climate – stefferber

Today’s wounds & scars: The Impact of Colonialism

Uganda as well as Indonesia rank very low on the transparency international corruption perceptions index with 144 and 96 respectively. The structural corruption, patronage, and nepotism is visible every day from police checks on the road to natural resource deals with top politicians:

“These days, Indonesians have rather a low tolerance for real corruption, for pure, self-serving greed […] That other type of ‘corruption’ – the one that leads to bad appointments and bad roads – is complained about endlessly. And yet no one gets voted out of power for that kind of patronage (In the 2004 elections in South Sulawesi, eleven of the thirteen provincial parliamentarians who had previously been convicted of corruption were re-elected”) That’s because everyone continues to expect their Big Men to deliver to their clan.” Pisani, Elizabeth. Indonesia, p.158. Granta Publications, London, 2014.

And as you get more involved, the boundaries of corruption and “a deal” get very blurry, particularly in Indonesia, a nation that has been successful in trading since the 12th century. I have never seen so many “Middlemen” helping to serve but also taking their proper share of “the deal.”

Our exceptional tour guide and multiple young entrepreneur, Nasser is very proud of Uganda’s independence.

Down two Rabbit Holes: Crypto & CO2

In the public knowledge, Bitcon is the slowest, most expensive, and most energy consuming database on the planet. From my perspective this problem is solved with switching from “Proof-of-Work” to “Proof-of-Stake”; although Bitcoin will continue with “Proof-ofWork” – maybe even there are some interesting Bitcoin climate options.

Crypto technology and organizations promise or already offer:

transparent public ledgers for trust building
International payment and trading systems
Independent institutions from national authorities organized in Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)
Smart contracts build on open source
Highest innovation speed based on thousands of talented enthusiasts
Evolution of today’s decentralized finance into regenerative finance

and will therefore be relevant for the CO2 removal market. Both the crypto technology (see unofficial state-of-the-art messari report) and the CO2 Removal market are in early innovation phases. I dived deeper into both rabbit holes and captured three possible benefits of crypto technology for the CO2 Removal market:

Keeping records of CO2 removals in digital ledgers in order to report and auditing CO2 removal activities.
Using Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) to capture a CO2 removal activity
Using CO2 crypto tokens to trade CO2 removals independent of national currencies

The real revolution behind crypto and web 3.0 is its new approach of highly motivated people to collaborate fast and intensely: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

But on the down-side, both rabbit holes share a major communication problem: It is impossible to understand what is going on here without learning the special tribal language and concepts. My recommendation is to start with the Carbon Removal Primer and Normie’s Guide to Becoming a Crypto Person. Good luck, don’t get stuck too long in the rabbit holes. I did!

The “improbable nation”: Indonesia

My next trip in April to Borneo, Bali, Java, and Flores introduced me to the “improbable nation” of Indonesia: 273.8 mio people of 1,300 ethnic groups with 719 languages live on 6,000+ of 16,000+ islands across three time zones.

Hopping Nusa-Tenggara islands in Indonesia

Climate impact: CO2 Markets & Trees

As I belong myself to Generation Golf, working in the automotive business for several years, I dived, during my sabbatical, into the UN Sustainable Development Goal: #13 Climate action. The clock is ticking:

Synchrodestiny! The Fairventures CEO Johannes Schwegler invited me to join the software spin-off TREEO for some months as a volunteer and mentor. TREEO’s core idea is to empower millions of smallholder farmers to plant trees. Farmers will then sell CO2 removals to net-zero companies via a smartphone app like they sell bananas or cocoa on their local market. In order to lock the CO2 for 50+ years, the harvested wood will be used in the building sector or in Biochar, serving as a long term CO2 sink. Potentially, 205 GtCO2 can be removed additionally with planting trees world-wide. Particularly, in areas with rainforest climate due to the amazing quick growth of trees. The German TV-show „Das schaffst du nie!“ planted 1,000 trees on 24h in February 2019. After 24 months, in April 2022 the Sengon trees have grown up to 29 cm diameter (DBH).