Carbon Credits
Trees for Travel has chosen to be actively involved in the creation of new forests. This is contrary to other organizations that sell CO2 credits from projects where plantation has already occurred or where the sustainable energy projects are already set up. These organizations cannot guarantee that your financial contribution goes towards actual plantation of new forest. We at Trees for Travel believe that your money should sponsor new forests or new sustainable energy projects. We use your contribution to finance plantation thus ensuring the desired absorption or reduction of CO2. Your CO2 emissions will be absorbed by projects that have been supported by your money. We call this FER: Future Emission Reduction units. The local organizations involved measure the relevant absorption levels.
The annual CO2 absorption of a particular forest is determined by a nominated local research institute that is itself verified by a certification organization every 3 to 5 years. The absorbed CO2 is measured in VERs (Verified Emission Units) - otherwise known as credits. The VERs are then deposited into our account guaranteeing that your CO2 is actually absorbed, one VER being equivalent to one tonne of CO2. The FERs that have been sold cancel out the absorbed VERs.
Click here for a Carbon Credit example.
Because the annual certification of absorbed CO2 is carried out by local rather than western organizations a greater part of your contribution goes to the developing country concerned. This methodology has been developed in close cooperation with the Ministry of Development, who also believe that the poorest, most commonly negatively affected by climate change, can benefit from money raised by CO2 offsetting.
Not all verified CO2 is used for offset purposes; Trees for Travel holds a certain amount back for unknown occurrences ensuring that we can always guarantee that CO2 absorption actually takes place.
Trees for Travel cooperates with trusted partners such as KIT (Dutch Royal Tropical Institute) in Mali, the FACE Foundation (Forests Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Emissions) in Malaysia and Alterra in the Philippines.
Because the certification process costs a substantial amount of money, it is unsuitable for small scale projects (less than 1000 hectares). To tackle this situation Trees for Travel has developed the Trees for All program where trees are planted but CO2 absorption is not (yet) measured. Instead we supervise the planting and the efficient management of the forest. An example of this in action is in the Philippines where we have set up a fund that provides an annual financial contribution to the local population on condition that the forest is well managed.