WISeKey International Holding Ltd (“WISeKey “) (SIX: WIHN), a leading global cybersecurity, Blockchain and IoT company, WISeCoin AG and the SUN^x – Strong Universal Network,announced today a partnership to jointly develop a special purpose Blockchain Center of Excellence in Brussels focusing on the development of standards and technologies to accelerate Climate Friendly Travel.

WISeKey Blockchain technology developed by WISeCoin creates a trusted decentralized and highly efficient way to record carbon emissions using digital identities on the blockchain. Recording all CO²emissions that occur globally and requiring emissions contributors to offset them by purchasing and revoking the corresponding amount of tokenized digital certificates eliminates the need for taxation. Furthermore, companies that have developed technologies that remove CO² from the atmosphere will be able to register their impact on the blockchain and trigger the new emission of digital certificate tokens that will allow them to further invest in the technology. With this model it will be possible to generate new emission certificates, called WISeTravel Carbon Offset Tokens. In the case of shortfalls, the travel industry will invest into WISeTravel Carbon Offset Tokens in order to fulfill their requirements.

Professor Geoffrey Lipman co-founder of SUN^x and President of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP), a travel and tourism coalition of global destinations committed to quality service and green growth, said: “We are delighted to cooperate with WISeKey by using state-of-the-art technology to bring a new Blockchain and Identity capacity to the world’s largest challenge, Climate Change Resilience, and one of the world’s largest industries, – travel and tourism. The SUN^x ‘Plan for our Kids’ climate friendly travel program calls for 100,000 STRONG Climate Champions by 2030 in all UN States. Through this collaboration we will be in a better position to deliver Climate Friendly Travel – measured, green, 2050 proofed, and meet the Paris Agreement Carbon targets.”

These technologies will help galvanize regional, national, and local stakeholders to develop their own climate change programs using blockchain technologies – for air, oceans, land, cities, industries, rural communities, indigenous people etc.  Each with their own vision of priorities and goals. The partnership ultimately aims at transforming overall production, consumption, and investment and better align them with the 2030 The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2050 Climate transformation.

Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of WISeKey said: “One of SDGs goals that stands out from the rest and is fundamentally existential, is climate change. Simply put, life on our planet is threatened, and without immediate, concrete actions the consequences will be irreversible – future generations will either freeze or fry and the intensifying consequences of extreme climate will continue to severely aggravate many of the other SDG challenges. Our special purpose Travel & Tourism Industry Blockchain Center of Excellence in Brussels will not only develop and deploy groundbreaking products and solutions for the industry and consumers but also harness the power of technologies to act as a catalyst of change and climate transformation.”

The Paris Agreement, with its 2050 national carbon reduction targets must be fully implemented and intensified every 5 years. In 2017, the world’s largest industrial activity, Travel & Tourism, formally embraced the SDGs, engaging public, private and civil society stakeholders in an International Year of Sustainable Development. Rightly so, to become a real force for good, we must be up with the mainstream curve on building sustainability into all growth and development aspirations. The main challenge remains how to keep Climate Resilience front and center when travel and tourism continues to massively grow.

The Blockchain Center of Excellence in Brussels will be fully interoperable with WISeKey’s network of Blockchain Centers of Excellence in India, Canada, China, Buenos Aires, Malaysia, Mauritius and Rwanda with new centers planned in the MEA region, including two in Saudi Arabia. All these centers will be interconnected with its 3 main hubs: Geneva, Toronto and Beijing, a Trust Triangle operating under a Common Trust Protocol, using WISeKey’s PKI hardened Blockchain technology, bringing trust and security, while maintaining the core Blockchain values of transparency, auditability, and traceability.  WISeKey’s implemented and integrated PKI solution is complementary to any Blockchain platform, where it can assist with developing a better trust model for use within a distributed system and create a universal Trust Protocol for the Web 2.0.

Like all other Blockchain Centers of Excellence, the new center in Brussels will assist local Blockchain startups to promote their technologies internationally, facilitate the rapid adaptation and on-boarding of Blockchain-based solutions, foster stronger collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors and cooperate to ensure that the latest technological standards are made available in a safe and trusted manner.