Digital public infrastructure could help the world fight climate change

When you spend so much of your time working on India’s digital public infrastructure, it is easy to overlook all the other countries that are building population-scale infrastructure. Of particular interest to me was Brazil’s rural environmental registry, a national digital infrastructure initiative that has been designed to promote sustainable land use and encourage environmental preservation. With more and more countries introducing regulations that restrict the sale of unsustainably cultivated produce, Brazil’s agricultural exports are at risk unless it can demonstrate compliance with these environmental obligations though some credible verification mechanism. Established under Brazil’s Forestry Code, it is a digital framework designed to map, monitor and regulate rural properties around the country to establish a baseline of agricultural activity that can then be used to demonstrate compliance with applicable environmental regulations. Since CAR makes the digital evidence of compliance instantly accessible, regulators can use a carrot-and-stick approach to strike a balance between improving agricultural productivity and ensuring ecological preservation.