Hello Kusama community!
I'm Pedro Polkadot Ambassador and founder of RMTerra— part of a Portuguese non-profit regenerating wildfire-damaged lands since 2017. We have planted over 20,000 trees out of 500 species with volunteers, developed diverse food forests using permaculture principles, secured 25–50 year land contracts, and established Web3 transparency through partnerships with Kodadot, RMRK, Treedefi, Digital Gaia, and others (NFTs directly tied to real trees with GPS coordinates, photos, survival tracking, and on-chain proof).
The Problem
Scaling impactful reforestation in Portugal remains a major challenge nearly a decade after the devastating 2017 wildfires, which burned over 500,000 hectares and left lasting soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and heightened fire risk. While large-scale initiatives exist, small local communities and grassroots groups — often the most motivated and context-aware — face significant barriers to thriving long-term. These include chronic financial constraints, limited access to stable funding, land fragmentation and unclear ownership issues, high tree mortality rates and the resurgence of invasive fire-prone species like eucalyptus monocultures. Volunteer-driven efforts frequently rely on sporadic donations and community goodwill, making it difficult to ensure verifiable long-term results, ongoing maintenance, or scalability. At the same time, corporate and investor participation remains limited due to a lack of compelling, transparent incentives that bridge real-world impact with accessible opportunities — all while the on-ground teams struggle to remain sustainable and resilient in depopulated rural areas.
Pilot Solution: "Choose Green" Hybrid ModelThis Phase 1 pilot introduces "Choose Green" — a hybrid RegenFi model that uses Kusama/Polkadot as the web3 tech backbone to support and scale our existing web2-focused reforestation work. The treasury funding will bootstrap outreach, partnerships, and pilot plantings so we can sell the concept to real companies (corporates for CSR/ESG programs). Once companies sign on and fund packages, we execute real planting, mint NFTs tied to the trees on-chain, and place them in multisig addresses shared with the partner companies for joint control and transparency.
Core Flow:
Pitch Deck here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SD-x27itPU1y4jruNzNfqgM7g5g2I_pU/view?usp=sharing
This model keeps the project web2-accessible for companies (no crypto required upfront) while leveraging Polkadot/Kusama tech for minting, proof, and long-term royalties. It delivers direct 1:1 real-world impact (real trees linked to digital assets), generates on-chain activity (new wallets, NFT mints/claims), and tests corporate onboarding to web3 in a low-friction way.
Requested Pilot Funding: ~10,000 KSM (Small Spender track, low-risk ask, approximately €20–22k equivalent at current rates).
Budget Breakdown:
Milestones (6–9 months):
Why Kusama?
First because i love it, second because is fast and experimental governance makes it the perfect environment to test innovative RegenFi models with real-world partners. A successful pilot proves the concept, scales our grassroots work, and opens the door to potential growth on Polkadot treasury. As an ambassador-led initiative, it helps grow ecosystem adoption in the EU and Portugal while showcasing Kusama as a leader in sustainable, hybrid green impact.Funds will be sent to a multisig beneficiary for full transparency. All progress will be shared publicly on Polkassembly, GitHub, and X.This is a low-risk pilot built on a proven foundation (20k+ trees already planted, established partners). I welcome your feedback:
Happy to refine further, share more details on "Choose Green", or provide visuals. Let's discuss!Pedro | Polkadot Ambassador | RMTerra Founder
Website: https://rmterra.org
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/rmterra
X:@lightsonemusic