The climate crisis is not an impending issue; it is here and now. We must mobilize as many solutions as possible as quickly as possible.
There is no silver bullet to solve the climate crisis, but restoring our forests is one of the most important levers we have to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.
Pachama is a technology company on a mission to restore nature to solve climate change. We harness the latest advancements in satellite imagery, remote sensing, and machine learning to evaluate the carbon stored in forests and monitor forest growth over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QwQLVVgpMY
Modernizing carbon markets
The carbon market offers a way to pay landowners to protect their forests and reduce carbon emissions. Today, the funding fueling carbon markets comes from the purchase of carbon credits. Each carbon credit represents a one metric ton reduction in carbon emissions, which is used by the buyer to compensate for one ton of carbon emissions produced elsewhere.
But there are critical challenges with the current market. A series of recent publications and news articles have questioned the credibility of forest carbon credits, specifically citing that projects have overstated their climate impact. Pachama has long recognized this issue and has been working to build technology solutions.
For decades, carbon crediting has been built around manual field measurements, assumptions, and PDF files. While technology has evolved, carbon crediting has not kept up. These older technologies and methodologies are prone to human error and bias making accurate measurement challenging. New technologies offer a more high-integrity and scalable future for carbon markets.
Figure 1. On the left, foresters measure plots of trees by hand to estimate forest carbon. On the right, is a sample forest height map Pachama has produced for Pará, Brazil using satellite observations including radar and lidar.
Using technology-enabled measurement to ensure quality
Rather than solely relying on these hand-based measurements and assumptions based on historical trends, Pachama is using satellite data and artificial intelligence to observe reality on the ground. We’re working to develop more accurate and efficient methods for calculating baselines and building regional-scale forest carbon maps. Pachama recently released initial results from our algorithmic dynamic baseline research. You can dive deeper into the research here. Pachama is not only doing cutting-edge research on new solutions, but we are already employing remote sensing technology to evaluate project quality. To date, we’ve evaluated over 150 forest carbon projects across four major registries, and fewer than 30% have met our stringent criteria. In September, we released the second iteration of our Project Evaluation Criteria, which raises our quality bar even higher. What do we mean by ‘quality’? Every forest conservation or restoration project listed on the Pachama Marketplace is evaluated based on our core quality standards:
- Accurate: The carbon project’s emissions reductions have been conservatively quantified.
- Additional: Emissions reductions wouldn’t have occurred without the incentive of carbon credits.
- Durable: The carbon project delivers a long-lasting climate impact ensured by continuous monitoring and public reporting.
- Net: The project has not simply moved deforestation from one place to another; producing no net climate benefit.
- Beyond Carbon: The project causes no net harm and delivers biodiversity and community benefits.
To ensure forest projects uphold these standards, we’ve developed our Evaluation Criteria, which include a series of quality checks each project must meet. Check out an overview of these checks below:
If you have any questions or feedback about our Project Evaluation Criteria, we invite you to reach out to us at science@pachama.com. We strive to continuously improve our Criteria as technology advances and new research is published.
Invest with confidence to meet your climate goals
At Pachama, we have two core pathways to help companies meet their climate targets today and create long-term strategies for the future:
- With Pachama Verified, companies can invest in existing high-quality forest conservation and restoration projects vetted by Pachama’s rigorous evaluation process.
- Through Pachama Originals, you can invest in your own high-quality forest projects from the ground up, secure credits to reach net zero, and make a transformative impact on communities and ecosystems for generations to come.
When investing in Pachama, you're also investing in assured quality, the ability to monitor projects through remote sensing technology, and the power of data visualization and intuitive reporting.
We are excited to join the We Don’t Have Time community! Follow us on We Don’t Have Time, Twitter, and LinkedIn to see how our mission helps address climate change. 
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Fantastic
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Superb!
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Really interesting!
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Very interesting work, your technology should be used in all carbon markets that want to be trusted!
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This is a great idea
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Scaling up nature based solutions. Well done.
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Finally some carbon credits that we might be able to trust!
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I had no idea that carbon markets were still using archaic measurement methods. However, it's good to see that Pachama is leveraging newer technologies to make carbon markets more transparent!