Greenstand’s TreeTracker is an open-source, mobile-based platform that verifies tree growth and connects smallholder tree growers to global climate finance. Using geo-tagged photos and AI-driven analysis, the platform generates verifiable data to track tree survival, species, and ecosystem services. These verified impacts are tokenized and traded, enabling donors and corporations to fund real, on-the-ground restoration efforts. Tree growers receive compensation only for living trees, ensuring long-term care. The system creates transparency, accountability, and livelihood opportunities in impoverished regions, redefining climate action as an inclusive, data-driven employment model.
Application to Pacific Regional Climate Challenges
Pacific Island Countries face rising sea levels, biodiversity loss, and limited economic options for rural communities. TreeTracker addresses these by enabling local people to plant, monitor, and earn income from trees, contributing to both climate resilience and livelihoods. Its adaptability to low-connectivity environments makes it ideal for remote island communities. The innovation respects indigenous knowledge by allowing native tree species and community-driven restoration goals. Outcomes include increased tree survival rates, biodiversity restoration, and community empowerment. It shifts reforestation from a top-down, donor-centric model to a grassroots, inclusive ecosystem that values local participation and long-term ecological health.
Experience in Implementation
Greenstand’s TreeTracker platform has been actively used across the Pacific region and broader Asia-Pacific, with the following verified tree captures:
● Fiji: 5 captures
● Papua New Guinea: 1 capture
● Australia: 27 captures
● Indonesia: 6,901 captures
● Philippines: 2,868 captures
● Japan: 64 captures
● Taiwan: 1 capture
● Malaysia: 8,409 captures
These figures represent verified tree data submitted through the TreeTracker app and reflect real engagement with growers in these countries. While some countries like Fiji and Papua New Guinea are in early stages of adoption, others such as Indonesia and Malaysia show significant implementation, providing a foundation for scaling across more Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Beyond the Pacific, TreeTracker has been successfully implemented in:
● Sierra Leone (Freetown): Custom version for city-wide reforestation, based on feedback from 310 community meetings, achieving 80% survival rates.
● Tanzania, Haiti, and 86 other countries: Used by over 6,000 growers and 100+ community-based organizations.
● Global reach: 7+ million trees verified, with a 90% average survival rate in tracked programs.
Replication and Upscaling in PICTs
TreeTracker is fully open-source and modular, enabling local customization. It works on basic smartphones and low-bandwidth networks, ideal for Pacific Islands. Scaling involves training local partners, integrating native species, and embedding into local policy frameworks. Its blockchain-based token system can enable peer-to-peer climate finance across island nations. The platform can serve as a regional climate data infrastructure while empowering thousands of local stewards.
Next Steps
Greenstand is scaling an AI-powered solution that verifies and values environmental restoration work done by individuals in underserved communities. Over the next 12 months, our next steps are to:
● Advance AI models to expand species recognition and improve capture association, critical to verifying long-term tree growth and ecological impact.
● Expand regionally, particularly in the Pacific, by adapting the TreeTracker tool to local ecosystems and onboarding new partners to collect data and deliver community-based environmental action.
● Enhance usability by incorporating user feedback from people with limited literacy and tech access, ensuring the tool remains inclusive, particularly for women, youth, and Indigenous growers.
● Scale data infrastructure and impact verification, enabling traceable micropayments for ecosystem services and expanding the marketplace for Greenstand Impact Tokens.
● Develop open-source tools and deployment documentation to support replication in new regions.
To succeed, we need funding for technical development, community onboarding, and to build out infrastructure that supports impact ownership by those restoring ecosystems. We envision TreeTracker becoming a foundational tool for climate finance systems that are inclusive, verifiable, and community-driven
Abyss Vanuatu Ocean Institute (AVOI) is a science-led, community-driven initiative advancing marine restoration, climate resilience and sustainable blue economy development in Vanuatu. Through its Havannah Harbour pilot, AVOI integrates Reef Ball deployment, artificial reef design, drone-enabled monitoring and workforce training via the Vanuatu Ocean Rangers. The model combines innovation and local stewardship to restore ecosystems, strengthen biodiversity and support climate adaptation. By linking technology, community engagement and practical delivery, AVOI is developing a scalable national framework that helps translate ocean policy into measurable outcomes, creating jobs, building local capability and supporting long-term environmental resilience across island communities.
Abyss Vanuatu Ocean Institute (AVOI) delivers integrated, science-led services focused on marine restoration, climate resilience and sustainable environmental management. Its core services include the design and deployment of Reef Ball artificial reef systems and managed vessel reefs to restore degraded marine habitats, enhance biodiversity and support fisheries recovery. AVOI also provides drone-enabled monitoring and survey services, using autonomous and manned systems to track climate impacts, support conservation planning and improve data-driven decision-making across marine and coastal environments.
A central component is the development of the Vanuatu Ocean Rangers program, which builds local workforce capability in restoration, monitoring, conservation and environmental stewardship. AVOI also supports Marine Protected Area (MPA) design, ecological baseline assessments and long-term monitoring frameworks aligned with national ocean policy objectives.
Through community engagement, eco-tourism integration and applied innovation, AVOI connects environmental protection with economic opportunity. Its Havannah Harbour pilot serves as a scalable model to deliver practical climate adaptation, strengthen ecosystem resilience and enable coordinated, whole-of-government environmental outcomes across Vanuatu.
The Innovation
One of AVOI’s key innovations is the integration of the Vanuatu Ocean Ranger program with locally delivered marine restoration systems, including Reef Ball fabrication and deployment. This model combines workforce development, community engagement and practical restoration into a single, scalable framework designed for island environments.
