| |  | The MRV Collective is an expanding coalition of MRV (Measurement, Reporting & Verification) companies building an open MRV protocol to accelerate investment in Nature-based-Solutions for climate mitigation. | October 2022 |  | TLDR Highlights | | | | Someone missing?Know an MRV Provider and/or an organization collecting nature data? | |
|
|
|
|
|
| | Summary and Key Learnings | Expanding Collaborations ♨️ Learning from Adjacent SectorsThis month we concluded eight weeks of founder circle facilitations and dedicated time to learning from adjacent fields such as the humanitarian sector and One Health, and completed an inventory of prospective collaboration tools for protocol development and data collection. As we continue to witness an uptick in cross sector attention on nature-based solutions we also see a gap in target setting, intervention deployment, and nature-based decision making tools. With COP27 and the Convention on Biological Diversity just around the corner, there is energy and determination in the air as organizations and countries are preparing this year’s announcements, commitments, and demonstrations. | Approaching 20 Million Surveys per Month — what can nature-data collection learn from the humanitarian sector?The collection of nature-data is a crucial component for all MRV solution providers, whether evaluating prospective nature-based interventions, establishing baselines, or ongoing monitoring of short and long term indicators. The data collection of social indicators such as education, human health, living conditions, economic, and gender equality are all important context. KoboToolbox, the world's most popular tool for data collection, management, and visualization in challenging settings has been adopted as the standard tool by the global humanitarian sector and made free by a consortium of international organizations. What might MRV providers learn from Kobo’s efforts and ubiquity to accelerate the quality, structure, and metadata of nature-data collection efforts? Each month, the Kobo platform is used to collect nearly 20 million surveys. The MRV Collective is exploring an MRV specific library of survey questions to help streamline initiatives and enhance collaboration. | Spotlight Speaker Tino Kreutzer, COO of KoboToolbox joined MRV Circle as a spotlight speaker on October 6th, 2022 | |
| |
|
|
|
|
| | Good News | Attending VERGE 2022Verge 2022 is the largest ClimateTech event of the year and includes attendees from business, government, solution providers, and startups — working together to address the climate crisis across six strategic areas: clean energy, sustainable transportation, carbon removal, regenerative food systems, net-zero buildings and the startup ecosystem. For the first time, Verge is hosting a special event focused on nature based solutions which is another indicator that nature and biodiversity are becoming increasingly important and complementary to climate initiatives. The MRV Collective will be in attendance with a primary focus on the food sector which has the most traction in terms of nature-based target setting adoption. Learnings can be applied to other sectors. | | New Member Welcome ☀️ SimplexDNA SimplexDNA was founded in July 2021 as a spin-off from ETH Zürich and are based in Winterthur, Switzerland, in the heart of Europe. The team has their own laboratory facilities and have years of experience in molecular methods and conservation research focused on Environmental DNA (eDNA), an important biodiversity and invasive species monitoring technique that identifies DNA found in the environment (e.g., water, soil, air) from cellular material shed by organisms in water, soil, and air. eDNA allows for testing without having to sample the organism itself and can also detect species which may be present in low numbers and difficult to find. | | | Ridge to Reef Design Sprint UpdateThe MRV Collective completed a handful of facilitations with Costa Rica Regenerativa and UCI to explore protocol development tools and methods. A collection of video interviews and summary video from the August field trip are nearly complete. |  | | Challenges | Protocol development, standardization, and barriers to nature-based solutionsProtocol development is a foundational aspect and significant source of complexity for both MRV providers and organizations in the planning and deployment of nature-based solutions. This development requires costly domain expertise, extensive planning, education, and cross disciplinary collaboration. In the public and private sector, standards could lead to exponential expansion and adoption. The internet witnessed such an expansion after converging on unified protocols in the 80’s and 90’s. One tool we are evaluating this month is Protocols.io, which was created as a Github for protocol development, including revision control, collaboration, and publishing to the Public Library of Science, PLOS. While the solution was born from wet labs, it was designed to be general purpose and the collective is considering to pilot the tool. | | Scaling adoption and deployment of MRV solutionsAs the number of MRV entrepreneurs and innovations increase so does the complexity around integrations, education, and complementary technologies such as eDNA and bio-acoustics. Entrepreneurs face critical challenges to adapt and shape their innovations and offerings for wide adoption and scale — the collective aims to help vet and match innovative technologies with cross sector adoption. Stay tuned for forthcoming planning to engage in learning activities to understand broad challenges and arrive at clear next steps | | Nature data & Research in Focus | | | Something to share?Submit recommended nature data sources, MRV news, and research. | |
|
|
|
|
|
| | Enjoyed this mail? Send to a friend. Have a comment or suggestion? Drop us a line. | | |
|
|
|
