Blockchain Papers

Insaf Arfa, Wided Khiari, Houssein Ballouk

ABSTRACT Faced with the accelerating erosion of biodiversity and its growing recognition as a source of financial risks and opportunities, the academic literature linking biodiversity and finance is expanding rapidly. This article offers a systematic and bibliometric review of this literature in order to analyze its evolution, intellectual structure, main conceptual dynamics and gap identification. Aligning with the PRISMA‐2020 protocol, this study examines 1088 scientific articles published in the period 1993–2025. The data were extracted from Scopus and Web of Science databases. The analysis uses descriptive bibliometric methods available in R software and the bibliometrix package via the Biblioshiny interface. The results highlighted a strong acceleration of scientific production since 2015, which is linked with the development of sustainable finance and international regulatory frameworks. While the thematic mapping identifies a broader landscape, three key areas are prioritized for in‐depth analysis: Sustainability as a macroeconomic framework, Biodiversity conservation via innovation in financial instruments, and the emergence of biodiversity risk as a systemic financial risk. Beyond descriptive mapping, this study proposes the Biodiversity‐Finance Inhibition Framework (BFIF) as an integrative conceptual framework to synthesize the persistent disconnect between academic evidence and market implementation. It identifies a systemic “Inhibition Loop” where data gaps at the micro‐level and a lack of ecological accountability at the meso‐level paralyze macro‐regulatory ambitions. The article also highlights a significant geographical disparity, with research heavily concentrated in developed economies. Finally, it outlines a strategic research agenda aimed at breaking this “Inhibition Loop” by exploring a “methodological frontier” involving bio‐econometrics, blockchain, and artificial intelligence to reinforce the measurement, governance, and effectiveness of biodiversity‐finance.

Loso Judijanto, Dila Padila Nurhasanah, Salwa Aulia Novitasari

The accelerating biodiversity crisis has prompted a paradigm shift in the financial sector, where integrating nature into financial risk assessment is becoming increasingly vital. This study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to explore the intellectual landscape of biodiversity finance, focusing on how biodiversity is being incorporated into financial theory, investment practices, and sustainability governance. Using the Scopus database and VOSviewer software, the study analyzes co-occurrence networks, temporal trends, density visualizations, and collaboration patterns among authors, institutions, and countries. The findings reveal that “biodiversity,” “finance,” and “sustainable finance” serve as conceptual anchors, while emerging themes such as “decentralized finance,” “green bonds,” and “ESG” indicate growing innovation in the field. The United Kingdom and United States lead global collaborations, with strong linkages to European and Asian institutions. This research contributes theoretically by clarifying the field’s multidimensional evolution and practically by identifying knowledge gaps and strategic entry points for policy, investment, and academic advancement. Limitations include database coverage and lack of qualitative content analysis, suggesting future research directions. Overall, the study underscores the critical role of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing biodiversity-aligned financial systems.

Loso Judijanto

This study investigates the evolving landscape of scholarly research on nature finance and the financialization of biodiversity through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of literature indexed in Scopus from 2000 to 2025. Using VOSviewer, we mapped co-occurring keywords, author networks, temporal trends, and country collaborations to identify dominant themes, emerging topics, and influential contributors. The findings reveal a conceptual transition from traditional ecosystem service valuation toward market-based conservation instruments, including conservation finance, carbon markets, and blockchain-based solutions. The thematic clusters emphasize the increasing intersection between finance, sustainability, and biodiversity policy, with recent trends showing a surge in decentralized finance applications for environmental assets. Notably, the United Kingdom and United States dominate collaborative networks, while Asia-Pacific regions exhibit growing engagement in the field. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of biodiversity financialization and offers practical insights for policymakers, financial institutions, and environmental stakeholders aiming to design inclusive and effective biodiversity finance strategies. It also identifies gaps for future interdisciplinary research that bridges ecological science with financial innovation.

Yiran Shang, Chen Qianrong

The mine ecological restoration fund system is a key task in the construction of ecological civilization. However, the existing accounting system, basic framework, and process handling are insufficient to meet the market-oriented demands of the mine ecological restoration fund. Based on this, this paper, using a decentralized logic approach, designs a decentralized management model for the mine restoration fund, incorporating’s classified financing-blocked usage layered management. This model explores the accounting elements of the fund, and based on the characteristics of fund management and flow, accounts for fund income, expenditure, and termination stages, presenting a comprehensive view of the fund's flow process. This paper explores the design of the mine ecological restoration fund's accounting system and the optimization of its funding sources, providing theoretical and empirical support for the accounting of the fund by mine enterprises, government departments, and social investors, and contributes to the improvement of the mine ecological restoration fund system framework.

