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January 2022 |
The MRV Collective is an expanding coalition of Measurement, Reporting & Verification companies building an open MRV protocol to accelerate investment in nature-based solutions for climate and biodiversity protection. |
TLDR Highlights |
Github for Nature Data Catalog Steering Committee Kickoff!
MRV Lab Updates from the Field — From EOV to Jaguars
👋 Welcome new members Rainforest Connection, Quantifying Nature, Agrotech Laboritorios Analyticos
Nature Challenges from Davos, Simon Zadek and Eva Gladek
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Summary and Key Learnings |
Kickoff! “Github 4 Nature” Data Catalog & DemoThe steering committee for the nature data catalog kicked off last week spanning a sweet balance between innovative nature focused non-profits such as One Earth, Nature4Climate, and Audubon Society to tech and innovation such as ESRI, Conservation X Labs, and Beta Earth, to finance and policy such as Pollination Group, Systemiq, and TNFD. The kickoff comes on the heels of COP15 a month earlier where TNFD side events packed rooms and the MRV Collective led a Data Lab, experiencing an overwhelming interest in the catalog — full recap in the Special Update from the beginning of the year.
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 | Are you piloting TNFD, SBTN, or Nature Accounting?Software products succeed when they are built together with users and solve real world challenges. Invite TNFD & SBTN, and nature accounting pilot participants to one of our upcoming short interactive and fun sessions leveraging collaborative intelligence by MURAL. | |
|  | Proof of Concept Delivered — What’s Next?In the first proof of concept development sprint of the catalog, over 22 user stories were delivered, linking 800 nature data sources. Features spanned faceted search, metadata, big query, geo-spatial and sparked numerous ideas to be vetted for future sprints. Have an idea? | |
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Ecosystem Realm Lead Collaboration OpportunitiesWe’ve received great response to our collaboration opportunities and still accepting applications through January for ecosystem realm leads with nature data experience to help with taxonomies, metadata, and data sources to guide engineering team in the development of the nature data catalog. |
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MRV Lab Update from the Field — From EOV to JaguarsThe MRV Lab in Costa Rica is the first Savory Hub in the Tropics, applying EOV (ecological outcome verification) to measure key indicators of ecosystem function, which, in the aggregate indicate, positive or negative trends in the overall health of a landscape. Some images from applying EOV in the field, restoring degraded range lands — stunning camera trap footage of a local jaguar! |
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Good 🤍 News |
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White House Nature Accounting Fact Sheet Released On 19 January 2023, the Whitehouse Office of Science Technology Policy announced a historic roadmap that will kick off a multi-year effort to put nature on the balance sheets of the U.S. for the first time, with an emphasis on better data to understand nature’s critical contributions to the U.S. economy and to guide policy and business decisions moving forward. We’re thrilled to see this moving forward and the MRV Collective will continue keep the OSTP apprised of progress since briefing their staff in meetings last year. |
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Welcome new members! |
| Rainforest ConnectionRainforest Connection's mission is to develop and leverage conservation technology that empowers partners to protect threatened ecosystems from illegal activities and monitor for biodiversity. Stunning bio-acoustic field devices and platform for threat detection and biodiversity monitoring. | |
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| Quantifying NatureQuantifying Nature is the world's first software identifying & quantifying the financial risks of the climate-biodiversity crisis to mobilize targeted adaptation solutions at scale. Brilliant team and collaborative spirit. | |
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| Agrotec Laboratorios Analíticos S.AAgrotec is a regionally accredited laboratory that collects scientifically-based environmental data in order to characterize and monitor ecosystems. This includes sample collection, field tests, and lab analysis. The relevant accreditation bodies have given our lab their seal of approval. This means that our data collection, testing, and analysis meet the highest quality standards. The company’s founder was featured in our Ridge to Reef Costa Rica MRV Lab Teaser last year. | |
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Challenges |
Trust in Modeled Data or Primary Data?The MRVC team participated in a feedback and review session of the GRI Biodiversity Standard. During the call, a presenter shared the following guidance in response to a question regarding gaps in primary data. “The standard recognizes the difficulty that organizations have regarding primary data. Our guidance is that when primary and secondary data is not available, we allow organizations to make use of provided tools and modeling to estimate the direct drivers of biodiversity loss”. We provided feedback to the GRI team and believe that standards and frameworks should mandate or require transparency regarding the ratios of primary, secondary, and modeled data reporting relies upon. If not, risks of greenwashing and misleading conclusions could result from stale data sources. Review the draft and provide feedback by 28 February 2023. |
Do you see Governance as an Enabler?Simon Zadek, NatureFinance at Davos last week spoke regarding several challenges. “We’re at the moment where nature is being added to our accounting — be careful what you ask for”, he warns, recounting decades of work to bring nature more fully into our global economy. “We are at that moment in history where that is happening, very quickly at scale, with huge innovation and excitement and loads and loads of potential risks.” He calls out numerous challenges including regulation, nature markets, web3 — his primary message? One of collaboration by framing governance as an enabler. View his talk here. |
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Where’s the data?Eva Gladek, Metabolic at Davos reported themes from her breakout group identifying what we believe to be the core challenge at hand and which the Github 4 Nature Data Catalog is aimed to address. “People are being hired as biodiversity leads or nature leads however in conversations with them they don’t really know where to start lack of data stored properly and consistently especially when it comes to geospatial insights which are absolutely critical” View here comments here |
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Data, Research & What We’re Reading |
News, nature data, research, MRV applications
January Thematic Focus — Policy & Perspective |
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| Something to share?Submit recommended nature data sources, MRV news, and research. | |
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