Backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, the United Nations and its partners propose creating a “Nature ID” that would serve as a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that could facilitate carbon market traceability and biodiversity credit schemes.
“By synthesizing information on biodiversity, climate and social factors, Nature ID can make environmental considerations more prominent in policy, private sector and local community
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
decision-making.
“This can unlock nature-positive incentives and direct financial flows—such
as payments for ecosystem services or carbon credits—toward conservation and restoration
initiatives“
Published in March 2025, a study by the UN Development Program (UNDP) called, “The case for Nature ID: How Digital Public Infrastructure can catalyze nature and climate action,” outlines how to digitally track, trace, and price biodiversity through Nature ID.
While the study arose from a workshop at COP16 in Cali, Colombia in June 2024, the agenda to develop Nature ID comes directly from the UNDP, the Rockefeller Foundation, Co-Develop, World Bank, USAID, Digital Impact Alliance, and GIZ.
“Nature-positive incentives—such as PES, biodiversity credits, and sustainable food system traceability — offer a set of mechanisms for supporting local efforts towards global nature and biodiversity conservation targets”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
“Nature ID: A proposed digital public infrastructure system for integrating and exchanging environmental, social and administrative data to support conservation and sustainability initiatives”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
The study paints Nature ID and DPI in general as a means to support conservation and sustainability, but what does that actually mean?
DPI is a civic technology stack consisting of three main components: digital ID, massive data sharing between public and private entities, and fast payment systems.
Let’s go through these three DPI components as they relate to Nature ID, beginning with digital identity.
“At its core, Nature ID aims to support the monitoring of key ecological indicators—such as vegetation cover, water levels, and pollution metrics—over time. This would enable comparisons between current data and historical benchmarks”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
“Participants identified a recurring need for a ‘Nature ID’ system that could integrate data from diverse sources—such as remote sensing, administrative records, and local communities—drawing comparisons to existing digital identity frameworks”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
For starters, everything in nature has to be identified and monitored in real-time with track-and-trace technologies.
“By leveraging tools from multiple data sources such as satellite imagery, remote sensing technologies, and environmental monitoring stations, the system could detect trends and changes, allowing for timely interventions and serve as a platform for biodiversity monitoring at scale,” the report reads.
Then, “By integrating data on flora and fauna collected through sensors, camera traps, acoustic monitoring and citizen science initiatives, Nature ID would provide detailed assessments of biodiversity, supporting species identification and ecosystem health evaluations.”
“Acting as an interoperability layer, Nature ID would process diverse data inputs—including legal ownership records, Indigenous claims, ecological indicators, biodiversity data, and human activity metrics related to specific natural assets—to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of natural ecosystems”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
Next, with all that data collected, it must be shared to determine what’s going on, who’s using it, and what’s its value.
According to the report, “Linking economic activities to spatial environmental data would allow for the assessment of environmental footprints and support the development of sustainable resource management policies.
“By incorporating socio-economic data from tourism statistics, agricultural registries and industrial reports, the system would provide insights into how human activities interact with the environment at particular locations. This could enable users to leverage Nature ID to monitor how human activities–such as tourism, agriculture and industrial operations–impact ecosystems.“
From there, “Data sharing through Nature ID can serve as a platform for scaling and targeting climate and nature-positive finance, such as for rural lending programs, financing local initiatives, and biodiversity and carbon credit markets.”
“Biodiversity credits are a more nascent mechanism that is still emerging. Given the need to monitor and certify multilayered data, early leaders in the biodiversity credit market are turning to tokenized solutions built on blockchain architecture. This also has the benefit of enabling different designs that compensate for work and outcomes.
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
“However, blockchain-based solutions come with additional technical complexity that may not be the simplest or most fitting solution to implement for all contexts. This architecture still requires robust monitoring, reporting and verification functions to link blockchain registries with real outcomes”
“Connecting Nature ID with other existing DPIs for identities and payments can also enable novel financing models, such as PES. This functionality would require the integration of different components within an overarching Nature ID architecture”
UNDP, The Case for Nature ID, March 2025
After nature is tagged and monitored, and after that data is used to develop “sustainable resource management policies,” the last part of the DPI is to establish Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes and biodiversity credits.
