Enron environmentalism or bridge
to the low carbon economy?
Are carbon offsets just modern indulgences for our climate
sins? Dan Welch investigates..
Carbon offset providers calculate the amount of CO2 emitted by common
consumer activities like driving a car or going on holiday. They then calculate
the cost of ‘offsetting’ the equivalent amount through funding
a project designed to reduce carbon emissions such as a small-scale renewable
energy or forestry scheme. If you choose to pay for this offset you can
claim to have taken responsibility for your emissions and done at least
a small bit to help combat climate change. What could be wrong with this?
The market in voluntary carbon offsets is in the midst of explosive growth.
A web search showed up more than 40 providers. Consumers can now buy offsets
by text message, bundled with insurance, with mortgages or with mobile phone
contracts, over the counter at travel agents or in a gift box from the Science
Museum. Michael Buick of Climate Care, a UK provider established in 1998,
said the company’s sales were expected to rise from around 150,000
tonnes in 2006 to one million in 2007.(1)
Carbon offset companies, environmentalists and the Government all agree
that offsetting is not the solution to climate change – carbon reduction
measures must come first. Those in favour of the industry see offsetting
as a useful tool for increasing consumers’ ‘carbon literacy’
and a source of funding for sustainable development. Michael Buick sees
it as “a way to fund the transition to a low carbon economy.”(1)
A wave of criticism
The idea of carbon offsetting has, however, faced steadily growing criticism.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) describes carbon offsetting as ‘a smokescreen
to avoid real measures to tackle climate change’.(2) Kevin Smith, author
of “The Carbon Neutral Myth” makes the analogy between carbon
offsets and the medieval practice of selling ‘indulgences’ for
the remission of sins.
He goes on to describe carbon offsets as commodifying,
privatising and de-politicising the difficult social and political task
of mitigating climate change and achieving climate justice.
In a joint statement, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and WWF-UK have
expressed “strong concerns over [their] environmental credibility…and
the contribution of the projects to sustainable development.” Campaign
group Carbon Trade Watch have dubbed offsetting “Enron environmentalism”
– nothing more than a clever accounting trick.
Yet FoE, Greenpeace and WWF-UK say they do offset, but choose projects
certified by the new ‘CDM Gold Standard’ (see 'Standards for consumers'
below). So in order to find an Ethical Consumer best buy for carbon offsets
we have used a different type of rating table to those used in our normal
reports. The industry is so new, and with such distinctive issues, that
our normal rating table was less useful. We have, however, checked parent
companies in the normal way and an overall ethiscore appears in the new
table.
Download a pdf of the Carbon Offset schemes' comparison table and profiles of the carbon offsetting companies here.
In this extended report we describe some of the quite complex products
and issues, provide resources and ideas, and even look at some of the more
bizarre elements of this most unusual market.
Seeing the wood for the trees
The first offset projects involved tree planting, on the principle that
trees absorb carbon as they grow. However, the science of how effectively
planting trees reduces global warming is far from certain. A recent study
for example even suggested that, although tropical forests do have a cooling
effect, at higher latitudes, trees have a warming effect.(3)
In 2006 the Advertising Standards Authority ordered the Scottish &
Southern Energy Group to stop making claims in its leaflets about ‘neutralising’
its customers’ emissions because the company could not provide proof
that the planting of trees would match the level of emissions. An even more
fundamental problem is the false equation between fossil carbon and biological
carbon.
When fossil fuels are burned they release carbon into the biosphere
that has been outside of the carbon cycle between air, sea and biomass for
millions of years. If the total amount of carbon in the biological carbon
cycle is increased, the cycle’s provision of climate stability is undermined.
As Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change says, “What
happens if the trees die in a forest fire and release their CO2 back into
the atmosphere?”
Climate change experts give us a brief window of a decade or two in which
to reduce emissions. Yet providers may account for 100 years of forest carbon
absorption in the year saplings are planted. For example, Climate Care accounts
for 29,500 tonnes of CO2 offset in 2005, against 74 hectares of forest planted
that year.
In the wake of controversy the industry has tried to get away from the equation
of offsetting with tree planting. In 2005 Future Forests re-branded itself
The CarbonNeutral Company and Climate Care states it is not looking to invest
in forestry projects in the future.
