Harnessing the power of transient Non-fungible Tokens in support of preserving natural landscapes as heritage in the face of climate change

Abstract

Heritage is a vital resource for storytelling, defining our identity and history, and adding dignity and uniqueness to our legacies for future generations. Therefore, it should be protected, and awareness needs to be created. Today, in the face of climate change challenges and natural disaster, some of our heritages, linked to natural landscapes, is endangered. This paper describes developing an alternative licensing model for NFTs and a mobile-based NFT marketplace created to promote and protect nature as a heritage in the face of climate change-induced dangers. By incorporating evidence about state-of-the-art, leveraging blockchain and NFTs technologies at the service of heritage, here we highlight two essential and unique aspects: i) ensuring the usage of zero-carbon blockchain solutions and the creation of temporary NFTs, and ii) enabling continuous income sources for the asset owners, in our case organisations devoted to the protection of the designated natural landscapes. In this paper, we describe the design process and the validation of the ideas behind the usage and licensing of zero-carbon temporary NFTs. Thus we propose a financially sustainable solution capable of showing the actual state of the lineage (for example, the changing aspect of a landscape over seasons) and promoting a continuous source of donations used to preserve the assets. We validated the concept with users and obtained good usability and design results, proving the chosen approach's effectiveness.