Some Ideas to Ponder

An effective climate change response goes beyond compliance – complying is the minimum threshold – what are you willing to do to?

Undertake actions with multiple benefits and improved sustainability – get more for your carbon dollar!

Going beyond carbon neutral, past net neutral is where we need to end up on the climate change action pathway – carbon neutral is a place on that pathway, not the end.

What’s the Carbon Price?  ask Beyond Neutral

Once we accept that carbon has a price, ask yourself:

• what else do I get for my carbon dollar?
• who does it help?
• what does it protect?

The voluntary carbon market empowers people, you, to act on climate change without waiting for government

• It represents a desire to do something about climate change without being compelled

Want to know more about a project?  Beyond Neutral is happy to provide further information

The Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project

445,339 ha project protects a critical part of Cardamom Mountains Rainforest Eco-region and part of the Indo-Burma Hotspot, a global biodiversity hotspot.

Uncontrolled small-scale forest conversion to agricultural land and plantations makes it one of SE Asia’s most threatened forest landscapes.

The project protects these forest habitats from fragmentation and destruction, and other threats like poaching.

Supporting communities and nearly 4000 families, it provides training, employment and economic opportunities, addresses food security and improves health and education facilities.  98 rangers and a 25-person community anti-poaching unit patrol the project area.

Southern Cardamom protects critical habitat for 17 endangered and critically endangered species including Asian elephant, Asiatic black bear, sun bear, large spotted civet and clouded leopard, and opens the possibility of tiger reintroduction.

Kulera Landscape REDD+ Program: Co-Managed Protected Areas

The project targets 169,136 ha of forest in the border zones of 3 critical Protected Areas – islands of standing forest in a heavily degraded landscape.

These protected areas have high biodiversity values, being habitat for iconic African species (mammals and reptiles), over 160 bird species and 215 orchid species.

Degradation pressures are rapidly increasing as the local population intensifies and expands their exploitation of forest resources to unsustainable levels.

In a pro-poor approach to community-based sustainable forest management, the project empowers more than 45,000 households (over 800 villages) within the surrounding 10 km.

Kulera is strengthening land-tenure and governance; undertaking forest protection activities like patrolling; helping reduce fuelwood use and creating alternatives; and developing local enterprises based on sustainably harvested non-timber forest products like honey and coffee.

The Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project

Project protects 300,000 ha of the world’s second largest intact tropical rainforest; supporting some of the world’s most impoverished and marginalized people, in one of the least-developed places on Earth.  Enormously bio-diverse, it is critical Bonobo and forest elephant habitat.

Your carbon dollars provide basic development needs for 180,000 remote people with little or no access to basic social services.

Working closely with villages and communities it deals with the leading deforestation drivers – logging, agriculture and fuelwood/charcoal.

Participatory, community-based conservation approach focuses on addressing logging; sustainable agriculture and development; and village-centred capacity building:

• Schools: 3 built (4 more under construction).
• Established mobile medical clinic, treating thousands of patients.
• Emergency vaccinations provided to children in all villages during the 2019 Measles outbreak.

The ARC REDD+ Project

The project area totals over 53,000 ha, in a high deforestation risk region of the eastern Amazon biome – agriculture, mining and logging are the major deforestation drivers.  The project preserves forest in a heavily degraded region where it is socially acceptable to convert forest to agriculture.

The project area’s 10 different habitat types contain over 300 tree species; 15 targeted by illegal loggers.  Surveys found over 500 bird species and over 50 other animal species.  8 plant and 19 animal species are on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species.

The project builds local communities’ capacity and skills and strengthens governance and forest management frameworks.  It employs local people to help with the forest’s protection.  It provided cook stoves with chimneys to improve fuelwood use, indoor air quality and lung health.

Agroforestry training helps conserve native forest and increase tree cover.  ARC creates animal corridors, maintains forest cover and reduces habitat fragmentation, helping threatened animal and plant species’ conservation.

Sustainable Deployment of the LifeStraw® Family in Rural Kenya

The first program directly linking carbon credits with safe drinking water, the project distributed over 1,000,000 LifeStraw® Family units.

Each point of use, instant microbiological purifier unit delivers at least 18,000 litres of EPA-quality drinking water, enough to supply a family of five with microbiologically clean drinking water for three years.

The water filters treat contaminated drinking water, reducing the demand for conventional water treatment (boiling water with non-renewable biomass sourced from forests).  The system requires no electricity or additional consumables beyond the unit itself.

Saves 1.5 million tonnes of wood from being burned each year, slowing deforestation among Kenya’s dwindling woodland and helping maintain Kenya’s biodiversity.

Reduces incidence of waterborne diseases achieving a statistically significant reduction in the odds of diarrhoea, dysentery and severe dehydration among under-5’s using it exclusively.

Women and children spend less time gathering and carrying firewood and it reduces their exposure to poor air quality from burning firewood to heat water.

Katingan Peatland Restoration and Conservation Project

Covering one of Indonesia’s largest remaining intact peat swamp forests, the project is protecting and restoring nearly 150,000 ha of peatland ecosystems and is reforesting over 4,400 ha.

It contains vast carbon stocks, over 14 million tonnes above ground and over 546 million tonnes in the peat.

Without the project, the forest would have been converted to fast-growing industrial pulpwood plantations.

The project area is biodiversity rich, supporting 384 animal and 314 plant species.

Home to 2 critically endangered, 11 endangered and 31 vulnerable species.  It has over 5% of the world’s Orangutan (almost 4,000), Bornean Gibbon (almost 10,000) and Proboscis Monkey (over 500).

Containing no permanent human settlements, it is surrounded by villages, supporting traditional livelihoods including farming, fishing, and non-timber forest products harvesting.

The Kasigau Corridor REDD Project – Phase II The Community Ranches

Protects a 169,000 ha corridor of tropical dryland primary forest threatened by mosaic deforestation from slash and burn agriculture and illegal charcoal.

The project area contains 300 year old trees, 50+ large mammal species including cheetah, lion and elephants, 20+ bat and 300+ bird species.

• Ranger stations established with training provided – recruited from local communities.
• Community Wildlife Scouts address illegal activity – charcoal, bushmeat and poaching.
• Community based eco-charcoal production developed – alternative to charcoal from primary forest.
• Organic clothing factory training and employing young women – creating organic cotton clothing for export to USA and Europe.
• Organic nurseries sell citrus trees and jojoba – sales fund free seedlings for local farmers.
• School works funded – expanded education bursary scheme.
• Ecotourism and agroforestry developed – employment and training.