The ixo Foundation has partnered with the Seneca Park Zoo Society to measure impact for global conservation projects using blockchain technology.

Tracking Conservation Efforts to Measure Impact

Seneca Park Zoo, New York, spends $77,000 yearly funding conservation projects worldwide. However, Tom Snyder, the zoo’s director of Programming and Conservation Action, said that they had been having a hard time determining how the funds were spent.

Snyder told the FT: “You send the money and you get an annual report on how it is going. Sometimes, because non-profit organisations are so stretched, the report doesn’t arrive for six months after the end of the review period. So it can be 18 months before you get any information. Many times the money doesn’t go towards the things they say it will.”

The zoo is currently funding a tree-planting scheme in Ranomafana National Park in eastern Madagascar and ixo Foundation, a non-profit open-source software development organisation, will monitor the tree-planting effort through its blockchain-based platform.

The project’s technologies will provide pictures and GPS coordinates every time a seed or sapling is planted, then compares that with satellite imagery or light readings from ground sensors to confirm whether or not there’s an increase of trees in the particular area. Ixo’s blockchain platform’s use is to capture many proof points, creating tamper-proof records that are easily accessible by anyone.

Snyder says that the plan, effective next February, will enable people to donate and receive real-time updates as well as the pictures of the tree planting process. He hopes that this will encourage more people to donate. He is also looking into a way to prevent data from falling into wrong hands. For example, poachers getting a hold of biodiversity information that will show them where rare animals are.

More Than Just Tracking

For the ixo Foundation, the tracking and verification possibilities are just the beginning. Shaun Conway, founder and president of ixo Foundation, want to bring new money and investors into areas such as impact investing.

Conway says Ixo’s Blockchain for Impact Platform could turn any desired impact investing outcome into a tradeable unit, or token. These can be traded on secondary markets, like a bond, with the value oscillating depending on the project’s progress. For instance, while educating girls in rural India using this system, if the students get high scores on their exams, the value of the token goes up. According to Conway, “It would establish a market and create liquidity around these projects.”

For Snyder, currently, the tracking is exciting enough. “People have to get comfortable with the system first. A year or two down the road we can see what else comes out of it.”