Imagine losing your home, your family, and your belongings due to a natural disaster. This is an annual reality for thousands of Indians.

Included amongst the wreckage and loss, imagine also losing your legal ID and other official documents.

This makes proving who you are, and rebuilding your home or business near impossible. Then you have the issue of land grabs. Why bother at all investing in reconstruction when someone can just come along to claim your property?

![](https://sustainableada.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/climate-change-refugees-world-bank-1.webp)

Why Blockchain?

“Big banks and some governments are using blockchains to revolutionize how they store information and conduct transactions. There are many reasons to do this, including faster speed, lower costs, greater security, and fewer errors.

A blockchain also eliminates central points of attack and failure. None of these reasons requires cryptocurrency per se. However, many important blockchains are based on Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin model, and here’s how they work.

Bitcoin or other digital currency isn’t saved in a file somewhere. Instead it’s represented by transactions recorded on a blockchain. Think of it as a global spreadsheet or ledger. Each Bitcoin transaction entered on it is verified by a large peer-to-peer network.


Each blockchain is distributed. That means it runs on computers provided by volunteers around the world. It also means there’s no central database to hack. It doesn’t mean all distributed ledgers are blockchains. A distributed ledger is a database existing in many places with many people using it. Not all distributed ledgers have the encryption and verification standards of a blockchain. A blockchain is a specific type of distributed ledger, just as a square is a specific type of rectangle.

The blockchain is public, it’s open-source code, it’s a protocol, not a product. Anyone can view it at any time because it’s located on the network, not inside a single institution. The blockchain has heavy duty encryption, using public and private keys. Think of it like the two key system to access a safety deposit box. Unlike Target or Home Depot, there are no weak firewalls to attack. Unlike at Morgan Stanley or the US Federal Government, there are no untrustworthy staffers to steal secrets.


Every 10 minutes, like the heartbeat of the Internet, all transactions conducted on the Bitcoin network are verified, cleared, and stored in a block. The block is linked to the preceding block and to the block before it, creating a chain of blocks. Each block must refer to the preceding block to be valid. The structure permanently timestamps, and stores exchanges of value, and it prevents anyone from altering the ledger.

This validation process makes theft impossible by any practical measure. If you wanted to steal a bitcoin, you’d have to rewrite the coins’ entire history on the block chain. What’s more, you’d have to do it without being detected by millions of other people working on it. Well, that’s practically impossible.


Some scholars say capitalism was able to thrive because of the invention of double-entry bookkeeping. It’s a system where a credit in one account always matches a debit in another. Well, blockchain, a worldwide ledger of value, goes much further. We can program a blockchain to record virtually everything or anything of value and importance, not only payments and profits, but birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, deeds, titles of ownership, educational degrees

Beyond financial accounts, it can also track votes, medical procedures, insurance claims, and even the origins of every ingredient in our meal. It can track anything that we can express in code. What’s more, it verifies these records in near real time

Soon, billions of smart things in the physical world will be communicating with each other. They’ll be sensing and responding to conditions through sensors. But they’ll also be able to do transactions. They’ll be buying their own electricity and sharing important data, doing everything from protecting our environment to managing our health. So, this Internet of everything needs a trustworthy ledger for everything."

​

Don Tapscott

Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Blockchain Research Institute

![](https://sustainableada.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/voting-desktop-01-2090x2416-1-1772x2048.jpeg)

Introduction

Blockchain can be compared to a book of permanent records, where every page acts as an information holder.

https://docs.cardano.org/new-to-cardano/what-is-a-blockchain





A book of permanent records

Let’s take a closer look at existing data storage solutions to understand the difference between these systems:


**Centralized systems** — all data entries and activities are usually managed using one central server. This increases the risk of a single point of failure, and also means that the controlling entity (such as banks or government institutions, for example) act as decision-makers.

**Decentralized systems** — generally rely on multiple server nodes, each of which serves a subset of the total end clients.

**Distributed systems** — all data and records of transactions are encrypted and stored not in one server, but in a system of interconnected, independent nodes and terminals. This ensures independence from centralized entities, transparency, and security.

Types of Systems

What is Blockchain?

“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we leave it for our children”


Sustainability is a complex concept and can be hard to wrap your head around when not clearly defined and articulated.

There are many ways to define sustainability. In 1987, the United Nations stated that “humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities.”

