APRIL 28, 2025 — EarthAcre, in partnership with the African Natural Capital Alliance (ANCA), today announced a new model for nature stewardship in Africa, introducing a way for community landowners to get paid directly, transparently, and with multiple revenue streams for nature.
EarthAcre is a leading nature technology company focused on quantifying nature outcomes scalably and enabling traceable, direct cash payments to individual landowners, regardless of complexity in land tenure or community structure. EarthAcre’s platform is currently delivering payments for nature to hundreds of indigenous households across 35,000 acres, with funding from the Klarna/Milkywire Nature Transformation Fund, with agreements in place to scale to 1M acres.
ANCA, a member organization that promotes African private and public sector awareness for nature-based solutions and transactions and counts 100+ leading African corporations among its members, is providing technical and fundraising support. Together, they are introducing a new model aimed at getting community landowners paid directly, transparently and with multiple revenue streams for nature. Indigenous communities safeguard the majority of Earth’s remaining biodiversity, but rarely get paid directly or sufficiently due to data and transparency gaps.
EarthAcre’s model enables traceable payments to individuals paired with rigorous nature monitoring at scale. This improves existing capital flow, while creating additional revenue opportunities for indigenous communities.
At the heart of this model is EarthAcre’s digital platform that transforms nature-based project development by addressing critical challenges in participant onboarding, project maintenance, and impact measurement.
“Current projects in nature finance, from carbon markets to tourism to payments for ecosystem services, typically face challenges with effectively reaching and incentivizing the individuals who live with and among biodiversity every day,”
— Viraj Sikand, CEO of EarthAcre
The platform addresses the most persistent challenges facing nature finance by introducing:
Simplified processes for onboarding participants in nature-related projects in line with the principle that indigenous peoples must consent to actions which impact their lands, territories or rights
End-to-end transparency with direct payments to individuals, no matter the community or landholding structures
Quantifiable measurement of nature outcomes, using rigorous scientific methods developed in partnership with Harvard University’s Davies Lab
Sikand added:
“Conventional incentives have focused on the representatives of these communities, such as management committees or trusts, with low visibility on how those funds are actually used and distributed. Our platform creates a scalable pathway for nature-based projects to directly and transparently pay communities and their constituents for their essential role as stewards of nature, and ensure long-term resilience of their culture.”
Payments are paired with rigorous and scalable measurements of nature outcomes, which create the opportunity for new, additional nature-based revenues for indigenous communities. For example, EarthAcre is among the first in the world to pilot Verra’s SD Vista Nature Framework to generate Nature Assets, which provide a structured way for private sector entities to invest in nature. EarthAcre is now partnering with ANCA to bring Nature Assets to ANCA’s network of leading African corporations.
“This partnership represents a significant step forward in ensuring that African communities are properly recognized and compensated for their critical conservation efforts,”
— Dorothy Maseke, Head of ANCA Secretariat
“Through this collaboration, we aim to create sustainable pathways for communities to thrive while preserving biodiversity, and to bring unprecedented confidence to nature finance.”
“Indigenous communities are the true guardians of our natural ecosystems, yet they’ve historically received little financial recognition for this critical role,”
— Patita Nkamunu, Co-founder and Head of Projects at EarthAcre
“Our new model delivers income transparently, directly and scalably, to these communities. By stacking nature based revenues from different projects, we can make nature stewardship a financially feasible choice for landowners on the ground.”
