The incompatibility of climate change and capitalism is one of the main reasons for failing with our mission to stop climate change on time. The Environmental Compensation Initiative by Mandatum is one step more to addressing that incompatibility. ECI consists of merchants and consumers paying our planet back every time we consume any product without the economic burden. The payback funds the conservation of our natural carbon sinks.
Protecting our forests and oceans is the most scalable and cost-effective way to address climate change. More importantly, the conservation of our natural carbon sinks is the most immediate solution to climate change as it is reducing and avoiding CO2 emissions today: Nature conservation has the potential to solve 1/3 of the problem we are facing on climate change which is to maintain temperatures below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. There is no doubt that we should prioritize climate change efforts toward what is already working, our natural carbon sinks. Unfortunately, we are losing the measurement of one football field of forests by the second. Meanwhile, we continue placing most of our capital and resources to fight climate change into much-needed technologies that would scale in the long term; According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), EVs will explode from 0.7% of the total vehicles in 2020 to 31% by 2050. Thirty years. Focusing on saving our forests and oceans buys time. How to do it immediately when there are tremendous economic incentives that lead us to destroy and degrade our natural carbon sinks? The answer is that only money counterbalances money.
There are only three ways to fund conservation at scale: governments, philanthropy, and carbon markets. Governments and philanthropy are unstable, especially in downturn economies. Carbon markets are facing unimaginable growing pains, and we ran out of time. The best chance is to make philanthropy recurrent, sustainable, and reliable, and that is all possible with our Environmental Compensation Initiative. The ECI makes capitalism and climate change compatible by making philanthropy an integral part of the value chain, so shoppers and vendors generate funding at no extra cost every time a transaction takes place. The ECI also makes commerce/e-commerce more efficient.
Only money counterbalances money, and the protection of forests and oceans is no exception. Like a subscription model, we will pay an annual fee to countries for protecting natural carbon sinks. A profitable alternative for countries to any economic incentive driving deforestation, like oil explorations or cattle ranches. The funding to pay the fees come from repurposing money we are using and by making an installed base of 26+ million online stores more efficient. DTC brands use their sustainability strength to differentiate from big retailers. Online shoppers take climate action using the merchant’s money. Everybody wins with our Environmental Compensation Initiative at Mandatumdotco.
The potential is up to $500 billion/year, and our initial goal is $50 billion/year of sustainable and recurring funding by 2030 for nature conservation in low and middle-income countries. We guarantee an immediate impact by focusing on the Amazon Rainforest, which accounts for 54% of primary forests on our planet. A team of biodiversity experts guides us in how to deploy the funding to generate instant impact. These are biodiversity experts whose only priority is to fight climate change and the biodiversity crisis without any conflict of interest. Nature First.
The incompatibility of climate change and capitalism is one of the main reasons for failing with our mission to stop climate change on time. The Environmental Compensation Initiative by Mandatum is one step more to addressing that incompatibility. ECI consists of merchants and consumers paying our planet back every time we consume any product without the economic burden. The payback funds the conservation of our natural carbon sinks. Yes, Mandatum makes it possible to pay back without an economic burden for merchants and consumers. Online stores embrace the Environmental Compensation Initiative as part of their value chain process. Thus, every time a transaction takes place on e-commerce, the system generates the means and the funding to compensate the environment.
If you landed on this blog from an online store which already joined the Environmental Compensation Initiative, please help us with word of mouth as we want to reach the $50 billion milestone faster. If you are reading this for a different reason, please visit our webpage and contact us. Merchants participate for free, and they fund their climate action initiatives with a budget-free approach. Their customers take climate action at no cost by shopping from the brands in our initiative. They save not only the planet but also some money.
