Business Development Manager
In today’s day and age, data is easy to come by, but what can be complicated is putting data to good use. This article addresses the use cases of Kanop produced data for Nature-based project stakeholders; and chances are, if you are a Nature-based Solution (NbS) project stakeholder, there is a use case for you.
It is our mission at Kanop to promote transparency throughout the lifecycle of nature conservation and restoration projects by providing high quality, scalable data. This frequently means working within the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), but there are plenty of instances where project developers use alternative mechanisms to generate revenue for their NbS project activities. Take for example our partnership with Ecosia, the tree planting search engine. But regardless of the financing mechanisms, having transparent data sources is key to the integrity and promotion of any climate action project. So below I share how you can put our platform to use…
Before making the decision to sign an offtake agreement, invest in a large number of credits, or promote a project on your marketplace, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the current state of the project land as well as its evolution over time. Oftentimes, these stakeholders need to study several large projects which can pose a significant financial barrier and prevent them from conducting the appropriate level of due diligence. That is why, after receiving feedback from our clients, we developed a tool specific to that use case, allowing for high volume assessments at a significantly reduced price point. In order to make the pricing accessible, the tool is set to default at 25m resolution (instead of our normal 10m) and has a couple of capabilities removed that might be more relevant for project development. With Project Screening, you still have access to the web app and API where you can find raw data downloads, maps and graphs for deforestation, biomass, carbon stock, tree height and more.
One of the primary use cases of our platform is in supporting project design and monitoring. Today, project developers rely heavily on collecting data on the ground, which is important, but can be very time consuming, costly, and unscalable. At Kanop, we attempt to resolve those issues, delivering rapid and affordable data for projects of any size. But it is important to note that we still see value in the precision that comes from ground collected data. That is why we have created a tool for project developers, allowing them to upload the data they have previously collected onto our platform in order to calibrate our machine learning models’ output specific to their land, leading to unprecedented project level accuracy. The question that we normally get asked next is, “how can we use that to comply with the standards’ requirements?” The good news is that there have been innovations in the market, such as Verra’s tool VT0005, which allows us to use our calibration feature to comply with any Verra AFOLU methodology. In addition, there is the rising trend of using dynamic baselines in order to consistently maintain project integrity. This new system is already in place for Verra’s ARR methodology, VM0047, so we, in response have developed a system utilizing our machine learning models to support dynamic baselining and continuous project monitoring (you can learn more about it in another blog post written by our Ecosystems Engineer, PhD. Victor Allory).
That being said, there are many project developers who are not at the PDD stage and still need to determine whether land is eligible for ARR project development, or want to know how much carbon their lands will be able to sequester. Those are also services we provide. For the latter, we use our models to assess mature forests in similar ecosystems (determined through analysis of a number of variables), and use that information to approximate the carbon sequestration potential in the area of interest. With the increasing popularity of carbon removals, this service has seen a huge increase in popularity.
The final use case I believe is important to mention is communicating impact. At any point across the lifecycle of a project, transparency is key. Natural climate solutions have undergone significant criticism over the past couple of years, and we hope to play a role in rebuilding confidence in these projects, scalably showing their true impact and power to transform ecosystems. Project developers need to understand the land they are purchasing; investors/marketplaces/buyers need to understand the project they are investing in; finally, financial stakeholders and the concerned global community need to understand the impact that their dollars are having. There are even instances in which our data can have a use case at multiple points for the same stakeholder, take for example investors/marketplaces/buyers who need to conduct due diligence on a project (supply side) but also need to report on its impact (demand side). One set of measurements can serve both use cases, ensuring that essential high quality data is affordably delivered.
Our ever-growing suite of indicators and platform functions are being designed to support you, the project stakeholder. So if you have any data needs, let us know, it is our honor to support our collective journey to healthier and more resilient global ecosystems.
