Measuring carbon in nature helps us understand and enhance the role ecosystems play in mitigating climate change.

WWF-Canada’s second technology challenge – Nature x Carbon – is making it easier to identify carbon-rich ecosystems that need protection and measure the impacts of restoration and land use changes.

WHY MEASURE CARBON IN NATURE?

Canada is facing dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Globally, one-third of our climate change-causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions comes from the destruction of trees, ground cover, peatlands, and coastal ecosystems. By safeguarding existing carbon-rich ecosystems, and restoring habitat that absorbs even more carbon, we can slow and reverse climate change while allowing biodiversity to thrive.

Protecting and restoring natural features that catch and store carbon (also referred to as Nature-based climate solutions, or NbCS), plays an important role in achieving our commitments to get to net zero by 2050. But we must be able to measure how much carbon is being captured by nature over time, to ensure we meet those targets. A variety of approaches for carbon measurement already exist, but they often deliver incomplete data and are costly and/or labour and time intensive.

The Nature x Carbon Tech Challenge is supported by founding partner RBC Tech for Nature and national technology sponsor Microsoft.

THE CHALLENGE

WWF-Canada is seeking cost-effective, innovative and user-friendly technologies (hardware and/or software) to support community-led carbon measurement of nature-based climate solutions in Canada.

CHALLENGE STREAMS

Carbon is stored differently in different ecosystems. Therefore, the tools and techniques used to measure carbon in nature will differ depending on the system of study. The Nature x Carbon challenge focuses on technologies that measure carbon in terrestrial and coastal ecosystems. The categories include:

Biomass

Soils

Ecosystems

Read more about these catagories here.

PUT YOUR CARBON MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGY INTO ACTION WITH WWF-CANADA

Up to five finalists of the Nature x Carbon Tech Challenge will have the opportunity to test their technology solutions on the ground with communities that are already implementing nature-based climate solution projects. The robust award packages are designed to help scale the technologies.

Read about the award packages for finalists here.

ELIGIBILITY

We're looking for academics, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors.

The Nature X Carbon Tech challenge will be open to participants from Canada who are over the age of majority. Eligible participants include:

Registered non-profits,

Registered charities,

Co-operative non-profits,

For-profit entities,

Public sector,

Collaboratives (project of more than one organization with the same legal form), or

Multi-sectoral (project of more than one organization with different legal forms).

Pre-register to join the challenge now.