dMeter is designing holistic data collection processes that provide robust information to inspire, improve, and incentivize local action to regenerate our world
MRV → Regenerative Finance → Regenerative Design and Development
dMeter is a project that lies in the context of MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification), a space working to collect, format, and present ecological and social data required to claim eco-social credits that can be sold on a marketplace, providing compensation for doing activities that improve the ecological and social state of a place.
Currently, MRV covers the following use cases
You can explore projects using MRV/restoring ecosystems here
MRV provides an important leverage point for the development of the regenerative finance space, a space that aims to create the financial infrastructure to incentivize the regeneration of planetary and sociocultural resources instead of extraction, which is incentivized under the current paradigm. With higher quantities of holistic eco-social data, we can more accurately design economies around eco-social resources and closely understand the downstream, multifaceted benefits of investments into eco-social resources. Without holistic data that can be collected relatively inexpensively, it will be difficult to provide the necessary data to prove the effectiveness of regenerative projects, which need nuance and complexity in the approach to implement correctly. The work of organizations like Regenesis shows that regenerative approaches to design and development of our built and cultural environment have exponential downstream positive effects, but if we don’t have the data to prove it and improve our approach, effectively mobilizing a large amount of capital to invest in the regenerative process will become more difficult.
MRV as it exists has many gaps that prevents many people and organizations from getting consistent funding to implementing regenerative projects. The narrow focus on carbon markets drives focus away from regenerative projects, towards more conventional projects that, while drawing down carbon, may contribute to further wealth inequities or grassroots community disempowerment. The data collection process isn’t standardized, so projects have varying pieces and qualities of data that makes it difficult to create a larger picture of how each project is holistically benefiting the larger ecosystem.
To solve these issues, dMeter is working on a design process for MRV that’s based on digitally enabled decentralization and standards for data collection that leverages multiple layers of technology and grassroots involvement to make MRV affordable, holistic, and consistent. The resulting high-quality eco-social data can then be monetized and folded into the larger regenerative movement in many ways that are still being explored.
You can get a big-picture understanding of dMeter’s context by referring to the graphic below: