Deforestation To Be Curbed With Blockchain In Paraguay

By Rishma Banerjee

Paraguay is one of the countries with a severe case of deforestation, and that is why a group of German entrepreneurs has come up with a project that aims to save trees by minimizing their cutting down. We reside in a world, where, every minute, our planet loses 27 football fields worth of forests, which adds up to more than 75,000 square kilometers. Deforestation results in about 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a major cause of global warming.

The project that has been initiated looks forward to stopping deforestation, one small step at a time. The system is that the company will be offering participants a share in an ambitious reforestation project in Paraguay, where fast-growing eucalyptus trees will be planted across an area that is bigger than the city of Paris. This land, every four years, will then be generating a profit from selling the eucalyptus timber, while more and more forests will be saved from being cut down. The goal of the team is to accumulate some 597 square kilometers of recovered forest area that they say will “continue to generate profits forever.” The project was presented at BlockShow Asia by a group of German businessmen led by Mr. Jörg Schäfer, also known as Mr. Green.

The company will be issuing a security token, TREE which will be under Swiss jurisdiction where, one TREE token is equivalent to one tree planted at the start of the project and will be worth $23, with all land purchases and management overhead included. The company promises that 50 percent of the profit from selling the timber will be reinvested for buying more land to plant more trees, and 10 percent will be donated to charities to support projects related to “nature, water treatment, hospitals, child care centers, foundations, and associations for people with handicap and disadvantages.”

The current project’s scope is 22 years, and during that period, the TreeCoin team will seek to amass some 597 square kilometers under its management, becoming one of the largest landowners in Paraguay.

The Tree Coin is also supposed to provide a “dual offering” method, where every TREE security token issued will trigger the emission of 100 TreeCoins, the accompanying payment tokens of the project. Seventy of these will go to the holder of the TREE token, and the remaining 30 will go to the project team to cover expenses and pay workers’ salaries.

The project is being backed by the Paraguayan government, as a legal tender into the local economy where the project will be functional. To incentivize TreeCoins’ use, TreeCoin plans to partner with local grocery stores in order to offer discounts between 15 and 20 percent on all purchases made with TreeCoins.