🎮 How can gaming and blockchain preserve the forest? Climate Guardians - Play to preserve
Challenges in forest preservation. Why gaming and blockchain can be a new solution.
As humans, we all like to play games. From kicking balls in the garden when we were kids, to becoming fruit ninjas on our mobile phones as an adult.
Game is lindy, which means that it has survived the test of time. According to an archaeologist from the University of Chicago, games have been used for thousands of years as a form of social interaction, teaching tools, and sharing of cultures with future generations (one of the oldest games was found in Egypt around 3,100 BC).
Growing up in the age of digital games, I have learned a lot by playing games, such as strategy from “The Age of Empires”, life skills from “The Sims”, and why being a gangster is a bad idea from “The Grand Theft Auto”.
I recently met a very interesting person, Stefan Kermer, a PhD of Climate Economics with 10+ years experience in the start-up scene. He is currently building a blockchain based game that aims to preserve the forest, called Climate Guardians.
He called it the “Play to Preserve” concept, a regenerative version of the “Play to Earn” model of web3 games.
In this article, I will start by exploring the current challenges that we have today in forest preservation, and why gaming and blockchain can be a new solution.
🌲 Preserving forest
Since 1990, we have lost around 420 million hectares of forest around the world, which is larger than the size of India. In the last 5 years, the rate of deforestation is estimated to be around 10 million hectares per year.
Imagine losing the grass in your garden or your hair at a rapid pace every year. You want to stop it right.
How can we preserve our forest? Currently, there are already various projects and organizations that are working on forest preservation, reforestation, and afforestation (planting trees in an area where it never existed before). However, there are still few challenges to stop deforestation faster and on a larger scale.
Here are some examples:
1. Raising awareness
Scientists have published various papers about deforestation (>2000 research papers). But truth be told, not everyone can understand or want to read complicated journal papers.
The scaremongering strategy of the media might also not be as effective. Too much bad news will lose its power in the end. We need to be creative to increase awareness on deforestation, especially to the younger generations.
2. Funding
It is estimated that to preserve forests globally to fight climate change, it will cost up to $393 billion per year. Traditional financing methods through public grants and loans might not be enough to pay this huge bill.
Not only the amount of funding that is a challenge, but also which projects are receiving the funds. In the current system, governments or organizations have the ultimate decisions on the fund allocation.
It is usually done behind closed doors in a bureaucratic process. We need to find a new way to fund forest preservation projects and democratize project selection.
Source: Wholesome memes
⚔️ Climate Guardians: Play to preserve
What is Climate Guardians?
Blockchain based games are a new solution to save our remaining forests. Climate Guardians is a mobile and PC based strategy game with a vision to create a fun way for players to make a positive impact on climate change.
It is the first to adopt the “Play to Preserve” concept, which means that by playing the game, players are contributing to preserving the environment, especially deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
Climate Guardians is also free to play, anyone with a mobile phone or a PC can join the movement to fight deforestation at their fingertips.
The game play of climate guardian is fun yet simple. Players will be playing as a village chief, guardian of the forest, fighting enemies that are trying to destroy the forest. If you have played games such as Clash of Clans or Clash Royale, you will love it.
But Climate Guardians is unique from other existing games. Players are not only destroying monsters in the digital world but also fighting against deforestation in the real world. Everyone playing the game can now have a real-world impact on climate change.
Climate Guardians operates on the Celo blockchain, a blockchain network that has a decentralized finance (Defi) ecosystem built specifically for mobile. As a result, it allows players to earn an in game-currency called Sols that can be traded in the future, and collect different types of characters as NFTs (Non fungible token).
In the Climate Guardians Metaverse, different NFTs will have different utility, such as adding special fighting skills of the troops, adding new defensive capabilities and design to a building, and owning lands to build more structures.
Players can also collaborate and trade with other players in the game. What a fun way to play with friends and save the forest at the same time.
Source: Climateguardians.io
How Climate Guardians will help to preserve the rainforest?
As a Web3 Refi (Regenerative finance) project, it plans to create a Rainforest DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) treasury that uses a pool of funds from its users for good.
The community will decide what kind of forest preservation projects will receive funding from the Rainforest DAO. Project voting will happen effectively and transparently on the blockchain.
Climate Guardians is currently under development and will be launched in early 2023. In the meantime, you can already try the mini game here and taste the feeling of becoming one of the Climate Guardians heroes.
If you want to learn more and be part of the community, join the discord channel here and get a chance to be in the whitelist.
Thanks for reading this article and enjoy the weather ☀️.