World Expedition - Index

World Expedition - booklet - Index

carbon neutral adventure holidays
renewable resources vs carbon sequestration
Although World Expeditions acknowledges that tree-planting
can play a role in a global greenhouse gas abatement
strategy, we do not feel it is a credible and effective way
to source carbon credits.
One of the reasons we choose to work with Climate Friendly
is that they focus on renewable energy solutions, a more
effective approach that actually reduces emissions.
Tree-planting (carbon sequestration) schemes will generally
produce cheaper, lower quality carbon credits as they are
simply less effective in combating global warming for the
following reasons:
� Climate change is largely caused by greenhouse gases
from the energy sector (about 80% of all emissions);
therefore our focus is on the energy sector. Forestry
projects do nothing to lessen society’s dependence on
fossil fuels for energy generation and they do not prevent
emissions.
� Trees take decades to sequester CO 2 as they grow,
meaning your greenhouse emissions will continue to
contribute towards global warming for many more years.
It’s difficult to justify ‘carbon neutrality’ claims with up to
100 years pay back time.
� It cannot be guaranteed that a new forest will be
permanent. It will eventually be likely to succumb to
disease, pestilence, fire, drought or logging therefore
releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere once more.
� Estimations of how much CO2 a forest can/will store can
differ vastly depending on the calculation method used
e.g. Whether other pools of carbon (e.g. soil, leaf litter)
and other factors are taken into account.
� Large-scale monoculture plantations often used can have
negative impacts on the environment and forest
communities.
variations in carbon calculators
There are two major differences in the way that Climate
Friendly approach flight emissions compared with others:
1. How and what Climate Friendly calculates emissions:
When calculating the climate impact of air travel, Climate
Friendly takes into account the emerging insights from
leading scientific sources, including the IPCC to reflect
the full impact of flying at high altitude rather than just
emissions from burned fuel. This makes a big difference
to the end result.