This week the Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust) announced that the Kingdom of Bhutan has fully integrated with the CAD Trust Metadata Layer. It’s the first national registry to do so. CAD Trust holds a log of Bhutan’s registry data. The Metadata layer aims to store carbon data across numerous carbon registries. By creating a single source of truth on its decentralized blockchain it helps prevent double counting of carbon credits.
CAD Trust was founded by the World Bank, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) and the Government of Singapore and launched late last year.
Forests cover almost three quarters of Bhutan’s territory helping to make it the first carbon negative country.
“By doing this, Bhutan is demonstrating its ambition to contribute significantly to global climate change mitigation efforts, and has applied maximum transparency and efficiency to the way its domestic market operates and how carbon market participants interact with it,” said Yuvaraj Dinesh Babu, Executive Director, CAD Trust.
“We expect many others to follow its example in the coming months as Article 6 markets become engrained in the fabric of global emission reduction and removal priorities.” The Paris Agreement’s Article 6 refers to voluntary carbon credit exports to help other countries reach their emission targets.
Druk Holding performs the integration
The integration was developed by Druk Holding and Investments (DHI), the commercial arm of the Royal Government of Bhutan.
“We look forward to working closely with the World Bank and other global stakeholders on such a worthy project,” said Karma Tshering, Secretary, Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Bhutan.
Druk Holding and Investments is also responsible for other government blockchain projects such as for self sovereign identity. More controversially, DHI reportedly built multiple Bitcoin mining hubs powered by hydroelectric as a ‘carbon free’ digital asset mining center. Singapore Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer claims to have built a 100MW data center in Bhutan in collaboration with DHI. Forbes says there are multiple mining hubs in the mountainous country.
