Mission Statement

To make Envirotrade Ltd the engine which brings together sustainable land-use practices and livelihood creation to sequester or "recycle"' carbon.

To shift the destructive paradigm between forest communities, their environment and the need for food security and income.

To find a formula in which economic development and bio-diversity conservation converge to each other's mutual advantage.

Become a catalyst for better land-use, a social agent for alleviating poverty in the developing world and a champion for community empowerment.

To give local farmers ownership of their carbon-assets through Plan Vivo so that they become self-sustaining, and are able to break the cycle of dependence on external aid and NGO's to shape their own future.

To provide expert advice and assistance rooted in extensive local expertise and experience to our clients in sub-Saharan in balancing development objectives with sustainability and livelihood creation.

To pilot integrated solutions to unsustainable energy and other natural resource consumption that benefits rural communities and contribute to global objectives in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

If you are concerned about climate change and poverty in the developing world, you can make a difference by offsetting your CO2 emissions by purchasing Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) certificates from our innovative projects that tackle poverty and environmental degradation.

How does it work?

VERs are generated from carbon sequestration linked to land-use change and forest management.1 A democratically elected local community council decides how the community’s co-operative tree planting and subsequent carbon revenues are spent and a community trust fund administers revenues.

How much do I need to offset?

Envirotrade sells carbon credits to individuals and organisations that wish to offset their carbon dioxide emissions to reduce global warming. The volume of the transaction is determined by the carbon footprint you wish to offset – and the examples overleaf may give you some idea of what this footprint could look like. It may be that you are offsetting the emissions from a fleet of twenty cars or from a manufacturing process that generates CO2 – or maybe you simply want to offset your personal carbon footprint. Envirotrade’s VER certificates enable you to transform both your lifestyle and that of forest communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

The transformation is closely monitored by the Edinburgh University and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management using co2fix methodology and the Plan Vivo carbon registry system (www.planvivo.org) to ensure that targets for sequestration and poverty alleviation are met.

For example… these amounts are given as guidelines and we encourage people to use independent calculators to establish the volume of their carbon footprint

● 2-litre petrol car driven 20 000 km per annum - 2 tonnes CO2

● Short-haul flight 0.6 tonnes CO2

● Long-haul flight 3.75 tonnes CO2

● Average household energy consumption per annum6 tonnes CO2

How much will this cost?

Voluntary Emission Reduction certificates from our projects are sold to offset both personal and corporate emissions. They are priced according to market-based values subject to readjustment on a regular basis and reflect investment in poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.

Make a difference.

A purchase of these VERs is not simply a cynical mechanism to let first-world polluters off the hook – it gives forest communities in countries like Mozambique a real chance to build sustainable livelihoods and protect the environment. It brings those of us in the developed world who are concerned about our own environmental impact into a unique partnership with communities who wish to conserve their environment and end poverty.