Ep. 9 Global Reforestation Efforts with Silvi Protocol

Today we get inspired by the global reforestation initiative with Djimo Serodio of Silvi. Djimo shares how his journey through agricultural technologies and environmental science education has culminated in the Silvi Protocol.

This episode sheds light on the critical role of indigenous tree stewardship, and also the sophisticated methods Silvi Protocol employs, using blockchain technology to foster transparency and further enhance environmental initiatives. 

We unearth the challenges and breakthroughs of the evolving landscape of natural capital investment in aligning financial mechanisms with positive environmental impact. Djimo's insights into collaborations with MRV (measure, report, verify) organizations and the creation of hypercerts reveal a very real and possible future for investment in our planet's health.

Djimo's Twitter
Silvi.Earth

Transcript

Djimo Serodio: 0:06

There are 70,000 tree species around the world and the volume we do have around propagation and nurseries and saplings are, as mentioned, limited to a few commercial tree products and we really need to scale up indigenous native tree stewardship.

Cash Upton: 0:36

Welcome to ReFi Generation, the podcast that talks to experts and leaders in the new frontier of regenerative finance to examine how blockchain technology is creating the next generation of environmental and humanitarian initiatives. I'm your host, cash Upton. In today's episode, I have the pleasure of talking with Jimmo Cerodio of Sylvie Protocol. Sylvie is aligned with the global mission of planting one trillion trees. From the nearly six trillion trees that used to cover the world, we've already lost three trillion of those trees. Sylvie believes this should be distributed and decentralized, with tree species, specific methodologies. Sylvie is seeking to scale up indigenous native tree stewardship. Jimmo teaches an environmental science course to high school students, using aquaponics to teach the nitrogen cycle, water cycle and ecosystem dynamics. Sylvie was born in response to the DGEN atmosphere that Jimmo saw, where investment time horizons were not aligning with the asset classes they actually represent. We discussed thoughtful critiques of the ReFi space and Jimmo suggests that ReFi should pursue longer term bonds and horizons in order to allow protocol mechanisms to mature. Go plant the tree folks. Hi, jimmo, how you doing today, hey.

Djimo Serodio: 2:10

Cash. I'll go just spending Christmas in your endeavor.

Cash Upton: 2:13

Oh, all right. Yeah, I was going to ask where you're calling in from.

Djimo Serodio: 2:16

Usually based in Florida, but I have some family here, yeah.

Cash Upton: 2:19

Okay, cool. Yeah, I saw that some of Sylvie's work was happening in Florida, so I'll definitely want to dive into that. I also saw you were on the Planta R podcast, the Portuguese podcast.

Djimo Serodio: 2:30

Yeah, season one with Rika. I think I was the third or fourth recording. It's not out yet, but yeah, he met with John and they already spoke about the podcast, so that was pretty cool.

Cash Upton: 2:42

Really cool. I'm not going to go into the Vagabond podcast in Spanish, but my Portuguese is not good enough to listen to that. Is that where your family's from. Are you originally from Brazil or Portugal?

Djimo Serodio: 2:54

I'm originally from Mozambique in Southern Africa, but I am also Portuguese. So yeah, definitely a Portuguese family.

Cash Upton: 3:03

Cool, very cool. Well, that's awesome to have some other ReFi podcasts, not just in English. I was excited to see you on that. I saw that you're on the ecological benefits framework called the other day, so I want to dive into that with you a little bit later. But kind of start with the background. In ReFi We'll dive into what Sylvie Protocol is doing, introduce our listeners to the Sylvie app and how that's working and then just pick your brain a little bit on ecological benefits framework, hyper-serts and just the broader regenerative finance space in general. So how'd you get into the ReFi space? What's your background?

