BioCarbon Engineering: Tree planting drones for democratic forest governance in Myanmar

We use emerging technologies such as drones to enable self-governing forest cooperatives in Myanmar and to restore global ecosystems.

The Problem

Six billion trees are lost every year resulting in losses in biodiversity, healthy environment and jobs. While all ecosystems are impacted, and there are many initiatives to restore the lost forests, the most precious one is mangroves. Countries that depend on mangrove ecosystems, such as Myanmar can suffer tremendous losses from deforestation.

While millions of people depend on mangroves for their survival, the government of Myanmar and WorldView International Foundation are putting a lot of efforts in ecosystem restoration. The urgency of this work, and the scale of the problem made BioCarbon technology a great fit for the long-term partnership in planting millions of trees.

The Solution

BioCarbon Engineering technology enables NGO partners and local communities to design data-driven forest management systems and to dramatically speed up mangrove planting with drones. While the technology allows to bring down the costs and speed up restoration, the villagers can focus on other areas of livelihood creation such as crab farming, education, textile production and eco-tourism development.

To make this a reality we use a two-step system. First, our drones create sophisticated maps of the terrain and allow local people to create forest governance plans and to empower communities to make decisions about their ecosystems. Then our planting drones follow the planting pattern and fire biodegradable seedpods. One team of pilots can plant up to 100,000 trees per day, ensuring rapid growth and ecosystem restoration, while providing jobs for local communities through seed collection and post-planting maintenance.

Stage of Development

Early Stage
Established Prototype
Scaling
Other

Organization to Receive Funds

BioCarbon Engineering is an Oxford-based start-up that carries out full-cycle ecosystem restoration projects. The company organises projects from finding local NGO partners, delivering mapping and planting services and providing post-planting monitoring.