Sustainability can be spread through any field of study and connected to all aspects of life.

This idea is derived by connecting all the Social, Environmental, and Economic dimensions of sustainability, and creating a harmonious balance between these systems.

Where these three dimensions meet, it enables equitable, ‘strong’ sustainable change, paving a way where top down Governmental led initiatives and grassroots community led initiatives harmonise to help create and nurture prosperous societies.

Such connections can also be seen in the private sector with businesses using guiding concepts such as ‘People, Planet and Profit’, also known as the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ (TBL), coined back in 1994 by John Elkington.

However, 25 years later in 2019, Elkington proposed a “strategic recall to do some fine tuning.” Why recall it? He explained that rather than achieving system change, in practice it became “just another accounting system.” 

Elkington goes on to explain that “to truly shift the needle, however, we need a new wave of TBL innovation and deployment…Indeed, none of these sustainability frameworks will be enough, as long as they lack the suitable pace and scale — the necessary radical intent — needed to stop us all overshooting our planetary boundaries.” 



Social, Environmental, Economic Dimensions 

**People** – aims to focus on the workers and customers, looking at how the products and services will impact people’s lives.

**Planet** – aims to have a focus on preserving the environment, and different ecosystems while producing products and services.

**Profit** – aims to create a balance between maximizing profits with the planet, and people aspects of a sustainable business.

https://www.ecomatcher.com/how-to-make-sustainability-an-everyday-part-of-your-business/


People, Planet, Profit 

Systems thinking is an important element of sustainability and can help with creating the balance between the social, environmental, and economic systems.

Systems thinking can also be used for solving wicked problems that exist in society today.

It is a form of thinking that goes outside the box, away from linear modes of production towards circular ones.

It allows people to think about problems in a new way, and it is also how we can find new solutions. 

Brain Pop defines systems thinking as a means of understanding a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the elements that compose the entirety of the system.

Systems expert, Donella Meadows, describes a system as ‘an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something’.

Systems Thinking

The current system is no longer working for businesses, people or the environment.​

We take resources from the ground to make products, which we use, and, when we no longer want them, throw them away. Take-make-waste. We call this a linear economy.

​OUR WAY OF DOING THINGS IS REACHING ITS LIMITS

​We now have the knowledge and tools to build an economy that is fit for the 21st Century.

​It’s called the CIRCULAR ECONOMY

​As leading circular economy thinker, Ken Webster, points out, the circular economy is ‘a story about the possibilities of abundance, of meeting people’s needs by designing out waste, and recreating the kind of elegant abundance so evident in living systems.’


![](https://sustainableada.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CE-Diagram-Green.png)

Systems & Circular Economy 

An old story with a timeless message

An ancient Sufi story tells of a city whose inhabitants were blind. One day a king arrived riding at the head of his army on the back of a mighty elephant. Curious to know what sort of animal it was, some of the blind men rushed forward to touch the elephant. One man, feeling the elephant’s trunk, claimed it was like a giant snake, strong and powerful. Another man, touching its feet, said it was like a sturdy tree trunk. And so the quarrel continued with each man claiming that his impression of the elephant captured its true form and likeness.

​
The lesson is simple: to understand something properly, the parts must be understood in relation to the whole. This story has universal appeal because its essential truth can be applied to all phenomena, from animals to economics. As John Muir observed, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” The key, therefore, to real understanding is understanding relationships.

THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT

Firstly, it is important to understand some of the relationships that shape our economy.

​
At its most basic level an economy is the name we give to a process: society making use of natural resources to create products and services that people need or want e.g. homes for shelter, and food for nourishment.

​
Viewed in this way, our economy, society, and environment are interdependent systems – the vitality of one affects the vitality of them all. This is the simple yet profound reality that begins our understanding of systems.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE ECONOMY?

What is Sustainability?

“What could be the contribution of blockchains with regard to the pursuit of sustainable development?” 

“Can blockchain accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, in a meaningful and sustainable way?”

These questions are explored in a white paper report, Blockchains & Développement Durable(Blockchains and Sustainable Development), created by Blockchain-X, in partnership with l’Institut Louis Bachelier and COREUM Consulting, released June 2020. 

Blockchain’s use beyond speculative finance is emerging and maturing. In a collaboration between dGen and PositiveBlockchain.io, they analysed this potential for social good, guided by the UN’s SDGs. 

