Interview with DOVU: Experts on Ecological and Biodiversity Credits
Ecological credits represent a key opportunity to drive funding into environmental projects that protect and restore nature. However, the process of issuing and managing these credits can be complex, time-consuming, and expensive.
This is where DOVU comes in. We caught up with the team to learn how they’re using blockchain technology to simplify the ecological credit system, making it easier for environmental projects to access funding while ensuring transparency and efficiency across the process.
Q: Tell us a little about DOVU, your story & the work you do
DOVU's journey began with our founders Irfon Watkins and Krasina Mileva spotting an opportunity to use blockchain technology to incentivise greener travel choices among consumers. This initial venture into the climate x web3 space led to extensive research and development, helping us understand where technology could make the most impact.
Irfon and Krasina ~ Dovu Founders
Through our market research, we identified a crucial opportunity; we could use the technology we’d built to remove barriers in the ecological credit space. We realised we could make it significantly easier to channel capital to the people doing the actual environmental work on the ground.
Today, this has evolved into our mission of building essential infrastructure for ecological credits, making it simpler for environmental projects to access the funding they need while ensuring transparency and trust in the system.
Q: What are ecological credits and how are they issued today?
Ecological credits are representations of investments made into environmental initiatives. While most people are familiar with carbon credits, there’s a broader range of credits available – including biodiversity and circular economy credits.
These are primarily used by businesses looking to meet their environmental commitments (by offsetting what can’t be reduced), as well as project developers who can generate new funding streams for their environmental work. They create a practical way to channel investment into verified environmental projects while ensuring proper valuation of ecological improvements.
The current process for issuing ecological credits is complex, time-consuming and expensive. Project developers need to navigate multiple steps; selecting the right methodology, collecting data, calculating environmental impact (like carbon sequestration), getting everything verified by auditors, and finally having credits issued through a registry. All these steps typically involve working with various parties including consultants, measurement and verification providers, and auditors - not to mention paying substantial registry fees.
This complexity creates a real barrier, especially for smaller projects that could be making a meaningful environmental impact. Many project owners are focused on the actual work of environmental conservation or restoration - they're not experts in navigating complex methodologies and registry requirements.
Simplifying this process means more projects can access the funding they need, ultimately channeling more investment into critical environmental initiatives.
Q: Can you explain in more detail how Dovu’s technology helps to simplify the process of issuing ecological credits?
DOVU is building the world's largest data warehouse of ecological credits, developing infrastructure that makes generating and managing these credits more efficient. We've built DOVU OS, a modular platform that currently sits on top of the digital ledger platform Hedera Guardian (and any blockchain in the future), combining digital identity, standardised data workflows and tokenisation.
What makes Dovu unique is our focus on simplifying complex processes - for instance, reducing the time it takes to create project documentation. Our solution particularly helps small project owners who can focus on their environmental work while our technology handles the administrative burden. Meanwhile, buyers get access to a marketplace where they can purchase verified credits using fiat currency.
Unlike many solutions in this space, we're also building infrastructure that can handle any type of ecological credit while ensuring different systems can work together, rather than creating more silos.
Q: Are you able to share some of your favorite success stories to date?
One of the first projects we brought on to the platform was a three-generation family farm in Bulgaria. Despite using sustainable practices for decades - from natural fertilisers to minimal chemical inputs - they'd never considered carbon credits as a revenue stream. Dovu helped them transform their sustainable farming practices into tradeable credits.
The credits sold out rapidly, bringing unexpected revenue that made a real difference to their lives. The family was so thrilled they even baked our team a cake! It's exactly what we're here to do - helping deserving projects be rewarded for putting the planet first.
On Dovu & Nature Tech
Q: Where does DOVU sit within the broader category of nature tech?
DOVU sits at the intersection of nature tech and web3, providing the digital infrastructure that helps scale nature-based solutions. While many nature tech solutions focus on specific aspects like measurement or monitoring, we're building the foundational layer that helps connect different parts of the ecosystem – from project development through to credit trading and retirement.
The growth of nature tech as a category directly supports our work because it's creating better ways to measure, verify and track environmental benefits. As these technologies mature, they can plug into our infrastructure, making the whole process of creating and trading ecological credits more efficient and trustworthy. Ultimately, the evolution of nature tech helps us achieve our goal of getting more capital to environmental projects more efficiently.
Q: What led you to the Nature Tech Collective?
We came across the Nature Tech Collective when exploring the world of MRVs, because we wanted to better understand the challenges they face, and how we could potentially solve some of these problems for them.
What we've found is that being part of this community gives us direct insight into the real challenges and needs across the nature tech ecosystem. As we're building infrastructure that needs to work for everyone in the space - from MRV providers to project developers to credit buyers - these connections are invaluable. The Nature Tech Collective creates such great opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing that will help us ensure our solution genuinely serves the needs of the whole industry.
Looking forward
Q: Where are you going next? What are you working on at the moment?
We're building infrastructure that can handle any real-world asset tokenisation, while ensuring everything remains standardised and interoperable. Our vision is to power a future in which high quality supply is matched with demand, where ecological credits are differentiated, meeting buyer needs – and where market integrity is high.
Q: How can others support the work you do & what kind of support would be of most use to your organization’s goals right now?
Right now, we're focused on two things: onboarding supply of high quality credits, and powering third-party marketplaces with our credit warehouse.
The most valuable support would be connections to project developers looking to create ecological credits, and marketplaces interested in accessing verified environmental credits through our infrastructure.
And, generally, speaking with anyone who believes our infrastructure can help solve their specific needs! Contact us directly (via Slack if you’re an NTC member) or through our website here.
About the Nature Tech Collective
The Nature Tech Collective (NTC) is a global community of nature tech stakeholders, united by a shared commitment to transform human systems which harm nature, and enhance the conservation and regeneration of our natural world. Our community is composed of representatives from the public and private sector, academia and field-level science, project developers and frontline communities, as well as inventors that build and develop nature tech solutions. Our industry alliance models collaborative intelligence for greater impact.
