KERALA RISING · FROM EXPORTING PEOPLE TO EXPORTING IDEAS Green Kerala can attract significant corporate sponsorship precisely because its persistence check makes its claims credible, the audit is the product. WORKED EXAMPLE: SELLING THE AUDIT, NOT THE TREES Green Kerala’s revenue logic is unusual: the product is not the trees, it is the proof. A corporate with carbon or ESG commitments needs defensible evidence of real green cover, and producing that evidence credibly; verified survival, not planting-day photos, is itself costly and often not done well. So a survival-audited grove with the corporate’s name on it, reported at six and twelve months, is worth a sponsorship far larger than the cost of the saplings, because what the corporate is really buying is the audit. Add nursery and gardensupplier Reward Partners, and Green Kerala can attract substantial corporate patronage precisely because its persistence check makes its claims stand up. The control that protects the outcome is, once again, the thing that sells the program. Failure modes and fraud controls HOW IT COULD BE GAMED TH E C O NT RO L TH A T C LOSE S I T Mass planting-day claims Provisional points only; full points with no intent to contingent on six- and twelvemaintain. month survival re-imaging. Re-photographing a Registration-baseline imagery; 196