The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and its innovation laboratory IDB Lab, in joint effort with the with the “Natural Capital Lab” (IDB Group) and the global alliance LACChain, announced the results of the “Digital Tokens for Biodiversity Innovation Challenge”. The initiative seeks to identify innovative solutions that make use of these instruments to promote the conservation of biodiversity and facilitate action on climate change.

The call had the participation of 86 proposals from 21 countries of the region. Startups, SMEs, non-profit organizations, corporations, think tanks, public innovation agencies, accelerators and other organizations presented ready-to-implement models. The four selected initiatives that will receive financial support are the following:
• Fundación Futuro (Ecuador): A proposal to expand the scope of the zero carbon system to offer monetary incentives to landowners for conservation and restoration, including communities favoring the transition to digital governance of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations).
• Nature Services (Peru): Looks to structure socioeconomic incentives to recognize behaviors and actions in favor of biodiversity and avoid unwanted behaviors by integrating blockchain functionalities.
• Terrasos (Colombia): A proposal that combines the concept of biodiversity credit with digital tokens to provide greater traceability and transparency to transactions by implementing Distributed Ledger Technologies (DTL), which store information in multiple locations at any given time.
• The Cropper Foundation (Trinidad and Tobago): Proposes using digital tokens to encourage agricultural sustainability and improve access to credit and capital for local small farmers.