Our story
Fair pay for ecosystem services
The soil under our feet
Soil plays an important role in the challenges we face: climate, water and nature. Fair reward for outcomes in these areas - we call them ecosystem services - encourages farmers to make an optimal contribution. This concerns CO2 sequestration, improved water storage and water quality and increased biodiversity.
The soil is an important source for all three. The soil of the earth contains three times more CO2 than the air. The soil acts as a sponge for water: storage with heavy rainfalls and source for growth in droughts. The soil life in the ground is the foundation for biodiversity.
Farmers use the soil to produce our food, but it can also be used to capture more CO2, store more water and achieve more biodiversity. If we reward farmers fairly for their ecosystem services, they then will make the most of their efforts. That is what we mean at aESTI when we say 'impact rewarded'.
The aESTI belief
The earth itself - our soil - can make an important contribution to solving our climate problem.
Farmers play a crucial role in this, through CO2 sequestration, better water management and more biodiversity.
Farmers should receive a fair price for these services.
This financial compensation is based on proven results.
An efficient marketplace ensures the outcome benefits the farmer.
Buying ecosystem services is interesting for companies, organizations, governments and consumers that want to offset their own CO2 footprint and / or invest in water storage and biodiversity. aESTI supports this in four ways:
We enable ecosystem services trading by matching supply and demand. This allows local customers to support local projects. The first step in this is our marketplace for CO2 certificates.
We reward the farmer for its services as much as possible: 90% of the credit value (recorded in certificates) goes to the farmer. The remaining 10% is to cover the costs of aESTI.
We define and certify ecosystem services. In order to be able to buy and sell, an ecosystem service must be precisely described and the specifications must be verifiable (certification). aESTI develops these certificates for CO2 sequestration, water storage and biodiversity.
We use smart controls. In this way we keep the costs of our reliable certificates low, making them also profitable for small and mid-sized farms.