Five villages were evacuated and a rail line was closed as a wildfire has burned 14,000 hectares (~35,000 acres) near Ateca in northwestern Spain. The fire was reportedly sparked by equipment used by a contractor to dig trees for Land Life. Land Life is a carbon offset company that focuses on reforestation, and speaks about its "autonomous planting, remote monitoring and blockchain verification". The Dutch company raised €3.5 million in a Series A round in October 2018.The wildfire is reportedly the second fire in that same location attributed to the company in the last month. Spain has been facing devastating fires brought on by record-breaking temperatures and drought, and Land Life acknowledged that contractors should not have been working during the heat wave due to the extreme fire risk.
  • AgreeableLandscape
    2·
    2 years ago

    To be fair, this isn’t unique to blockchain gimmicks and could have happened with ang reforestation organisation, so it wasn’t technically caused by the blockchain gimmick. Not defending this company of course, the fact that it did happen is evidence of very bad negligence, and they should dace consequences, but I feel that the blockchain thing is only tangentially related to the disaster itself.