Recent news

April 2010

Open letter to the Editor of the Observer

22 April, 2010

Dear Sir,

It is regrettable that the Observer did not contact Envirotrade prior to publication of the article ‘Carbon credit film shouldn’t have been shown, BBC says’ (11 April 2010, page 6). If you had called us first, we could have corrected some serious factual errors. We wrote to you on 15 April 2010, but have received no reply. This open letter is intended to set the record straight.

The article contains a number of inaccuracies, but the two of greatest concern are:

The false allegation that Envirotrade and Robin Birley misled or deceived the BBC and programme producers to secretly fund a documentary that was sympathetic to their business interests; and
The false allegation that £150,000 of carbon offsets are unverified and may have to be paid back by Envirotrade.

We address these errors below.

Misleading the BBC and Producers

You allege that a sympathetic documentary about Envirotrade was financed by the Africa Carbon Livelihoods Trust, which you describe as a secretive trust linked to the company. You also claim that Envirotrade deceived the BBC and/or the producers about Envirotrade’s connection with the ACLT and as a result, millions of BBC viewers were misled by a biased documentary.

Your article completely misrepresents the facts.

Firstly, Envirotrade and Robin Birley have never hidden their relationship with the Africa Carbon Livelihoods Trust. Moreover Charles Hall occupies highly visible senior management positions in both Envirotrade and ACLT. Mr Birley, Mr Hall and Envirotrade are extremely proud of their association with ACLT, whose mission is to promote accomplishment of the Millennium Development Goals through community-based programmes to mitigate and adapt to climate change. ACLT aims to accomplish this mission by linking local African communities with the world carbon markets and other sources of finance.

Secondly, Envirotrade made its relationship with the Africa Carbon Livelihoods Trust perfectly clear to the producers of the documentary.

Certainly we never hid the connection or funding arrangements from those we were involved with in making this documentary and in fact, we took advice from the professional third parties who procured the documentary, who assured us that this was completely above board.

£150,000 to pay back

The article alleged that £150,000 of carbon offsets sold to clients are unverified and may have to be paid back. This is entirely false. None of the carbon offsets we have sold over the years is or ever has been under threat for possible repayment to buyers.

Envirotrade has always rigorously adhered to the Plan Vivo standard in certifying our offsets for sale. The Plan Vivo standard was developed by the University of Edinburgh with the support of UK DFID, is fully independent and is recognized by carbon offset buyers as a guarantee of integrity.

As in most areas of academic research, there are reasonable differences of opinion among experts in the field of forest carbon. The fact that some advisers to the European Commission disagree with some of the technical standards adopted by Plan Vivo in no way invalidates the Plan Vivo offsets we have sold. Purchasers of our offsets know exactly what they are buying.

It is also important to note that the many auditors who have inspected our project in Sofala over the years – including the EU auditors – have noted clearly the significantly positive economic and social results our project has achieved with the participating local communities. We at Envirotrade are justifiably proud of our project’s accomplishments, which include the planting of over one million trees and the transformation for the better of the lives of some 2,000 subsistence farmers and their families, many of whom were combatants (on both sides) in that country’s civil war.

We sincerely hope that this sets the record straight on these issues.

Yours faithfully,

Charles J Hall
Chief Executive
Envirotrade Group

June 2009

New African – How Africa can earn billions from carbon trading

Download the article (2.05MB pdf)

April 2009

The Sunday Times Magazine – The Green Shoots of Hope

The Sunday Times Magazine journalist Richard Girling, who visited and wrote about the Nhambita Project in 2005, has recently returned to the project and written about the changes he has seen. He was accompanied by Bénédicte Kurzen, an award winning photo-journalist who has illustrated the feature which investigates grass-roots aid to Africa.

The Sunday Times Magazine will carry the article on Sunday 12 April 2009.

Richard Girling

is a senior feature writer for the Sunday Times Magazine. Voted Journalist of the Year in the 2008 Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards, he has also been Specialist Writer of the Year at the UK Press Awards (2002) and has been shortlisted for this award in 2005 and 2006. He has been a consultant to the former Department of the Environment and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and author of campaigns for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).
(From Random Books)

Bénédicte Kurzen

is a French photographer currently living in South Africa. At the age of 23, she left Paris for Israel/Palestine. She has been a photographer since then, covering the news in the Middle East from Jerusalem to Charm El Sheick and from Beirut to Baghdad, until recently. Freelance but represented by World Picture News, her work has been seen in Paris Match, Newsweek, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times of London, and Courrier International.