About
Evidence that holds up, built with the people who farm the land
Climate Ground prepares auditable evidence of environmental outcomes from satellite observations, field measurements and laboratory results. We are starting in agriculture, with soils and agroforestry and smallholder farmers in India, and building towards other climate and nature projects.
Farmers first
The best evidence comes from people who gain from keeping it
Ground truth keeps coming only when the people who farm the land get something back. The records that feed an evidence pack can return to the farmer as advice: when to check a field, what has changed, and what to record next.
That loop is what keeps the evidence current, and it is why every one of our examples ends with a person deciding what to do.
Principles
How we work with evidence
- We never verify our own evidence.Accredited, independent bodies do that.
- Every figure is labelled.Measured, modelled or estimated, with its source and its uncertainty.
- Gaps and disagreements stay visible.They are shown and reviewed, never smoothed away.
- Raw data is never overwritten.Corrections are logged as new versions.
- Claims stay conservative.Where uncertainty is wide, a claim uses the lower end of the range.
- Farm data is used as agreed.Governments receive summaries; farm-level records stay under agreed control.
Commitments
What we commit to now, and what is proposed
We commit to
- Publish our evidence labels and what each one means
- Show every exception with who resolved it
- Keep raw and corrected data apart
- Never describe our own work as verified
Proposed
- A mission lock, through a golden share held by a community interest company
Proposed, not yet in place. Details to be confirmed when the company is incorporated.
Team
The team
Draft: biographies to be approved
Dr John LewisChairFormer USAID Director of Agriculture and co-founder of Terra Global Capital; five decades in regenerative agriculture.Chair of Climate Ground. Former Director of Agriculture at USAID, and co-founder and former chief executive of Terra Global Capital. He has also worked with the OECD.
Trained in socioeconomic anthropology at Yale, John began in the 1970s studying farming villages in Mali. He has spent five decades in agriculture, sustainable development and food security across Africa, especially the Sahel, including regenerative farming for the Great Green Wall. He now works on nature-based solutions in the private sector and sits on Phyla Earth’s advisory board.
Professor Eric Bishop-von WettbergChief ExecutiveProfessor of Agriculture, Landscape and Environment at the University of Vermont; soil health and crop science.Chief Executive of Climate Ground. Professor of Agriculture, Landscape and Environment at the University of Vermont, where he directed the Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station in 2024–25.
Eric co-leads a USDA programme with the Vermont Land Trust on pasture and soil health and is a co-investigator on a US$12 million NSF restoration institute. He has been scientific adviser to Soil Carbon Partners (4Terra Capital) since 2020 and evaluated the Crop Trust’s US$80 million BOLD programme. He has worked with ICRISAT in India and is a Fulbright Specialist in India for 2027.
Dr Mojtaba ZeraatpishehChief Technology OfficerUniversity of Vermont soil scientist who maps soil carbon with machine learning.Chief Technology Officer of Climate Ground. Researcher in spatial soil modelling and soil carbon at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School and Gund Institute.
Mojtaba builds machine-learning maps of soil organic carbon stocks, including Vermont’s farmland (2025) and mountain landscapes in Patagonia, and works on Sustainability Starts with Soil, a US$600,000 USDA-ARS project. He holds PhDs in soil science from Ghent University and Isfahan University of Technology, and was a postdoctoral researcher at Henan University from 2018 to 2022.
Harry VernonExecutive DirectorTwenty-five years in cross-border transactions and blended finance, with deep ties across Asia, Africa and Latin America.Executive Director of Climate Securities and of Climate Ground. Twenty-five years in cross-border transactions, CSR-led investment and blended finance with governments and multinationals, and some twenty years of relationships with India’s leading corporates.
Harry built Phyla Earth’s agroforestry business across India, Africa and Latin America and represented it through its UNCCD accreditation. Managing Partner at Fortessa Partners and a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics, Cambridge.
AJ HeathDirector of Climate EvidenceDocumentary photographer and filmmaker, published in The Times, The Guardian and Al Jazeera.Director of Climate Evidence at Climate Ground, leading its imagery, film and photography from the field.
AJ is a documentary photographer and filmmaker with an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography from the London College of Communication. His work, from a year in Bhutan that produced Way of Harmony: Portraits from Bhutan to reporting from Afghanistan and Uganda, has appeared in The Times, The Guardian and Al Jazeera. Founder of Shiko Productions; trustee of the Charles Hayward Foundation.
Ayesha KhanBoard & Operations AssociateResearch and project analysis.Board & Operations Associate at Climate Securities and Climate Ground, supporting both boards and leading research and project analysis across the programmes the companies assess.
Farhan AsifBoard & Operations AssociateClimate finance and project analysis.Board & Operations Associate at Climate Securities and Climate Ground, supporting both boards and running climate-finance and project analysis, from first screening through to programme delivery.
Advisory board
John WaughConservation technology and communityCo-founder of Planet ASAP and Executive Director of OneNature; four decades designing environmental programmes, twenty years with IUCN.Chief Operations Officer and co-founder of Planet ASAP, a non-profit that designs bespoke instruments to bring advanced technology to biodiversity loss, food insecurity and climate change. Executive Director of OneNature, an IUCN member that works to align communities’ worldviews with conservation and development.
John has spent more than four decades designing environmental programmes across Africa and worldwide, in conservation finance, climate adaptation, nature-based solutions and benefit-sharing, and did pioneering work on community co-management of protected areas as an alternative to resettlement. He spent twenty years in programme management and policy at IUCN, was Vice-President for Environment and Climate Change at an international development consultancy, has led UN-level delegations and has written more than fifty publications. He began as a wildland firefighter with the US Forest Service and a ranger with the US National Park Service.
Beth AllgoodConservation and wellbeing economyFounder of OneNature, which joins wildlife conservation with community wellbeing; formerly IFAW, WWF and The Nature Conservancy.Founder of OneNature, a non-profit that puts human wellbeing alongside wildlife conservation. With the Happiness Alliance, OneNature developed Wild Happiness, an approach that helps conservation groups measure community wellbeing, piloted with a Maasai community in Kenya in 2023.
Beth’s career runs through the International Fund for Animal Welfare, WWF, the National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy, with time at USAID and the Peace Corps. Named by The Explorers Club in 2023 among fifty people changing the world. Master’s in management, Boston University.
Robert MuhuhuStakeholder engagementCommunity engagement and consent on the ground across Africa.Robert works on the ground with communities across Africa, leading the stakeholder engagement on which conservation and climate programmes depend.
His focus is community wellbeing and free, prior and informed consent: making sure that the people who live on and from the land are consulted properly, agree on their own terms, and stay part of the decisions that affect them.
Next step
Bring your evidence question
Tell us about the decision or the report the evidence needs to support, and what evidence you hold today.