Theory of change
Inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact, with the assumption each link rests on written next to it. A theory of change that lists no assumptions is a wish list.
Funders ask for this document, and most versions of it are written to be approved rather than to be true. The useful version states what has to hold for each step to lead to the next, so that a reader can judge where the chain is weakest. Ours is below, weak links included.
| Stage | What happens | What has to be true for it to work |
|---|---|---|
| Inputs | Capital for establishment, long leases on degraded land, technical specialists, measurement systems, local labour. | Land is available on terms long enough to justify the investment, and carbon rights can be secured explicitly in the lease. |
| Activities | Multi tier planting, protection and maintenance, pyrolysis and digestion of residue, development and operation of generation, advisory assignments. | Species selection matches the site, particularly its water. Protection holds against grazing, fire and encroachment. |
| Outputs | Hectares under restoration, surviving plants, tonnes of biomass and biochar, units of energy and gas, verified removal, completed assignments. | Survival stays high enough for the block to be economic, and measurement is credible enough for buyers to accept it. |
| Outcomes | Rent income for landowners, local employment, soil organic matter rising, improved infiltration and recharge, displaced fossil fuel use. | Rent is genuinely better than the alternative use of the land. Recharge effects are large enough to be detectable rather than only theoretical. |
| Impact | Degraded land returned to productive ecological function, permanently reduced atmospheric carbon, more resilient local water, a working model others can copy. | The company survives long enough to reach year twenty, and the land is not reclaimed once it becomes valuable. |
The three assumptions most likely to fail
If this model does not work, it will most likely be for one of these reasons rather than for a novel one.
Survival over twenty years, not two
Establishment is the part everyone photographs and the part that costs least. Holding a block through a failed monsoon, a grazing incursion and a fire season, repeatedly, for two decades, is the actual work. If our survival rates fall below what the economics assume, the chain breaks at the output stage and nothing downstream happens.
Buyers who keep paying
The revenue side assumes that carbon removal continues to be purchased, that biomass demand holds, and that advisory clients continue to enter this sector. Any of those can weaken. Our defence is to hold several unrelated revenue lines rather than one, and to base plans on contracted offtake rather than on forecasts.
Holding what we build
A restored block becomes more valuable as it matures, and more attractive to reclaim. Leases are only worth what is enforceable years later against parties who may see it differently then. This is why we prefer land with clean title and few competing claims, and why the terms of a lease matter more to us than its price.
Every claim above becomes checkable through project reporting. Survival counts, area, species and dates are published per site, and the ones that fall short stay published. If our reported survival ever stops including bad numbers, stop believing the good ones.