Sustainability Beyond Carbon
The concept of Sustainability Beyond Carbon relates to the non-CO2 benefits that are generated by a carbon offset project.
Carbon offsets – creating significant sustainable development outcomes
Education, schools, training, employment.
Governance, community, land tenure, indigenous peoples.
Equality, empowerment, safety, time saving, women, children.
Indoor air pollution, polluted water, particulates, pneumonia, soot.
Health clinics, injury reduction, WASH, water-borne disease, diarrhea.
Pro-poor, reduced poverty, micro-enterprises, economic opportunities, eco-tourism.
Food security, sustainable land management, agroforestry, non-timber forest products.
Biodiversity, habitat protection, critically endangered, iconic species, anti-poaching, endemic.
Link your climate response to improved sustainability
Sustainability co-benefits often equal or exceed those of the carbon reduction activity.
These co-benefits exist due to verified climate benefits from an accredited project that wouldn’t have occurred without carbon finance.
Do you want carbon offsets that offer more than just carbon reductions?
Beyond Neutral offers a range of sustainability outcomes from inspiring projects
Sustainability Beyond Carbon | Renewables
Access to Electricity
Nearly 800 million people do not have access to electricity today
Add to these people, all those who live in areas where demand outstrips supply which leads to “brown-outs” and black-outs.
Imagine the impact to the lives of people who have no or poor electricity supplies, when electricity is made available:
- Without carbon finance, these projects would not be viable.
- The climate benefit (emissions not released into the atmosphere) is just one aspect of the benefits.
Renewables | infrastructure-scale renewable electricity
Infrastructure-scale Projects
- Reduce outdoor air pollution by avoiding emissions of NOx, SOx and particulates.
- Create employment during construction and operation.
- Reduce the energy demand/ supply gap.
Reliable Electricity Supplies
- Enable new economic activities to develop (i.e. tourism, village industries).
- Provide greater access to educational resources and lighting.
- Improve village life, both socially and economically.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon | People
Improving Living Conditions
Firewood, charcoal and other polluting fuels are needed each day by 2.6 billion people for cooking
Traditional cooking arrangements are often rudimentary. The most basic consists of 3 stones with a fire in-between and the cooking pot balanced on top.
Traditional stoves are inefficient and smoky.
Fuelwood or charcoal extracted from surrounding forest is inefficiently burnt in these stoves, creating smoke and using a lot of fuel.
In places without access to fuelwood or charcoal, coal or dung is often used with similar impacts on indoor air quality and household health.
According to the World Health Organisation:
- Nearly 4 million people die prematurely from household air pollution.
- Almost 50% of pneumonia deaths in kids under 5 years are caused by breathing soot.
Clean cooking projects can use household biogas, solar cookers, bio-ethanol, or improved cookstoves
Cookstove projects typically have a program for manufacturing and/or supplying more efficient cookstoves.
These improved cookstoves are provided to the people in the project’s area, either free or at a subsidised price.
Carbon offset revenues are often used to subsidise the price paid by households.
These household-scale projects can be undertaken at a local, regional or national level.
People | Eliminating or reducing polluting fuel use in the household
Untreated surface water like lakes, ponds, rivers and streams are relied upon by 144 million people for their water
Safe Water means access to an improved water source on site, available when needed and free from contamination.
- Globally, one-in-four people do not have access to safe drinking water.
- Unsafe water sources are responsible for 1,200,000 deaths each year.
- 6% of deaths are caused by unsafe water in low-income countries.
Safe water projects provide water supplies that are safe to use without the need to boil the water and so avoid the need to use firewood/ charcoal/ coal/ dung.
The projects vary in size from domestic household water filtration using gravity filters, up to rehabilitated community water bores.
Safe Water projects eliminate the need to boil water
People-focused Projects
- Reduce the considerable time, effort and risk of injury or violence for women and children while collecting fuel.
- Provide increased time for other tasks, education, employment and economic activity.
- Decrease the degradation of local forests and the associated impacts on biodiversity.
- Save lives by reducing indoor air pollution and improving drinking water quality.
- Help improve health and safety (e.g. burn risks), especially for women and children.
- Create employment directly by using local people to implement the project.
- Actively improve gender equality and women’s empowerment.
- Households save money by not needing to buy polluting fuels.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon | Forests
Protect Biodiversity, Support Community
Each year between 2015 and 2020, 10 million hectares were deforested
REDD+ projects reduce emissions, empower communities and support biodiversity
Standing forest contains vast stores of carbon in the trees and soil.
These carbon stores, the biodiversity they contain and the communities that rely on them are under imminent threat from deforestation and degradation.
REDD+ projects are located where deforestation and/or forest degradation is actively occurring and where it is expected to severely impact the standing forest into the future.
Projects on the deforestation frontier act to protect the forest from being lost
“Where forests have not been degraded, people have enjoyed greater protection from natural disasters such as flooding and landslides. In coastal areas, mangroves can protect against storms and waves. Healthy forests also reduce vulnerability, offering food, shelter, medicine, and livelihood support to some of the world’s poorest people.“
(UN Food and Agriculture Organisation)
Forests | Nature-based projects protecting or restoring ecosystems
Forest-based projects
- Transform local forest-based economies and sustain communities.
- Improve land tenure, social equity and resilience.
- Help community and infrastructure development.
- Protect biodiversity and enhance ecosystem functions.
- Maintain traditional customs and lifestyles.
- Establish a monetary value for keeping the standing forest as opposed to chopping it down.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon - Renewables
Wind, India
VCS 292, India (Gujarat)
Wind
150 MW wind farm with 100 turbines generating approximately over 348 GWh per year.
- Project helps meet Gujarat’s electricity demand which is growing quickly, with a significant supply/ demand gap existing.
