Land ownership is currently a requirement for any long-term stewardship plan, and responsible land development is a key component of any intelligent climate-crisis response strategy.  Unfortunately, centralized land stewardship has failed to generate positive ecological change.  Economic pressure and income inequality are driving a global transfer of land into the hands of growth-addicted corporate entities.  Over the past century, those entities have demonstrated that they are incapable of balancing the demands of investors against the survival requirements of thousands of species, including our own.  Simply put, profit-driven corporations are structurally unfit to function as land stewards.

Distributed stewardship through a place-based tokenization model is most successful when token holders feel a connection to the physical spaces that their tokens represent.  Individual land stewards can leverage existing technology stacks to strengthen those emotional and intellectual connections in a variety of ways.  Some stewards may feel most comfortable providing purely digital perks using photos, video tours, or IRL streaming.  More sociable stewards might offer token holders physical access to the land for camping, hunting, skills workshops, wildcrafting, or nature walks. As telepresence technology evolves, tech-savvy land stewards will have opportunities to drive engagement using outdoor mesh surveillance networks, UGV or UAV tours, and virtual reality.

Distributed Stewardship brings individuals together to achieve balanced ecological and economic goals, by connecting family-scale land development projects with ecologically conscious NFT collectors.  As collectors transfer capital to land stewards through the purchase of location-based non-fungible tokens, that capital is deployed to secure those locations, improve on-site wildlife habitat, transition to renewable energy sources, remediate existing ecological damage, and install genuinely sustainable agriculture systems. As capital flows through development projects, land stewards record their spending in a transparent public ledger, prioritizing local purchases of goods and services, and avoiding wasteful accumulations of capital.