DEV Community: Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR)

OGCR Fieldwork in Virrat: Advancing Peatland Rewetting and Carbon Monitoring

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Tue, 26 May 2026 08:38:25 +0000

As part of the Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) Horizon Europe project, the LUKE team, represented by Aleksi Lehtonen, recently carried out fieldwork in the forests of Finsilva Oyj near Virrat, focusing on peatland restoration and greenhouse gas mitigation.

Together with experts including Juha Hakkarainen, Markus Nissinen, Aura Salmivaara, Anssi Ahtikoski, Karri Uotila, Lauri Kahila, Aku Lilja and other collaborators, the visit focused on identifying peatland areas with potential for rewetting and discussing practical approaches for water level management to reduce GHG emissions.

In parallel, the team collected detailed field data on drainage ditches to benchmark airborne laser scanning (ALS)-based estimates. These efforts support OGCR’s broader mission to improve transparent, science-based carbon monitoring methods by integrating field observations and geospatial technologies.

The field campaign highlights the importance of collaboration among researchers, foresters, and technology developers in advancing reliable carbon accounting and sustainable peatland management solutions.

Deconstructing the Carbon Narrative: How does trust drive the Open Geospatial Carbon Registry?

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:21:12 +0000

On the 18th of March, the Open Geospatial Carbon Registry project hosted a panel discussion at the European Carbon Farming Summit in Padova, Italy. This article briefly summarizes some of the findings from the one-and-a-half-hour interactive session with stakeholders.

The transition toward regenerative agriculture is not just a shift in farming practices; it is a compound of language, power, and socio-economic conditions. A recent session at the European Carbon Farming Summit, the Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) project tested the foundational assumptions of carbon markets to validate its sociotechnical approach.

Participants underwent a "live polling exercise" to assess and comment on key statements about the OGCR framework. The session "Co-Benefits for Whom? Exploring Underlying Assumptions in the Design of an Intergenerational Open Geospatial Carbon Registry" uncovered the underlying power dynamics between farmers, technologists, supply chains, and policymakers.

Distinguishing "Data Sovereignty" vs. "Exploitation": Whoever defines the terminology often dictates the priority aspects of the system. The OGCR project intentionally relies on the CARE data principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) to guide its technological assumptions.

A central aspect of this is "sovereign data," an assumption that farmers prefer granular control over their own land's data. When the audience, which consisted primarily of researchers, NGOs, farmers, and MRV/tech developers, was asked via Slido what "sovereign data" brought to mind, the predominant responses centered around the concepts of "ownership" and "control"

This exposes deep-rooted concerns about exploitation. Farmers expressed that while they are open to sharing environmental data as a public good, they deeply fear that supply chains will use it to expose their economic vulnerabilities during negotiations. In simple terms, data is not viewed as a neutral byproduct of farming but as a critical aspect for ensuring farmers' autonomy.

The Myth of Technological Neutrality The OGCR's fourth assumption posited that highly technical, open-source solutions such as APIs, hybrid machine learning, and blockchain would inherently establish transparency, fight greenwashing, and build trust. However, the Slido results challenge the idea that tech is the solution to all problems.

When asked what other ingredients are required if the tech is solved, the audience emphasized governance structures and data quality. Session participants recognized that without transparent governance and ethical guidelines (like protecting long-term storage and use), technology alone cannot bridge the trust gap between land managers and the institutions demanding their data.

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De-centering Carbon and focusing on co-benefits While many actors, in particular corporations, are driven by ESG or similar reporting systems to prove their commitment to sustainability and nature-based solutions, farmers and Slido participants completely reframed the conversation.
When asked which co-benefits they would like to see monetized, Slido participants largely wrote "water," "biodiversity," and "soil health".

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Furthermore, the discourse from farmers on the panel framed their practices not as "carbon offsetting," but as building "climate resilience" against extreme weather events. This reveals a clash of paradigms: a top-down, reductionist corporate discourse that seeks to commodify a single element (carbon) for Scope 3 reporting, versus a holistic, localized discourse that values the entire interconnected ecosystem.

Who Owns the Narrative? The Call for "Place and Landscape" The ultimate question the session sought to answer was who gets to author the rules. The OGCR’s second assumption asked who should drive the system design.

Overwhelmingly, respondents voted for "place and landscape," actively decentering governments and corporations. Leading regenerative farmers are frequently acting as uncompensated research and Lighthouses, lacking the financial support to consistently participate in policy and software design.

If the OGCR is to succeed in its mission to safely shield landholders and support a just transition, the project must actively democratize its MRV infrastructure so that the very language, design, and economic mechanisms of carbon registries are authored by the "place and landscape" actors themselves.

By looking at these Slido interactions, it is evident that building a carbon registry is less about solving a math equation for soil carbon storage and more about navigating complex human relationships, restoring trust, and shifting the balance of power back to the stewards of the land.

