additionality

This is central to all offsetting – it means that the project benefits are truly additional to what would have occurred if no action was taken. It takes two forms, applied equally to ‘ Kyoto compliant’ and ‘ Kyoto non-compliant’ actions.

Ecuadorian Landscape. © Andrew Smiley

Financial
World Land Trust raises funds to protect threatened habitats. This has a benefit in terms of avoiding release of CO2 into the atmosphere, a good thing in itself with gains that we can estimate for the donor if they wish. It can only count as an offset, however, if concern for offsetting CO2 emissions was the primary reason for giving the money – i.e. it allows World Land Trust to do work that it could not otherwise undertake, based on a formal calculation of emissions and sequestration.

Delivery
This means that the action results in less atmospheric CO2 than would otherwise have been the case. There is, for instance, no gain in reforesting land that was abandoned and returning to bush anyway. There has to be a definite gain, attributable to the action taken and measured against a ‘no-project’ baseline. Setting the baseline is fundamental to offsetting.