Carbon Balanced

All projects under C Level’s Carbon Balanced programme are designed and verified by the world’s original carbon standard, which is called Plan Vivo. Certification systems like Plan Vivo were set up to give credibility to carbon offsetting/balancing schemes and they require projects to meet a set of standards and provide data about impact. This means that everything from project design to impact reporting follows a structured approach as a part of Plan Vivo’s system.

Payments are made over long periods to communities for the ecosystem services they create or protect. This is key to ensuring that the forest projects under Plan Vivo are uniquely placed to provide long-term security to the forests. Only by creating on-going value to small holder farmers and communities close to forests can their integrity be maintained. Otherwise pressures to cut and clear land of forest are often over riding. 

All projects must achieve additionality – which means they must provide evidence that the project is providing new carbon savings which would not otherwise have been achieved – it’s a key part of the standard. Additionality is built into the project design documents (which have to be approved for each project by Plan Vivo). 

Even more practically, C Level aims to add another layer of additionality by funding projects in advance of any project intervention. This enables the project teams on the ground to plan in advance for seed collection, tree nurseries, community recruitment and everything which is needed to create a long-term viable project. So in short, C Level works with  projects that represent the highest achievement in additionality.

Plan Vivo sets the base for ensuring best practice. A good example is CommuniTree. There are three strands to this. The project works out how much carbon (on average) will be stored over the course of 50 years from the trees planted on farmers’ land. The carbon models CommuniTree uses have been created by a team of PHDs and reviewed by Plan Vivo’s technical advisory committee (Plan Vivo TAC). The TAC is made up of forestry experts and scientists. All of the technical specifications and carbon projections are outlined in public documentation. 

Second, CommuniTree’s team of local experts provide ongoing monitoring and forestry assessments as the trees grow. These are at the level of individual farmer families’ land. Following best practice forest measurement techniques, they calculate the carbon stored on the farms over time. The project is assessed by an independent third party auditor to verify the results being reported. In the last assessment, conducted by the Rainforest Alliance, the CommuniTree program was awarded “Best Monitoring and Evaluation” for its leading approach. The monitoring results from each year are made public in annual reports each of which can be downloaded on individual project pages.

Finally, CommuniTree’s innovative proprietary software, FARM-TRACE, combines mobile monitoring on the ground with satellite data and uses machine learning to provide continuous reporting on carbon uptake and other impacts. Their interactive tool makes it possible to track the impacts being made in near real time across every farm where trees are being grown.  You can see FARM-TRACE on the CommuniTree project page.

The Plan Vivo model for natural climate solutions has a 25-year track record of success, longer than any other carbon standard. On a project level, action is spread over large areas and with hundreds or thousands of participants.  The programme spreads organizations’ investments over thousands of farms and they plant a surplus each year so they can guarantee that even if some individual farms fail, the overall programme succeeds.

Furthermore, all Plan Vivo carbon offsets are backed up through a risk buffer, like an insurance policy, that spreads risk across all projects across the world. Each Plan Vivo project contributes a percentage of their climate benefit averaging a total of 15%, to the Plan Vivo Non-Permanence Buffer. https://www.planvivo.org/buffer. If a project can no longer meet their carbon sequestration quota, it can draw on the buffer. This protects C Level client Carbon Balanced Certification and reporting.

Plan Vivo sets the base for ensuring best practice. A good example is CommuniTree. There are three strands to this. The project works out how much carbon (on average) will be stored over the course of 50 years from the trees planted on farmers’ land. The carbon models CommuniTree uses have been created by a team of of PHDs and reviewed by Plan Vivo’s technical advisory committee (Plan Vivo TAC). The TAC is made up of forestry experts and scientists. All of the technical specifications and carbon projections are outlined in public documentation. 