- Improves the local grid’s power characteristics, improving reliability and usability.
- Reduces India’s reliance on foreign sourced fuels and local fossil fuels.
- Local air pollution including NOx, SOx and particulates is reduced.
- Helps alleviate poverty through employment generation.
- Improves economic activities as a result of strengthening the local grid.
- Infrastructure in and around the project area has been improved, including development of the road network.
- Leads to economic investment in a developing region which otherwise would not have happened.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon - People
Household Biogas, China
GS 2664, China (Hainan)
Household Biogas
15,555 households equipped with biodigester to replace old coal fired stoves.
Biogas use reduces methane from manure, improves indoor air quality and saves the household money.
- Recovery and utilization of biogas reduces uncontrolled methane emissions that would otherwise occur.
- Promotes changed manure management practices to prevent the uncontrolled methane emissions.
- Significantly decreases production of smoke while cooking, reducing indoor air pollution.
- Increased employment for the local people through the construction of methane pools and follow-up service.
- Improves the living and cooking conditions and the health of the local people.
- Popularizes a practical energy technology and improve quality of life for participants.
- Reduces expenditure on coal, improving the finances of the poor.
Solar Cookers, China
GS 7606, China (Henan)
Solar Cookers
49,000 solar cookers using the sun instead of coal to cook food.
- Enables rural households to partly and efficiently substitute solar energy for the coal used in daily cooking and water boiling.
- Less smoke is generated resulting in better indoor air quality and improved health.
- All of the materials and facilities engaged in the project are produced domestically.
- Ensures affordable access to energy.
- Households consume less coal and reduce their costs in purchasing coal, alleviating economic pressures on local residents.
- The households do not need to pay for the solar cookers which are distributed to them for free as a part of the project, overcoming a barrier to their uptake.
- Created 15 local jobs and provided training.
- Helping stimulate the development of solar thermal energy.
- Creates more technology and knowledge-based employment with good working conditions, a significant improvement on local employment options.
Cookstoves, Malawi & Mozambique
VCS 1719, Malawi & Mozambique
Cookstoves
20,000+ domestic fuel-efficient cookstoves replace inefficient three-stone fires or traditional pot supports.
- Less fuel is burnt more efficiently, helping curb forest degradation and improving indoor air quality.
- Reduced forest degradation helps protect watersheds that regulate water table levels and prevent flash flooding.
- Lower air pollution in the home benefits women and children; 40% of all childhood pneumonia is attributable to indoor smoke, which is also a cause of chronic lung disease in women.
- Decreases the time and energy necessary to collect fuelwood and is faster to cook with.
- Provides relief from high fuel costs due to higher efficiency.
- Design protects family members, especially children from burns and accidents common to open-air fires.
- Helps develop Malawi’s rural economy; over 70% of its people live on less than US$1.25 a day.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon - Forests
REDD+, Cambodia
VCS 1748, Cambodia (Koh Kong)
REDD+
CCB Gold: Climate, Biodiversity
Protecting >445,000 ha and 17 endangered and critically endangered species.
- Protects these forest habitats from fragmentation and destruction.
- Prevents poaching and illegal logging.
- Supporting communities and nearly 4000 families.
- Provides training, employment and economic opportunities.
- Addresses food security.
- Improves health and education facilities.
- Community employed in anti-poaching units that patrol the project area.
- Critical habitat for 17 endangered and critically endangered species.
REDD+, Malawi
VCS 1168, Malawi
REDD+
CCB Gold: Climate, Community, Biodiversity
Protects >169,000 ha, over 600 species – lions, elephants, antelopes.
- Protected areas have high biodiversity values.
- Habitat for iconic African species (mammals and reptiles), over 160 bird species and 215 orchid species.
- A pro-poor approach to community-based sustainable forest management.
- Empowers more than 45,000 households (over 800 villages) within the surrounding 10 km.
- Strengthening land-tenure and governance.
- Undertaking forest protection activities like patrolling.
- Helping reduce fuelwood use and creating alternatives.
- Developing local enterprises based on sustainably harvested non-timber forest products like honey and coffee.
REDD+, Brazil
VCS 1953, Brazil (Para)
REDD+
CCB Gold: Climate
Protects >53,000 ha of Amazon forest, home to 8 plant and 19 animal species on IUCN’s Red List.
- Provided the first stage of land tenure processes to over 200 different households in the region.
- Allows forest regeneration by reducing the area of cassava and focusing on alternative crops with a smaller footprint.
- Provided a one-on-one course for agroforestry systems.
- 350 energy efficient cookstoves provided to all riverine people in the project areas.
- Efficient cookstoves also provided to villagers within the project boundary and nearby, for cooking and cassava production.
- Protects habitat of two critically endangered primates, the endangered Giant Otter and other threatened mammals including the Giant Anteater, Giant Armadillo and the Oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus).
- Habitat for many bird, amphibian and fish species endemic to the Eastern Amazon.
Sustainability Beyond Carbon: Offsets offer more than just carbon reductions
Beyond Neutral provides a range of inspiring projects
Visit our Carbon Shop
Buying carbon offsets from Beyond Neutral is easy
All the projects sold by Beyond Neutral are accredited under either VCS or Gold Standard , so the offset you buy has been created by a project:
- that follows a specific methodology;
- has been verified as having occurred by one of that Standard’s third party verification bodies; and
- is tracked in that Standard’s Registry using a unique serial number from issuance until retirement on your behalf.