Additionality
The whole notion of offsetting also depends on the idea of “additionality”
– that the savings in emissions are additional to what would have otherwise
happened without the offset funding. Jutta Kill, of the Forests and the
European Union Resource Network (FERN) says the very idea is “conceptually
incoherent”. The effects of offset projects, she says, are impossible
to verify.(6)
Proving “financial additionality” is complex as projects are
rarely fully funded by offsetting. Usually the offset provider buys the
‘carbon rights’ to a project that it partially funds.
The CarbonNeutral Company (TCNC) has run into controversy over additionality
and transparency. Customers were invited to invest in Orbost forest in the
West Highlands. Donors may have thought they were paying to plant trees.
The confidential contract with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, released
under freedom of information legislation this year, shows that customers
were actually buying the “carbon rights” to trees.
Kevin Sutton, the manager of Orbost forest, said that while he welcomed
the “extra money,” which paid for refurbishing a footpath, the
woodland would have been planted anyway with government grants.(7) The Forestry
Commission, which has granted £103,000 for planting in Orbost, does
not sell the ‘carbon rights.’
The issue of transparency was raised five years earlier with TCNC (then
‘Future Forests’) in a ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority
(ASA)(8) concerning a misleading advert in the Sunday Times. Readers were
led to expect that their payment would to be used to plant trees, argued
the ASA, when in fact the money would buy ‘carbon sequestration rights’
to trees.
Providing 100% of project funding is one answer to additionality, as co2balance
Ltd guarantees. NativeEnergy, which funds wind generators in Native American
communities, has another strategy. The company purchases the (US) ‘renewable
energy credits’ that will be generated over the life time of projects
up front, enabling projects that would not otherwise be viable.
Supply chain issues and CO2lonialism
Critics regard offsetting in the global South as a distraction from the real
issue of fossil fuel use in the wealthy North. For Larry Lohmann of NGO the
Corner House, offsetting is the “fossil fuel economy’s new frontier”
in which neocolonial power relations are reproduced: “Added to classic
local struggles over extraction, pollution, and labour abuse are now, increasingly,
local conflicts over carbon offsets”.
Both the CarbonNeutral Company and Climate Care have run into controversy.
In Uganda’s Kibale National Park, Climate Care funds a project established
by FACE, a Dutch offset organization. The project is run by the Ugandan
Wildlife Authority (UWA) and audited by SGS-Qualifor. The project provides
offsets for the Co-operative Bank, amongst other customers.
A recent World Rainforest Movement report(9) documents land disputes and
human rights abuses at Mount Elgon, a different national park in Uganda,
also run by FACE and the UWA and audited by SGS. In March 2002, a few days
before SGS issued a certificate for the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC)
for Mount Elgon, the UWA evicted more than 300 families from the area and
destroyed their homes and crops.
That the project was taking place in an
area of on-going land conflict and alleged human rights abuses did not make
it into SGS’s report. SGS’s credibility has also been called into
question by the decision of the FSC’s Accreditation Service to suspend
another of its certificates, issued to the Barama company in Guyana.(10)
At the time of writing the Kibale certification was due for renewal. Ethical
Consumer raised the issue of doubts over SGS with Tom Morton, Climate Care’s
Director of Projects. He was unaware of concerns with the company and promised
to raise the issue with FACE.
In January 2007 the BBC’s “Inside Out” claimed that the
communities in the Kibale area have been denied access to forest resources
and that workers on the project were denied a living wage.(11) In a statement
rebutting the allegations, Climate Care noted “there is no traditional
community right to exploit the land.”(12) According to Jutta Kill,
a researcher for FERN who has conducted fieldwork in the area, in 1993 (long
before Climate Care’s involvement) 30,000 people were violently evicted
from the land.(25)
Jutta Kill stated that the wages on the offset project were considered
extremely low and were half that of tea plantation workers in the local
area.(6) She accuses Climate Care of buying into an outmoded model of “park
versus people management”. Climate Care’s Tom Morton, who had
just returned from reviewing the Kibale project, rejected these allegations
and told Ethical Consumer the company were happy with the workers’
conditions.(13)
Climate Care also deny that there is a problem with communities accessing
resources from the park, with “access…managed by local village
governance committees”.(12) Jutta Kill responded, “Locals laughed
out loud when asked about these local village governance committees. Even
[the] UWA acknowledge…that these committees are largely dysfunctional
and in existence only on paper.”(14) Tom Morton told Ethical Consumer
the villages he had just visited had no such problems, with functioning
local committees.
