Empowering Rural Innovation

Scalable MRV Solutions for Agroforestry and Rice-Based Carbon Projects

1. Problem: Identifying scalable and affordable MRV prototypes with high accuracy that facilitate automated carbon credit calculation, verification, and reporting for agroforestry and rice based carbon projects.
   
   Current MRV systems for agroforestry and rice carbon projects often face critical limitations, they are either prohibitively expensive, overly complex, or poorly adapted to India’s smallholder-dominated landscapes. These challenges result in high transaction costs and discourage meaningful participation from farmers. Data collection at the ground level is frequently inconsistent, while remote sensing technologies remain either underutilized or fragmented across platforms. Moreover, there is a lack of standardized protocols for integrating farmer-level data into carbon registries, creating further barriers to verification and monetization of carbon credits.
2. Outcome: The key outcome of the hackathon would include identifying scalable and affordable MRV prototypes with high accuracy and prototypes that facilitate automated carbon credit calculation, verification, and reporting, development of localized, farmer-friendly data collection protocols that can be integrated into national or global carbon registries, identifying tools or templates that ensure consistency, reliability, and interoperability of field data, assessing learnings on barriers to scalable MRV adoption in rural India and a curated list of startups, enterprises that can be considered for pilot collaborations, incubation, or concessional financing.
3. Context: Nature-based Solutions (NbS) hold immense potential for carbon sequestration while enhancing ecosystem health and community resilience. In India, agroforestry and climate-smart agriculture present promising opportunities to mitigate emissions, particularly from high-emitting sectors like rice cultivation.
   
   However, despite their benefits, the growth of agriculture and agroforestry-based carbon markets is limited by the lack of robust, affordable, and scalable Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) systems suited to India's smallholder-dominated, fragmented landscapes. Bridging this gap is essential to unlock climate finance and drive sustainable transformation in the agriculture sector.

Who Can Apply?

1. Startups (Setup on or after January1, 2020).
2. Teams with demonstrated technical and institutional capacity.
3. Technology professionals, researchers, and grassroots innovators.
4. Agritech, Fintech, and RuralTech teams.

Team Composition

1. 1 to 5 members
2. Interdisciplinary teams encouraged

Geographic Scope

1. Open to all Indian nationals; select entries from international applicants with India-focused solutions will be considered.

Solutions will be judged on the following parameters:

1. Innovation: Technology application (remote sensing, AI/ML, mobile-based tools, others), alignment of the MRV approach with IPCC or relevant carbon frameworks and ability to assess and minimize uncertainty.
2. Relevance and suitability to smallholders: Adaptability of the solution to smallholder context, operability in low-connectivity or resource-constrained environment.
3. Data integration and usability: Ability of the solution to ingest diverse data sets from satellite, mobile, IoT and others, and Intuitiveness of the user interface for different sets of stakeholders.
4. Verifiability and Transparency: Ability of the system to support third-party verification and immutability of records or version control.
5. Sustainability: Long-term value and affordability in terms of cost effectiveness as compared to traditional MRV systems, especially for smallholders.
6. Impact Potential: Scalability across different agro-climatic zones and farming systems, Ability to quantify co-benefits.
7. Alignment with NABARD’s Mission: Support to rural economy