Second, CommuniTree’s team of local experts provide ongoing monitoring and forestry assessments as the trees grow. These are at the level of individual farmer families’ land. Following best practice forest measurement techniques, they calculate the carbon stored on the farms over time. The project is assessed by an independent third party auditor to verify the results being reported. In the last assessment, conducted by the Rainforest Alliance, the CommuniTree program was awarded “Best Monitoring and Evaluation” for its leading approach. The monitoring results from each year are made public in annual reports each of which can be downloaded on individual project pages.

Finally, CommuniTree’s innovative proprietary software, FARM-TRACE, combines mobile monitoring on the ground with satellite data and uses machine learning to provide continuous reporting on carbon uptake and other impacts. Their interactive tool makes it possible to track the impacts being made in near real time across every farm where trees are being grown.  You can see FARM-TRACE on the CommuniTree project page.

Our high level C Level Impact Reports are often presented to clients through zoom or in workshops.

We also co-create micro documentaries, available on the C Level 101visions Channel,  to better tell the stories of these inspirational projects.

We use the hashtag #BurntItBalanceIt to encapsulate our approach to making use of natural offsets in business and in our daily lives. The point is we’re always dealing with a historic footprint. When we carbon balance a business, we are looking back over time, usually the last 12 months (although some look even further back to the founding of their business, like Google recently announced). You have made the mess, do something about it. Logically you become carbon balanced or offset your last year’s impact and also use your understanding of your carbon footprint to set carbon reduction targets to look forward.

Also, carbon and carbon finance is leveraging a lot of equally important benefits. Since our approach to offsetting (balancing) is always about forests, nature and people, we are helping to make progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and on biodiversity.  The other point is that we need to take action on carbon on all fronts. Supporting nature is one massively important way. 

So what happens next?  It is vital to reduce emissions.  Our Carbon Balanced programme can be used to calculate impact, identify technical carbon reductions and offset previous CO2 emissions.  But we need to go much further.  We want to make carbon balancing just the start of a journey of cultural transformation and radical carbon reduction. And that is where we bring in our new rewilding and relearning programme. To explore together the kind of radical changes we need to accelerate culture change. And yes, it is also vitally important to reduce ongoing emissions. 

We have worked hard over the last 20 years to identify and build relationships with the most effective and holistic carbon offsetting projects in the world. We have spent a lot of time establishing their credibility, transparency and effectiveness.

The essential credo behind our offset schemes is that simple tree-planting is a less effective solution than community-led projects that mix tree planting with poverty reduction, education and conservation.

The projects we work with all fall under the Plan Vivo Standard, run by Scottish Charity, the Plan Vivo Foundation.  This ensures they are designed and verified to the highest standards.

Unfortunately, there are some rather poor offsetting projects around – it’s difficult to see and understand what the projects are achieving on the ground. So we look closely at every project and will often take clients right ‘under the hood’ of a project, connecting them with project leads on zoom so that they can get the story straight from founders and key people on the ground.  

Plan Vivo means Living Plan.  Every project has these living plans at the heart of the project.  They are developed through a collaborative process with the local community.  By design, each project has to put local needs at the centre.  It takes time. The local people are involved  from the very beginning and have control over decision making which means that these projects have a truly sustainable future.  You cannot plant trees without ensuring you have a Living Plan or equivalent that ensures people and nature work together and are funded for years and decades to come.  That’s what the projects are about.  

CommuniTree, for example, has grown from a phone call and a vision ten years ago to the biggest reforestation programme in the whole of Nicaragua. That is for many important reasons, including the support it receives from C Level clients. But most important is the enthusiasm of and agency given to more and more local communities taking part. 

 

 

Plan Vivo is the original carbon standard

With some 25 years experience that predates all other standards, from the beginning it has been about providing verified carbon offsets while also ensuring and guiding sustainable development goals. So with the advent of the Global Goals, it’s really seen as both way ahead of its time, and timely!

