Flights will usually represent the largest portion of a traveler’s carbon footprint; consider using airlines that have invested in advanced technology and equipment to already lessen the impact of flights.
Alternatively, travelers may use any free online calculator to calculate their carbon footprint. It’s easy to use and includes a range of options to calculate the carbon footprint of flights, buses, accommodations, trains, and others.
Once a figure representing the carbon footprint of a trip is obtained, the next step is to select an organization with funding in carbon reduction programmes.
There have been companies and projects collecting donations from trip carbon footprints. One of them is Gold standard, established in 2003 by WWF and other international NGOs as a best practice benchmark for energy projects developed under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It was set up to ensure that projects delivered genuine emission reductions and long-term sustainable development.
Gold standard was to ensure that the money collected from donations of trips must make its way to forests in Costa Rica, cookstoves in rural Africa, and wind farms in India. Other quality carbon offset programmes around the world are Carbon Footprint and MyClimate.
Yet none of the above certified globally funded projects has ever benefited the customary carbon owners in PNG. Not even the Gold Standard’s projects has ever set foot in PNG shores to donate to customary landowners against logging, land use clearing and to cover the cost of managing the standing forests.
In your next trip, remember, offsetting your carbon footprint is about more than calculating the amount and donating, it’s about selecting projects that will have genuine impact. PNG has never benefited from tourism carbon footprint in the past years, although has the largest rainforest in the world. – Via Garamut News.
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