Laimonas Noreika - From FinTech to Farms: bridging the €60B loan gap for Europe’s small farms

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 15:35:46 +0000

Laimonas Noreika, founder of InSoil (formerly HeavyFinance), is tackling one of the biggest barriers to regenerative transformation in Europe: access to finance for small and medium-sized farms. With traditional lenders stepping away due to regulatory constraints and perceived risk, an estimated €60 billion annual loan gap has emerged across the sector. InSoil’s answer is an innovative “Green Loan” model: zero-interest financing that helps farmers adopt practices such as no-till, cover cropping, and soil-restoring equipment. Instead of repayments through interest, the company earns back investment through future revenues from verified soil-carbon credits, aligning financial incentives with long-term climate benefits. Early results from Eastern European farms suggest that regenerative management can yield around 20 % higher profits compared to conventional systems, even before carbon-credit revenues are included.

By directly linking access to finance with the creation of measurable environmental outcomes, this approach unlocks opportunity for farms typically excluded from carbon markets and mainstream credit systems. It supports farmers in reducing input costs, stabilising yields, and building resilient soils, while at the same time generating high-integrity carbon-removal credits that help strengthen the wider carbon-market ecosystem.

Original interview published on Investing Regenerative Agriculture.

Julia Kasper - Rewetting peatlands is the biggest climate opportunity to cut CO2

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:00:09 +0000

In her recent interview, Julia Kasper, co-founder and CEO of Zukunftmoor, argues that rewetting drained peatlands represents the single biggest climate opportunity in agriculture today. Although peatlands cover only about 3 % of the global land surface, they store more carbon than all the world’s forests combined. When peatlands are drained, a common practice for agriculture, they don’t just release CO₂ once; they leak carbon continuously, year after year. Restoring peatlands thus stops that “constant leak,” and rewetting them can turn a major source of emissions into a long-term carbon sink.

But rewetting alone is not enough: farmers need viable, sustainable livelihoods. That’s where Zukunftmoor’s innovative approach comes in. They propose combining rewetting with cultivation of Sphagnum moss — a natural plant of peatlands — which can serve as a sustainable substitute for extracted peat in horticultural substrates. This turns rewetting from a purely ecological restoration act into a market-driven, economically viable land-use model. By using drones or hand-seeding methods, and developing harvesting and substrate-supply chains, the approach offers farmers a low-input, long-term pathway to maintain income while restoring degraded peatlands.

With this combination of climate mitigation and practical agriculture, Kasper’s vision offers peatland regions across Europe a concrete alternative to drainage-based farming — one that aligns environmental restoration with economic viability.

Original article published on Investing in Regenerative Agriculture.

Europe Launches OGCR: A New Open-Source Carbon Registry for Agriculture and Forestry

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:24:45 +0000

In September 2025, the Intergenerational Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) was officially launched under the funding of Horizon Europe, marking a major step forward in the creation of an open, transparent, and scientifically robust framework for carbon accounting across the EU. The initiative brings together more than thirty partners, including universities, research institutes, SMEs and NGOs, and aims to run through 2029, with an investment of €11.5 million.

The project’s ambition is broad: to offer Europe’s 9.1 million farmers and forest managers simple, affordable tools to measure, verify, and certify carbon sequestration and ecosystem-service benefits from their land-management practices.

At the heart of OGCR’s innovation is the creation of harmonized, updateable baseline data on soil carbon along with biomass and peat carbon. These geospatial carbon baselines, scalable from local to pan-European level, are intended to underpin fair, transparent certification and remuneration under the upcoming framework of Carbon Removals Certification Framework (CRCF).

Original article posted in Italian on Materia Rinnovabile

Building an open source foundation for the EU Carbon Registry

Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:46:01 +0000

In August 2025, the Intergenerational Open Geospatial Carbon Registry (OGCR) was officially launched, marking the start of a major new EU-wide initiative to build a transparent, accessible, and scientifically rigorous carbon registry that supports both farmers and forest managers across Europe. With a consortium of more than 30 partners spanning research institutes, NGOs, SMEs and universities, OGCR aims to establish updateable, high-resolution geospatial baselines for soil, biomass, and peat carbon at parcel level. These baselines will serve as the foundation for a registry aligned with the Carbon Removals Certification Framework (CRCF), enabling fair and verifiable carbon removals accounting.

Beyond baseline mapping, OGCR seeks to combine cutting-edge data science tools, from machine learning and remote sensing to participatory monitoring to deliver cost-effective, accurate carbon accounting across the EU. The project will validate its approach through business demonstrators covering diverse farming systems. By doing so, it intends to prove that carbon farming can be economically viable for landholders, requiring minimal upfront investment while offering long-term benefits. With its open-source, transparent, and harmonised methodology, including unified uncertainty metrics and hybrid measurement-modelling frameworks, OGCR aims to build a robust infrastructure that supports carbon markets, biodiversity, climate policy and rural livelihoods simultaneously.

Original article posted on Differ.blog