Carbonica’s offsets are carried out through tree planting, reforestation, forest conservation, multi-story crop planting and other energy-saving programmes.
Our partners are highly skilled ecologists and interdisciplinary scientists with years of expertise in managed forestry, crop management and educating local communities to acquire the skills to achieve sustainable growth and a restoration of habitats, their communities and environment.
Our main emphasis is in supporting tree planting and reforestation programmes, because these are of most direct relevance to the issue of carbon sequestration and combating global warming. We also support additional programmes, within the general remit of our partners’ community and environmental work, in order to support their efforts in providing the know-how to the communities that live around reforested land.
Our commitment is to ensure that the carbon offsets that we sell are of the highest quality and that they remain in place. In order to achieve this, we insure all our tree planting against damage, such as forest fires, deliberate or accidental premature felling, tree disease, etc. In the event that the trees planted are damaged, we replant them again to ensure that the offset is carried through to completion for the length of the term.
We work closely with our partners to monitor the growth and progress of the areas of restored forest and new plantations.
Tree planting
Reforestation is the most efficient way to mitigate and reverse global climate change. It also prevents drought and impacts local communities.
When trees are planted back onto the land, wildlife returns, soil erosion decreases and vital water sheds are protected.
Our partners SHI undertake reforestation in partnership with local communities in Central American countries. In the rainy season, when seedlings are ready to transplant, tree planting is carried out in a way that is beneficial to local agriculture, providing shade for crops like coffee, creating barriers for soil erosion and protecting local streambeds.
Practices such as multi-story farming are efficient parts of offset programmes and they bring to an end the destruction of slash-and-burn farming. In Nicaragua, multi-story farms mimic natural forests with an overstory of hardwood trees shading bananas, coffee and ginger — all of which thrive in the shade. The shade-loving crops flourish in this environment, while farmers greatly expand their overall productivity. This results in an ideal symbiotic relationship between the goals of carbon offsetting and the interests of local communities. Plantations like these have been found to contain 90% of the biodiversity of bird species natural to the nearby forests.