Ashwini Thakare, MIP/E-IPER '24
Graduate Fellow, Woodwell Climate Research Center
Growing up in India, I was always surrounded by vibrant cultures and diverse landscapes. These experiences ignited my passion for the environmental justice and sustainable development. Recently, I graduated with a master’s degree in international policy, and now I'm pursuing a second master’s in environment and resources. My journey has been deeply influenced by my work advocating justice for millions and power of community engagement. Moving forward, I envision Just Climate Finance as a powerful tool to deliver climate justice, empowering common people to actively participate in the energy transition and leverage its processes such as participation in carbon markets
This summer, I have the exciting opportunity to work with the Woodwell Climate Research Center’s Carbon Team, led by Dr. Jonathan Sanderman. Our team is developing the Rangeland Carbon Tracking and Management Tool (RCTM), which aims to provide a low-cost and remote sensing solution to quantify and monitor soil carbon exchanges in the grasslands of the United States.
At Stanford, I had the privilege of collaborating with world-class professors, innovators, climate scientists, and policy makers. This experience honed my skills and deepened my understanding of the multifaceted challenges surrounding climate solutions. Now, I am eager to leverage my expertise to tackle these issues head-on.
I work remotely and in my role, I am delving into the financial aspects of sustainable rangeland management practices adopted by ranchers in the Northern Great Plains. These ranchers can use RCTM to understand carbon sequestration processes. The goal of RCTM is to provide robust carbon market MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification) solutions for ranchers adopting sustainable practices. This initiative encourages grassland preservation and efficient land management for animal husbandry, helping quantify soil organic carbon exchanges and establish causality with sustainable practices.
As part of this broader process, my task is to develop a financial model for land or ranches where RCTM has already measured the carbon sequestration dynamics. Sustainable agriculture involves numerous complexities for landowners, including costs, opportunity costs, and expenditures, which are particularly challenging to quantify for family farms or ranches where many activities are informal.
For this exercise, I am defining the variables based on legacy data, ranch economics information, and interviews with scientists and stakeholders to understand their perspectives. I have identified three key parts of the process:
Sustainable Ranching Initiatives: These initiatives are either sponsored and funded by Woodwell’s partners or undertaken independently by the ranchers, broadly falling under land improvement categories.
Measurement of Carbon Changes: This involves measuring increases in biomass, which can be correlated to the sustainable ranching initiatives.
Selling Carbon Credits in the Market: This step involves numerous sub-steps that need to be deciphered to establish carbon market accountability.
One of my biggest takeaways from this project is the immense scale of land monitoring undertaken by Woodwell, the time invested to observe changes, and the number of partners involved in the process. This isn’t a uni-dimensional implementation but a comprehensive research project into carbon sequestration processes through sustainable ranching initiatives. It aims to provide more accurate and precise information for carbon markets and ranchers exploring market possibilities.
I'm truly grateful to SFI and Woodwell for providing this incredible learning experience. The knowledge and insights gained from this project will undoubtedly fuel my future endeavors in sustainable development and climate action.
