“We first innovated this system leveraging on Design Thinking and Systems Tools when a Philippines mayor spoke to us on wasted farmland in its township which requires huge capital to irrigate and establish power grid to resurrect the vast abandoned land. The mayor highlighted that the farmers became nomadic and abandoned the land when the land loses its fertility or after long drought. Because of the nomadic nature, the farmers and families are stuck in vicious poverty loop”, Victor Tay, the Chief Executive Officer of Global Catalyst Advisory elucidated.

The vertical farm comprises of racks for vegetables and containerised aquatic farm preempted the issue of infertile land since we grow vegetation from elevated racks disregarding the land. In fact, the harsher the environment, the better our system is in reducing carbon footprint and resolving issues of the nature.

Given the Multiponics systems and rejuvenated business model, as well as, the ability to alleviate poverty, we propose our project to University of Oxford under code name, “Plenitude”. Plenitude is the name for Celtic God for abundance and wealth of food. The University of Oxford in turn proposes a farming platform to disintermediate middle-men and distributors to sell direct to the restaurants and f&b operators. In South-East Asia, distributors were well known to take advantage on small farmers grossing huge margins while at times leaving farmers to sell at a loss. The improved system fulfilled some 9 Sustainability Development Goals but also helps to disrupt the vicious poverty cycle as well as ensuring continued food supply with zero hunger to the region.

Addressing Sustainability Challenges through Web 3

Victor further explained on the state of affair with sustainability challenges, “While globally, 37 industrialized countries have ratified Kyoto Protocol in 1992 to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, it did not reduce the overall greenhouse emission. Subsequently the movement extend towards 196 countries, which ratified the Paris Protocol in 2015 to ensure a great push towards climate change. However most developing economies highlighted climate justice when developed economies have outsourced the most pollutive industries to these nations which are saddled with the drudge work to reduce emissions. Concurrently, with the advent of carbon credits and trading, the multinationals were monetizing on the credits which the farmers engaged in the afforestation activities and natured-based solutions were inequitably incentivised. In this modern era, there has to be a technology mechanism towards a more equitable rewards to the lower echelons.”

Digital Tree, Tokenization and Carbon Credits

With this, Global Catalyst Advisory leverages on dynamic monitoring, reporting and validation technologies (DNRV) which is a combination of web3 technologies of blockchain to ensure traceability of these nature-based afforestation. The company leverages IOT, satellite, drones and blockchain to assure permanence and immutability of the afforestation projects implemented. These projects upon pledging to a carbon reduction projection and credits will be securitized by blockchain to ensure the trees are protected. Satellite and IOT images have also helped monitor these trees against illegal logging.

With the technologies, Global Catalyst Advisory has moved towards unleashing consumerism to participate in carbon reduction projects which were usually an institutional play. “Current carbon credits were merited and traded based on a full tonnage. The advent of web3 technologies allows fractionalizing the tonnage of carbon credits and hence empowering consumers to participate. In this aspect, consumers may aggregate the credits and generate greater liquidity to the carbon credit market. Concurrently we provided a full transparency and traceability to every carbon certificate to authenticate the carbon value chain against greenwashing”, Victor explained.

In their latest endeavour, Global Catalyst Advisory is collaborating with a 40,000-acres durian plantation to link consumer’s participation through growing to digital tree in metaverse while linking to growing a real tree at the plantation. This allows carbon credits to be accrued to all parties.

And in this regard, Victor emphasized that the farmers who are involved in the actual plantation would have their carbon credits interests safeguarded through blockchain. This fulfils his ideology of balancing triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.

Victor emphasized, “We believe that innovation is the key to maintaining interests of all stakeholders. Many organizations have sought the easy way out of using only financial as the guiding light to its decision making. This invariably resulted in many vulnerable groups being marginalized. Technologies is able to bridge the gap, balance all stakeholders interests, while seeking breakthrough in prevalent industry processes.”

Differentiated Advantage

The CEO of Global Catalyst Advisory, Victor Tay, was a scholarship recipient at the University of Oxford Executive MBA programme. Victor emphasized that Global Catalyst Advisory like Oxford and Oxfam aims to “Resolve World’s Problems” while offering client solutions on strategic long-term basis. He explained that the firm only picks projects which will fulfil the triple bottom-line of people, planet and profit. He shared that, “We are different from other advisory firms as we believe the solutions derived should transform inefficient and unproductive business model. Many businesses were disrupted as they overly emphasize on financial gain that it ceases to provide value. We believe that all successful and sustainable businesses must fulfil the equilibrium of preserving the planet, fulfilling people’s expectations while generating profit as a collective outcome.”