The controversy raises the issue of whether small, private offset companies
have the capacity or the skills to address the kind of supply chain issues
which ethical consumers increasingly expect companies to attend to.
Although
the CDM Gold Standard has extensive provisions for stakeholder engagement
it is unclear whether they are adequate to resolve “supply chain”
conflicts when stakeholders come to the table from extremely unequal positions.
If the industry is to address the ethical concerns of those at the ‘coal
face’ of carbon offsetting an explicit and robust code of conduct for
workers’ rights is needed.
Rating offset providers
In December 2006 two consumer guides to offset providers were published
in the USA employing complementary evaluative criteria (see LINKS). Ethical
Consumer used these as the basis on which to select providers to evaluate
by its own criteria.
Clean Air Cool Planet (CACP), a leading US non-profit
organisation promoting solutions to climate change, rated 30 offset providers
against seven criteria on a scale of 1-10:
• Providers‘ prioritisation of offset quality
• Buyer’s ability to transparently evaluate offset quality
• Transparency in provider operations and offset selection
• Providers’ understanding of the technical aspects of offset
quality
• Priority assigned by provider to educating consumers about climate
change
• Ancillary environmental and sustainable development benefits of offset
portfolios
• Use of third party protocols and certification
Eight providers earned a cumulative score of more than 5: Atmosfair,
DrivingGreen, CarbonNeutral Company, Climate Care, Climate Trust, co2balance,
NativeEnergy and MyClimate. The report did not attempt to rank this
top tier.
The Tufts Climate Initiative chose 13 providers on
the basis of Google scorings and evaluated them on the following criteria:
• Accuracy of air travel emissions calculator
• Project portfolio: should be mainly or entirely energy efficiency
or renewable - little or no forestry projects
• Project/Offset Quality: based on additionality, permanence, contribution
to development of low carbon economy; implementation standards and independent
verification; additional development benefits.
• Transparency of procedures, verification schemes, financial arrangements
and partnerships.
• Percentage of sales going directly to project implementation.
Four were recommended - Atmosfair, MyClimate, NativeEnergy, and Climate
Friendly – all but the last of which were also recommended by CACP.
In addition Ethical Consumer has looked at four newcomers,
all based in the UK, recommended by DEFRA’s draft voluntary Code of
Best Practice for carbon offsetting(15) – Carbon Offsets, Equiclimate,
Global Cool and PURE.
The ‘CDM Gold Standard’ (see below) has recently begun certifying
offset projects. Other codes such as the UK government’s and the ‘Voluntary
Carbon Standard’ are still at the consultation stage.
In a sense, therefore,
the older offset companies start with a disadvantage as their projects are
up and running and the newer companies have no track record on which to
judge them. All but one provider (AgCert\DrivingGreen) were excluded from
rating on our environmental reporting criteria due to being smaller companies
(less than £5 million turnover). However standards of environmental
reporting were disappointing across the industry.
Click here to see a
pdf of the Carbon Offset schemes' comparison table and profiles of the carbon
offsetting companies.
Standards for consumers
The consumer market in carbon offsets has long been recognised to have a
lack of transparency and for extremely variable standards in the implementation,
monitoring and verification of projects.
This has led to demands for government
intervention and in January 2007 the Environment Secretary David Miliband
announced a consultation process to develop a voluntary ‘Code of Best
Practice,’ to be published later in the year. The UK government clearly
wants to encourage offsetting and is keen to demonstrate its green credentials
through its own offsetting scheme for official air travel.
Controversially the government’s draft code does not offer a standard
for the small-scale projects that make up the bulk of the current consumer
market. Instead it endorses projects verified under the mechanisms of the
Kyoto Protocol, which govern offsets in the compulsory corporate markets,
such as the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Businesses use these ‘Kyoto
credits’ to offset against their compulsory emissions allowances.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, criteria for project additionality are:
• that it is not required by current regulation
• it uses technologies that are not common practice
• or it faces economic, technological or investment barriers and would
not have started up without the offset funding
In reality this involves over 60 approved methodologies and complying with
these complex criteria pushes up the cost of projects.
Critics point out that these requirements tend to exclude the small scale,
sustainable development projects that customers are attracted to and that
provide value added benefits. Michael Buick of Climate Care points to the
company’s scheme to provide efficient stoves in the Third World, preventing
ill health from fumes, improving safety and reducing deforestation. There
is currently no methodology in place in the Kyoto regulations for such a
project, so its offsets could not be officially certified as ‘Kyoto
credits’.