Kweon JIhye

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), based on blockchain technology, are organizations that operate autonomously according to agreements made among members rather than through a centralized authority. Utilizing blockchain’s attributes of decentralization and cryptography, DAOs embody decentralization, autonomy, and transparency, establishing themselves as a distinctive governance model. However, despite the increasing prevalence of DAOs globally, their legal nature remains ambiguous, leading to unclear legal relationships and insufficient protection for participants and third parties. In 2021, Wyoming proactively established the Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement, creating a foundational legal framework for the formation, operation, and dissolution of DAOs. Wyoming recognizes DAOs as a special form of LLC. However, considering the various types of DAOs in operation, legislation that reflects each organization's characteristics, rather than prescribing a single legal status, is needed. Furthermore, this study reviews elements within Wyoming’s regulations that may conflict with DAOs’ core values of decentralization and anonymity, highlighting areas requiring caution in the legislative process. Finally, to address the technical risks and potential centralization tendencies within DAOs, this paper suggests imposing a high duty of care on key developers, introducing clauses to exclude indemnification for core members, and formalizing dispute resolution procedures in advance.

Baruani Mshale

The last forty years has seen both unprecedented loss of natural tropical forests and innovation in forest governance, implying that more work is needed to refine the theory and practice of forest governance in a carbon challenged world. This dissertation used the Tanzanian case of the recently introduced international program to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) to empirically explore the design and performance of emerging forest governance arrangements. Drawing from extensive ethnographic field data (participant and non-participant observations, oral histories, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, documentary reviews and household surveys) conducted over five years (2009-2014), with actors in Kilwa and Lindi Districts in South-Eastern Tanzania, this dissertation makes several contributions organized into three substantive chapters. The first chapter, entitled “Negotiating forests under the REDD+ context in South-Eastern Tanzania” provides descriptions of how local forest residents creatively deploy the use of modern technologies of mobility (cellphones and motorcycles) and the discourses of decentralization, democracy and participation to continue performing otherwise banned cultural-ecological practices of shifting cultivation and wood extraction blamed for the reported forest disappearance. The second chapter, entitled “Deliberative democracy and the making and unmaking of illegitimate forest institutions” exposes and analyzes the paradoxical eruption of REDD+ resistance despite the adoption of participatory and democratic processes in making and implementing REDD+ interventions arguing that the adoption of deliberative democratic processes remain alien to local residents and has resulted in the production of legally legitimate but democratically illegitimate and often unfair forest institutions pushing local residents to opt for resistance as alternative mechanisms for contesting the introduced forest institutions. The third chapter, entitled “Mismatched: why do REDD+ payments fail to avoid deforestation in human dominated miombo ecosystems?” challenges and expands on the application of recently introduced carbon payment as an innovative financing scheme for encouraging adoption of sustainable forest management practices in the tropics. I argue that when those inadequate payments are aligned to seasonality of cultural-ecological practices causing forest change and if injected at the appropriate spatial scale (individual and/or community) where decisions affecting forests are made, they have a greater chance of achieving intended impacts.

