DAOs can be used to protect land by providing funding for conservation projects. For example, a DAO could raise money to support the work of environmental organizations that are working to protect endangered species or habitats.DAOs can also be used to educate the public about the importance of land conservation. For example, a DAO could create a website or social media campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues.Overall, DAOs have the potential to play a significant role in protecting land. By using blockchain technology, DAOs can make land conservation more transparent, accountable, and efficient.Here are some specific examples of how DAOs are being used to protect land:

—The WatershedDAO is a DAO that is working to protect the water supply in the San Francisco Bay Area. The DAO has raised over $1 million to support projects such as watershed restoration and water conservation.

—The ForestDAO is a DAO that is working to protect forests in the Amazon rainforest. The DAO has raised over $5 million to support projects such as forest patrolling and sustainable land management.

—The ClimateDAO is a DAO that is working to combat climate change. The DAO has raised over $10 million to support projects such as renewable energy development and carbon offsetting.

These are just a few examples of how DAOs are being used to protect land. As DAO technology continues to develop, we can expect to see even more innovative and effective ways to use DAOs to protect our planet.

Evolution

There are a lot of cool developments that I’ve seen come up in regenerative finance and there is grant money from crypto to pay for climate solutions.

Asset tokenization refers to the act of turning the ownership of a real world asset (RWA) into a digital token. These digital tokens can be fungible or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that exist in a wallet on the blockchain.

Slowly we see tokenized assets entering the web3 paradigm – for sure an increase in transparency, global access, liquidity, composability, etc. Each tokenized asset can be tracked on the public ledger (or on the blockchain or multi-chains), available to anyone connected to the internet.

One interesting aspect of tokenization is that each token holder joins a community. And token-gated web communities can verify and allow access through verifiable proprietary on-chain ownership.

Tools like Juicebox ETH, Aragon Project, Snapshot Labs, Discord and many many others are making this process faster and easier for any DAO community to get started owning and controlling assets together.

Currently many open-source models for legal structures and DAO governance workflows are being developed, that allow mission-driven (e.g. net zero) organizations and local communities to tokenize real-world assets and propel DAOs.

For example, currently approx. 28% of the 2.3 BN acres of land in the US is governed by various federal agencies, such as Forest Service, BLM National, US FWS and National Park Services. It's the same in a lot of e.g. European countries.

Despite some of the strongest collective protections of public land in the world, current rates & patterns of land consumption and mis-/ab-use will still result in wide-scale loss of natural planetary capital, at accelerating speeds.

Everyday people have almost no voice in the very much closed federal agencies, and also have no direct control on the corresponding budgets. And the ability for the people to actively protect public land is also threatened by government shutdowns ('the cliff') and party politics.

Even if we would fund and direct federal agencies & services properly, they alone are not enough.. we need new solutions at a scale large enough to change our planetary trajectory.

Rising novel governance principles & structures such as (re-)distributed governance, or DAOs will allow for significant improvements to democracy & transparency in many civil aspects. And in the protection, stewardship & conservation of land, DAOs offer many possibilities.

Conclusion

So we started a private-public land DAO for Costa Rica, specifically for our 430 hectares national park land in Chirripo; this DAO, based on open-source frameworks (e.g. toucan.earth), continuously creates land bio-design stewards, and they manage the land until the end of time. The main purpose of our DAO is to create and apply a coherent and whole-systems approach, based on a range of ancient and modern technologies in Chirripo – but in the most ecological, regenerative, and biocompatible way possible.

We also consider tokens for the Chirripo DAO, that are minted when land stewards are verified and accredited. The amount minted is coupled to a biocompatible design rating and by area & size of land managed. But the tokens would be destroyed when land is removed from the regenerative stewardship program or when certain biocompatible design goals have not been achieved.

The Chirripo DAO is a conservatory & protective land investment vehicle for this beautiful region. The key goal for the Chirripo DAO is to increase the commitment of available worldly assets, skills & expertise to regeneration, reforestation & permaculture activities in the area, with the ultimate purpose to heal & care for Chirripo and Costa Rica, to heal & care for the local people, and return of any surplus to the earth.

We e.g. apply design principles such as the 21 so called bio-compatible principles – to design, implement, and maintain systems that are eco-systemic and biocompatible across 3 core categories: eco-sphere, techno-sphere, and anthro-sphere.

These principles are flexible enough to adapt/ localize them to any project, and hereby also to the givens in Chirripo. They are a whole-systems approach for regeneration, which we spoke about in Changing Matter. Our Chirripo DAO is committed to acquire and regenerate the land, steward & protect it as a perpetual community assets – as a small contribution to regenerate our planet and support its inhabitants toward a purposeful evolution.

PS: This idea is rooted in the theory (and my believe) in regenerative economics, creating systems that restore and maintain all physical resources that are essential for planetary and human well-being – for the sustainability of being. It is the alignment of ecology and economy, using Web 3 tools to efficiently reward "Pro-Earth" behaviors & patterns, in a way most nations, companies and other actors are not capable of.