Pachama

There’s money to be made in providing a reality check for carbon credits. Those credits set money aside for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide, usually through reforestation. But reforestation is itself often a murky exercise in which it’s difficult to precisely measure environmental impact.

Pachama operates an online marketplace in which organizations can buy carbon credits that fund forest restoration projects around the world, including in the Amazon rainforest, Uganda, the United States, and India. Its selling point is that it’s able to verify that the carbon credits offered on its platform are accurately linked to measurable reductions in carbon emissions. The company uses machine-learning technology to analyze satellite and Lidar imagery data to measure and monitor the carbon stored in forests—a significant step up from older, more time-consuming methods of measurement. Pachama also recently partnered with Latin American e-commerce giant MercadoLibre to use its technology to help fund and monitor restoration projects involving other Latin American forests.

This article has been updated to include more information about forest restoration projects affiliated with Pachama.