L.P.A. van Gerven

The Netherlands is well-known for its extended networks of drainage ditches, with a total ditch length of about 300.000 km. Their main function is to enable agriculture by draining water. Nonetheless, ditches also have important ecological functions. They serve as ecological corridors and harbor a high biodiversity in which water plants play a crucial role. The last decades, the ecological quality of ditches is at stake. Enhanced nutrient inputs promoted the invasion by dense mats of free-floating plants like duckweed. Underneath these mats the water becomes dark and anoxic, which severely constrains aquatic life. In this thesis I developed new concepts to better understand, predict and combat the dominance by free-floating plants in ditches. The following questions are addressed. Are floating plants a self-stabilizing state - an alternative stable state - which would make it more difficult to combat floating-plant dominance (chapter 2)? Does it make sense to fight floating-plant dominance by reducing nitrogen (N) inputs to the ditches or will it lead to an invasion of floating plants that can fix N2 from the atmosphere (chapter 3)? What about spatial aspects, does the vulnerability of a ditch to floating plants depend on the position of a ditch in a polder, like its distance to the polder outlet (chapter 4)? To answer these questions, I used ecological models that predict the abundance of free-floating plants based on the competition for nutrients and light with other plants such as submerged plants, and where possible validated these models with field data. Starting from the ecosystem model PCDitch, I developed and combined models with different complexity to see how theoretical concepts, developed in minimal models, translate to the ecosystem level. Chapter 5 deals with a method that facilitates this up- and downscaling in model complexity. Are floating plants an alternative stable state? To answer this question I extended mechanistic resource competition theory with a framework (minimal model) describing the competition of floating and submerged plants for light and nutrients. The model predicts that the competitive advantage of floating plants - they have a primacy for light and shade submerged plants, giving rise to asymmetry in competition for light - makes that floating plants always dominate at high supply of light and nutrients. At intermediate nutrient supply, there can be alternative stable states: either the submerged plants or the floating plants dominate depending on who established first. However, based on the traits of common floating plants (duckweed; Lemna) and submerged plants (waterweed; Elodea) the model predicts, in line with field data, that floating plants are not an alternative stable state. Furthermore, from a theoretical point of view this study shows that the asymmetry in light competition ensures that common rules from standard competition theory do not apply anymore. Like the R* rule, which states that the species that can persist at the lowest resource levels always wins the competition. Can duckweed-dominance be combatted by reducing N inputs to the ditches? Or does this promote other floating plants like water fern (Azolla) that can fix N2 from the atmosphere? Important is the question whether such N2-fixers can provide enough N to prevent N-limitation and keep the system P-limited, which would make steering on N inputs ineffective. To investigate this, I considered the competition between Lemna and Azolla for N, P and light. Both a minimal model, an ecosystem model (PCDitch) and field data reveal that N2-fixation is unlikely to lead to P-limitation. This can be explained by N2-fixers typically requiring higher P concentrations to persist, implying that they cannot keep the P concentration low enough for non-N2-fixers to become P-limited. In combination with field data that hint at constraints on N2-fixation that prevent N2-fixers from becoming abundant at low N availability, this suggests that it certainly pays off to combat floating plant-dominance by reducing N inputs. Is every ditch in a polder equally vulnerable to floating plants? Each ditch in a polder receives water and nutrients from the adjacent land. This leads to a spatial gradient in water flow and associated nutrient loading, from low in the remote polder sites to high in the direction of the polder outlet where the water leaves the polder. I explored if this spatial gradient affects the vulnerability of a ditch to floating plants, by investigating with a simple nutrient model how this gradient affects the nutrient concentration of the ditches and by subsequently predicting the gradient's effect on the ditch ecology by applying the ecosystem model PCDitch spatially, through coupling PCDitch to the 1-D hydrodynamic model SOBEK. Surprisingly, we found that every ditch is equally vulnerable to floating plants, despite the spatial gradient in water flow and nutrient loading. It turned out that the ecological state of each ditch could already be predicted by regarding only the lateral supply of water and nutrients from the adjacent land, and not the supply from upstream ditches. However, these findings are violated when there is spatial heterogeneity in the water and nutrient supply from the adjacent land or in ditch characteristics like depth and sediment type. Then, the chance on floating-plant dominance differs throughout the network and a spatial modelling approach (PCDitch-SOBEK) is required to predict this chance. Developing and combining models of different complexity plays an important role in this thesis. To do so, I used a Database Approach To Modelling (DATM), a recently developed method in which a model is stored in tables in a clear and clean way, which facilitates model development. In addition, with DATM a model can be automatically implemented in a modelling environment of choice. This relieves technical implementation issues and leaves room to focus on ecology rather than technology. I illustrated the use of DATM by implementing and analyzing the ecosystem model PCDitch and its twin model for shallow lakes PCLake in different modelling environments by using DATM. This showed that DATM allows one to use the environment one is familiar with and eases the switch to other environments for complementary analyses, including analysis in a spatial 1-D to 3-D setting. The insights provided by this thesis can help us to improve the ecological quality of ditches. A challenging task, given the fast human-driven environmental changes at both local and global level. To predict and to anticipate the effect of these changes on the ecology, it is essential to understand how the ditch ecosystem functions. The developed and applied methods described in this thesis may be helpful in that. For example, using models of different complexity makes it possible to translate fundamental theory to the ecosystem scale, which is essential to better grasp the behavior of an ecosystem. Furthermore, the in this thesis established coupling between PCDitch and SOBEK breaks new grounds for spatial ecosystem modelling. In combination with the growing amount of remote sensing data from satellites and drones, which allow for the continuous and potentially real-time validation and calibration of spatial ecosystem models, such a spatial approach has the potential to greatly increase our ecological understanding of ditches. These advances facilitate the development of successful management strategies that make our ditch ecosystems future-proof.