Furthermore, the Kyoto mechanisms have been accused of failing to deliver
sustainable development. For example, renewable energy is involved in only
2% of Kyoto projects. And three quarters of projects involve major petrochemical
and manufacturing plants. As for ‘additionality’ arguably many
of these projects should have occurred anyway under the Montreal ozone-depletion
protocol.(16)
In a typical project, Centrica (British Gas’ parent company) is investing
in technology for capturing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas HFC-23
from a Chinese chemical company. Mike Rigby of co2balance says his company
has Kyoto credits for sale but no-one is interested in buying them. “Who
is interested in voluntarily paying money to an industrial plant in China?”
he said. As Michael Buick of Climate Care points out, it is the value-added
benefits of projects, the ‘story’, that attracts consumers.
However both The CarbonNeutral Company and Climate Care told Ethical Consumer
that they will begin offering ‘Kyoto credits’ alongside their
usual offsets. We would expect others to follow suit.
The ‘CDM Gold Standard’ has recently emerged
as a measure of best practice. Backed by Greenpeace, FoE, WWF, and many
other NGOs, the Gold Standard credits individual projects, not offset providers.
Only renewable energy and energy efficiency projects with sustainable development
benefits are eligible.
The Gold Standard requires higher standards than
the Kyoto mechanisms, such as stakeholder consultations involving a Gold
Standard NGO. It also accredits projects outside of the Kyoto regulations
and therefore provides a standard for the small scale projects popular with
consumers. Gold Standard projects have not escaped criticism (see “The
Strange World… below”). But despite these problems the Gold Standard
does appear to currently provide the best available benchmark.
EU Allowances
Another approach entirely has been adopted by a new generation of consumer
carbon offset companies. In the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS),
‘EU allowances,’ representing a tonne of CO2 emissions, can be
traded between companies. Offset providers buy these allowances on the behalf
of consumers and then ‘retire’ them - permanently removing them
from the market.
As a result, the overall limit on CO2 emissions is reduced.
Elegant though this idea is, it is not without problems. Over-allocation
of allowances and a glut of cheap Kyoto credits for businesses has pushed
down the cost of polluting. As a result, phase one (2005-2007) of the ETS
has failed to drive emission reductions, says EU Energy Commissioner Adris
Piebalgs. For phase two (2008-2012) to succeed, the European Commission
must stop cheap ‘Kyoto credits’ flooding the market.(17)
Consumers should be wary of paying high prices for EU allowances. At the
time of writing, EU allowances were trading for 1.18 euros, while one company
(not reviewed) was offering to sell EU allowances to consumers for £30.
Equiclimate, on the other hand, has fair and transparent pricing, with prices
calculated daily (£3.91 at the time of writing).
Phil Levermore, Equiclimate’s
Director, explained that this price reflected transaction costs in the market,
and spread buying from the current and futures markets (phase two). According
to Paul Monaghan, Co-operative Bank’s Head of Sustainable Development,
“no one should be buying any phase one EU allowances, it’s a waste
- that’s why we avoid it, even though it would save a packet if we
went down this route.”
Alternatives to offset providers
Involving consumers in the Kyoto mechanisms and the ETS opens up the possibility
of concerted consumer action to drive up the price of polluting. However,
critics of carbon trading question whether commodifying pollution can drive
emission cuts at all. And beyond 2012 it is uncertain the market will even
exist.
Kevin Smith of Carbon Trade Watch would like us to move beyond choosing
between ‘good’ and ’bad’ offset companies. Instead he
suggests we should forget the rhetoric of offsetting and carbon neutrality
and simply support worthwhile projects.
• Kevin Smith cites the example of Palang Thai, a Thai non-profit
organisation that seeks to transform the energy sector on the basis of sustainability
and social and environmental justice. Palang Thai has succeeded in stopping
the development of two coal-fired power stations in the area. The organisation
also collaborates in the development of community-based renewable energy
projects.
www.palangthai.org
• The Ken Saro Wiwa Foundation campaigns for corporate responsibility
in resource industries and supports projects aimed at strengthening and
reconciling communities now in conflict in the Niger Delta. After decades
of social and political struggle, victory finally came in 2006 when the
Nigerian courts ordered Shell to stop flaring gas, thus securing an enormous
carbon offset for the world. The Foundation is therefore a particularly
apposite recipient of ‘offset’ donations.
www.kensarowiwa.com
• Another option could be to support the Post Carbon Institute,
a “think, action and education tank” which offers research, project
tools, education and information on how to move beyond the fossil fuel economy.
