We all love visiting exotic destinations to enjoy the local environment and culture, but the very act of travelling emits greenhouse gases that lead to climate change. Ultimately this poses a risk to the very communities we want to protect, so what can be done?
Leading Climate and Development experts ClimateCare, help you take responsibility for unavoidable carbon impacts by offsetting your emissions – effectively balancing the effect of them by ensuring the same amount of carbon and greenhouse gases are not emitted elsewhere.
Specialising in innovative projects that both protect the environment and improve people’s lives, ClimateCare have developed award winning projects across the world that cut carbon emissions, provide jobs, improve health and stimulate local economies.
Examples of their integrated projects include the world first LifeStraw Carbon for Water project. 780 million people in the world still do not have access to safe drinking water and many suffer from waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea – the third leading cause of death among children and adults in Kenya. This project cuts carbon and provides safe water by distributing 877,505 LifeStraw Family filters to households in Kenya’s Western Province. These simple, gravity fed filters meant that families no longer need to cut and burn wood from dwindling forests to boil their water and make it safe to drink.
In this way the project is delivering safe water to 4.5 million people in Kenya and is one of just nine ‘lighthouse’ projects selected by the United Nations.
Another example of a project that cuts carbon and improves lives is the Ugastoves project in Uganda, which creates jobs manufacturing efficient cookstoves that in turn improve health and save money. The World Health Organisation estimates that indoor air pollution form cooking on open fires and rudimentary stoves causes almost two million premature deaths per year, more than those attributable to malaria or tuberculosis.
These clean cookstoves use less fuel, cutting carbon emissions and substantially reducing indoor air pollution, making them much less damaging to the health of the cooks and their families. The project has also created jobs for 159 local people.
Last week, on BBC Radio 4, Professor John Broome explained why we all have a duty to offset our carbon emissions, and as leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt said recently “By investing in best quality offsets, we can start to make the sweeping cuts [in carbon] needed – while at the same time helping improve people’s quality of life in the here and now. It honestly should be a ‘no brainer’!“
On the Go Tours will offset your travel emissions with ClimateCare on your behalf, just ask next time you book a trip. You can also visit www.climatecare.org to find out more about how to reduce your carbon footprint and to calculate and offset other emissions online.