Q. Is funding environmental restoration to address carbon emissions a valid approach?
The short answer is yes, if done only as a secondary action to account for ‘unavoidable emissions’ whilst on an active journey toward lower carbon travel, and if the environmental projects you fund are valid and verifiable.
The long answer is that there are valid criticisms of carbon offsetting or ‘balancing’ such as: it gives a social license to those who intend to continue ‘business as usual’ and who can afford to ‘pay to pollute’. On the latter point, we believe that wealthier nations and companies do need to invest in a sustainable future on behalf of all humanity – global inequality is a significant barrier to progress.
On the point of effectiveness, European Commission research[1] concluded in 2017 that 85% of offsetting initiatives under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)[2] simply haven’t delivered the carbon benefits they claimed. The EU are currently abandoning this mechanism. There were a number of problems (1) It did give polluters globally a mechanism to ‘pay to pollute’, (2) which activities delivered climate benefits wasn’t defined well enough and (3) projects were not regulated adequately. Well-intended, but ultimately it didn’t work.
However, it does not translate that planting trees responsibly, protecting forests, or investing in clean energy, does not deliver measurable climate and nature benefits – it does. Fact. So, let’s get on with what needs to be done.
Our commitment is to first engage our network of live events and their stakeholders with understanding the issues around travel and taking action to reduce emissions wherever possible. We provide tools, advice and inspiration to help them do this. As a second step we provide the mechanism to fund environmental restoration projects that are transparent and have clear benefits: taking meaningful action.
All of our projects prevent carbon emissions from being released into the atmosphere or remove carbon through tree planting. Additionally, we prioritise project partners who are actively supporting communities that are already affected by climate change and working towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals: especially in restoring ecosystems; alleviating poverty, providing healthcare and education, halting and reversing land degradation and biodiversity loss, and creating sustainable livelihoods.
Our approach is simple, transparent and robust:
We work with members to help them calculate and understand travel-related carbon emissions and we support them to take action to reduce these impacts. Whilst on this journey, we offer the option to balance unavoidable emissions in two ways:
1. Our Trees+ programme funds tree planting, the protection of threatened habitats, ecosystem regeneration and conservation and support for communities at the brunt of climate changes. This programme includes a verified carbon offset. We work with three partner organisations:
Temwa is our tree planting partner. It’s a community-led tree-planting and climate adaptation programme initiative that is run by and supports the people of North Nkhata Bay in Malawi, who are currently facing the worst effects of climate change.
The Rainforest Trust is our rainforest protection partner: they secure land rights to protect against deforestation and support ancient woodlands that sequester vast amounts of carbon.
Verified carbon offset: Our third partner can change depending on the availability of carbon credits but is always with a verified carbon standard project (VERRA / REDD+ / UK Woodland Carbon Code certified). Each year we research suitable VCS carbon offset projects and strive to build relationships with partners to share the positive impacts of your donations for people and nature – beyond carbon offset. *15% goes to onboard:earth to support our community building activities and the development of our tools and resources for measuring and reducing emissions.
2. Energy Revolution Programme: Fund renewable energy investments into community-led, community- benefit clean renewable energy initiatives to help reduce reliance on fossil fuels, benefit neighbourhoods and empower communities to take control of their energy consumption with financial gains. We prioritise community-scale projects which include community engagement, training opportunities for young people and clean energy education in local schools. 100% of your donations go directly to the projects and every kW hour from our renewable energy investments replace the use of fossil-fuel for energy generation.
We are a registered UK Charity with excellent governance standards and industry leaders as trustees. We work with established and inspirational partners, and we undertake in-depth due diligence on behalf of our members and report back on the impact of our investments annually.
We believe that a lack of understanding, or concerns about how offsetting has been done badly, should not prevent anyone from investing in a sustainable future. We are here to support members to take responsible and effective action.
Q. Shouldn’t we just wait for legislation or technology to change?
A. No, the reality is we can’t afford to – everyone in society must actively take steps toward reducing emissions. We must all adapt to managing our businesses with less environmental impacts.
Projects like onboard:earth exist in part because of the relative vacuum of government action or economic drivers toward sustainable practices. The Government’s own Committee on Climate Change (CCC) concluded in Summer 2019 that: ‘UK action to curb greenhouse gas emissions is lagging far behind what is required, even to meet previous less stringent emissions targets. Over the past year, the government has delivered just one of the 25 critical policies needed to get emissions reductions back on track’[3].
We believe we must come together as an industry to show leadership and take action in the areas we are able.
The music industry is orientated around live events & shows and this represents a considerable percentage of emissions and sector income. Recording artists are not likely to stop touring in future and festivals, concerts and events will not cease to exist, so we believe the pragmatic and positive approach is to work with the sector to inspire more sustainable approaches to travel and investment into climate solutions.
Q. What does the term ‘unavoidable’ emissions mean?
A. We view unavoidable emissions as those that an organisation considers essential to operate whilst on a journey toward reducing their travel-rated carbon emissions. As a charity we do everything within our means to provide knowledge and inspiration to everyone in the events and music industry to reduce travel emissions.
Q. Why are the costs for balancing emissions different for Energy Revolution and Trees+ programmes?
A. The costs are different for mitigating a tonne of carbon for each programme because they are completely different activities. A full methodology is provided on the programme pages.
Do you have any other questions or thoughts? Tell us if we can do better
A. We welcome your questions and ideas. We are a charity founded by leaders in the live events industry to take responsibility for and tackle our industry’s impacts. We take what we do seriously, have excellent governance, and the expertise that is required to do things right. But there is always more to learn, as contexts change and new ideas emerge, so please tell us what you think and how we can do things better.
[1] Source: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/ets/docs/clean_dev_mechanism_en.pdf
[2] The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is one of the Flexible Mechanisms defined in the Kyoto Protocol (IPCC, 2007) that provides for emissions reduction projects which generate Certified Emission Reduction units (CERs) which may be traded in emissions trading schemes
[3] Reducing UK emissions: 2019 Progress Report to Parliament (UK Committee on Climate Change, July 2019) – https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/reducing-uk-emissions-2019-progress-report-to-parliament/