Djimo Serodio: 3:35

Yeah, so my background is in agriculture. I've been working on all types of agriculture technologies, from vertical farming to greenhouse tech, a lot of hydroponics and aquaponic systems, some consulting, and so I've generally been sort of navigating towards regenerative and sustainable ag. But before Sylvie I thought that I had learned more about basic chemistry and environmental science by being involved with aquaponics, and so I put together a startup called Just Learn where we developed aquaponics systems and curriculum to support environmental science learning, particularly in high school grade levels. So Just Learn is still going. We've deployed over a thousand systems and we scale that to over 40,000 students, mostly in the Florida area, some in the Northeast as well, and at some point we were sort of thinking about a new module. So the aquaponics really covered indoor activities and we were now thinking about how to engage students outdoors, and so we're developing a reforciation module.

Djimo Serodio: 4:50

But long story short, I was also quite plugged in the Web3 space and the reforciation module quickly spun off into Sylvie, its own protocol. I saw some gaps with the early refi mechanisms. Primarily the time horizon of things like staking and bonding did not align with the asset classes that they represented and felt a little bit degenerative. So Basically, sylvia was born to try and align impact to the actual time horizon that Reforestation calls for. So we're talking about at least six months, but ideally like six plus year type of months.

Cash Upton: 5:34

Okay, interesting. Yeah, I like that feedback and a little criticism on the space. So the impact of carbon sequestration, or the benefit that Reforestation has, is a longer time horizon than more traditional mechanisms that you saw.

Djimo Serodio: 5:48

Yeah, basically I'm not against disproportionately incentivizing early adoption, maybe even having, like crazy, apuis I don't know if you remember the last bull cycle, but the volatility I think needs to be solved for. So when you are offering that, those types of returns, but you're only locked, you only lock up liquidity for four days. That just completely allows for, you know, for a wreck, pooling and for projects not to get a chance to take off. And so when you think about capital deployment and capital commitments, you're not really giving a fair chance for a project to properly deploy capital in real world. Regenerative activities and Reforestation to me is it's symbolic, but it's a bit of the epitome of this work. Now, that's not to say that a lot of the early refi work you know it was working with existing carbon credits and so my statement is a general feedback, a general critique. But for the most part I do think that refi needs to pursue those longer term bonds and longer term horizons to really sort of allow for protocol mechanisms to mature.

Cash Upton: 7:05

Yeah, from DGEN to REGEN. I love that you're building something sustainable with longevity yeah, absolutely. And super cool that you're doing K through 12 education with aquaponics. I mean, aquaponics has so much benefit to farming, it's cool that you're in that space.

Djimo Serodio: 7:20

Yeah, we're not so much teaching agriculture. We're actually using aquaponics to mimic the world, and so we're teaching things like the nitrogen cycle, the water cycle, ecosystem dynamics, you know concepts like pH and yeah. So there's a lot. For sure it contributes to agriculture, it matters, but it's mostly like an environmental science course.

Cash Upton: 7:46

Okay, yeah, that's interesting because it is. You know, especially with reforestation, there's a lot more that's necessary than just planting trees and sequestering carbon, right? Is it a monoculture? Are you allowing for biodiversity? Is water happening to get replenished and stuff like that?

Djimo Serodio: 8:03

Perfectly said yeah, biodiversity, I think, is a really important one, and aquaponics helps you understand what's inoculating a system and population dynamics of its microbiome and ultimately the introduction of fish and plants, but different species of fish that balance out the water column. It's really cool.

Cash Upton: 8:24

Awesome, okay, well, let's dive into Sylvie. What's the Sylvie protocol down?

