A regenerative land project typically refers to a place-based initiative aimed at restoring, revitalizing, and enhancing the ecosystem in which they are embedded. These initiatives often focus on practices that cultivate a symbiotic relationship between the human and more-than-human kin embedded in that ecosystem. Additionally, regenerative land projects acknowledge and address historical and ongoing injustices and imbalances of power related to land ownership, management, and resource extraction.

The following are common features of regenerative land projects.

1. Soil Health Improvement: Activities such as composting, cover cropping, no-till farming, and rotational grazing are employed to enhance soil fertility, structure, and biodiversity.

2. Biodiversity Conservation: Efforts are made to promote biodiversity through practices like planting native species, creating wildlife corridors, and restoring habitats for endangered or threatened species.

3. Water Management: Sustainable water management techniques, such as rainwater harvesting, restoring wetlands, and implementing water-efficient irrigation systems, are utilized to conserve and improve water quality.

4. Carbon Sequestration: Practices like agroforestry, reforestation, and holistic grazing management are employed to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, mitigating climate change.

5. Community Engagement: Regenerative land projects often involve local communities and stakeholders in decision-making processes, education, and awareness campaigns to foster a sense of ownership and stewardship.

6. Holistic Management: These projects often take a holistic approach, considering the interconnectedness of various elements within the ecosystem and striving for balance and resilience in the long term.

7. Indigenous Land Rights: Recognizing and respecting Indigenous land rights and sovereignty, including Indigenous peoples' knowledge, practices, and cultural connections to the land.

8. Land Governance: Transforming land governance structures to be more inclusive, equitable, and participatory, with a focus on decentralized decision-making and community-led stewardship.

9. Environmental Justice: Prioritizing environmental justice by addressing inequalities and disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on marginalized communities. This includes ensuring that regenerative land projects benefit local communities and contribute to social and economic empowerment.

10. Healing and Reconciliation: Acknowledging and addressing intergenerational trauma and healing relationships with the land and among different communities. This involves fostering reconciliation processes, building trust, and promoting dialogue and collaboration between Indigenous peoples, local communities, and other stakeholders involved in regenerative land projects.

Overall, regenerative land projects seek to restore degraded land, promote ecological resilience, and create thriving, diverse landscapes that benefit the entirety of the web of life. Regenerative land projects create an opportunity to not only restore ecosystems but also to advance social justice, Indigenous rights, and holistic approaches to land stewardship that honor diverse ways of knowing and being in relation to the land.

Quadratic funding distributes matching funds based on the number of people who have donated, not only donation size. It helps ensure that matching pool funds don’t just go to the communities who raise the most money, but also to those projects with broad support. You can learn more about quadratic funding here.

Gitcoin creates technologies and opportunities that enable communities to build, fund and protect what matters. Gitcoin’s software is what enables the grants administration and quadratic matching. Learn more about Gitcoin here.

There is no cap on how many crowdfunded donations a project can receive. From the $100,000 matching pool, there is a $25,000 max cap per project.

Yes! You will need the ability to transact ‘onchain’ in order to make a donation or to participate as a land project. We are using the Arbitrum network on Ethereum to conduct the round. For step-by-step tutorials to getting onchain, go here.

The $100,000 matching pool funds are being provided by Biome Trust, a charitable foundation in service to ecological health and wellbeing. Learn more about Biome Trust here.

We hope so! This is our first experiment and we will be evaluating the results when determining future iterations. Our aim is to support regenerative projects with additional funding streams. We anticipate the user experience in crypto will continue to get easier.

We are exploring with Hypercerts, leading MRV (Measuring, Reporting, and Verification) providers, and other actors in the “refi” (regenerative finance) ecosystem how to streamline impact measurement in a way that benefits both grantees and donors. Projects are asked to describe their intended impact when applying for the round. Those who apply for future grants rounds will also be asked to show how funds from this initial grants round were used for regenerative purposes. We will share our learnings and scorecards on MaEarth.com.

The round is now closed. Please watch this space for further updates.

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