On stage (left to right) Thomas DeBass, Special Representative for Global Partnerships, U.S. Department of State; Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr, Director General of Smart Dubai; Mark Kaplan, Partner Fishcoin; Mark Metzler, Director of Development Credit Authority for USAID
The potential transformational benefits of blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are many: assisting the world’s most vulnerable populations, transforming foreign aid and global trade, promoting government efficiency and transparency, countering corruption, promoting accountability, reducing costs, enhancing cybersecurity, and more. This session will explore the real-world implications of blockchain/DLT adoption on global governance and outline the potential opportunities for public-private partnerships.
I had the honor to represent Fishcoin on this esteemed panel with US Department of State, Smart Dubai and USAID. The panel presented an interesting insight into how the Foreign Affairs agency, a Smart City and a leading Government Donor would view blockchain. It was a heartening and refreshing panel to see such diversity, insight and humilty.
Thomas DeBass from State Department moderated the event and discussed the potential impact blockchain could have on governing partnerships for complex multilateral issues they addressed in their inagural like labor rights, STEM education for women and Ocean Acidification. Dr. Bin Bishr discussed the opportunity for cities to make improvements for trade, efficiencies for citizens and reliability of government services. Mark Metzler discussed the impact blockchain could have on measuring effectiveness of donations, transparency across the agriculture and fisheries programs they have and enabling banks to create new financial products based on immutable data from supply chains.
What the USAID Development Credit Authority?
Whether it’s getting working capital to promising entrepreneurs or input financing to small farmers, DCA seeks to prove the commercial viability of underserved markets so that lending and investment continues after we exit. Through DCA, more than 500 guarantees between financial institutions and USAID have made up to $4.8 billion in private financing available for more than 245,000 entrepreneurs around the world.
Meet Herbert, Karim, and Vidal. Thanks to a USAID guarantee, Herbert’s bank was able to issue a loan to Karim, a fish processor, who was in turn able to process more fish, meaning Vidal could sell more fish and hire more fisherman.
Why Were We There?
As the private sector representative on the panel I presented Fishcoin’s intent to use blockchain to enable incentives for data logging and sharing. Fishcoin’s model to create a distributed network across an ecosystem of partners enables organizations like Governments, USAID and implementers like RARE to have open access to program data. Fishcoin’s model enables the incentives to gather data in an open ecosystem to help govern natural resources.
Interested in becoming a Fishcoin partner?
Companies and organizations throughout the seafood industry are signing up almost daily to be rollout partners in the Fishcoin ecosystem. If you would like to know more about joining our community of partners please read through our , and .
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