Djimo Serodio: 8:28

Yeah, so Sylvie is really aligned to this broader global mission of planting trillion trees. I'm not sure if you're familiar with some of the research that has come out of the Crowther Lab. Ultimately, the World Economic Forum has adopted a lot of that movement not to be controversial, but it is nonetheless a target or a goal that I fundamentally believe in. We basically had six trillion trees in the beginning of time and we've lost almost half of them. A lot of it was pre-industrial revolution with raw materials like wood and timber and construction, but also a lot of the deforestation primarily more recently has been because of population growth and agriculture, but we're still facing incredible deforestation, and not nearly as much deforestation, however, agricultural land use has peaked just a couple of years ago, and so deforestation is actually slowing down significantly and more land is protected every year and there's finally some hope around the deforestation side of things. But we're not nearly making up for new tree growth as quickly as we should, particularly to meet the trillion tree target, and most deforestation that happens is less than a dozen species or so. They're mostly commercial grade timber products like eucalyptus and pine, etc. And so what Silvi is doing is building tools to help finance and coordinate a reforestation, you know, following a few theories of change. The first one, I suppose, is that it should be distributed and decentralized and anybody should be able to partake in it. But for that to happen, we ultimately need, like species specific methodologies. There are 70,000 tree species around the world and the volume we do have around propagation and nurseries and saplings are, as mentioned, limited to a few commercial tree products. And we really need to scale up indigenous, native tree stewardship.

Djimo Serodio: 10:44

And so we're, at Silvi, basically doing three things. One is building tree forward instruments. These are the smart contracts that program tree investments according to various milestones surrounding a methodology or an area or species. The second thing is, because we need species specific methodologies, we're building a library of species and location specific methodologies with a goal of scaling it kind of appear to appear around the world Hopefully getting as close as possible to the 70,000 tree species out there. We're currently working with about 45 or so. And then the last piece is the MRV, the monitoring, reporting and verification. So for all of this to happen, you really need to be able to verify the work, and in fact the MRV is part of the guidance. So we've built an app that basically guides all the methodology milestones with curated UI that basically tells you hey, the next report you need to do is to take a close-up photo or a front or side photo, or maybe you're reporting on saplings or you're reporting on plantics. So yeah, basically the app just walks you through how to report on a particular methodology.

Cash Upton: 12:04

Okay, cool. Yeah, I was going to ask about the MRV side because that is where I've heard a lot of people say is one of the bottlenecks, and the space right now is how to make sure that the measure reporting and verification happen. So the app is a good place to start. Can we dive a little deeper into that? Where do you see some of the improvements still need to happen with MRV and how it's still tackling that?

Djimo Serodio: 12:27

Yeah, I mean my MRV has been around for a while. I suppose DMRV what most people call digital MRV is sort of where we're at, transitioning from analog systems and very analog verification work and, by the way, mostly done by accredited bodies of verification. These are certified people that work for certifying bodies or accreditation bodies etc. And so in this digitalization efforts clearly there's a lot of practicality and efficiency by having digital interoperable data that can live in the cloud and that can scale and adopt things like computing and perhaps software, logic etc. I would say that there are some really exciting things happening with satellite MRV data. So things like understanding at scale the growth trajectory of a restoration project or picking up on deforestation, by the way. So these are usually land use, land cover models or algorithms. There are things like vegetation growth index or even a lot of color coding that can just kind of infer the direction of these projects.

Djimo Serodio: 13:49

The problem with satellite data is that it typically requires some amount of maturation from the trees, in that the resolution of satellite data is not that fine, that precise, and at best maybe you get half a meter resolution, but more likely you get three meters.

Djimo Serodio: 14:12

Ten meters are the cutting edge satellite services and you cannot detect individual trees for crowns that are smaller than, say, three, four meters, which typically the trees are at least four or five, six years old. And so there's a gap in MRV before satellites can infer kind of area-based analysis of a project, and therefore there's also a gap for census-based analysis, which is census-based analysis basically just means that you have an account of every tree, and so what Sylvia is really doing is focusing a little bit more inherently on the earlier lifecycle of the tree, but really where it is human-centric, a lot of the steps pre-planting and then the early post-planting steps. This is where cell phones and even drones can be leveraged to produce high-resolution, high-fidelity data. Basically we can combine coordinates with timestamps, photos, information on the steward who participated, and then we can also cross-reference that with a high-resolution drone image, for example, so we have a high-fidelity claim around any tree-related reporting.

