Earthshot Labs

Earthshot raised a Series A and that’s not what really matters. I’m really glad to share that Earthshot recently closed a $5.5m Series A to serve land stewards everywhere to get paid for regeneration, support offtakers' due diligence, and facilitate project investments. This last year we’ve been working mostly under the radar, growing with the huge influx of demand from partners looking for rigorous alternatives to conventional carbon developers. Earthshot has worked on more than 60 reforestation and conservation projects, directed more than $55m in project finance, and we are profitable and hiring across all teams. In the self-reinforcing swirl of venture capital, it sometimes seems like fundraising is the most important news there is. It’s not. The news is ecological heroes addressing the greatest challenge of our time. It is the 15th straight month of record heat, unprecedented in human history, consistently above the 1.5 degree target that used to be the policy goal for a stable climate. We must deploy .5% of global GDP (around $500BN per year) for ecosystem restoration and conservation, and we’re a fraction of the way there. Our partners at BirdLife International have done epic work across the globe, working on new projects together in Cambodia, Paraguay, Indonesia, Madagascar, and numerous other places. Tree Aid did a huge expansion of their reforestation operation in Burkina Faso, with more countries in the African Great Green Wall next up. Corporate, NGO, and government partners across Guinea, Mexico, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Peru, Brazil, Mongolia, and more have trusted us to support their projects end to end. Trust and integrity is what this market needs to scale. Earthshot’s mission is too important to be subject to the hype cycles of venture. This is why we’re very excited to be supported by a team of investors with long-term conviction: Acorn Pacific Ventures, Future Ventures, Earth Foundry, One Small Planet, Parameter Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, Resilient Earth Capital, and more. Thank you to everyone who has joined the journey so far. If you’re reading this, feel the responsibility to act, and want to apply your talent, capital and will toward ecological regeneration, please reach out.

Wrapping up Earthshot Labs's second fieldwork in Madagascar with Cecilia Simon and Alejandro Gómez Chica. Happy to be engaged with such amazing local and international partners in protecting and restoring some of the country’s critically endangered forests and their unique biodiversity 🌳

I've been working with Google Earth Engine (GEE) for over a decade now, and it's still my go-to tool for developing fast, precise geospatial analyses and presenting the results in an interactive way. A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Geo4Good summit in São Paulo, where I had the privilege to connect with software engineers, remote sensing experts, and heart-centered scientists committed to protecting and restoring natural systems. One of the standout innovations was GEE’s new embedding fields technology (not yet released!). Essentially, they've built a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) using spectral and radar data to predict key attributes like land cover, GEDI observations, and biomass. What’s really exciting is that they publish the activations from the layer just before the outputs, creating a compressed, learned representation of the input data. This representation is highly relevant for ecological monitoring. With the heavy computational work already handled, these embeddings can be combined with simpler machine learning techniques (like K-means) to generate insights. One of my summit highlights was making a solid land cover classification on my phone with just a handful of sample points! Beyond learning about the latest datasets, updates, and ways to integrate GEE into broader cloud ecosystems, I also had the chance to present how we at Earthshot Labs are using GEE to meet the technical challenges of Verra’s ARR methodology (VM0047). I also got to join experts like Vasco van Roosmalen of ReSeed and Gabriel Ribenboim of Impact Bank, along with forest technologists Tania Franco of ChacoVivo and Kyle Woodward of Spatial Informatics Group, for a panel discussion on trust and technology in carbon markets. The challenge is clear: investors need confidence in the accuracy of projections, local communities need assurance that projects will serve their needs, and the market as a whole needs transparent data to trust that nature-based solutions can deliver on their promises.

