Biodiversity NFTs (aka Nature NFTs)

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Biodiversity NFTs

Emerging from jams at the intersection of climate and blockchain during the Earth2030 gathering, which I organized at Stanford in 2020, this idea was developed with the C3 collective of artists, then shared at the Glitch NFT residency. Through our Forum for Earth ecosystem, we have engaged with a variety of artists, NFT funders and collectors, climate activists, and technical organizations, to map an initial ecosystem for their distribution and adoption. Now, with a core team of resonant artists and hackers, the project is preparing for its genesis drops in early 2022. Please be in touch if you’d like to join us or learn more!

Who are we?

An emerging collective of artists and blockchain developers are bridging their work to social activism and civic engagement around local and global sustainability and regeneration projects.
This collective seeks to activate and empower rapid, coordinated action through re-usable digital infrastructure for local solidarities and biosphere federations, channelling financial and political resources towards sustainability-focused projects aimed at addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and other kinds of environmental degradation, at a local and global level; projects that desperately need funding and attention if life on earth is to survive.

For each project, its story and ongoing impact as measured through verifiable means will be paired to and portrayed with digital artwork, into a limited edition set of NFTs that will be exhibited and auctioned off, with a significant portion of proceeds going to support the project (e.g. for conservation and regeneration work / legal defense funds for activists) and the remainder going to the artist (and/or art collective).

These NFTs will also serve as key elements in the coordinated monitoring, reporting, and verification of data related to biodiversity and bioregions, which will feed into emerging financial, regulatory, and compliance infrastructure to ensure accountability and enforcement to prevent further harm and destruction.

Why does it matter?

NFTs represent a new way of seeing, a method for institutional recognition on the one hand, and also a way of nurturing and recognizing the intimacy between ourselves and the entities and events we hold meaningful. What we nurture and steward is who we are. Our intimacy to nature will be foundational to the change our world needs to undergo in order for humanity to survive and thrive. This collective will offer evolving and freely usable templates, tools and infrastructure to enable any artist to collaborate with a nature-serving project to help institutions recognize the value of nature, and to support relationships, activism, and the radical consciousness and political change that will be needed to secure the future for the planet and the next seven generations of humankind.

What are we doing about it?

Our initial work focuses on:  
  • research, MVP legal and technical standards (Impact NFTs and Creative NFTs);

     

     

  • the initial building of a coalition of biodiversity-serving projects that would benefit from this infrastructure; 

  • engaging artists and musicians in the coalition, connecting their work to biodiversity projects, and enabling participation from collectors and the public via NFT drops, festivals and immersive experiences;

  • nurturing bridges between the data, stories, meaning, and measurable impact woven from these collective efforts to address the climate and biodiversity loss crises.