The report defines PES schemes as “Financial incentives provided to individuals or communities in exchange for maintaining or restoring ecosystem services, like carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation.”
The authors also add that “Providing financial compensation in exchange for maintaining the benefits of natural ecosystems is one way to recognize their value while recognizing the critical role that farmers, local communities and Indigenous Peoples play in stewarding ecosystems.”
Putting prices on water, air, and soil is a hot topic among globalists at the UN, the G20, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the COP meetings.
“Just like we’ve got carbon credits, we need to develop the market for water credits and biodiversity credits”
President of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam, WEF Annual Meeting, January 2025
At the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos this year Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam said that water credits and biodiversity credits should be “stapled” on to carbon credits.
The year prior, at the 2024 WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, aka “Summer Davos” meeting in communist China, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership CEO Lindsay Hooper told the panel on “Understanding Nature’s Ledger” that every part of the economy depends on nature, and that in order to protect natural systems, one solution would be to “bring nature onto the balance sheet.”
“We can’t do business on a dead planet. If we’re going to protect natural systems, one of the solutions is to bring nature onto the balance sheet”
Lindsay Hooper, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, 2024
“At the moment, the way that decisions are made on an every day level within businesses and financial institutions is because we’re looking at financial data metrics that are not factoring-in nature,” said Hooper.
“Nature is treated within the economy as though it’s unlimited, and predominantly as though it’s free.”
According to Hooper, “every part of the economy is fundamentally dependent on nature,” including, “the air that we breathe, the water we drink, the soil, the oceans that we need for the food that we need to consume, the minerals that we need as inputs to technology and into infrastructure.
“Without these forms of value, these forms of natural capital, we won’t have economies. They are the fundamental building blocks of our economies.”
In addition to putting “nature on the balance sheet,” another proposal coming at the end of the panel discussion suggested putting a tax on natural systems like water in the same vein as carbon taxes.
“Beyond carbon [taxes] let’s think about other aspects of nature that are easier to quantify […] What about water?”
Gim Huay Neo, WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions, 2024
At the same Summer Davos meeting last year, WEF managing director for nature and climate Gim Huay Neo said that “We need to keep pushing while continuing to refine and enhance, and the best example I can give is carbon pricing […] “And beyond carbon let’s think about other aspects of nature that are easier to quantify.
“We will probably not be able to quantify everything on day one, but what about water?
“That’s quite possible for us to start integrating systematically into current trading carbon pricing mechanisms,” she added.
“We start thinking about putting prices on water, on trees, on biodiversity […] How do we start tokenizing? How do we start building systems that actually create not only the value, but transfer that value around the world?”
Ex-Bank of England Advisor Michael Sheren, COP27, 2022
With putting prices on nature comes tokenization and derivatives.
At least that’s what former Bank of England adviser Michael Sheren said at COP27 in November 2022.
“Carbon, we already figured out, and carbon is moving very quickly into a system where it’s going to be very close to a currency, basically being able to take a ton of absorbed or sequestered carbon and being able to create a forward-pricing curve, with financial service architecture, documentation,” said Sheren.
And with carbon being close to a currency, “There are going to be derivatives.”
And just like with the UN and Rockefeller-proposed “Nature ID” as a DPI to systematically track, trace, and monetize biodiversity, next comes the tokenization of water, trees, and just about everything else in nature.
“We start thinking about putting prices on water, on trees, on biodiversity, we find where does that sit?” Sheren pondered in 2022.
“How do we start tokenizing? How do we start building systems that actually create not only the value, but transfer that value around the world?”
Digitalizing and pricing nature with derivatives is swiftly becoming the new gold for powerful groups looking to revolutionize the global financial system.
Image Source: AI generated with Grok
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