TreesAI

in Glasgow

TreesAI is developing novel

investment opportunities
beyond Carbon, to help meet
Glasgow’s climate targets
Glasgow City Council (GCC) is partnering with
NatureScot, the Scottish Government and Dark Matters
Labs to develop TreesAI, an open source platform to
map, value and finance urban forests. The initiative
strives to establish nature as a critical part of urban
infrastructure, alongside bridges, roads and rail,
enabling investment, profitability and sustainability.
1.4tCO2 sequestered

Project Synopsis
20.07.21

–€162 water treatment

TreesAI
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Dark Matter Labs
Introduction
With a pledge to plant 18m trees in the lead up to COP26, Glasgow
City Region is exploring radical new approaches to financing urban
tree planting and maintenance, developing the next generation
infrastructure to map, monitor and finance the city’s urban forest.

Glasgow city has adopted a number of ambitious actions to contribute

to The Glasgow and Clyde Valley Green Network mission. The city’s
Open Space Strategy and its Climate Emergency Implementation
Plan are seeking to improve open space provision and increase tree
cover, with for example, ensuring that homes outside the city centre
are within 400m walking distance of a good quality public open
space of 0.3ha or more. In order to achieve these objectives the
city is working on delivering Nature-based Solutions (NbS), including
urban forests.

Urban forests are powerful Nature-based Solutions (NbS) supporting

human life and natural ecosystems. They provide multiple
environmental, social and economic benefits such as: carbon
sequestration and storage, providing shelter to wildlife, recreational
areas for city dwellers, reducing heat island effects, improving human
health, managing flooding incidents, offering food and shading,
mitigating energy usage, while supporting urban biodiversity.
A recent study shows that the value of stored carbon alone within
Glasgow’s urban forest today is £50 million, and is estimated to
become £120 million by 2050.

However, today, we are struggling to maintain existing tree stocks,

let alone create new ones. The UK is falling short of tree-planting
targets by 17,000 hectares a year; and in Glasgow, delivering the
Green Network over the next 35 years will require an estimated £1.1
billion—equivalent to approximately £33 million per year—while the
project is already facing a 35% shortfall.

What is the problem? For too long we have valued trees as costs,
not as valuable assets.
SYNOPSIS TREESAI IN GLASGOW

As a result, fifty percent of urban trees don’t survive after 10 years

of life, while the benefits generated by those same trees peak
only after 50 years. Unless we improve the quality of planting and
maintenance to sustain trees we will not be able to generate real
environmental, social and economic benefits, helping us finance the
green transition and reach our climate targets.

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Dark Matter Labs

Glasgow City Council and

TreesAI partnership
This partnership, between Glasgow City Council and TreesAI,
will address the challenge of how the city of Glasgow will cope
both with the upfront capital and, more importantly, the ongoing
maintenance costs for sustaining trees in the future.

The outcomes of the partnership will focus on addressing the

following challenges to help the city measure and contract for the
benefits (ecosystem services) provided by urban trees:

• Lack of recurrent and good quality data: Lack of data is a key

barrier to understanding and proving the performance of urban
forest ecosystem services.

• Private funding gap: While a number of innovative NbS financing

models have been suggested, these are not market-ready, and
as a result public bodies struggle to gather revenue funding
from multiple sources and scales of private fundings to
maintain urban nature.

• Lack of standardised ecosystem services pricing: Urban nature

is today accounted for as a cost not an asset, hindering scaling
and investment opportunities for internalizing nature’s services,
as well as accounting for intangible and non-financial benefits.

• Outdated bureaucratic processes: Current practices lead

to cumbersome financing/ contracting processes for both
municipalities and investors.

• Lack of skills across the supply chain: Nature-based Solutions

and Natural Capital are nascent fields of knowledge that are not
yet widespread in the market or the public sector.
Partners

This partnership is between Glasgow City Council, Dark Matter

Laboratories (TreesAI project holder), NatureScot and the Scottish
Government and will be seeing to make this transformation in
Glasgow City over the next two years.

This work has already gained the financial support of both Google.
org Impact Challenge on Climate and Morgan Stanley Sustainable
Solutions Collaborative.

TreesAI has also been recognised by the World Economic Forum’s

Trillion Trees Challenge and is supported by Europe’s leading
climate innovation initiative, EIT Climate-KIC.

As part of our first pilot in Glasgow we will be developing and

nurturing conversations with NGOs and local communities, as well
as regional and national stakeholders to ensure that learnings from
the pilot can scale across multiple sites.

“So many of the challenges surrounding the climate emergency

will be addressed by our cities and Nature-based Solutions are
absolutely critical within that.
Urban forests deliver significant ecological, environmental and
social gains, creating safer, more resilient and more liveable
places. The road to Net Zero must also be delivered in a way that
resonates with ordinary citizens and is relevant to their everyday
lives. The transformation of the look and feel of our communities
whilst addressing greenhouse gases does just that.
Our status as COP host has given us a tremendous opportunity to
SYNOPSIS TREESAI IN GLASGOW

attract some of the most pioneering approaches and interventions

within the climate agenda. Our selection as a location for one of
the projects supported by the Google.org Impact Challenge on
Climate underlines that.”

Susan Aitken, CEO of Glasgow City Council

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Dark Matter Labs

The lead up to COP26...

Carbon Plus, a new crediting system

beyond carbon, for delivering and
sustaining urban forests.
The first phase of this partnership will be to leverage the interest in
COP26 to announce the forthcoming launch of a new carbon credit
linked to Glasgow’s urban forest. Glasgow City Council, with Dark
Matter Labs, are developing Carbon Plus, a new credit programme
that transforms the way we account and finance the maintenance
of urban trees.

