Welcome to the IUCN Green List Marketplace
IUCN is exploring means to connect demand for nature goods and services to the conservation work underway by the Green List community, in protected and conserved areas and by their custodians.
The Marketplace is an area where new and innovative financial technologies can be developed to match this demand, and give confidence to buyers and investors that participating sites and actors are working to the highest international standards for nature conservation – the IUCN Green List.
Nature Seychelles with IUCN and Porini Foundation launched the world’s first Digital Nature Collectibles (Non-Fungible Token for Conservation (NFTC), the first Digital Species for a future series of Digital Species Collectibles.
Nature Seychelles is selling the magpie robin! But don’t panic; none of the 59 Seychelles magpie robins will be expelled from their home on Cousin. Instead, it is their digital likeness that will be sold.
Each token will be a representation of a living bird currently on Cousin Island, which are all known and can be identified individually through a unique system that also includes every aspect of their biology.
The #NatureCollectibles team were now joined by ProAves Colombia and Shoal Conservation.
Shoal Conservation, represented by Michael Baltzer and Prof. Topiltzin Contreras, are prioritizing conservation action for the world’s most threatened freshwater fish species. One of these, the Darkedged Splitfin, is found only in the Lagunas de Zempaola National Park in México. Under severe threat from invasive fish and river pollution, saving this species of Splitfin is a race against time. The additional finance will be critical to survey and engage local people and authorities in urgent research and protection activities.
ProAves Colombia, represented by Sara Lara, shared the work underway to protect dozens of small nature conservation areas in Colombia, including the Harpy Eagle Reserve in the Amazon region. Home to breeding pairs of the rare birds, the reserve is the workplace of Ninfa Carianil, an award-winning ranger whose dedication to this area of remote jungle is testament to the commitment and spirit of many ‘defenders of nature’ in the Amazon.
Funds raised through the Harpy Eagle #NatureCollectible will support Ninfa and her conservation work with local communities in this important part of the Colombian Amazon.
The Seychelles Magpie Robin #NatureCollectible – helps continue the conservation work on protecting the endangered and emblematic bird on Cousin Island.
The Darkedge Splitfin #NatureCollectible – helps rediscover and protect this rare and highly threatened freshwater fish, found only in México, in the Lagunas de Zempaola National Park.
The Harpy Eagle #NatureCollectible – helps support an award-winning indigenous Amazon ranger, Ninfa Carianil, and her work to protect a nature reserve in Colombia.
An NFT (non-fungible token) is a one-of-a-kind piece of digital content and can be linked to an image or a video. The NFT’s ownership is authenticated and verifiable by the blockchain, a technology that can prevent copypasting and was first used for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. That means while copies of videos, images and even animated gifs can multiply on the internet, there can be only one with a certificate of authenticity. Like other collectibles, people can buy, sell and trade them or even use them as collaterals.
They will be available here for purchase using credit card or other means of payment. There will be a marketplace for reselling the collectibles, so they can be traded and purchased again in the future.
Funding for conservation is not always guaranteed and the COVID-19 pandemic made things even harder. Many areas lost a great part of their budget and revenue, especially those relying on tourism income.
With the world’s first Digital Nature Collectible, we can offer a new road to income and extend the NFT market beyond art, games and music. With #NatureCollectibles, we want to provide sustainable funding and an innovative financing alternative for conservation work in protected and conserved areas.
By highlighting key values in these protected areas we emphasize the conservation role of each protected and conserved area, whilst also engaging our main audiences and beyond to be an active contributor to conservation efforts.
Pioneered by the IUCN Green List, Swiss-based Porini Foundation and Nature Seychelles. These nature collectibles support conservation work in protected and conserved areas committed to or certified by the IUCN Green List for their fair and effective conservation outcomes.
Hence, relying on the IUCN Green List Standard, with its 3rd party assurance and validation ensures the positive impact and credibility of these NFTCs and that they’re directed to work where impact is seen, measured and internationally recognised.
Any protected and conserved area that gains ‘Green List’ status demonstrates:
Yes, we are looking to add value to our community, to finance your conservation efforts and to help you achieve and maintain the IUCN Green List Standard. Please get in touch with your ideas and willingness to be part of the next #NatureCollectibles series promotion and funding campaign.
We are trailblazers. Our most well-known product is Cousin Island, but we are globally recognised for initiating norm-breaking projects such as the Reef Rescuers, The Sanctuary at Roche Caiman, CBC, LEAP, etc. We are an established voice for conservation in the Seychelles community, the region and internationally. We are happy to be early adopters of this technology for fundraising. Our CEO, a globally renowned, multi-disciplinary environmentalist, has been talking about how important it is to innovate during this crisis, what he calls “Next-Gen Conservation”. This is the first of many ways we are breaking the mould of traditional fundraising.
Porini Foundation is a Swiss NGO active at the intersection of innovative technology and nature conservation with a special focus on the DLT / blockchain space. In 2018 Porini Foundation set up a first near-zero energy blockchain called Sustainability-Chain to make this technology accessible for nature conservation projects. The clear and supportive regulatory framework in Switzerland is an important factor to implement DLT technology and attracted major players in the blockchain space to set up their headquarters in Switzerland. Swiss legislation allows global organizations to use this technology in a sustainable way and in 2017, Toni Caradonna – now our CTO – wrote the first smart contract for the United Nations. Since then, DLT related projects for nature conservation are gaining traction and Nature Collectibles are a successful example for our work.
In the last 30 years the planet earth has seen three waves of digitalisation.
The first wave was a digitalisation of data. As a consequence the internet with web-pages and emails were adopted by humans and organisations.
The second wave was the digitalisation of communities. All of a sudden people and organisations used social media.
The current third wave is about digitalisation of values and assets. People and organisations adopt blockchain and digital wallets, because it offers efficiency and transparency for digitalisation and transfer of values.
Today, we accepted that emails are faster and cheaper then letters, we use smartphones and social media and we will make our crossboarder payments using a blockchain.
Blockchain technology offers two big advantages for our nature collectibles project:
First: Fast payments and we can see that the money arrives directly at the beneficiary.
Second: the NFT standard ensures that the collectible is indeed unique and that there is only a limited number of items which can be sold.
Since the #NatureCollectibles are implemented on the zero-carbon blockchain solutions of Porini Foundation the carbon footprint of the #NatureCollectibles is only a few milligrams of CO2 which is compensated through Porini Foundation
