Water credits putumayo

Water credits

Water credits are one of our six payment layers for smallfarmers and Indigenous groups guarding tropical forest.

ALL THE NERDY DETAILS...

Most people don’t ask about this stuff, but for the ones that do, here’s the current science and markets work.

As you know, we’re big on tangibility because it improves equity and outcomes.

Water credits are experimental protocols, there hasn’t been an industry norm so far. The really great projects we’ve seen in the US and China usually look at entire watersheds which might not be feasible at a micro-behaviors scale. There is good scientific work on behaviors though. While we normally like outcomes-based economics, we think science-backed behaviors are the only thing we can authentically reward right now.

Our current protocols are listed here. They’re just pragmatic semi-equivalents and need further research. We’ll likely have more protocols in the future based on our ongoing research. If you buy, you’ll find out which one you got when it’s matched to the participating smallfarmer.

Water credits tropical forest
Amazon water credits

Conservation

Conservation water credits represent 100 meters of conserved waterway in tropical forests for one month. To qualify the waterway has to have a primary forest on one side (half credit) or two sides (full credit). It gets bonus points if it has proof of a dragonfly, the apex predator of the insect world.

BIOCHAR

In the pipeline, we’re looking at a biochar protocol and characterizing filtration, reduced nitrogen runoff, and other characteristics based on putting one-ton of activated biochar in the earth — (biochar isn’t just good for carbon it helps water out a lot).

Dragonfly biodiversity amazon

RESTORATION

Restoration water credits represents 100 meters of restored waterway in tropical forests for one month. To qualify, the waterway has to be degraded, then reforested, and it’s partial as the trees grow for the first year which is all we currently validate. So they get a total of 1/12 every month, and 1 at the end of the year.

  • “Despite only stewarding 22% of the world’s land, Indigenous territories protect 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. These lands are also estimated to contain 36% of the world’s remaining intact forests.”

    —Fitri Arianti, Rainforest Action Network using World Bank data

  • “We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.”

    —David Foreman

  • “Scientists were startled in 1980 by the discovery of a tremendous diversity of insects in tropical forests. In one study of just 19 trees in Panama, 80% of the 1,200 beetle species discovered were previously unknown to science... Surprisingly, scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than how many species there are on Earth.”

    —World Resources Institute

  • “The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.”

    —World Wildlife Fund

  • “Drug discovery from wild species has always been, and will continue to be one of the most critical for most if not all aspects of health care, disease prevention, and wellness.”

    —Neergheen-Bhujun et al., Journal of Global Health