Cash Upton: 15:35

Okay, that's really cool. Now it seems like there is a whole bunch of tools happening that are making it so that it can actually be verified and not just by the traditional third-party creditors that are more entrenched in the traditional way. But boots on the ground, people with cell phones and drones is a really cool way to make it happen. I went to a talk recently by Dave Muffy. He's a tree specialist. He did all the tree planting at Apple's headquarters. Oh yes, and really interesting guy who comes at it. He has a Stanford PhD and comes out from a very scientific background.

Djimo Serodio: 16:12

What I really appreciate about his work is this concept of chasing climate. So how do you plant trees that can actually be optimized for what their environment will look like in 40, 50, 60 years? And I know he has a lot of experience in that field and has given him a few talks. But lucky you did you hear the talk in person.

Cash Upton: 16:34

Yeah, it was in Ventura. I live in Ohio and so it was really great to hear his. Well, it was very scary to hear that, like you know, corkis agrifolia, the coastal live oak, is going to be in 90% less habitat in California in 90 years, and so, with your tree library and actually like diving deep into thousands of tree species. I think that's really cool because he was talking about, yeah, going down to northern Mexico and areas in Arizona where there are more resilient oak trees and planting them here.

Djimo Serodio: 17:06

Yeah, exactly and definitely. You have these natural migration of species. Because the north is warming up, then it is more ideal to bring southern species there and then the species of the, say, central belt can then move even more north. So and that is not just imported for the trees, the particular resistance or adaptation of the trees, but also for all the entire fauna, for example butterflies and animals that depend on those trees, as host species right to live on. So it's really a complex, integrated problem. But I think that speaks to why we need more precise species, specific methodologies that can easily scale outside of the hands of the professionals but in a you know, hopefully reach mass adoption and mass participation.

Cash Upton: 18:09

Yeah, and I especially love the biodiversity angle that you're taking. So maybe this is a good segue into the ecological benefits framework mindset of not just looking at the carbon sequestration of the trees but tracking other metrics, and you know what the thought process is with Sylvie on that.

Djimo Serodio: 18:26

Yeah, well, we're deeply inspired by what EBF has accomplished and I think that biodiversity frameworks are going to be, they're going to be developed for many, many years.

Djimo Serodio: 18:41

But EBF, I think, offers us a framework to look at important things like biodiversity.

Djimo Serodio: 18:48

Of course it's not limited to biodiversity, but a lot of us are quite excited at the biodiversity angle and, at the very least, I think it offers a framework for us to understand a pipeline of practice-based activities that can ultimately render certain outcomes, because most credit systems are issued upon the certification of, let's say, a carbon ton being sequestered, but it might take at least wood reforce station it's an S-curve right so it can take actually quite some time until we're in peak sequestration, a period for a forest.

Djimo Serodio: 19:30

But we can start to understand with a high level of certainty and confidence that certain practices that we can implement today, whether it's planting or planting the right trees, or amending the soil in a certain way, or introducing biochar, these practices, while they haven't sequestered carbon yet or they haven't restored a biodiversity corridor, they will lead to those outcomes. And I think the EBF framework, as a particularly with a lex icons approach, is just a very interesting toolkit and framework from which we can start to communicate the needs of projects, the associated practices those projects are receiving and, potentially, what types of outcomes we they are seeking as well.

Cash Upton: 20:20

Absolutely, especially just the communication aspect of it. Like you said, being able to talk about six different areas of impact rather than just one and being able to kind of get everyone on the same page of how we look at something I think is really important. One thing that you know I've been talking to a lot of folks about is the philanthropy side of environmentalism and how regenerative finance is able to provide some monetization and rewards for people who are on the ground regenerating the earth and not just having to be philanthropy. So I'm wondering is there monetization mechanisms built into Sylvie or will there be in the future?

