Bridging the Climate Change Divide

Title: Bridging the Climate Change Divide

This talk will explore the use of technology, particularly mobile, that is currently being leveraged by HAFTrust to enable the Southern poor to become key actors in combating Climate Change through land-based carbon forestry sequestration projects.

Part of the presentation will look at some of the technology currently being used by HAFTrust and will also explore the business strategy & partnering ecosystem we are planning to build in 2011.

Speaker: Ed Bell-King

Ed is a co-founder of HAFTrust (Hadlow Agro-Forestry Trust). Edmund Bell-King is a serial entrepreneur, with a career in business development, particularly in technology-driven retail focused payment services, e.g. mobile parking payment systems and consumer real-estate GIS-driven portal services. Edmund studied agriculture at Sparsholt Agricultural College, Hampshire, and Hadlow College, Kent, a partner college of the University of Greenwich. His interests lie in the land-based sector, an interest that developed in his early years growing up on the family farm in Tipperary. He is particularly interested in developing technology that enables:

Everyday payment for ‘carbon intensive’ activities through micro-transaction and settlement services
Innovative financing mechanisms for the development of land-based projects, e.g. carbon, biodiversity, water and biomass energy projects
Technology that allow consumers to engage/participate in the delivery of land-based carbon projects for the benefit of small-scale rural farmers
Improvement in the lives of rural people in the Developing World through participatory land-based programs, in part. financed through carbon payments
A greater equity share and participation for rural communities and farmers in the carbon markets
A fairer financial distribution in made to communities for payments eco-services (PES)
A reduction in the ‘digital divide’ between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’

Ed volunteers his time for HAFTrust and currently acts as the CEO. Ed's background is in business development opportunities, specifically technology companies with a bias toward mobile commerce solutions. Ed co-founded HomeIreland in 1999, a Dublin-based property portal, which was sold to an Irish consortium of Estate Agents in 2000.

In 2001, Edmund also co-founded, Mobile2Meter Ltd, an early location-based service which allowed motorists to pay for parking using their mobile phone. Mobile 2 Meter was sold to Imperial Patking Inc, Chicago, USA in 2002 for an undisclosed sum. Ed won the Year 2000 'Entrepreneur of the Year' awarded by the Dublin Project Development Centre for his Home Ireland-Business Model.

Ed is keen on canoeing, skiing, climbing, geo-caching and is a occasional (but not very good) participant in biathlon.

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