

Blockchain for Sustainability
March 20, 2020 | Article
"We are living on this planet as if we had another plant to go to"
Climate change and sustainability are two crucial topics not only in the past or in 2019, but also in the future. Greta Thunberg has highlighted the importance of making a global change before it is too late. In order to avoid a hothouse earth scenario, we have to significantly reduce the global greenhouse gas emissions by 55% before 2030. This impacts future generations on an incomprehensible scale.
There are many definitions of "sustainability" and may be hard to boil down to one. Nevertheless, sustainability is widely considered as made up of three pillars: economic, social and environment. Or informally known as profit, people and planet.
Merkle Tree Innovation Foundation works with different research labs, universities and NGOs to explore possible solutions on how to use blockchain technology (e.g. rewarding individuals who reduce their carbon footprint by tokens and those tokens are usable in brands/shops which are environmental-friendly, etc.) to make our environment more sustainable without impairing the existing development pace.