DIOs - Decentralized Impact Organizations for the Climate

As an illustrative example: The city of Helsinki wants to reduce Helsinki’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 31st of December, 2030, as measured by real-time data from NASA's carbon-sensing satellites. The city agrees to pay out $60 M in total when the reduction is achieved. It issues 600 000 carbon bonds redeemable for $100 at the date of... See more

An SPB and its bondholders together form an entity very similar to a DAO: the bondholders form a grassroots organization and share an economic fate via the bonds they own. What is particular about this type of “DAOs” is that its token (the bond) derives its value from the quality of a public good.

Crypto has transformed grassroots-level organizing. For the first time in history, it is possible to economically align networks of strangers into working together by using programmable incentives and providing them with tools to make decisions and govern shared resources in a decentralized manner. These new organisms are called by many “DAOs,” Dec... See more

Therefore, we need to create new market mechanisms that reframe people’s thinking to the longer term and better subjects for their attention.

The purpose of this essay is to propose DIOs as a novel mechanism for climate change mitigation and expose it to scrutiny before designing a real-life pilot.

Enter social policy bonds. Social policy bonds (SPBs), initially proposed by Ronnie Horesh in 1988, are financial instruments that reward people when they achieve social goals.