http://www.carbonbalanced.org

Carbon facilitating Conservation

World Land Trust Restoration Ecology Projects

The World Land Trust Carbon Balanced Programme offers individuals and companies a means of offsetting their CO2 emissions while, at the same time, conserving some of the Earth's most threatened habitats and endangered species.

The Carbon Balanced Programme is managed by WLT's Restoration Ecology Team with the aim of restoring and protecting critically threatened habitat through the provision of carbon dioxide offsets and tree-planting initiatives.

Degraded land at Buenaventura Reserve, Ecuador, one of the areas benefiting from WLT's Carbon Balanced Programme.

WLT's Restoration Ecology Projects are specifically designed to rehabilitate cleared and degraded habitat to create buffers and corridors which link to existing WLT supported reserves.

A mixture of avoided deforestation, tree planting and assisted natural regeneration techniques are used to protect and re-establish habitats which had been cleared in the past. While this approach works for cleared land, WLT is of the opinion that saving biodiversity is key, and always prefers to protect existing habitat where this is an option. Therefore Carbon Balanced strongly promotes avoided deforestation as a demonstrable way of addressing climate change.

All Carbon Balanced Restoration Ecology Projects must meet the same project selection criteria as WLT projects. Using these criteria we can give assurances that they are innovative, effective, fully verifiable, closely monitored and managed by effective local partners.

There are two main types of Restoration Ecology Projects undertaken by WLT;

• Carbon Balanced projects. Current projects are taking place in Ecuador and Mexico.
  Learn more about the Carbon Balanced projects on the Carbon Balanced website.
• Tree-planting projects. These projects restore forest habitat in reserves in Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil.
  Learn more about the tree-planting projects on the Carbon Balanced website.

We are continually looking to expand the Restoration Ecology Project portfolio in terms of both project design and location. All money raised through the Carbon Balanced Programme is used in restoration ecology projects and if any profit accumulates it will be ploughed back into the conservation fund and will be used to purchase more acres of threatened habitat.

More information

Learn more about offsetting carbon emissions with World Land Trust on the Carbon Balanced website.

After Copenhagen - a position statement from the World Land Trust

Read about the Carbon Balanced programme on BBC Suffolk: Pay for your CO2 use