"WATERSHED SOLUTIONS REPOSITORY"

A Collaborative Repository of Peer Reviewed Papers and Projects for Water-Soil-Vegetation-Climate Restoration

INTRODUCTION

There is a desperate need to consolidate the science and viable solutions for restoring both our planetary and local water cycles, in order to encourage a hydrological cooling result, more conservatively referred to as "water, soil, vegetation, climate". And then to get this information translated into actions by the committed eco-practitioners who are getting the actual, tangible work accomplished.

This OpenCivic Round 2 proposal for the development of a decentralized, peer-reviewed science database/website referred to here by the working title of the "Water Solutions Repository". This Water Solutions Repository intends to implement the first phase of a seven phase, five year development cycle initiative – co-created with hyper-radical collaboration – with Planetary Watershed Revitalization as our focused end goal.

This initiative is emerging from a collaboration of several contributing partners, along with input from their community members. These currently include: WaterUnity Networks, EcoRestoration Alliance, Open Future Coalition, Regenerate Earth, and the World Water Community as our core primary alliance, with other esteemed colleagues will be contributing. Final agreements are still pending and the constellation may adapt over time.

As a member of the OpenCivics Coalition, the WaterUnity Network is the primary focalizing organization coordinating the grant proposal and accountability.

PROJECT BRIEF:

This proposal is driven by two key motivators:

To offer clear pathways made available to every community everywhere for those committed wisdom councils of Water Stewards ready to implement the most accessible, cost-effective, high impact, nature-based solutions with longest-term benefits efficiently in the shortest amount of time to restore their local biomes;

To convince the world's lawmakers, the United Nations and the large scale ecosystem restoration funders to provide the required financial support and/or take steps necessary for restoring our planetary, bioregional and small local water cycle based on peer reviewed science for the hydrological cooling of Earth's ‘soil, water, vegetation, and climate’.

There are myriad elements to this scientific story. With this repository, we are co-creating a collaborative online space where scientists and activated Watershed Stewards can discern what is needed most to remediate the unique challenges in their own Watersheds, as well as efficiently collaborate on the larger scale bioregional and global solutions. This is an ambitious initiative with far-reaching goals that must be implemented in phases. This current proposal is intending to procure the seed funding required to accomplish the first phase of this broader seven phase initiative with a 5 year plan: Phase 1: System Design, Resource Curation and Initial Content Development (3 months) Phase 2: Technical AI & Data Systems Mapping, Development and Integration (6 months) Phase 3: Pilot Program Beta Launch and Evaluation (6 months) Phase 4: System Refinement and Expansion (6 months) Phase 5: Selective Public Launch and Reevaluation (3 months) Phase 6: Full Public Launch and Year-end Revaluation (1 year) Phase 7: Two Year Maintenance and Economic Sustainability (2 years)

This first phase will assemble a small dedicated team of whole-system designers, content curators, subject matter experts and change agents to identify, review, and organize relevant articles, presentations, videos, and other resources to begin converting these into usable templates and curriculum. WEB3 and AI technologies will be utilized as appropriate. Many scientists and journalists have done, and are doing, significant work in this space. These excellent coordinated collective actions can be implemented on local, bioregional and global scales to ripple out with positive effect to rebalance Earth's essential planetary hydrologic cycle. The "Water Solutions Repository" intends to tie together these many diverse aspects of the science, solutions and communities into a larger coherent system of functional and practical actions.

MEASURABLE GOALS

Depending on the grant amount our 3 month Phase 1 measurable milestones include:

 Paying part time compensation for 4 collaborators to administer production of the goals;
 Final draft of the strategic action plan for all 7 phases to develop the Water Repository,
 Evaluate and curate a minimum of 10 nature based Watershed restoration solutions;
 Provide for the expenses to host the website housing the 1st interaction of the repository;
 

PRELIMINARY BUDGET:

This OpenCivics grant will support the first phase development of our measurable and deliverable 6 month goal for one specific portion or "branch" of a larger ERA initiative for an ERA Solutions Library.

1. WATERSHED SOLUTIONS REPOSITORY $20,000 - Provide seed funding for WaterUnity Networks and allies to contribute
   a functional template for the broader ERA project, as follows.

   1.1 Part time compensation for 4 administrative collaborators; 1.2 Drafting the strategic action plan for all 7 phases to develop the Water Repository 1.3 Curate a minimum of 10 nature based Watershed restoration solutions; 1.4 Provide expenses to host a website housing the 1st iteration of the repository.

