Smart Nature-Based Solutions Challenge
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
Smart tools to enable nature based carbon capture The algorithm acts as a tool to inform farmers decisions
Imagine a world in which people who manage and care for the land can harness nature’s full potential to avert catastrophic climate change
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1 The algorithm is informed by
data collected about the land
A The climate
THE A LG O R I T H M
B The land
The problem
Why a challenge prize
To have a chance of limiting warming below 1.5°C and averting the worst impacts of climate change, we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere at the scale of 100-1000 gigatonnes by 2100.24 Nature-based solutions (NBS) are among the most low-cost and effective methods of carbon removal, offering a route to tackling the interdependent climate and biodiversity crises. Whilst there is great appetite on the carbon market for NBS to offset carbon, many of these interventions are not meeting their full carbon sink potential based on the local environmental and land use factors of a specific area.25 To optimise land management practices for carbon removal, we need smarter, data-driven tools that can also make it economically sustainable for people who own or manage the land, such as smallholder farmers, to implement these practices.
A challenge prize is uniquely suited to create datadriven tools for implementing nature-based solutions that can lead to systemic change. By raising awareness among regulators and the public, a prize can inform and encourage an anticipatory regulation approach to redefine standards and regulations around highquality carbon offsets. Just as the Open Up Challenge26 enabled access to previously untapped sources of financial data, this prize can explore the opening of new information streams to stimulate data-driven innovation.
farmers share data on successful carbon capture interventions
Crops and ecosystem thrive
and other contextual datasets, the tool should offer farmers reliable and evidence-driven recommendations of optimised land management practices for carbon removal. The winning solution will be co-designed with farmers, building on their experience as well as relevant local and indigenous knowledge, whilst making the process financially sustainable for them via the sale of carbon offsets.
24. V. Masson-Delmotte et al., Special report: Global warming of 1.5°C (Summary for Policymakers), IPCC (2018). 25. Z. Sha et al., The global carbon sink potential of terrestrial vegetation can be increased substantially by optimal land management, Communications Earth & Environment, 3, 8 (2022). 26. https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/open-challenge
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Climate Possible: How funders can accelerate innovation for a resilient future
using data from the algorithm
C Farmers decisions
Co2
4
Co2
£3M to the best solution that enables people to plan and deliver optimised land management practices for carbon removal and financial sustainability The Smart Nature Based Solutions Challenge will empower smallholder farmers and other small landowners to participate directly in carbon offsets markets, or alternative routes to financial viability and sustainability. Solutions should provide people with a user-friendly tool to collect accurate and relevant field data from their land, and map the current carbon capture potential of their existing practice. By combining this with biophysical, socioeconomic
Farmers implement optimum carbon capture interventions
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Farmers benefit through sale of high-quality carbon credits
Digital insights enable maximum carbon capture
Credit Credit
High quality carbon offsets
INDICATIVE TIMELINE Month 1
Month 12
Open call
Consumer trials
- Recruiting community testbeds
- Capacity building
- Innovator outreach
- Grant funding
- Data sandbo released
- Developing business models
- 25 discovery awards disbursed
- Piloting recommended NBS, validating uality of carbon offsets
- Submission of proof of concepts
- Market demonstration of trading carbon credits or alternative financial mechanism
- Finalists selected
- Final submissions
Month 36 Selection of winners - 3M to the winning team