Twenty-five external experts lent their insights into current and potential applications, from diverse organizations such as: Celo, Duniter, UCL, Affinidy, MineSpider, Cardano, Ethereum, Climate Chain Coalition, Energy Web, and more.


Some of the questions tackled in the report include:

- How can blockchain make identity more accessible?
- What can blockchain do for financial inclusion?
- What does transparency mean for supply chains?
- How can climate initiatives benefit from blockchain?



Blockchain & the SDGs:

From the Blockchains and Sustainable Development report, all 17 goals are addressed through the case studies of Blockchain & Sustainable Development Use Cases, which impact directly or indirectly our ability to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030:


Examples of how the SDGs are connected to blockchain from “Leveraging Blockchain for Sustainability and Open Innovation: 

Cyber-Resilient Approach toward EU Green Deal and UN Sustainable Development Goals” by Paula Fraga-Lamas and Tiago M. Fernández-Caramés.

SDGs Connection to Blockchain

Blockchain is fundamentally a technology of trust, but transformative possibilities to benefit society more broadly are emerging. As blockchain has trust, openness and transparency built into its design, its benefits are wide-ranging and impact multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).


Learn more: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain

Frontiers in Blockchain was the first blockchain peer reviewed scientific journal

Blockchain & Sustainability 

The UN defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Cardano’s blockchain technology enables everyone and generations to come to access a digital world of opportunities, and for everyone to find their role and play their part in shaping a global society where everyone can prosper and flourish. From the ground up Cardano is sustainable. Cardano’s core values are Scalability, Interoperability, and Sustainability. 

Cardano thought carefully about what factors promote centralization and what techniques could be applied to encourage the protocol to gradually become public infrastructure like the web. Cardano fully admits that total decentralization is both impossible and perhaps even counterproductive. Yet certain factors can be encouraged to produce a more balanced system. More information can be found here on Cardano’s roadmap, and section on Governance as part of Voltaire.

CARDANO - https://cardano.org/

DAEDALUS - https://daedaluswallet.io/

ATALA - https://atalaprism.io/app

MANTIS - https://mantisclient.io/




IO Global

WHY CARDANO - https://why.cardano.org/

CARDANO.ORG - https://cardano.org/

Cardano Foundation

Lesson 4

EMURGO is a multinational blockchain technology company providing solutions for developers, startups, enterprises, and governments.


Emurgo Trace - https://emurgo.io/our-products#emurgo-traceability

Supply Chain solution that leverages blockchain technology to provide overall enhanced security, transparency, and efficiency to all stakeholders in the value chain.

Emurgo

The Cardano Roadmap is split into 5 different sections working simultaneously.

Learn More: https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/

Cardano Roadmap

Why Cardano?

Cardano & Sustainability have a lot in common…


The UN defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Cardano’s blockchain technology has the ability to allow generations to strive and for every single individual to have a part in a global society. From the ground up Cardano is sustainable. Cardano’s core values are Scalability, Interoperability, and Sustainability. 




For Cardano, they thought carefully about what factors promote centralization and what techniques could be applied to encourage the protocol to gradually become a public infrastructure like the web. Cardano fully admits that total decentralization is both impossible and perhaps even counterproductive. Yet certain factors can be encouraged to produce a more balanced system.

First principle: have chosen to integrate a treasury system into Cardano. 

Second principle: will deploy a formal process to propose Cardano Improvement Proposals through a system coordinated by Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) itself. 

Third principle: believe Ouroboros provides an elegant solution.


First, while centralized custodianship of crowd sale funds allows for agile and rapid development of the protocol during the early days, eventually funding has to diversify and the speed of development needs to retire to a more systematic and deliberate pace. Following this point, funding needs to avoid cultural, linguistic and geographic bias.
 
Second, as the community becomes more informed about the underlying nature of the cryptocurrency’s technology, decisions about the roadmap cannot be centralized to a set of core developers or foundation. There needs to be a blockchain based method for proposing, vetting, and enacting changes to the protocol.

Third, the incentives behind maintaining the Cardano Settlement Layer (SL) blockchain have to be directly aligned with the aggregate desires of all users. We cannot permit a cabal of specialized actors to emerge who are independent of the will of the greater community.

