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Climate change threatens the health of our ecosystems: an estimated $845 B of annual investment is needed to protect our natural environment, but today's spending (~$134 B) falls far short. Increasing worldwide investment in nature-based solutions (NBS) is critical to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
But closing the funding gap alone isn't enough. Dollars need to go towards field-proven, scalable projects, and investors and NBS credit buyers need ongoing transparency into project integrity and outcomes.
Remote earth observation is positioned to do just that: enable scale, integrity and outcome transparency, across the full lifecycle of NBS projects – from initial diligence to long-term monitoring. There is no scenario where global nature investment scales to the levels we need without increased, efficient oversight of those investments.
With the proliferation of high frequency, high resolution satellite data sources and derived datasets using those sources, there are fewer barriers than ever to incorporating remote sensing into NBS diligence and monitoring workflows.
And that's why we built Lens. We set out to build the most accessible platform for remote project analysis and monitoring, combining a vast library of satellite imagery and environmental data with the tools needed to empower organizations to utilize them. Today, organizations—from international conservation non-profits to Fortune 500 companies—use Lens to monitor over 140 million acres worldwide.
A quick review of recent satellite imagery, biodiversity datasets, and land-use history can illuminate project risk and opportunities within minutes. For carbon project investors, such as Lens customer Apple’s Restore Fund, understanding biodiversity and habitat metrics can help determine whether a project site is appropriate for tree planting. For investors in agricultural practices, multispectral data can help detect the history of water rights usage or cover cropping.
Monitoring projects can be one of the largest barriers to investment efficiency. In the past, conducting regular monitoring involved at worst an in-person visit and at best an expensive and manual technical resource. Lens changes that by democratizing access to key data and the tools needed to unlock their value.
For example, Lens’ Lookout provides user-defined change detection alerting, allowing project investors to take on their own long-term monitoring of project areas without a significant cost or time burden. For forest based projects, information from sources like Sentinel-2, Planet, or Chloris can allow for near-real-time detection of deforestation or forest degradation with limited team capacity requirements.
Or, if you need a partner to carry out the ongoing monitoring of your investments, our in-house team of Lens experts can design and execute a monitoring protocol with and for your team. Get in touch.
Remotely-sensed data enables investors to understand project impacts over the long-term. Additional insights into project areas lead to better investment decisions over time, as teams learn from the outcomes and challenges of their work. Given the ongoing concerns over the integrity of NBS projects, this type of continual learning and assessment is critical for fostering greater investment in effective projects in the future.
Lens is already an important tool in the toolbox of many NBS investors and credit buyers. Lens aggregates data from a wide-variety of sources critical to investor diligence and monitoring and builds the tools needed to make that work quick and easy — no special geospatial experience required.
Lens is used by Apple’s Restore Fund, SailVentures / &Green, the Iowa Soybean Association, the American Forest Foundation, the National Forest Foundation, Climate Asset Management, Supercritical, and many other NBS investors to support their work.
Ready to get started? Sign up for Lens or get in touch with our team for more information.
