At the COP26 press conference in Glasgow, Scotland, on Wednesday, a number of experts from the technology environment spoke to citizens around the world to better coordinate and support action to tackle climate change with blockchain technology.
GloCha United Civil Society Organization (UCO) was launched to work on enabling climate at COP26 as a blockchain-based quasi-international organization headquartered in Klagenfurt, Austria. It will now seek to leverage blockchain technology to promote climate change in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UCO is part of the Action for Innovative Climate Empowerment (ACE_AT) and Global Challenges Empowerment Consortium (GloCha). It facilitates open discussion of a community’s collective vision of action to tackle climate change and promote resource mobilization at scale.
GloCha partners with the UN-Habitat Youth Program and the Climate Chain Coalition, in particular to work with youth climate groups to build the technological and institutional infrastructure needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals through impact-driven entrepreneurship models.
Organized by GloCha founder Miroslav Polzer, speakers included Romy Somaria and Dairu Sediki and Cointelegraph Editor-in-Chief Christina Korner, who specifically represented UCO as a media partner.
Romy Soumaria, Co-Founder and CEO of Oblique Life, spoke about the possibilities of mobilizing financial and human capital against climate change initiatives through the implementation of blockchain technology and said:
“Blockchain will allow us to ensure that those who invest in these projects can understand where their money or time is going, what kind of metric they are looking at, and know their return on impact (ROI).
The organization’s roadmap sets goals for the publication of an official report at the end of February 2022, followed by a proposal for registration at the beginning of April 2022.
Additional considerations include allocating carbon footprint offsets to crypto tokens, mobilizing resources through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and supporting multiple community engagement projects.
UCO will work with relevant government systems to build these partnerships in the coming months, and they are expected to be rolled out at COP27 to be held on the African continent in November 2022.
Experts from Citizens United at COP26
APCD CEO, Chad and longtime GloCha partner, Dairou Sidiki, commented on the importance of engaging African citizens on sustainable development issues and promoting innovative solutions:
“We think it’s a great idea for this partnership to come to fruition in order to raise and mobilize resources for action to tackle climate change, particularly in Africa, and consider potential options for Africans and help them implement those solutions on the ground.”
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During the COP26 conference, a number of opinion leaders in both the ecological and crypto ecosystems expressed serious concerns about the increased energy-intensive activity on blockchain networks such as Bitcoin.
A leading digital resource has discouraged climate experts from being too reliant on fossil fuels to support mining, a mainstay in its creation and operation.
Earlier this year, a group of research experts from the University of Cambridge published the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, according to which Bitcoin consumes 121.36 TWh annually – a seismic measure measured by the energy consumption of countries like Argentina.
A number of crypto companies that intend to research and develop solutions to decarbonize their blockchain activities have gained momentum in recent months.
Jack Dorsey Square teamed up with Ark Invest this year to publish a memo claiming that Bitcoin offers a unique opportunity to spur innovation and introduce a green grid powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
The report concludes by citing analytical data from accounts such as the break-even cost of energy, or LCOE, and lines dedicated to determining the ease of transition to cleaner production:
“The bitcoin and energy markets are converging and we believe that today’s energy owners are likely to be the miners of tomorrow.”
