IBM and Rebalance Earth To Work Together on Elephant Conservation

As organizations work to address climate change, supporting nature restoration - particularly?keystone species?- is an imperative to addressing climate change. African elephants, an endangered keystone species, play a vital role in maintaining Africa’s ecosystem despite facing threats like poaching and deforestation.?

IBM?and?Rebalance Earth?are planning to join forces as partners to help address these challenges, starting with the African forest elephant (a?IUCN Red List of Threatened Species?), whose overall population has declined by 98% in the last decades.

Elephants as a keystone species

The African Forest Elephant, one of the largest land animals on Earth, lives in the forests of Central and West Africa and is considered to be critically endangered. Influential in shaping their habitat, the elephant eats forest greenery and creates pathways for small animals, in addition to spreading seeds across the forest through their dung that help fertilize new plants.?

Unfortunately, poachers are targeting elephants in hopes of profiting as the ivory trade is estimated to be worth?$23 billion?per year. However, when an elephant is able to roam around in the wild, and let perform its activities as nature intends (removal of low density vegetation, fertilization of the ground), these elephant’s natural activities yeild a valuation of up-to $1.75m according to the?IMF (International Monetary Fund)?based on today’s ecosystem service valuations.

This concept of natural capital - the world’s stocks of natural?assets, including geology, soil, air, water and?all living things - is where humans derive a wide range of services, often called “ecosystem services.” Natural capital is gaining more market focus as organizations work to identify avenues to achieve nature neutral or positive status. Natural capital was a key focus area for many global business, organizations and governments at last year’s?UN Global Biodiversity Conference, COP15. COP15 concluded with the creation of the?Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an agreement designed to restore ecosystems and address biodiversity loss by 2030, while respecting the rights of local communities and indigenous peoples.?

One of the Framework’s primary targets addresses the role that the keynote species plays in the larger ecosystem: “Restore, maintain and enhance nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, such as the regulation of air, water and climate, soil health, pollination and reduction of disease risk, as well as protection from natural hazards and disasters, through nature-based solutions?and/or ecosystem-based approaches for the benefit of all people and nature.”?(Target 11)?

When considering the role of African forest elephants and the role they play within the scope of natural capital, organizations looking to reduce or balance their own carbon footprints could consider nature-based credits that can be directly tracked using technology.

IBM to?provide Consulting Services and?Sustainability?Software?

IBM aspires to make a lasting, positive impact on the world in business ethics, our environment, and the communities in which we work and live.?This engagement with Rebalance Earth allows us to continue our work that matters for the communities and wildlife we service.

IBM Consulting hosted a series of meetings with Rebalance Earth to explore mutual collaboration related to Rebalance Earth’s materials and IBM’s products, with a goal of exploring collaboration related to innovative products, services, and businesses described around the use with Rebalance Earth to create a sustainability strategy designed to increase the accuracy of elephant tracking and create an opportunity for organizations to harness the power of natural capital. Rebalance intends to explore leveraging??IBM’s advisory services and technology, Rebalance Earth as an orchestrator of natural capital and nature credits, who are leading the conservation efforts for elephants with an ecosystem of conservation partners. This partnership is aimed to provide a holistic approach to supporting the nature restoration of elephants, and making meaningful impact on climate change.?

Through pilot datasets of images provided by camera-traps and film, we’re identifying unique elephants that could be later tokenized and traded for the ecosystem services that they provide (e.g., carbon sequestration).?The current use cases are pertaining to Head and Tusk related image recognition (like a fingerprint for human), with a scaling of all angles of the elephant, and historic datasets from birth to adulthood also to follow.??

Rebalance Earth as an orchestrator of nature positive?capital

Nature markets make up?$9.8 trillion worth of goods and services — equivalent to 10 percent of global?GDP, however to date, nature has either been seen as a resource to be extracted or a global common good, yet nature is our life support system and 100% of the economy is 100% dependent on nature, but not?all of nature's value is recognised in economic activity. Nature markets are a sub-set of the economy where nature is specifically traded and valued.??

Rebalance Earth’s mission is about “enabling a world worth living in where nature thrives, economies are sustainable and communities are resilient and prosper”. Rebalance Earth is fast proving itself a global “green” leader by developing the first ecosystem services platform that captures the carbon sequestration services of keystone species. The funds generated from this initiative are then utilized to fund the species’ conservation and raise the living standards of its human neighbors while furthering the science and data-driven knowledge of our interconnected planet.

Our personal thanks to Walid Al Saqqaf - Rebalance Earth Robert Gardner William Vine Ian Redmond Ralph Chami for the collaborative engagement, and partnering in purpose to make lasting impactful change for Elephants and all Nature related resources.

I would also like to thank Dr. Arnulf Koehncke and Thomas Breuer for the continued support in this collaboration as well.

As the saying goes, "when the elephants walk, the forests walk with them" (Sudha Ramen).

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