Through structured Vanuatu Ocean Ranger Camps, over a 3 day period AVOI identifies and trains local Ni-Vanuatu participants in marine conservation, Scientific diving, restoration techniques, monitoring and stewardship. One aspect of the Rangers responsibilities is to support the fabrication and deployment of Reef Ball artificial reef systems using locally sourced materials and regional supply chains, significantly reducing costs and increasing local ownership. The approach enables degraded reef systems to be restored while simultaneously building in-country capability and employment pathways, guided by our National AVOI Play Book at its core.
This innovation directly addresses climate change by strengthening reef resilience, supporting fisheries recovery and enhancing coastal protection against storm surge and extreme weather events. It also improves ecosystem health, which is critical for food security and long-term adaptation in Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs).
What makes this model particularly relevant for PICTs is its practicality and scalability. It does not rely on high-cost external inputs but instead builds local capacity, integrates customary stewardship and aligns with government policy frameworks. The system can be replicated across islands using a consistent training, deployment and governance approach.
Supported by drone-enabled monitoring and AI self learning data collection, AVOI’s model provides a cost-effective, community-led solution that connects restoration, climate resilience and sustainable economic opportunity in a way that is both locally grounded and nationally scalable.
How is this solution innovative?
AVOI’s solution is innovative because it integrates community workforce development, marine restoration and applied technology into a single, scalable delivery model tailored for island environments. Rather than treating conservation, employment and climate adaptation as separate challenges, AVOI combines them through the Vanuatu Ocean Ranger program and locally delivered Reef Ball restoration systems. This creates a practical pathway where communities are directly trained and employed to restore and monitor their own marine ecosystems. The model also incorporates drone-enabled monitoring and emerging AI-supported survey systems to improve data collection, ecological tracking and rapid response capability, including in remote and disaster-affected areas. This blend of low-cost, locally sourced restoration methods with advanced monitoring technology allows for both accessibility and scientific rigour. What makes the approach particularly innovative is its focus on scalability and replication. By developing a standardised training, deployment and governance framework, AVOI provides a repeatable model based on a National AVOI Play book that can be adapted across Pacific Island Countries, helping translate policy into measurable, community-led climate and environmental outcomes.
How can the innovation be replicated and scaled up in other PICTs
AVOI’s model is designed for replication across Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) through a structured, partnership-driven and capacity-focused approach. Following an initial two-year proof-of-concept in Vanuatu, AVOI will develop a refined National PICT Playbook outlining standard operating procedures (SOPs) and safe work method statements (SWMS), delivered in both English and Bislama, with visual and pictorial elements to ensure accessibility across diverse communities.
Scaling will be enabled through institutional partnerships with government agencies, regional bodies, scientific partners such as UTS, and local stakeholders, supported by blended financing models including public-private partnerships, eco-tourism revenue streams and conservation funding.
A key component is the development of a simplified, citizen science-based survey framework focused on key indicator species. This approach lowers technical barriers, enabling participation from communities with varying levels of formal education while strengthening data collection and stewardship.
By combining local workforce training, accessible science, and standardised systems, AVOI creates a practical, low-cost model that can be adapted regionally, empowering communities while supporting climate resilience, biodiversity restoration and sustainable economic development across PICTs.
Is your solution cost‑effective and affordable in the context of Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs)?
AVOI’s solution is designed to be highly cost-effective and affordable for communities, local governments and small operators across PICTs. A core principle of the model is the use of locally available materials, including aggregates from regional quarries and, where appropriate, surplus or repurposed government materials. This significantly reduces construction and deployment costs for Reef Ball systems and associated infrastructure.
From an end-user perspective, the model lowers financial barriers by building local capability through the Vanuatu Ocean Ranger Camp Initiative and subsequent program, reducing reliance on external expertise and enabling communities to deliver and maintain restoration activities themselves. The integration of eco-tourism also creates revenue-generating opportunities that can help offset ongoing costs.
Affordability is further strengthened through the development of a streamlined cross-departmental approval pathway within the AVOI Playbook. By providing clear guidance on site selection, environmental considerations and standardised processes, local governments can reduce delays, duplication and administrative costs, enabling more efficient project delivery at scale.
Together, these elements create a low-cost, accessible and sustainable model that is practical for widespread adoption across PICTs.
Where is this being piloted?
AVOI’s solution is being piloted in Vanuatu, with Havannah Harbour (North-West Efate) identified as the primary proof-of-concept site, supported by a permanent operational and training hub at Lot 149, Lapita Estate. While over 1,000,000 Reef Balls have been deployed globally across more than 80 countries, this will be the first integrated deployment of this system in Vanuatu. The pilot combines initial baseline surveys across 12 regions using Reef Life Survey (RLS Methodology) prior to any deployments. Once 6 of the sites are selected for deployment we will deploy 50m x 10m of Reef Ball habitat restoration—designed as a 500+ year solution—, allowing us to. Continue to conduct 6 monthly replicated surveys in exactly the same 50m transects to demonstrate recruitment changes providing proof of concept. Together with the Vanuatu Ocean Ranger program, which trains and employs local Ni-Vanuatu to deliver restoration, monitoring and stewardship, supported by drone-enabled surveying, community engagement and eco-tourism integration. The approach is intentionally holistic, linking marine restoration, climate resilience, workforce development, local supply chains and government coordination into a single, place-based model. The Havannah Harbour pilot will be used to refine systems, demonstrate measurable outcomes and establish a scalable framework for national and regional replication across PICTs, through the development of our AVOI National Playbook, helping guide replication across all our satellite sites. Initial training will be conducted through AVOI Headquarters in Havannah Harbour, with Ranger selection conducted through a multi-day conservation camp where participant will all leave with new knowledge and appreciation for the terrestrial and marine environment, and Ocean Rangers selected for employment within the AVOI team at the conclusion of the camps.
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