78 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SPRING 2022 Social Impact LEADING LEADERS This App Has Planted 1 Million Trees and Pays Those Who Do it An Alaskan-based company called Greenstand has created an open-source, community-driven software platform that enables users anywhere in the world to earn an income by growing trees. It verifies that new trees have been planted and helps tree planters get paid for planting. Greenstand’s Treetracker app supports reforestation initiatives by tracking and mapping individual trees. During the first two years of a tree’s life, known as the vulnerable seedling stage, trees are too small to be captured by drones or satellite imaging, and care must be taken to make sure that these trees are healthy and safe. The Treetracker platform verifies when tree farmers plant and care for their trees and then facilitates monetary compensation for the planters’ stewardship. Most of their projects are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where tree farmers can more than double their monthly income by tracking their trees with Greenstand. The app doesn’t just incentivize people to take care of their local environments; it allows them to make a sustainable living out of it too. The platform’s most basic form allows users to track thousands of trees a day with the easy-to-use app. After newly planted trees are verified, their data is sent to the cloud to be analyzed, placed into digital wallets, and displayed on maps. Each tree’s impact can be owned and traded from these wallets or even linked to any level of digital transaction. Leadership in gender equality; reduced inequalities; peace, justice,and strong institutions The framework is already creating a rich dataset at the individual tree level. It allows each tree’s unique attributes to be compensated for at a per-tree incremental growth level. Once-disenfranchised people now have an option to support themselves and their families through reforestation and participate in the global environmental credit market. In poverty-stricken parts of the world, where people are desperate to earn a living and don’t have the luxury of planting trees for sustainability’s sake alone, the app is a win-win for communities and conservationists alike. “Our app allows for smallholder farmers to act as stewards of their land and earn supplemental income for their efforts,” says Tabitha Kelly, vice president of operation. One of the app’s users, Lucy, is a single mother of three. She and her children survive by growing food on a small plot of land in the semi-desert of Southern Africa. As the local women’s group leader, she has started a massive grassroots planting movement on the ground. Her local group is not only getting paid monthly to grow trees, but they are doing invaluable ecological work too. Before using the Treetracker app, she and her family survived off less than $1 per day. Since then, she has more than doubled her monthly income. This is an entirely scalable story. Erin Baker is head of operations at Greenstand. “Our app allows for smallholder farmers to act as stewards of their land and earn supplemental income for their efforts.” — TABITHA KELLY, VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATION 76 MONEY 77 CLIMATE ACTION 78 SOCIAL IMPACT 74 INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY 79 INVESTING GREENSTAND
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