The Post Carbon Institute focuses on strategies of ‘re-localisation’
to improve environmental conditions and social equity.
www.postcarbon.org
• Rather than offsetting on your own you could get involved with a
Carbon Rationing Action Group. These are support groups exploring
ways to reduce emissions and can serve as collective vehicles to support
the kind of sustainable projects commonly associated with offsetting without
the ‘greenwash’ baggage.
Find a local Carbon Rationing Action Group www.carbonrationing.org.uk.
Join a 15,000 strong community reducing carbon www.cred-uk.org
• One second generation carbon reduction organisation moving ‘beyond
carbon neutral’ is “The Converging World” (TCW) a
UK charity established in 2006 . TCW is an innovative scheme that links
community and business carbon reduction projects in the UK with renewable
energy and sustainable development in India.
In the UK TCW will facilitate
community carbon reduction and renewable energy projects based on the successful
GoZero organisation. Business will engage in its own reduction schemes and
provide funds by buying and retiring ‘Kyoto credits’ generated
by TCW’s Indian partner organisation Social Change And Development
(SCAD), which is developing wind farms in Tamil Nadu. Revenue raised in
India from the wind farms will then fund SCAD’s projects to empower
marginalised communities.
www.theconvergingworld.org/member.html,
www.gozero.org.uk,
www.scadindia.org
• Trees for Life is a Scottish charity dedicated to ‘restoring
the Caledonian forest’. It admits on its website that carbon offsetting
through tree planting is a bit of a nonsense but still has a form enabling
you to ‘make a donation to help offset your carbon emissions’.
www.treesforlife.org.uk
Of course a measured donation to one of those progressive behemoths like
FoE or Greenpeace may just be as good as any of these.
|
The Strange World of Carbon
Offsets
“Silverjet Awarded Carbon Neutral Airline of
the Year Award 2007.” So reads a press release on the CarbonNeutral
Company’s website. “The world’s first carbon neutral
airline” includes the price of a ‘carbon offset’ in its
£999 fair to New York, as well as offering a chauffeur driven
service to the airport. According to Silverjet, “If the industry
was to simply charge its customers 90 pence for each hour they fly on
average, then they could neutralise the carbon pollution created by
the aviation industry.”
CarbonNeutral® is the leading kite mark for company “carbon
branding”. To earn it, the CarbonNeutral Company requires businesses
to measure and identify reductions in CO2 emissions and ‘offset’
the remainder. Sue Welland, founder of the CarbonNeutral Company, is
adamant that buying an offset “is not a donation, a customer is
buying a reduction of one tonne (etc) of CO2.”(19)
So can an airline really be carbon neutral? Ethical Consumer asked Sue
Welland whether awarding an airline CarbonNeutral® status wasn’t
just ‘greenwash’? “Silverjet is not CarbonNeutral,”
she replied, “it is making all flights CarbonNeutral”.(20)
Despite, then, the much repeated claims of the offset industry that
offsets are a last resort, Silverjet has not been through the CarbonNeutral
Company’s emissions reduction programme.
A recent Oxford University study highlighted how ‘frequent fliers’
such as Silverjet’s target market were disproportionately responsible
for greenhouse gas emissions. The 20% of individuals with the worst
carbon emissions were responsible for 80 times the emissions of the
best 20%.(21) |
The
‘carbon neutral’ G8 summit
In 2005 Margaret Beckett, then the Environment Secretary,
announced that the 4,000 tonnes of CO2 generated by the G8 summit of
that year would be offset - “over two years.” The offset project
involved installing solar water heaters, low-energy light-bulbs and
ceiling insulation in more than 2,000 homes in Kuyasa, a township in
Cape Town.
As the residents were to be provided with electricity for
the first time, the savings in emissions were calculated by predicting
that all locals would have otherwise switched to conventional electrical
power by 2028. Despite the initial claim the reductions were in a two-year
time frame it was realised that because people were being provided with
electricity for the first time initially emissions would rise. The savings
would actually occur over the 21 years of the project.(22)
Britain pledged £100,000. By January 2007 not a penny had been
spent as the organisers had to find £2.5m to implement the plan.