Djimo Serodio: 20:56

Yeah, I mean, this is a, this is a. I guess it's a sensitive topic because the very how we test, which was created to understand what a security is, involved citrus plantations, citrus orchids, which are trees, effectively Now the reserve on investment. There are oranges or lemons or whatever specific citrus tree they were referring to. But the same applies to whether you're returning an agricultural commodity or a carbon credit or potentially even a different type of biodiversity credit. So I certainly believe that there are two, maybe three types of directions that things will go that involve solving this. You know, the first is basically just regulations to be relaxed tremendously and to allow for for for investment schemes and instruments into natural capital. But the other is, if regulation isn't relaxed, then I think there's going to be a lot of innovation on the impact certificate side of things, because it's not direct return on investment, particularly a monetary one, but it's still a claim that I believe can be made and can be potentially retired and can be used to service on a footprint, and so that generally, I think could could work. The other is the tokenization of protocols don't necessarily need to be directly backed by returns on investments, and so, for example, some of the protocols maybe just to mention Klima Dow.

Djimo Serodio: 22:44

I'm not sure if you're familiar, but going back to the early days of ReFi, those tokens they considered being backed by carbon credits. Each token in circulation was backed by an X amount of carbon credits. But there it is a gray area, right, because the way they returned ROI wasn't by distributing carbon credits to stakers was to issue more clima and distribute the native clima token. I actually believe in that model. I think there is a distinction or a separation between what a token represents but what it is truly backed by. There could still be buy-in and psychological adoption of protocols that are doing good and that are navigating in between the words of what the Howie tests deliberately say, for example.

Cash Upton: 23:39

That's really interesting. I didn't realize Howie test was originally for citrus. That is really interesting. Have you heard much about the earth coin from SolarPunkDAO?

Djimo Serodio: 23:51

A little bit. I definitely see a lot of activity. I'm generally excited by what they're doing, but I can't tell you exactly what they're doing. Are they creating an instrument to invest into regenerative projects?

Cash Upton: 24:05

Yeah, it's a digital currency and they're backing it by various projects from Solar to regenerative agriculture to eco-villages. I think they're involved in the traditional dream factory. They were just on the podcast. I was talking to them about this. But you're right, there is regulation and compliance issues that do make it difficult to be able to reward people for doing good, because a lot of people are just burdened by life. Being able to make an easily investable tool that has positive externalities, I think, will help a lot more people be able to flex their impact and make more stuff happen on the ground.

Djimo Serodio: 24:50

Definitely. I think that's optimistic about that. I think retail participation is important.

Cash Upton: 24:57

With impact certificates. You made me think about hyper-serts. Have you had much interaction with those?

Djimo Serodio: 25:04

Yeah, a little bit At traditional dream factory. A month and a half ago or so for ReFi Week, we had the planting action that Sylvia was involved. We actually minted a hyper-sert. That was defined by that action and actually with some insight from EBF, it was like first, I think, worlds first. It was a tree planting action with tree MRV and looking through the lens of EBF that ultimately made into a hyper-sert. It was a very early prototype but I think it exposed us to what's possible.

Cash Upton: 25:49

That's really cool. Yeah, I just had Sophia Dewan episode three. We were talking about hyper-serts and I think there is a place for them in the ecosystem. It's exciting to see how they evolve. What are some of the specific projects Sylvia's working on? Just to give our listeners a little idea of where your focus is right now.

Djimo Serodio: 26:07

Yeah, historically we've been mostly focused in Kenya.

Djimo Serodio: 26:11

We've gone through multiple iterations of the app and, by now I think, five cohorts of farmers We've worked with a total of maybe 50 farmers.

Djimo Serodio: 26:23

In the Kaka-Mega Forest specifically, we have worked with about 150 users globally but definitely concentrated adoption in the Kaka-Mega Forest, which is the remaining tropical rainforest in all of East Africa. It was connected to the Great Congo Basin back in the day. We are basically engaging communities at the outskirts of the Kaka-Mega Forest and hyper-locally collecting seeds, propagating and planting within a square mile or two. Stewards are participating basically in the entire reforestation supply chain. That's historically, and now we've pledged 25% of our Bitcoin grant and Bitcoin 19 grants to spearhead a global, basically to catalyze our open beta project that is onboarding eight to 10 different nodes or projects around the world who are interested in reforestation. They are receiving small subsidies via the microgrants, user onboarding documents, local and native reforestation documents and the Sylvie tech to basically start being able to tell the world their impact story with regards to reforestation. I'm super excited to be partnering with Demeter, which is a broad, multi-member MRV organization and network, because they're super interested in collaborating with us and spearheading their own initiatives, but also heavily involved with EVF.