Cardano’s Sustainable Principles of Implementation

Ouroboros is the first peer-reviewed, verifiably secure blockchain protocol, and Cardano is the first blockchain to implement it. Ouroboros enables the Cardano network’s decentralization, and allows it to sustainably scale to global requirements without, crucially, compromising security. 

The protocol is the culmination of tireless effort, building on foundational research, and is propelled by a vision for more secure and transparent global payment systems, and a means to redistribute, more fairly, power and control.

More about Ouroboros – https://cardano.org/ouroboros/

Proof of Stake & Ouroboros

Working together, we achieve more for the many.


Cardano is built by a decentralized community of scientists, engineers, and thought leaders united in a common purpose: to create a technology platform that will ignite the positive change the world needs. We believe the future should not be defined by the past, and that more is possible – and, through technology, can be made possible for all. We measure the worth of a task not by its challenge, but by its results.

Every ADA holder also holds a stake in the Cardano network. Ada stored in a wallet can be delegated to a stake pool to earn rewards – to participate in the successful running of the network – or pledged to a stake pool to increase the pool’s likelihood of receiving rewards. In time, ada will also be usable for a variety of applications and services on the Cardano platform.

People 

A platform built for a sustainable future, to help people work better together, trust one another, and build global solutions to global problems.


Cardano is a fork in the road. It takes us from where we’ve been to where we’re destined to go: a global society that is secure, transparent, and fair, and which serves the many as well as the few. Like the technological revolutions that have come before, it offers a new template for how we work, interact, and create, as individuals, businesses, and societies.

Cardano began with a vision of a world without intermediaries, in which power is not controlled by an accountable few, but by the empowered many. In this world, individuals have control over their data and how they interact and transact. Businesses have the opportunity to grow independent of monopolistic and bureaucratic power structures. Societies are able to pursue true democracy: self-governing, fair, and accountable. It is a world made possible by Cardano.




Purpose 

Pioneering tech begins with groundbreaking research.


Cardano began with and has grown through research. Before any technology we integrate is developed, it is specified. And before it is specified, it is researched. That research is peer-reviewed – a unique achievement for a blockchain platform – so that our ideas may be challenged before they are validated.

To build a lasting future, we’ve ensured the durability and stability of every building block

The research – led by leading academics – explores philosophy, sociology, behavior, and game theory. To achieve each outcome, we consider the minutiae of possibilities: the variables that often go unconsidered, but which may ultimately impact the integrity and sustainability of a global, decentralized platform. We take nothing for granted.

Research 

Cardano brings a new standard in technology – open and inclusive – to challenge the old and activate a new age of sustainable, globally-distributed innovation.


Cardano’s technology is underpinned by research. They have redefined what it means to create a global software platform through scientific methods. By not having to compromised on their belief, or in the approach.

To build a better future – secure, sustainable, and governable by the many – Cardano has taken the road less traveled. The result of this effort is a blockchain platform unparalleled in its capability and performance. Truly able to support global applications, systems, and real-life business use cases.

From the incremental to global, Cardano improves how we interact, transact, and create – and ultimately operate as a global society.

Cardano is a blockchain platform built on the groundbreaking Ouroboros proof-of-stake consensus protocol, and developed using the Haskell programming language: a functional programming language that enables Cardano to pursue evidence-based development, for unparalleled security and stability.

Technology 

The staging point for every new opportunity. Empower your business through Cardano, and discover the future of technology

Cardano provides the template and toolset to a new age of innovation. It introduces leading-edge technologies, models, and methodologies to help individuals, developers, and enterprises discover a new possible, realize change, and enrich their lives. 


Blockchain technology holds the answer to a number of legacy challenges, whether financial, societal, or technological. It disintermediates essential relationships, and redistributes power to alleviate costly dependencies, restrictive paradigms, and inefficient systems of transaction and exchange. Cardano is a realization of this potential. It is a platform with the security, privacy sustainability, and performance standards required to accelerate the mass adoption of the technology, and support a lasting ecosystem. 

Cardano powers new, more secure, and globally scalable solutions. Its technology is continuously improved upon through evidence-based development methods, and guided by a democratic voting system, in which every member has a voice. The opportunity of Cardano is adaptable to your use case. It is an opportunity that creates other opportunities, continuously.

Blockchain & Sustainability

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