Cape Town council have calculated that the procedures required by the
Kyoto mechanism, and hiring auditors, will cost £54,000, leaving
the council £17,000 in debt.(23)
Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth commented, “the government
would have done better to concentrate on the supply of low energy light
bulbs in the UK before moving on to Africa.” Kuyasa was the first
CDM Gold Standard project. |
Enron environmentalism?
Offsets are generally marketed as if the emissions of a given activity,
such as flying, are neutralised instantaneously. Mike Mason, founder of
Climate Care, has said “I would rather that 100% of people offset their
emissions from flights than 50% of those people not fly at all.”(4)
Kevin Smith of Carbon Trade Watch has estimated how long it would take the
company to offset the carbon from a flight from the UK to New York. Climate
Care’s portfolio of projects include energy efficiency (50%), renewable
energy (20%) and forestry (30%). These produce emissions reductions over
time scales of approximately 6 years (life of a CFL bulb), 12 years (life
of a wind turbine) and 100 years (life of a tree).
For a flight taken on New Year’s Eve 2005, by 2018 original emissions
are 80% offset through six years of energy efficiency savings and 12 years
of renewable energy generation. However because forestry offsets at the
rate of 0.3% of the original emissions a year, it takes until 2106 before
we can declare the flight ‘carbon neutral’.
You might say an offset of 80% within 12 years looks pretty good. But only
if it is the only flight you ever take. What about more frequent flyers?
Because the emissions build up faster than they can be offset, it is a very
different picture. Taking just three trips a year and offsetting with Climate
Care, by 2036, 51 tonnes of CO2 remain in the atmosphere.(5)
Links
Carbon Calculators
- The Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN) has carried out
a study of the best carbon calculators in the following areas: Air Travel
Calculations, Land Travel Calculations, Home Fuel Emissions Calculations,
and Waste & Consumption Emissions Calculations.
Best overall was www.resurgence.org.
http://coinet.org.uk/solutions/carboncalculations
None of the providers reviewed are in COIN’s top 5. Accuracy of those
reviewed is noted in the table
Consumer Guide
- “Voluntary Offsets For Air-Travel Carbon Emissions”
The Tufts Climate Initiative will be updating its website with information
on additional providers at www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/
- “A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers”
available from www.cleanair-coolplanet.org
- www.ecobusinesslinks.com
- monthly updated survey of providers detailing cost and other key criteria
Offsetting for companies and organisations
- “The Carbon Trust three stage approach to developing a robust offsetting
strategy” is a guide to both reduction and offsetting
www.carbontrust.co.uk
tel: 0800 085 2005
- www.econtext.co.uk
has a useful downloadable guide to providers and advisors
Activist groups
Standards
Further Reading (available for free download)
References
References
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6184577.stm
4 New Internationalist,
July 2006 , 391 "If you go down to the woods today"
5 based on its 2005
portfolio, "Climate Care Annual Report 2005"
6 telephone conversation 26/2/07
7 Sunday Herald, 25 February 2007
8 ASA Future Forest Ltd 20/11/02
9 "A
funny place to store carbon": UWA-FACE Foundation's tree planting project
in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda" C. Lang and T. Byakola (2006)
10 www.fsc-watch.org/archives/?other~=SGS+Qualifor
viewed 12/3/07
11 Broadcast on BBC1 in the London area on Friday 12th January
2007
12 "Climate Care response to criticisms of the rainforest restoration
project, Kibale National Park, Uganda" 30/1/07
13 Telephone conversation
5/3/07 14 personal communication 26/2/07
15 DEFRA Jan 2007 "Consultation
on establishing a voluntary Code of Best Practice for the provision of carbon
offsetting to UK customers."
16 New Internationalist 391, July 2006 17 "EUETS
will not drive abatement in phase 2" ENDS 385 Feb 2007
18 www.pointcarbon.com
viewed 8/3/07
19 www.carbonneutral.com/ viewed 8/3/07
20 email 5/3/07 21
"Aviation dominates transport impacts" ENDS Report, Feb 2007, 385 22 "G8
summit ?carbon offset' was hot air" The Sunday Times 21/1/07
23 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6092460.stm
24 K. Smith "The Carbon Neutral Myth," 2007, p.30
25 viewed 29/2/07 26 email
1/3/07
25 see also "Salvaging Nature: Indigenous Peoples, Protected Areas
and Biodiversity Conservation" M. Colchester (2003) http://www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/PA/nature.html