How does the Open Forest Protocol
platform
work? The platform will cross-check monitoring data recorded on the ground using a
mobile app
with data from
satellite
,
IoT
, drone, and AI technologies confirmed by 'validators' such as
government
agencies, tech companies, universities, development agencies, and environmental
NGOs
. If a forest project is judged to be successful, then the company or organisation operating it will have evidence enabling them to access
carbon
financing. The OFP uses
blockchain
to record all data and transactions on an open distributed ledger, and those behind the project frame this as central to their aims to create a more transparent, standardised, and decentralised system of forestation projects in efforts to address
climate change
.
Given that carbon financing and
funding
for forestation projects are key to the stated outcomes of the OFP, it seems important to consider the role of capital in stucturing how forest projects are developed and validated. What interests, incentives, and implicit values are at work not only in forest projects, but also validating agencies, and how do these shape what constitutes successful projects? As other logbooks suggest, there are also questions we might ask about the use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in forest management, for example in terms of
energy
consumption, and in terms of ideas of
value
they reproduce and transform. The OFP is built on the NEAR blockchain, which claims to be more energy-efficient than other similar technologies and carbon neutral by
offsetting
emitted CO2 through tree-planting in Colombia, Zimbabwe, and the United States.
Emerging platforms such as the OFP generate new modes of understanding and validating forest environments. They mobilise a nexus of private, state, and local actors, offsetting practices, and validation measures that seek to build transparency through open-source data and transactions, but also remain entangled with existing political and economic structures of calculating forest value.