2. Overall projected budget for an ERA Solutions Library that is currently be raised by ERA (but not included in this proposal) includes the following:

2.1 RESOURCE CURATION AND CONTENT DEVELOPMENT $50,000 - Content curators and subject matter experts $20,000 - Resource database development and maintenance

2.2 AI SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION $100,000 - AI development team $40,000 - AI system training and fine-tuning:

2.3 PILOT PROGRAM LAUNCH AND EVALUATION $30,000 - Training and support for educators and facilitators $20,000 - Monitoring and data collection

2.4 SYSTEM REFINEMENT AND EXPANSION $30,000 - System improvements and updates: $20,000 - Expansion planning and outreach:

Total ERA Solutions Library Budget: $310,000

WHY: Water's diversity of life sustains and strengthens Earth's intricate nurturing biospheric web, and this integrally includes the human species, all structurally supported and organized within our Watersheds.

The planetary hydrologic cycle nurtures and nourishes an interconnected web of relationships woven together into the diverse tapestry of life, yet unites all living beings in a delicate and enduring dance of complexity. In order to repair the damage humans have caused, in time, we need effective organizational methods and tested tools to collaboratively manage this scope and scale of this complexity.

Yet, even while we discuss what to do to address the existential challenges of the current climate catastrophe, ecosystems are still being rapidly destroyed while we ponder and all the species are either suffering significant decline or being driven to extinction. The flood/drought cycle is decimating lands and impacting communities everywhere.

Good people are caught in the crossfire of geopolitical conflicts caused by diminishing resources. Long established cultures are being shattered, wisdom lost and rarely to recover. Many all over the world are without access to the basics of survival - safe water, nourishing food, secure shelter - but help can not reach them because of the consequences of ecosystem degradation, resource wars and climate related displacement. Vast numbers of children having their future hopes lost forever.

This is only going to escalate in the next decade. The question is what can we do to repair the damage.

It is not that we don't care about the suffering of the world - innumerable compassionate people around the world are working on solving these challenges - or that we don't want to contribute. The glaring gap in the system is that many don't know what to do or how they can positively contribute. We need guidance.

PROJECT IMPACT

Every Watershed on the planet is under stress. Not only is a balanced, intact Water Cycle essential for a thriving ecosystem, access to safe Water is a basic human right, and a requirement for a peaceful society. Recent scientific results are showing that implementing living systems solutions provide the most available, lowest cost, highest impact, and longest benefit solution to remediating the climate catastrophe. Any and all efforts count.

Recent watershed restoration projects have demonstrated that restoring a local Watershed significantly improves the quality of All Life within and around it, rippling out to rebalance the bioregional Water Cycle. This information must be made available to a broad demographic of concerned citizens in order to make a difference in the time frame we have available.

As we begin to heal the human relationship to the natural world, that which sustains us all, we positively affect the human social dynamics and will increasingly be the beneficial consequence of redefining our current dysfunctional paradigm. This will take time, of course but is the only course of action that makes any realistic common sense and we can not wait.

Not only do we believe the information and tools collected in the Watershed Solutions Repository are critical to effectively and efficiently implementing the eco-restoration work so needed in Watersheds all around the world we believe that being able to verifying the delivery of solutions and the measure the returning data accurate metrics will help the hydrologic system to recalibrate herself with more grace.

Here are a few of the impact that are expected from the success of this proposal

1. The Watershed Solutions Repository framework provides the bridging system for transferring the conversion of this scientific and social innovation into effective actions by supporting citizen cohorts working locally in the field and from afar, first with comprehensive needs assessments, then how to provide the basics for survival - food, shelter, and medical care, with an emphasis on providing filters for access to safe water.

2. The structure for the repository will help to coordinate advisors and experts, monitoring vital resources in critical areas, including impacts on the Water & ecosystem; and help focalize the regenerative projects striving to restore peace and abundance to the Watershed Communities once the conflicts have eased.

3. WaterUnity Networks (WUN) will be incorporating the tools offered by the fully integrated throughout everyone of their other actions, to scale, verify and reward these solution collaborations as individuals and communities take purposeful actions towards critical environmental and humanitarian causes.

WATER SOLUTIONS REPOSITORY COALITION LEADERS

WaterUnity Networks Leading partner (Eliza Herald) The WaterUnity Networks (WUN), guided by the Watershed Wisdom Council Concept, is an online and in-place organizational framework focused on co-creating community resiliency as an educational portal, wisdom repository and community-builder activating Watershed Community Stewardship in river catchments all around the world. Aligning with the Nature of Water, WUN empowers at the local community and bioregional level. WUN is an active long time member with both the ERA and the Open Future Coalitions community platform, the Open Impact Platform.

