THE WWF ARE TRYING TO RAISE THEIR MONEY

Most online images are just a right-click away from being in someone’s personal collection. They’re free, pretty much. So it’s tough for charities to fundraise with them. That is, until 2017 when non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, came along. Unlike regular pieces of digital media, NFTs can’t be so easily copied. And for as long as they have existed, there have been conservation charities using them for fundraising.

A cartoon drawing of a cat-turtle named Honu raised US$25,000 (£18,485) for ocean conservation charities in 2018. Rewilder is a non-profit organisation using NFT auctions to raise funds to buy land for reforestation. The charity claims to have raised US$241,700.

There have been various cartoon apes sold for US$850,000, with the money going to orangutan conservation charities. The most expensive NFT to date, a picture of some small grey balls, sold to multiple buyers for US$92 million in December 2021.

With many UK charities in dire straits, it’s no surprise some want a piece of the crypto action too.

Recently, WWF UK joined the NFT circus with its Tokens for Nature collection. But before the fundraiser had even started, the project sparked a backlash from environmentalists online who worried about its carbon footprint. Within just a few days, the sale was terminated.

The NFAs (or Non-Fungible Animals) project aimed to raise lots of money and awareness about endangered animals. The number of rare animal images available for sale corresponded to the estimated number left in the wild. There were 290 Giant ibis NFAs, for example. An ibis jpeg would have raised about US$400 through a single sale .

‘Eco-friendly’ NFTs?
According to one estimate, NFTs generate more carbon emissions than Singapore as a result of their energy consumption.

Most NFT creators use a technology called Ethereum, which is a blockchain system similar to Bitcoin that involves an energy-intensive computer function called mining. Specialist mining computers take turns validating transactions while guessing the combination of a long string of automatically generated digits. The computer that correctly guesses the combination first wins a reward paid in a cryptocurrency called ether.

Unlike regular NFTs though, WWF claimed that its NFAs were “eco-friendly”. In its sustainability statement, the charity suggested the sale of all 8,000 or so NFAs would have a similar carbon footprint to a pint of milk, or a half-dozen eggs. The reason for this negligible impact they claimed was a clever blockchain application called Polygon, which would have allowed WWF’s project fewer direct interactions with the Ethereum blockchain. WWF wouldn’t then need to take as much responsibility for its share of Ethereum’s monstrous carbon footprint.