Please find below the
Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
SUBJECT: Your proposal has been selected as a Finalist!
Congratulations! Your proposal, An Online Management and Finance Platform for Sustainable Forestry Projects, in the Land Use Contest, has been selected to advance to the Finalists round.
Be proud of your accomplishment – more than 350 proposals were submitted and only a very small number have been advanced through these two rounds of judging.
As a Finalist, your proposal is eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as the contest’s Popular Choice award, which is determined by public voting.
If you haven’t already, you will soon receive an email from the Climate CoLab staff with details about the voting period. If you don’t receive that email within the next day, or have other questions, please contact the Climate CoLab staff at admin@climatecolab.org
All winners will be announced the week after the voting period ends, on September 12, 2015 at midnight Eastern Time.
Both Judges Choice and Popular Choice will receive a special invitation to attend selected sessions at MIT’s SOLVE conference and present their proposals before key constituents in a workshop the next day, where a $10,000 Grand Prize will be awarded. A few select Climate CoLab winners will join distinguished SOLVE attendees in a highly collaborative problem-solving session. Some contests have additional prizes given by the contest sponsor.
Thank you for your work on this very important issue. We’re proud of your proposal, and we hope that you are too. Again, congratulations!
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
Below is a summary of the Judges' comments:
• Good idea, seems feasible
• Nice use of technology and user-friendly platform
• Small geographical focus
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
Congratulations! Your proposal A online management and finance platform for sustainable forestry, in the Land Use: Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock contest has been selected to advance to the Semi-Finalists round. You will be able to revise your proposal and add new collaborators if you wish, from July 1st, 2015 until July 14, 2015, midnight Eastern Time.
At the revision deadline listed above, your proposal will be locked and considered in final form. The Judges will undergo another round of evaluation to ensure that Semi-Finalist proposals have addressed the feedback given, and select which proposals will continue to the Finalists round. Finalists are eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as for public voting to select the contest’s Popular Choice award.
The Judges' comments are posted below.
Please incorporate answers to these comments in your revisions, or your proposal may not be advanced to the Finalists round.
Judge 1: Financial analysis needs the following:- All figures after appropriate taxes, and if in Euros, after applicable taxes.- How much does the community make after tax? How does this compare to their opportunity cost for clearing land at the proposed interval of five years? - Does the community have the banking services available to them to wire money to them?- Where do the seed trees come from (Agroforestry company?)? Are there enough seed trees available? Are the trees disease resistant?- Trees are 50% water by weight (more or less) so what about the hydrological impacts?
Judge 2: It is not clear how the on-line platform will be used, and how it will bring benefits to either the investors or the forest owners. Potentially useful, but could be just another "gee-whiz" tech toy that provides nothing of substantial value. Needs more clarification of functions and benefits.
Thank you for your great work and again, congratulations!
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
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 Alexander Watson Jul 13, 2015 09:18  | Proposal creator
--- To Judge 1:
Thank you for your comments! We have recognized through your questions, that we have not made the focus of our proposal clear enough. Your questions have motivated us to run through the entire proposal, ingrate an initial overview chart, present existing forest and investment tools more clearly, and restructure the proposal in a way to make our focus more clear.
Central to our proposal is the creation of a forest management and finance platform which will be show cased with our implementing partner Planting Empowerment. However the platform is not limited to this specific case. All financial figures are therefore only related to the development, promotion and maintenance of this platform.
However we also included a part in the paragraph: What actions do you propose? → Planting Empowerment's land lease model, where we outlined the community reforestation business model of Planting Empowerment.
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Alexander Watson Jul 13, 2015 09:17 | Proposal creator
--- To Judge 2:
Thank you for your comments! In times where platforms have become excessive your question has been very important for our proposal. To make more clear how the this platform works and in what way responsible investors as well as sustainable community reforestation projects will benefit from, we have added another paragraph at: What actions do you propose? → How the platform works and what are the benefits
Working in this sector for over 8 years and also in the respective country and region our own experiences and the implementing partners experience revealed the demand for a much more structured approach to invest in forestry, as currently forest investment markets in developing and emerging countries are yet nontransparent, not structured and investors only do have little experiences with this asset class (see also http://www.etfrn.org/file.php/45/3.1haas-watson-schmidt.pdf.)
To make sure, that the platform meets the real demands of investors and community reforestation projects and to meet the above mentioned informations lacks, we analyzed the current market situation and the required platform specifications briefly. Our existing and successful forest investment and management tools as well as our experience with online platform development are the cornerstones of the platform.
We have added a more comprehensive description about functions and benefits for the investors and for the community reforestation projects.
The central values for the investors are: Big pool of structured sustainable forest investment opportunities help to find the “invisible” investment project opportunities, costs savings for project scouting, structured project description makes it easy to compare and benchmark different investment opportunities. The forest management module is the fundament for a data based decision making in order to lower investment risks.
The main values for the community reforestation projects are: Get access to an international investment market and responsible investors (impact investors), improvement of forest management with structured online forest management software. Through the drone based imagery module and standardized reporting transparency amongst all stakeholders is improved.
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Alexander Watson Jul 13, 2015 09:28 | Proposal creator
--- For both Judges → Change tracking:
-- Summary:
We have included an overview chart which describes the users, main modules and main functionalities.
-- What actions do you propose:
We added an image of the local ethnic and community which will work with Planting Empowerment as implementing partner.
We further made more clear, that the platform will be developed out of existing and standalone forest management and finance modules so that the users (investors and community reforestation projects) will have an easy and integrated access to all modules and their synergies.
These existing modules are presented.
We have added a short description about Planting Empowerment’s land use business model.
We have elaborated in more detail how the platform practically works and what are the specific benefits for local community reforestation organizations and for responsible forest investors.
-- Who will take these actions?
Beside the organizations we added also the key persons who are involved in the platform development
-- How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?
We provided the standard units to measure carbon sequestration.
-- What are other key benefits?
We added other key benefits.
-- What are the proposal’s costs?
We have made clear that the involved cost of the proposal are for the platform development, promotion and maintenance only. All reforestation activities will be directly financed by private investors. The long-term maintenance costs for the platform will be payed by a fraction of the attracted private investment capital.
-- Related proposals
We added two related proposals
-- References
We added two further references
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