Plan Vivo is the most holistic carbon standard only delivering natural climate solutions

Plan Vivo exists to enable rural communities whose livelihoods come from land and ecosystems to thrive.  The people and land, people and forests go hand in hand.  They are inseparable in the standard and this makes it unique.  And, importantly, this is all the standard does. The total focus on people and nature makes Plan Vivo the world’s most holistic standard. The whole standard is built to empower and support local communities and the ecological integrity of the places they live.  Some 20,000 people across hundred of communities around the world are currently working to deliver projects designed around Plan Vivos or Living Plans.  Projects under this standard regularly win the UN Equator Award each year – a global award that highlights projects where local people are working with nature to achieve sustainable development.  Hadza in Tanzania is a good example winning theEquator Award in 2019.  Mikoko Pamoja in Kenya won the award in 2018. 

Plan Vivo is the world’s most inclusive and empowering carbon standard

Plan Vivo offers the most accessible of standards, with a far stronger focus on people and communities. By intention. Designed to provide rural communities with access to the carbon market by keeping up-front development / consultancy costs down and creating tools like SHAMBA (watch the C Level 101vision here) to empower and aid the development of community based forest projects.

PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST

Other standards typically work with larger projects, and often involve heavily funded project development companies who create higher volumes of carbon offsets and cashflows. By nature they tend to not be as focussed as Plan Vivo on people and communities.

Globally, Plan Vivo is also a network of community leaders and developers, and regular gatherings happen to steer the standard and share best practice. These are attended by C Level and are also open to anyone to attend. 

You might also want to take a spin through the micro-documentary C Level made on Plan Vivo

Unfortunately, there are some rather poor offsetting projects around – it’s difficult to see and understand what the projects are achieving on the ground. So we look closely at every project and will often take clients right ‘under the hood’ of a project, connecting them with project leads on zoom so that they can get the story straight from founders and key people on the ground.  

Plan Vivo means Living Plan.  Every project has these living plans at the heart of the project.  They are developed through a collaborative process with the local community.  By design, each project has to put local needs at the centre.  It takes time. The local people are involved  from the very beginning and have control over decision making which means that these projects have a truly sustainable future.  You cannot plant trees without ensuring you have a Living Plan or equivalent that ensures people and nature work together and are funded for years and decades to come.  That’s what the projects are about.  

CommuniTree, for example, has grown from a phone call and a vision ten years ago to the biggest reforestation programme in the whole of Nicaragua. That is for many important reasons, including the support it receives from C Level clients. But most important is the enthusiasm of and agency given to more and more local communities taking part. 

 

 

C Level is a B Corp Certified business, meaning we see business as having the potential to be a force for good. B Corp businesses meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.

C Level’s Carbon Balanced Programme includes projects run by all kinds of organisations, relevant to the country and cultural context where the project is based. For example, The Khasi Hills Project in Meghalaya is run by a community federation or ‘synjuk’ made up of 11 Indigenous Kingdoms.

Some of the projects in our programme that are the most dynamic and scalable have social enterprise and for-profit business models. Hadza Hunter Gatherers in Tanzania is a good example. Over the years this project, run by our partner Carbon Tanzania Limited, has been able to innovate, expand, and create excellent communications using its organisational structure as a for-profit social enterprise.

CommuniTree is run as a highly innovative social enterprise. Our partner Taking Root are a not-for-profit that runs itself like a business (they describe themselves as being in the business of maximising impact rather than shareholder value). They have a successful business model with a track record running over 10 years during which time they have gone from a vision to being the biggest reforestation project in the country they operate in.

 

People and communities are by nature always at the heart of projects validated and verified under Plan Vivo.

Each community gains in different ways.  That is because they make their own decisions about how project income gets shared and spent. For example, access to mobile health clinics is a key aspect of the Hadza project in Tanzania; school books and clean water is a main benefit to people in Gazi Bay where the Mikoko Pamoja Blue Forest Project is based; and CommuniTree creates full time and part time employment for thousands of farmers.  Projects typically create new and sustainable livelihoods.  CommuniTree for example is providing around 25% of families annual income from reforestation efforts and doing so for 10 years so as to ensure the forest is viable ecologically and economically.