17 IDEAS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD

Last week WWF’s award-winning innovation program, Panda Labs, announced the launch of Impactio, a platform which enables funding for projects at scale that help solve the world’s most pressing environmental and social issues.

In 2015, 193 countries and thousands of businesses agreed to an ambitious blueprint to end poverty, fight inequities and tackle climate change. This is known as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).

However, we face a $2.5 trillion annual funding gap to achieve the SDGs by 2030. This is not due to a lack of capital. Rather, what is lacking is a robust mechanism for linking private dollars to viable, large-scale SDG-advancing projects with well-developed concepts. Enter Impactio!

Impactio is a blockchain-based online platform that links project owners, subject matter experts, financial modelers, philanthropists and impact investors together to identify, improve and fund projects from across the globe to support the advancement of the SDGs. We aim to build a community of allies in a ‘brains trust’ to develop the best ideas and projects that have impact so that they are ready for funding, and to reduce the onerous requirements needed to apply to different funders. Impactio has also proved useful by providing a collaborative platform for the project leaders to talk to leaders and subject matter experts, to act as sounding boards and given opportunities to refine their own ideas. 

The 17 curated projects have now been presented to donors and organisations such as Australian Ethical for funding. Here are the 17 projects with their ideas that could change the world:

1. iBUILD: (USA & Kenya)

iBuild connects people in need of shelter with construction workers and supplies, and facilitates open access to housing support services that will guide individuals through the housing (re)construction process.

2. Plastic Mesh Design for Porous Roads (Australia)

This project aims to enhance the life cycles of roads by developing a new plastic mesh for porous roads that reduces wear and tear from heavy vehicles and potential road melting from increasing temperature. 

3. Modelling integrated community development planning from the ground ‘owner’ up. (Papua New Guinea)

This project aims to provide training and support for traditional landowners to integrate Ward Development Plans that improve governance and are tailored to address their community disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation needs.

4. Deserts Go Green (Pakistan)

This project aims to mobilise desert communities of Pakistan and provide alternative economic solutions so that cattle don’t continue to be the only source of income generation. 

5. Büyük Menderes Cleaner Textile Production (Turkey)

A Bankable project which aims to protect and restore the Büyük Menderes River Basin while simultaneously promoting bankable cleaner production practices in the Turkish textile sector. 

6. Ngarra Limestone Bay Conservation Estate (Australia)

This project aims to create a sustainable conservation community. It aims to develop environmental and social impact through a sustainable development model that includes a mix of tourism and real estate assets.

7. Kua Coffee (Australia)

Kua is a social enterprise that does workplace coffee without the footprint. The project aims to pioneer an open-sourced franchise system, allowing workplaces everywhere to have access to coffee delivered through fair and circular supply chains. It aims to promote fair and circular consumption through a quarter million cups of coffee in 2020.

8. Ndovu Care (Kenya)

This project introduces an animal motion sensor alarm system, powered by solar and integrated with Kenya Wildlife Services, to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Ndovu Care aims for peaceful coexistence between the community and elephants, which are a keystone species. 

9. Bounties for Good (Australia)

This project aims to test a ‘Bounties for Good’ solution to match organisations and citizens, enabling people to support their chosen cause. The goal is to incentivise citizens to contribute spare time and leverage the work of organisations to help meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

10. Innovative Approach to Reduce Food Waste and Loss (Pakistan) 

This project is functional in four major cities of Pakistan and estimates 15% of fresh fruits and vegetables are lost during transportation due to the wooden packaging used. The project aims to convert and upcycle plastic waste, especially from carbonated drinks, into safe and resilient crates for fresh produce storage and transportation, reducing supplier food loss to a minimum level. 

11. Sunlords (Australia)

This project pilots the feasibility of tenants and landlords sharing benefits of solar with a technical solution, to provide tenants cheaper electricity that is less CO₂ intensive while de-risking the decision for landlords/bodycorps as potential solar investors. 

12. Emmi: the blockchain climate solution (Australia)

The project aims to validate the use of a private sector, member-led decentralised carbon management platform, where members transparently set their own emission reduction targets then validate their actions in real time across the open, scalable and trusted framework. Its short-term goal is to allow the financial industry to better price carbon risks in the market and provide better green financial products. Emmi’s  long-term goal is to become the backbone of the financial system for proper carbon pricing with or without government involvement.

13. NeuTreeLize: helping people plant one trillion trees (USA and Haiti)

This project aims to create a mobile app to connect people with tree planting opportunities to offset their travel impact. This project will also enable people to become more aware of their impact, reducing individual greenhouse gas emissions over time.

14. Ukwenza VR (Kenya)

Ukwenza VR creates educational VR content with a focus on helping children understand and appreciate the role of different species in nature and guide them towards actionable conservation activities they can start doing immediately in their communities. 

15. Green Wallet (Australia)

This project aims to build and validate an app that will help consumers easily adopt quality green alternatives at little effort, while automatically tracking their impact and rewarding those who become carbon-neutral. 

16. Xinnani (India)

Xinnani is a land-based seaweed cultivation unit that can be set up on shrimp farms to help filter effluents, which can cause algal blooms and dead zones (low-oxygen areas in the world's oceans and large lakes) when released in large quantities. The long-term goal is to use Xinnani as a means of growing native seaweed on land, rather than exploiting seaweed stocks in inshore waters and outsourcing these units to local coastal communities.

17. Kua Kelp (Australia)

Kua Kelp will design and produce convenient single-use food containers using seaweed, to reduce plastic use. The project’s long-term goal is to develop a modular solution that can be adopted wherever kelp grows and wherever there is a demand for single-use plastic.

To learn more about Impactio visit Innovate to Regenerate