Carbon Plus are verified credits that help fund urban forests
through local carbon offsets. The new credit recognises that
urban trees deliver carbon-related services and multiple co-
benefits for the city and the natural capital market. It accounts
for and values carbon sequestration and storage, while estimating
additional environmental impact measurements such as air quality
improvements, water management, and human health benefits,
reflecting the true environmental, social and economic benefits
delivered by urban trees in metropolitan areas. `

What is special about Carbon Plus? It recognizes the multiple

benefits of urban trees without bundling the financial benefits or
costs to one single stakeholder. As a result, it lays the foundations
for recognising that the benefits of urban forests accrue to
diverse beneficiaries. In the future, multiple funders and investors
interested in other than carbon co-benefits—like water or health
benefits—can fill the full capital gap required to scale and maintain
urban forest projects. For example, Corporate Local Carbon
Offsets funds will be matched with investments from water
management and healthcare companies, to address the true costs
of maintaining trees and their benefits in the long-term.

Carbon Plus credits are powered by the TreesAI open source

platform. Using trusted satellite and ground data to map, monitor
and account for the benefits provided by urban trees, the platform
also provides a secure digital infrastructure for funders to invest in
the growth of urban forest.
The long-term vision...

The future of financing urban forests, from

credit to investment.
TreesAI is an open source platform that aims to encourage the
development of the urban NbS market from carbon outwards,
and from trees onwards. TreesAI is aiming to a) soon value and
price water as well as health related benefits and b) in the future
account for the co-benefits provided by other urban Nature-based
Solutions (e.g. rain gardens or flood plains). The aim of this work is
to extend interest in urban NbS through wider ecosystem services
markets, by building an integrated ecosystem services registry.
There is general consensus that ecosystem services will become
tradable in the near future. There is already evidence of interest
in biodiversity, water, health and other benefits with, for example,
Natural England launching a Biodiversity Credit Scheme, NHS
piloting Nature on prescription approaches, water management
companies participating in environmental impact bond structures
and water departments launching stormwater credits.
For this reason and following COP26, within the scope of the
partnership, Glasgow City Council, supported by TreesAI, will
develop urban forestry investment strategies, beyond offsetting
schemes.
The second phase of this partnership will seek to develop the
first of additional financial products focused on water impact and
health impact credits.
As a third phase, the partnership will aim to develop long capital
financing instruments that combine investments and funding from
multiple private entities, in order to grow and maintain urban NbS
in the future.
TreesAI is being developed to enable long-term distributed
stewardship of urban forests, based on the following principles:

• Beyond carbon → A transparent ecosystem services registry allows multiple entities

to monitor & invest in the benefits provided by urban nature.
• Digital contracts → Smart contracts reduce bureaucratic and operational time and
costs, ensuring secure multilateral payments for ecosystem services.
• Long-term stewardship → Outcomes-based financial instruments generate stable
revenue streams to support long-term ecological maintenance and stewardship.
SYNOPSIS TREESAI IN GLASGOW

• Collective intelligence → Secure and trusted data is collected through machine

sensing technologies, public institutional data infrastructures and and citizen
sensing groups enabling collective intelligence and engagement with NbS,
• Beyond trees → Urban trees are the Trojan horse for nurturing interest and
investments in all Nature-based Solutions. TreesAI will continue to advocate for and
work to establish Nature As Infrastructure, enabling other natural asset types to be
recognised by the market as indispensable civic assets that benefit society at large;
ultimately acknowledging the systemic and interconnected existence of Nature-

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Dark Matter Labs

Next steps and deliverables

Dark Matter Labs and its team powering TreesAI is a strong

advocate of an agile management methodology, encouraging
teams to set clear goals and missions while progressively building
specific tasks and deliverables. This can allow teams to be more
flexible when facing obstacles that are outside of the team’s
control and to respond proactively and creatively to challenges. For
this reason we have an overarching two-year mission, while we co-
create deliverables every six months with our key partners.
Legacy
TreesAI will aim to leave the following legacy to Glasgow City Council:
A more complete, streamlined and linked up Urban Forest data infrastructure.
Open access to the pilot version of the platform that aims to enable city stakeholders
to collectively value and invest in urban nature.
SYNOPSIS TREESAI IN GLASGOW

Any funding that might be raised through the platform during the duration of the
partnership, net of any transaction fees incurred that should be agreed in due time.
Good reputation in relation to the use of cutting edge technologies and practices in the
climate transition and urban forest sector.

For more information about the nature of this partnership please review this
Memorandum of Understanding, which also contains an indication of the commitment
in kind expected from Glasgow City council and also the partner benefits.

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Get in touch Links to DM relevant work:

Adam Purvis Civic Capital

[email protected] Scotland’s Nature-based Solutions
Micro-treaties with the Earth
Carlotta Conte Civic AI
[email protected] An Alliance for Long Investing

Konstantina Koulouri
[email protected]

About TreesAI and Dark Matters Laboratories

TreesAI is part of Dark Matter Laboratories (DML), a strategic discovery,
design and development lab working with partners across the planet to
build pieces of institutional infrastructure required to transition society
in response to technological revolution and climate breakdown. Dark
Matter Laboratories aims to do so in the interest of public value and
good.

TreesAI (Trees as Infrastructure) is an open source platform that aims

to enable city stakeholders to collectively value and invest in urban
nature. TreesAI aims to make it easy to map and forecast ecosystem
services, such as carbon, storage, stormwater runoff and energy
savings. By connecting environmental impacts with finance, TreesAI
unlocks novel financing streams—from citizens to corporates, or
healthcare providers.

Dark Matter Laboratories

20 July 2021

TreesAI