and forestation through the Amazon are frequent. Largely living beyond state support systems, the short-term economic gain is deeply enticing, offering the opportunity to fund services such as medical emergencies and local education systems. Often the choice comes down to preserving their own lives (culturally and physically) or preserving the Amazon… a catch-22 created by the above issues.
For Per Espen Stoknes, a co-Founder of the project, the predicament facing these communities crystallised ‘before a dawn ceremony in the village of Sharamentsa’ when they were told about the loggers coming down the river offering cash in exchange for the hardwood. As he put it, “the beginning of extractive, industrial fingers coming downstream” causing chaos within and between communities and driving the destruction of the forest.

The Scape

Imagine in the not-so-distant future, an area half the size of Wales situated in the Eduadorian Amazon has successfully demonstrated the opportunity in a new system called the Biocultural Jaguar Credit or Contribution model. This is the Achuar's ancestral territory. Through this model, their way of life has been empowered and the value of their stewardship recognised.

The forest is still standing, diggers and trucks are no longer making inroads into the ecosystem, the Achuar Nation are continuing to thrive.

The Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, an indigenous-led organisation looking to empower frontline communities in the protection of the Amazon, are now preparing to expand the model across the 30million hectares of Amazonia under its stewardship – roughly 5% of the Amazon.

How does the model, termed a transparent ecologic-economic model, actually work?

Firstly, the infrastructure underlying the model was built by Regen Network. Developing their own Layer 0 blockchain, their market-place maintains full transparency and security, working on a proof-of-stake model. The Regen Ledger is designed to provide coordination, verification and coherence for living capital accounting all tracked on a decentralised data system.

This web3 infrastructure is combined with the physical assets of drone, satellite, and mobile technologies that enable consistent monitoring and verification of the healthy of these dense and biodiverse forests. The system can flag when a potential change to the ecosystem occurs – such as an illegal logging site – and a team of indigenous stewards head to the location to provide on-the-ground verification.

Monitoring biodiversity health however is controversial. Reducing the complexity of an ecosystem to a handful of metrics is problematic. To answer this design challenge, researchers and indigenous communities decided upon using the Jaguar – a well established 'umbrella' and 'indicator' species – as the yardstick of ecosystem health. An umbrella species is one whose presence suggests the flourishing of many others – an umbrella that covers many other species. Similarly, an indicator species is one that strongly reflects the health of its habitat – a canary in the mine. Studies have found the Jaguar fits the bill.

Issuing a pre-determined amount Biocultural Jaguar credits annually on their marketplace, for organisations, individuals or governments to purchase, each credit ensures the transparent governance and monitoring of the region. As the purchaser, you can track your contribution to maintaining the health of the Amazon, all-the-while knowing that the money is flowing directly those who really deserve it. All this revenue flows into a Generation Fund – or what others have called an Indigenous Sovereign Wealth Fund. The plan is expand until each community in the Achuar Nation receives its reward for their Ancestral Stewardship Services every quarter.

This governance model allows us to recognise the biocultural value of indigenous stewardship.

This is an offsetting credit market that does not encourage colonial land grabs as witnessed in the UAE-based company purchasing 10% of Liberia. It is a market that enables those with a larger footprint on nature to reward those working to re-balance the scales. Enabling a peer-reviewed verification of biodiversity health via the transparent blockchain infrastructure, and ensuring indigenous-led governance, the model looks to build trust with its contributors that may maintain the demand of the credits through the market fluctuations. The 2024 jaguar credits were sold at cost price of 6$ per hectare. For this area, no more is needed right now to resolve the tensions between self-preservation and nature's preservation.

What has made it so successful?

In essence, collaboration and empowerment.

The project was indigenous-led from conception, emerging from a long process of reflection and generation of local capacities accompanied by Stoknes Futures and Fundación Pachamama, under the Achuar's own governance processes, which laid the foundations to later build this model in a partnership between Regen Network, The Pachamama Alliance, Fundación Pachamama, the Sacred Headwaters Alliance and Stoknes Futures.

It has remained so. The equipment is indigenous owned and operated, the verification teams are indigenous-led. As the Generation Fund is built up, it will be stewarded and allocated to each community by Indigenous leaders, building a community-centric revenue stream; a revenue stream that is owned and governed by the community, not by individual(s).

The funding flows have also been transformed. Where the average conservation model saw 1% flow to the frontline, during this pilot phase, 75.5% of the Biocultural Jaguar credit heads to the community. Of the remaining, 20% was allocated to the development of Regen Network's platform and 4.5% to supporting the operations of Fundación Pachamama. As Regen Network have said, this 60x improvement is only the beginning.

Downstream Value Creation

1. A healthier biosphere

The amazon continues to regulate our climate and hold incredible carrying capacity for biodiversity.

2. The conflict facing frontline communities resolved

Meeting their needs, the income received by frontline communities has achieved an accurate expression of value.

3. A new funding model, and a new marketplace

The ecologic-economic model provides what some term a 'Collective Universal Basic Income' crowdsourced across a range of actors from all other the world. The value and use of this income is transparently communicated across the ledger.

4. A collective appreciation of real work

The model has posed the global community a wider opportunity to honour the value that's being stewarded, the biocultural value thats being lived. To recognise how much the work of these stewards gifts to the world.

📣 Call to Action 🔔

The pilot for this project was launched earlier this year. The pre-financing scheme has moved successfully with the vast majority of the initial 75,300 credits having been purchased.

Yet there is still the opportunity to become a contributor.

If you know of any individual, business or organisation looking to offset their footprint on nature or simply contribute to repairing our damaged biosphere, please forward the project onto them. The marketplace and terms of sale can be found here.

When asked why we should do this, Regen Network's Greg Landua responds simply:

"There is both a sacred duty and sacred joy in being agents of regeneration."

Projects like this give all of us that agency.

For Digging Deeper…

Learning to Value

A tribute to the life and wisdom of our dear friend Stephan Harding, for whom this project meant a great deal, and who inspired many to rethink how they value nature.

The Biocultural Jaguar Credit model.