Nemus on the Ground Impact

Article originally posted on Nemus Medium

We’re excited to?announce our first payment?to support economic activity for the indigenous communities that live in the area of our Genesis drop in the Amazon rainforest. Our withdrawal from the Nemus smart contract began on June 10th. It covers our first mission and will pay for several of the initiatives introduced in our?last town hall.

Our aim is to protect the Amazon, while focusing our investments on generating activity directly related to economic events.?After extensive conversations with the local community, and a collaborative review of their needs along with immediate areas of opportunity, we are focusing our efforts on Brazil nut harvesting during the upcoming dry season. As such, most of the expenses are going towards equipment and people preparing access and inventory data on all the Brazil Nut trees we have on our property. This is arduous work and takes quite some time since the teams will have to be in the forest for extended periods of time.

The total amount withdrawn is around US $113,000 (dependent on exchange rate), to be distributed as follows:

1. US $ 12,000 for Infrastructure
2. US $ 23,500 for Operations & Logistics for Monitoring
3. US $ 16,000 for Operations in Economic Activities
4. US $ 38,500 for Operations including planning, research, management, and Security
5. US$ 15,000 for Specific requests from Communities
6. US$ 8,000 Misc expenses such as purchase and sale agreement, notary costs and fuel and food for teams.

A deeper dive into each category of expenses:

1. Infrastructure?includes transportation, fuel for 3 months, and the purchase of 1 RTV for general use on clear cut areas and access roads.?This RTV will significantly improve all operational aspects of the Brazil nut harvest, enabling us to harvest more nuts in a more efficient and faster way.

2. Operations for Logistics and Monitoring?includes a team of people for monitoring and a new boat engine for the local Lieutenant in charge of monitoring the area which is roughly the size of Holland.

The dry season that we are coming into, is also the time when you will start seeing a lot of fires in the Amazon, because over the last few months, people have been clear cutting in some locations and then the dry season comes along and they set fire to the logs and the brush that is there so that they can open up new pasture. You can actually see the fires from miles and miles and miles away. The problem is how do you get there to stop the fires when they are often located six to seven hours by boat from our location. So if there’s any threat of deforestation or clear cutting, we want to be able to have the military police and the forestry police access these locations, so that they can stop any illegal activity that’s going on.

One of the investments that has been requested is from the Lieutenant who is in charge of this battalion of military police. His task is to protect an area almost the size of Holland with 12 people with no highways. Instead of highways he has local rivers and without a boat with a decent engine, there’s very little that he can do. So one of the things that we’re doing is purchasing an engine for his boat.

— Flavio de Meira Penna, Founder Nemus

3.?Operations for Economic Activities: Includes a team of people to work for 6 months counting, numbering and locating all of the Brazil Nut trees (inventory set-up, much the same as we do for Sustainable Harvesting). This also includes opening of access trails by the community members, so that the Brazil nuts are accessible by November when harvesting begins.

4.?Operations for Planning: This includes the Forestry Engineer, local GPS, drone surveillance, and land documentation. This must be concluded in order to make moves on the illegal squatter’s removal.

What used to be 2,400 hectares of clear-cut area is actually closer to 3,500 of which around 1,000 was done in the past 2 years. We have also discovered a new set of squatters, with 10 houses, on the Western portion of the property. This expenditure also includes a small security force — 2 men (which is going to be necessary for the next few months) and a team of Environmental Engineers, an Architect and a Forest Planning engineer. This portion of the Funds could come out of the Land Purchase Funds since it is related to land documentation, and squatter negotiations, etc.

5.?Community requests:?This includes additional special requests from local communities ranging from the purchase of a generator, care for stray animals in the region, and compensation.

These funds will be allocated over the next 90 days running through August.?Through this activity, we will be generating 22 direct and paid jobs for this period, and countless volunteer work.

With over 20 million people living in the Amazon, we see this as sustainable economic activity that will have a positive economic impact that can serve as an alternative to the clear cutting that many of these small subsistence farmers are resorting to.

While Mission One may seem like a small step, it is an important first step toward proving the use of NFTs in conservation. It is a scalable and sustainable solution to deforestation, taking action against a challenge we all face.