The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Gaiachain Lab are collaborating to develop the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) chain. The FLRchain is a fintech solution designed to maximise the positive impact of every dollar invested in restoring degraded landscapes. It uses blockchain and other technologies to make payments to local ecosystem stewards more reliable, efficient, transparent, and ultimately more impactful.

Quick facts:

Who uses it and why?

There are three key user groups:

1. Investors: private companies, government donors, or philanthropist foundations that provide FLR funds.
2. Facilitators: NGO, farmer association, or other entity that coordinates FLR implementation at the local level.
3. Stewards: the local farmer, landowner, community level institutions, etc. that implement FLR activities, such as tree planting and tree growing.

The FLRchain is designed to help each user group achieve their key priorities:

What does it do?

The FLRchain allows actors to interact in four key ways:

1. Investments: investors can easily contribute to projects without complicated and expensive administrative processes.
2. Payments: efficient and transparent distribution of payments that are truly end-to-end (investor to stewards), automated, transparent and triggered by verifiable data.
3. Governance: smart contract logic shaped by propositions and voting among facilitators and stewards to foster engagement and ‘ownership’ of the FLR projects among local actors.
4. Monitoring & Reporting: data submitted by landscape stewards, linked to spatial data, allow facilitators and investors to demonstrate proof-of-impact more efficiently.

Learn more about FLRchain by watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwG8e7RkChs