Blue Ventures Launches Carbon Offsetting Fund to Fight Climate Change and Help Local Communities
Blue Ventures’ volunteers and others can offset emissions for flights and other activities
Blue Ventures today launched a new carbon offsetting program that allows anyone to offset their carbon emissions from flights, driving or other daily activities.
Blue Ventures has always been dedicated to reducing its environmental impact. As a large proportion of Blue Ventures’ work brings people from all over the world to Madagascar for research and conservation work, offsetting resulting transport emissions has become a major priority for the organisation. Instead of risking uncertain investment in alternative carbon offset providers, Blue Ventures has launched the Blue Ventures Carbon Offset fund, to offset the carbon produced from flights in projects that will directly benefit the local communities where Blue Ventures’ work is focused.
For travellers visiting Madagascar with Blue Ventures, BV Offset reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the Andavadoaka region – where Blue Ventures has its science research site – by at least the same amount of carbon dioxide that is generated by a return flight to Madagascar.
The current carbon mitigation project offsets by providing the training to facilitate the distribution of fuel-efficient stoves in Andavadoaka. Every stove reduces carbon emissions by 1.5 tonnes annually, and decreases the wood required by 70% for each stove set in place. Along with producing considerably less carbon dioxide, the stoves provide environmental, economic and health benefits.
Environmental benefits: Stoves require less wood to generate heat and can operate on alternative fuel sources such as maize husks or other agricultural bi-products – reducing wood foraging, deforestation and associated habitat degradation.
Economic Benefits: The locally-produced stoves create local employment through manufacturing, distribution and information dissemination. Coupled with the additional available money saved from fuel use, the stoves will provide an alternative income.
Health Benefits: With less smoke produced the incidence of cooking-related respiratory infections may decrease. Recent research indicates that cooking smoke and the resulting indoor air pollution in poorly ventilated homes is responsible for 1.6million fatalities in developing countries every year. It is a poorly documented silent killer responsible for 2.7% of the global disease burden and is the fifth most common cause of death in developing countries (for more information see the WHO report, Fuel for Life: Household Energy and Health (2006)).
This is the first of a number of carbon mitigation projects in the SW Madagascar region currently planned by Blue Ventures. All BV Offset projects are aimed not only at reducing global carbon dioxide emissions, but also at helping alleviate poverty, educating local communities and protecting local habitats. Additionality is key to the BV Offset programme: no project is endorsed unless it is provides an additional benefit to the local community, as well as providing a quantifiable carbon reduction.
For further information please see the Blue Ventures Carbon Offset pages on www.blueventures.org/bvco
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