We (my amazing friend and colleague Sara Betancur and I) were told we would encounter an INCREDIBLE variety of coffee produced by farmers for over a decade in the Valle del Cauca, Colombia. And they were right. They didn’t tell us how INCREDIBLE it would be to meet the people and hear the stories behind those coffees, lands, and crops. On behalf of our business partner and client, BirdLife International, and as part of Earthshot Labs's team we conducted a field trip to support the pre-feasibility of an ARR (Agroforestry, Reforestation and Restoration) project with Calidris, an NGO based in Cali. We had the chance to visit 14 farms where agroforestry with coffee and grassland for cattle was being practised in El Cairo and El Dovio. During those 14 visits, we heard stories of farms filled with lush forests that were once mere pastures, achieving incredible biodiversity; the impact of the climate crisis on these lands; tales of a group of women fighting against the system for a dignified education in a rural landscape, among many inspiring others. And, one common factor we found in many of these stories was the connection between nature (the farm) and their well-being. We took away from this field trip technical lessons shared by Serraniagua, an NGO based in El Cairo with an incredible team dedicated to their people, exemplifying how to create and sustain a true community. We also learned from ACERG, an educational NGO that has achieved excellent engagement in El Dovio, instilling the importance of nature care from a young age. Equally important, we witnessed the impact Calidris has had on the protection of reserves and bird biodiversity, reflecting that with genuine interest and the necessary support, tangible results can be achieved. We look forward to continuing a potential new chapter in this ARR project!

Earthshot is coming to NY Climate Week! Feel free to reach out to our teammates Ezra Neale, Anika Staccone, Olivia Palma, Rita Croce, G Tamber, and Leticia Labre. We're ready to talk about large scale ecosystem restoration and conservation, as well as how to get these projects financed!

🌏 hummingbirds is very proud to announce its first Nature-based project in Asia!  We are partnering with the NGOs BirdLife International and NatureLife Cambodia to launch a forest conservation project to reduce #deforestation and avoid GHG emissions in the Lomphat Wildlife Sanctuary. 🌳 The Lomphat Wildlife Sanctuary REDD+ project will be deployed under the management and control of the Ministry of Environment of #Cambodia in the Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces. It aims at conserving over 130,000 hectares of diverse Cambodian forest ecosystems, including evergreen, semi-evergreen, and dry deciduous forests through the implementation of: ▶️ Site management with ranger patrols, community protected areas, awareness raising and boundary demarcation; ▶️ Livelihood improvement with sustainable rice production, micro-credits fund and scholarship distribution; ▶️ #Biodiversity conservation, including flagship species monitoring of globally threatened fauna such as the eld’s deer, sarus crane, red headed vulture, giant ibis and the white shouldered ibis.        With the support of Earthshot Labs.Labs, the project should soon be registered and issue its first high-quality credits.  Over 11.6m tCO2eq emissions are expected to be avoided from being released in the atmosphere for the next 40 years.   A big thank you to all the people who have been working their heart out on this project over the past months: Bou Vorsak, Camila Meza-Cuadra, Cecilia Simon, Alice Ward-Francis, Richard Grimmett, Anaïs BACH, Inès Venencie, Pauline Bommier, Melina Gersberg, Adrien Borras, Vitor Vannozzi Brito, Coline Ciresa and Alexandre Lépée among others!

Our ally BirdLife International is seeking a Senior Nature-based Solutions Project Manager for Africa. If you have experience in managing nature-based solutions projects and a passion for environmental impact, this role is for you. You’ll play a key role in supporting BirdLife Partners as they develop innovative NbS projects across the continent. 🌍 More info here: https://lnkd.in/eeSec99a #teamearth

Welcome to the team Rita Croce! We're so glad to have you :) and pssst, we're still hiring for the BD team so if anyone is reading this, you could be Rita's teammate!

🌳 Join Earthshot as a Social Safeguard Specialist! 🌍 We are seeking a highly skilled specialist to ensure our nature-based carbon projects meet all relevant social safeguards. Our new teammate will implement social safeguard requirements, conduct workshops on social impact assessments, support project validation and verification, and guide our partners. If you know someone who enjoys doing field work and is proactive, detail-oriented, and has a deep love for nature, please share this role. We have an incredible team, flexible work environment, and a mission that engages us all. 💙 https://lnkd.in/gUvMHVJ2