Carbon Balanced with the WLT

A few weeks ago we launched our completely overhauled web site dealing with carbon emmissions. We are not the first orgainisation to deal with this issue -- there are several others selling carbon credits -- such as Future Forests, and Carbon-Balanced(R) and CLevel. just type in carbon balance, carbon sequestration or any similar phrase into Google and you find them. The big difference bewteen the World Land Trust and all the others I have been able to find, is that we are a charity and the others are not. In itself this does not make us better than anyone else. But it does make us more transparent. Charities have to publish summaries of their accounts on the Charity Commission web site, and have to make their accounts available to supporters. For-profit Companies do not.

We are also more directly involved in the delivery of the results -- unlike most of the for-profit businmesses who are paying other organisations to carry out tree planting and other schemes.

It is not surprising that the costs of carbon sequestration through the World Land Trust is often significantly cheaper than through some of the commercial companies. And a final, but significant difference, is that the WLT is moving rapidly towards having carbon that can be legally traded. The companies that have cashed in on public concerns over global warming will soon have to demonstrate much more clearly how they are implementing their schemes and how much of the money raised really goes to conservation or any other activity.