The climate emergency is big news, and with good reason. We’ve been thinking seriously about the responsibility of organising meetings like JAlba. Yes, there is a strong case for individual action to reduce our carbon emissions, including travel. But there’s also a strong case for meetings which improve international understanding and help to counter narrow nationalism — the same nationalism that resists action on climate change. So here’s the JAlba compromise for 2020:
- We’re adding an optional amount to the registration charge corresponding to the offset of one tonne of CO2. That’s a very rough average of the emissions of the travel of JAlba participants. If you want a more accurate figure, use this carbon calculator.
- Your payment will go to projects supported by ClimateCare. You can see descriptions of the projects at their online portfolio page. Here are brief descriptions of some of them:
LIFESTRAW WATER FILTERS – PROVIDING SAFE WATER IN KENYA
The LifeStraw Carbon for Water project provides simple, gravity fed water filters for families in Kenya. It not only provides safe drinking water to 4 million people, it cuts carbon emissions by removing the need to boil water in order to make it safe to drink.ECOMAPUA REDD
The Ecomapuá REDD project preserves around 90,000 hectares of the Amazon rainforest on Marajó Island, at the mouth of the Amazon River. By making it more economically advantageous to protect the area, rather than open it up to logging – a major cause of deforestation in the region – logging activities have now ceased.GYAPA STOVES – IMPROVING LIVES IN GHANA
This project is creating a market for locally produced efficient cookstoves which cut emissions, reduce exposure to toxic fumes and decrease fuel bills.BURN STOVES – IMPROVING HEALTH AND CUTTING CARBON
Indoor air pollution from cooking on open fires and inefficient stoves kills more people every year than Malaria. This project manufactures and sells the market leading Jikokoa stove, which reduces charcoal consumption by 50% and greatly diminishes the negative environmental and social impacts of cooking.GLOBAL WIND FARMS
Providing rural communities with clean energy, this wind farm in India generates renewable electricity which feeds into the grid, displacing fossil fuel energy and improving connections for rural communities.