Blockchain-based carbon offset company triggers forest fire on 35,000 hectares

Land Life is a company that offers “technology-driven large-scale reforestation,” the kind of business that boasts buzzwords like this:

Land Life Company is committed to its high-tech approach to smart reforestation, using it all the way: from beginning the process with detailed climate analysis to using specialized machines to mechanically accelerate the planting of biodiversity species to then monitoring growth with our proprietary terrestrial surveillance app and drones.

Basically, they sell carbon offsets in the form of trees. However, it is not entirely clear how much carbon they have actually offset with their reforestation programs, especially given that back in 2018 Land Life scored €3.5 million in Series A funding by promising “Patented plant technology, autonomous planting, remote monitoring and blockchain verification. ” It sounds like it could potentially be quite carbon intensive!

And anyway, they started the fire, and it didn’t always burn since the world turned. Via Vice:

The fire started in Bubierca, a province of Zaragoza, capital of the autonomous region of Aragon, when a Land Life contractor planting trees accidentally set off sparks that ignited nearby plant life.

“The fire started while one of our contractors was using a retro spider digger to prepare the soil for planting trees later this winter,” Land Life said in a statement Thursday. “The operators notified the emergency services. The emergency services are working non-stop to control the fire and fortunately have established the fire perimeter. However, we are devastated by the latest estimate that the damage will be around 14,000 hectares,” or approximately 35,000 acres.”

35,000 acres, FWIW, is probably more than the company had actually planted so far. They also caused a similar fire about a month ago, although that one just wiped out around 50 acres of forest. According to a local news source in Spain, this latest fire led to the evacuation of more than 2,000 people from five municipalities near the 35,000-acre fire.

To be fair, large swaths of Spanish land were already on fire, thanks in part to the ongoing heat wave. But Land Life’s efforts are clearly not doing much to help with the whole climate change thing!

The Corporate Carbon Offset Company accidentally starts a devastating forest fire [Edward Ongweso Jr and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / Vice]

Photo: Cameron Strandberg / Flickr (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

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