Sep 29, 2022   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Watr and Flowcarbon Partner to Bring Tokenized Voluntary Carbon Markets to Ethical Commodities

Today, Flowcarbon, a leading climate tech company scaling carbon reduction and removal projects, and Watr, the pioneering Polkadot parachain for ethical commodities, announced a partnership to bring the capital, talent and technology of decentralized finance to the voluntary carbon markets on Watr - in service of the $17 trillion USD commodities industry.

The partnership will see Flowcarbon launch its carbon tokenization technology and infrastructure on Watr Protocol as a foundational building block of Watr’s decentralized carbon ecosystem. The aim is to support the exponential step change in carbon credits needed to service the net zero commitments made by industry for 2030 and beyond.

Today's on-chain carbon ecosystem is fragmented and excludes the largest demand centers for the voluntary carbon market (VCM): industry and commodities. This partnership sees Watr and Flowcarbon collaborating to ensure novel VCM products are co-created with, and amplified by, expertise and demand from the largest consumers and participants in the VCM including industry and commodities.

“Tokenization allows a deeper connection with the source through traceable and transparent carbon credits, which are critical to ethical commodities. We believe that with Watr’s ecosystem, we will expand access to a high demand center and drive climate action more efficiently and effectively. We are looking forward to seeing the impact that this partnership will have on the voluntary carbon markets,” said Dana Gibber, Chief Executive Officer at Flowcarbon.

The Watr ecosystem bridges the institutional giants of commodities and retail participants with web3’s leading technologists. The combined potential is immense and immediately material to global dilemmas around the footprint of our consumption - in agriculture, metals and energy. Flowcarbon is an important part of the puzzle to meet these demand requirements with high-quality, verified carbon credits. The novel business models and infrastructure emerging from this partnership will enable more efficient and democratized financing of climate action while providing connectivity to commodity flows for industry, end-consumers, traders - and ultimately at-scale onramps for retail participation.

“We see the tokenized voluntary carbon market as a powerful tool for inclusion. It allows a broad capital base to participate in climate action alongside institutions and traditional finance. It also allows intimacy with sources such that DeFi, industrial and traditional capital can be focused on the geography, project and community of their choice - even linking climate finance to the very communities from which extraction and production of commodities is occurring. This intimacy and inclusion is game changing and we see Flowcarbon’s leading ecosystem, technology and talent as important enablers of this future,” said Maryam Ayati, Co-Founder and Council President at Watr Foundation.

The next iteration of how society consumes and how resources fuel global prosperity requires new business models and tools to ensure a more balanced outcome: people and planet alongside profit. To this end, the partnership sees the two organizations also collaborating on a series of incentivized development programs focused on the VCM. The endgame is to establish thriving marketplaces and infrastructure that bring greater accountability, scale, accessibility, transparency and price discovery to the voluntary carbon market and commodities.

For those interested in participating, please contact Ecosystem@watr.org.

About Watr

Watr is the digital commons for ethical commodities. A public Layer 1 protocol and Polkadot parachain for d’apps servicing provenance, procurement, financing and trade in the $17 trillion Dollar commodities industry: from carbon credits to metals, agriculture, and energy. The objective is Interoperability across digital ventures servicing the end-to-end of a new class of ethical commodities for physical delivery. Watr is co-founded in a first-of-its-kind collaboration between industry giants, commodities, and Web 3 pioneers including Parity Technologies.

About Flowcarbon:

Flowcarbon is a pioneering climate technology company that brings carbon credits onto the blockchain. Its mission is to make carbon markets accessible and transparent, enabling the efficient and early flow of capital to be invested directly into projects that combat climate change. Flowcarbon is committed to driving real impact for people, biodiversity, and the planet. To learn more about our work visit our blog.