Cash Upton: 28:05

Awesome. Yeah, I just learned about Demeter so I'm excited to dive into them more. Yeah, seeing that they're doing MRV stuff in the space is really exciting. Yeah, you should talk to T-Rex and to yeah, basically Sev as well with Sunflower Ecotech, that's right, yeah, sev is lined up to come on in January sometime, and then T-Rex was on right before ReFi Week. I did talk to T-Rex and Sam there at the traditional green factory in Sofia, right, how was there?

Djimo Serodio: 28:37

I remember.

Cash Upton: 28:38

Yeah, super rad that you were there for that. With your app, you're making me think about NF Treehouse with Jade Dharmawangsa doing Urban Tree Reforestation. Have you heard about what she's doing?

Djimo Serodio: 28:50

I think I've heard about NF Treehouse all the way back to Ark Basel's ago.

Cash Upton: 28:54

Yeah, it was kind of a PFP project where you're then supporting urban tree planting, reforestation, but it was still pretty early in the days of ReFi, so I need to check back in with Jade. Actually, but my tree lives in East LA. It's a California cottonwood so you can see it on a map as well. So I think there is some overlap there. So pretty cool that it seems like you guys are also just taking it to the next level too. I mean that's a perfect example of a collaboration.

Djimo Serodio: 29:20

I mean, they have a whole minting process of storytelling visuals where they're minting these tree NFTs or NF Tree specifically, but then we can come in and help with the data, perhaps our certain amount of the proceeds of the NFT reserved for follow-up, verification of its existence, not just for the planting and the sourcing of the sapling. So, yeah, would love to connect with them to see, to explore how both our protocols can collaborate Cool.

Cash Upton: 29:49

Yeah, I'll put you in touch. They're definitely. They had a portion to dedicate to making sure it had water and fire protection for at least five years, but I think being able to connect you guys would be really cool.

Djimo Serodio: 30:00

So yeah, program that into a methodology that's kind of like automated.

Cash Upton: 30:05

Well, as we wrap up, do you have any other thoughts to share with our listeners on ReFi or just kind of how our listeners can support the work that Sylvie's doing?

Djimo Serodio: 30:12

Yeah, well, you can check us out at silvieearth. We're mostly sharing updates on our Sylvie X or Twitter and every now and then we put together these big threads. But soon enough for 2024, we're definitely going to start engaging community a bit more via Telegram group and potentially even some Discord. But yeah, if you're interested, feel free to reach out. I'm super interested in working with anybody and everybody around the world who's interested in trees and reforestation and then keep up with a Demeter collaboration and with a EBF and ReFiDow EBF collab as well. I think there's just so many cool things that are going to come up that Absolutely yeah.

Cash Upton: 31:01

ReFiDow is doing some great stuff. Are you going to be at ETH Denver? If you live in Denver, I assume we'll see you there.

Djimo Serodio: 31:08

That's the plan right now is to be here, yes.

Cash Upton: 31:11

Well, I will be there as well, so definitely when I meet up and buy your beer. Thank you for all the cool work you're doing.

Djimo Serodio: 31:16

I'll buy you a second one.

Cash Upton: 31:17

Take care. Cheers Thanks to Matthew Patrick Donner for the ReFi generation production, including the music mixing and editing. As a reminder, none of this is financial advice, and feedback is the breakfast of champions. Please subscribe to our show and send your thoughts, critiques and ideas for future content. Be well, take care of each other and do something good today.