COSTA VERDE · LIMA · EST. 2026
A moonshot for the world's coastlines, grown on a cliff in Lima.
THE THESIS
The cliff is not a problem. It is the solution.
Fifteen kilometers of Pacific cliff, grown into living infrastructure. A vertical forest of native Peruvian species, anchored by science developed in Tokyo, monitored by a custom AI stack, and financed by a new class of ecosystem credits. Built to hold Lima, and to prove a model that every coastal city can replicate.
PRECEDENT · TOKYO · 2018
Before Lima, there was Azabudai.
“One hundred species per one hundred square meters. No fertilizer, no pesticide, minimal irrigation. A functioning ecosystem embedded in one of the densest urban fabrics on earth.”
In the center of Tokyo, inside the Azabudai Hills development, Masatoshi Funabashi and the Sony Computer Science Laboratories team have been running a live experiment for more than fifteen years. One hundred species per one hundred square meters. No fertilizer. No pesticide. Minimal irrigation. A functioning ecosystem embedded in one of the densest urban fabrics on earth.
The Tokyo site proved that augmented ecosystem science works in a city. Les Jardins du Pacifique is the next step in the program: proving that it works at territorial scale, on a vertical surface, in a desert megacity.
Synecoculture developed by Masatoshi Funabashi, Sony CSL. Deployed at Azabudai Hills, Tokyo.
THE SCIENCE
Why the method matters.
Augmented ecosystems, not monoculture.
Most reforestation programs plant a handful of commercial species in rows. Synecoculture plants more than one hundred native species in three dimensional assemblies, with each species chosen for its role in the ecological network. The result is not a plantation. It is a functioning forest from year one.
Living rebar.
Deep rooting pioneer species mechanically anchor the sedimentary cliff. Canopy species above the Garúa mist line capture water from the air. Salt tolerant groundcover below holds the beach edge. The geometry of the garden is the geometry of cliff stabilization.
Replicable methodology.
The method is published. The species list is open. The protocol is designed to be licensed, not owned. Every coastline that shares Lima's geomorphology, including Jeddah, Casablanca, Mumbai, and parts of coastal California, can adopt the same framework.
The Atlas of Barranco documents the species assembly in the open, under Ordinance Nº 1852. See the full catalog →
SAPHI INTELLIGENCE
A forest that can be read in real time.
Saphi Intelligence is the multi agent AI platform that runs the cognitive layer of the project. It orchestrates three data streams, verifies every observation against ground truth, and issues the resulting ecosystem credits on an auditable ledger. The forest becomes a living, queryable, auditable system.
Every observation signed.
Each sensor reading is cryptographically signed at the edge. By the time an observation reaches the ledger, its provenance is immutable.
Every credit traceable.
A buyer of any credit can trace it back to the individual observation, the sensor that captured it, and the second it was recorded.
Open protocol.
Saphi Intelligence is designed to be licensed to other territorial projects. The architecture is the product, not the data.
“Every observation is a signature. Every signature is a credit. Every credit is traceable to the moment the leaf was read.”
A NEW ASSET CLASS
Urban Resilience Credits.
The project introduces a new category of ecosystem finance: credits that bundle biodiversity recovery, stormwater absorption, carbon sequestration, urban heat reduction, and air quality gains into a single verifiable unit. One hectare of living cliff produces a stack of services that a single service credit cannot capture.
Nature becomes bankable. Not as an abstraction, but as a measured, traceable, stackable unit.
This is what fifteen kilometers of living coastline looks like.
01 / 05
La Cala at dawn
02 / 05
The Malecón suspended walkway
03 / 05
The germination pavilion
04 / 05
Bordemer destination
05 / 05
Costa Verde, looking south
Renders by Saphi International Holding Corp., in partnership with Sony CSL and the CGIAR Alliance. Current phase: pre construction modeling, site activated April 2026.
THE COALITION
Built with the people who have been doing this for decades.
Additional institutional conversations in progress with UNESCO, the European Commission Nature Credits pilot, and municipal partners across Peru, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.
Maxime Nassour
Founder & CEO, Saphi International
Masatoshi Funabashi
Senior Researcher, Sony CSL
Evert Thomas
CGIAR Alliance — Bioversity & CIAT
Marc Vogt
Founder, Pollenn
CITIZEN LAYER · ALERTA
The movement lives elsewhere.
The citizen science and public mobilization layer of Les Jardins du Pacifique is operated independently by Alerta, a Lima based climate movement. Alerta runs the observation network, the seed library, the neighborhood mobilization, and the public education program. If you are a resident of Lima, that is where you go.
alerta.earth