Ecosystem Restoration Alliance Leading partner (Jon Schull and friends) The EcoRestoration Alliance (ERA) is a network of scientists, earth stewards, storytellers and grassroots leaders united in the conviction that ecosystem restoration, conservation, agroecology, accelerated rewilding, and allied practices can solve the climate and biodiversity crises.

ERA is developing a more comprehensive Solutions Library to include all manner of regenerative solution, which will be nested within the Open Impact Platform.

Open Future Coalition (Kaitlin Archambault, Jamaica Stevens)

Open Future Fund is a growing set of tools and practices for ecosystem approaches to funding. We convene, syndicate, support, and invest in local funds to apply the right resources at the right time while supporting the long-term resilience of on-the-ground efforts. We are currently convening across the areas of ecological restoration, food systems, the built environment, and cooperative infrastructures.

Open Future Coalition already has a digital resource library module pilot with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to bridge research and practice between land grant extension and small farmers. They have agreed to make this available to this initiative.

Here's a link to (a concise version of) the scope of what they have built so far:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mUR8nRfGTyBSoyO9vPa4CIRFNy8sfFRJFSw1HbBG3EU/edit?usp=sharing

Regenerate Earth (Cindy Eiritz) Through consulting, education, advocacy, and peer and network support, Regenerate Earth works with graziers, farmers, scientists, advocates, businesses and local, state and federal governments on industry strategies, government policies and community initiatives. Regenerate Earth focuses on growing soils, communities and futures through consultancy, education and advocacy, and through applying solutions found in nature to build prosperity for people and planet.

World Water Community (Everine van de Kraats, Bastiaan Bosch) The World Water Community is an independent community platform gathering top new water paradigm scientists, watershed restoration practitioners, water stewards and concerned citizen, all dedicated to the global-to-local healing and restoration of our planetary and internal Waters providing a diverse ecosystem of tools and collaboration spaces to bring this vision into action and reality in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

The WaterUnity Network is currently building their Watershed Wisdom Councils on this community platform.

COLLABORATION WITH OPENCIVICS

In addition to the financial support that OpenCivics Genesis Grant Round can provide, we have long considered the OpenCivics consortium as one of our key potential partner platforms.

Because of the aligned expertise within the civic sector of society and a clear focus on eco-advocacy it is our hope, in the future, to collaborate further on creating a "Civic Guild" engaging with the citizens of OpenCivics and all the members of this as our creative partners.

This coalition is completely aligned with the three core pillars of OpenCivics innovation:

1. Adaptive self-organizing of strong community resilience thriving amidst of great challenges;

2. Freedom of Choice to reach for our greatest potential and provide for ourselves–individually and collectively–with the ability to determine the future we wish to past to our descendants;

3. Finally, the life-generating Vitality that comes from weaving together these interconnected levels of well-being and quality of life for ourselves, our families, our communities, and the biodiversity that sustains us.

SUMMARY:

Humanity faces an urgent need to integrate advanced regenerative science into effective climate mitigation efforts, aiming to heal our crashing planetary hydrologic cycle before irreversible damage occurs and avoid the worst consequences of cascading system collapse. Centralizing the solid science, best solutions, vetted templates, and most appropriate educational materials we will be mobilizing our collective intelligence toward implementing the most effective, efficient and practical field projects.

Our proposed first phase of funding strives to initiate our multi-phase approach, with each phase building upon the last while also being capable of standing alone as a complete achievement. This phased strategy spanned over five years is vital for sustained progress. We must first outline the comprehensive strategic design of the "Watershed Solutions Library" as a global repository of wisdom and establish governance protocols in order for the rest of the work to make good progress. Then, the production of the repository can proceed and adapt strategically, ensuring the greatest enduring success. This approach lays the groundwork for effective action, prioritizing strategic planning to maximize impact.

By linking as many regenerative networks with the most efficient tools, interconnecting local, bioregional and global functional community led wisdom councils, we will be fostering a sense of proactive planetary stewardship and nurture "cultures of caring" worldwide and ensuring resilient watershed communities thrive far into the future.

FOR MORE DETAILS ON THE WATERSHED SOLUTIONS REPOSITORY

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SGuKE_O3l11nK8WANBIZuYI8QWE7s6Tj-jXAPBqvEDQ/edit?usp=sharing