BITKRAFT Ventures, an investment platform for gaming and interactive media, and Terraformation, a tech-accelerated forestry company, announced a reforestation partnership focused on the restoration of biodiverse forests and seed banking.
Founded by ex-Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, Terraformation’s vision is to bring Silicon Valley’s techniques for rapid growth to forest restoration. Forests represent the most immediately available and effective means of carbon capture. Addressing the largest bottlenecks to forest restoration at scale, Terraformation team members come from a diversity of fields, including carbon sensing, botany, fintech and logistics, and from organisations such as Paypal, Facebook, Flexport and NASA, giving the company a unique combination of expertise in tech, scaling and forestry. Terraformation currently manages several projects in Hawaiʻi and works with partners across five continents.
“At BITKRAFT, we are driven not only to help shape the future of gaming and synthetic reality, but in the process of doing so set a standard for how we aspire to embody responsible entrepreneurship. This endeavor began with our formal commitment to diversity and representation in service of building a more inclusive future. Our partnership with Terraformation reflects our commitment to building a more sustainable one as well. Working with Terraformation’s team will drive our reforestation efforts and empower our partners, stakeholders and portfolio companies to provide critical environmental aid, and collectively advance the mission of sustaining our planet for generations to come. Beyond creating a direct impact on the greater causes of the moment, we are hopeful our actions inspire similar engagement across our community and industry, as we know that meaningful progress in these areas will require the work of many.”
To start, BITKRAFT will support two Terraformation projects:
ReClimate, Ukraine – an NGO, founded by three women entrepreneurs, that creates a sustainable model of forest management, bringing together local foresters and small businesses to maintain the restoration of the biodiverse forests in the Rivne region in Ukraine. To date, 300,000 trees have been planted, and the project has prevented over 100 forest fires in the last three years as well as created dozens of jobs to plant and protect the forest and supported the preservation of 80+ species of rare animals. BITKRAFT will be ReClimate’s first international sponsor, enabling the planting of 10,000 trees. This project was selected prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and both Terraformation and BITKRAFT are undeterred in their efforts to support ReClimate’s instrumental forest restoration work.
The Kilimanjaro Project, Tanzania – a grassroots initiative activating community leaders and local partners to create a scalable restoration initiative around Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, in East Africa. BITKRAFT’s commitment to supporting a reforestation seed bank will help the project’s goal of planting 10 million trees within the next seven years across 13,500 hectares, benefiting over 350,000 people while capturing millions of tonnes of carbon.
“Trees are the world’s most promising carbon capture solution, with potential for immediate impact. To solve climate change, we must plant 1 trillion new trees across the planet by 2030. Every tree begins as a seed, so to make reforestation at scale possible, we need to establish a continuously stocked supply of millions of seeds in every location where we can regrow forests. Terraformation’s goal in 2022 is to establish the world’s largest decentralized native seed banking network. Partnership is the key to achieving any goal of import, and especially to unlocking the solutions to climate change. We’re thrilled to join with BITKRAFT, ReClimate and the Kilimanjaro Project in this climate solution,” Yishan Wong, founder and CEO of Terraformation, said.
Led by Terraformation’s Head of Global Business Development Celia Francis, the investments committed to ReClimate and the Kilimanjaro Project are fulfilled in partnership with ImpactAssets, a leading nonprofit specialising in impact investing and donor-advised funds providing the expenditure responsibility grant oversight for the initiative.
