Neno Macadamia Trust support small holder farmers in Malawi as they develop agroforestry for food security. Some of their funding comes from Carbon Mitigation Certificates.
https://www.nenomacadamiatrust.co.uk/CO2.html?#01

Guy has hit the nail on the head. How you achieve net zero is vital information for anyone, not least the person making such a claim.

As usual, a good deal of sense in this article. I am very cynical about targets that are conveniently several years in the future as well as whether they are really meaningful. If short term (1-2 years for example) measures are not identified that lead to 'zero carbon', then is is too easy to make airy promises and continue in the same old way.

I fear that our government, not only doesn't know HOW to get to carbon zero, but also that it doesn't actually know what it means.

With respect Guy is half wrong on this. Trees in the tropics are far more effective than elsewhere (look at Project Drawdown for the science) and given the big deforestation going on in tropical lands and that climate impact is worse in poorer and hotter countries, it makes absolute sense to plant there. Of course getting the right planting partner is critical. Offsets are highly criticised but this is wrong too and the offsetting scene has become much more accountable. Of course living-as-normal and just offsetting is NOT a solution but there is also a mirror risk of poo-pooing everything. In fact the problem with climate change is there are so many reasons NOT to do anything - the governments, the big companies, somebody else doing something somewhere else that negates the good... I admit I have skin in the game, running a much smaller organic company than Guy's and finally addressing this problem which until now I have felt is too big, too complicated, too confusing and too not down to me/I am nothing in the scheme of things. We've done a hell of a lot of research and an optimistic path, including offsetting or investing in sinks, is not just available but completely necessary. Yes Guy is right to say there is a lot of airy promising and commitments been bandied around. We are world leaders in a version of sustainable fish for example which has been buried under a mountain of greenwash and the big business takeover of the term itself and all reference points so my BS detector is as closely attuned as anybody's. The good thing with the Climate Change scene is that there is a huge pool of expert knowledge, science-based, broadly independent, inclusive, accessible, intelligent, with powerful voices and reach to be used to guide, educate and hopefully correct us all as we move with hope in the right direction.

Hi Jack,

Wow that was quick.

I think Guy/you have got it upside down really. We - "the North" have done the carbon excess. In that process the global South/developing nations have and are going to suffer and be far more affected than us. Climate/Paris negotiations etc have equity and equitable concerns written in to the net zero journey (yes I'm sure they will be f*** up, lied about and got around by the usual suspects but the "liberal" viewpoint is an equitable developmental outcome must be baked into climate solutions - and that has been "agreed"). So for me the right approach is to recognise that and go and pay the global south and if you get the right project you are not just planting trees but you providing employment and economic incentives. That's not colonialism or shifting the emission offset burden.

My take is that "we" are rich enough to re-forest our own lands and governments should be doing that anyway and have already provided incentives there.. There is also an urgency/impact side to my conclusions. 2 major points. First you get many more trees for your money in the global South so if humanity has 30 years to get our sh*t together then planting as many trees as possible £ per £ should be the priority. Second a tropical planting is worth about double in climate impact terms than a temperate planting.

Re - what have we done/decided - not really there yet. We've paid for our organization to be carbon neutral to get a little logo that counters other people with little logos. We are going through a tortuous Scope 3 accounting of the products we buy & sell with plan to be be cradle to gate neutral but for that we will not go via a logo for official offsets, not because we have formed an opinion on official or verified offsets (I personally did have a bit of negative opinion there but I don't think that is fairly thought out tbh so am keeping an open mind) but because we are organic, we wanted to be a bit more bespoke with where we put that offset equivalent - it will be a mixture of renewables, trees and support of regenerative agriculture.

Every business is in a slightly different place though - Riverford has loads of land in the UK and much more control/power over your supply source so you will have different logical starting points as to what you can do around your climate footprint. The fact we're all thinking about it is important. I also think it's important that the organic sector which is so often troubled by our yield/output disadvantage is NOT scared off from the carbon debate.

I would like to understand if Riverford has researched using rail transport for fruit/veg imported from Spain and France to the UK. This might reduce carbon emissions. But it might not.

Detailed example: Transfesa Logistics has started to run a regular express refrigerated freight train from Almussafes in Spain to Barking in the UK (the "Lead customer" underwiting the volume is Tesco, but should be available to other companies wanting to transport an refrigerated intermodal container).

Whether that would be less emissions overall for Riverford (trucking from the farm to loading point in Spain, then diesel/electric trains, and from Barking to Dorset,) vs a direct truck on a ferry needs to be assessed, ditto whether financially the costs are reasonable (for an employee owned business) and acceptable transport time (not impacting freshness).

A statement one way or the other as part of your ongoing emissions reduction campaign would be interesting.

It is hard to disagree about taking responsibility for our own (nation's) environmental damage, such as carbon emissions, in order to reduce the impact of climate change into manageable margins (as per recent scientific understanding). Well..., the hard bit is to find a way on how to do it. There have been numerous scientific reports now about the limitation of soil to store increasing amount of C, purely because of the nature of processes in the soil, which do not permit fast sequestration of carbon into the soil. Relying only upon the soil to 'save us' would not be wise. The part of the solution is definitively reduction of carbon emissions of our economy. Land bases (i.e. soil C storage) solutions for carbon capture, although a genuine idea, will likely play a minor role in our effort for decarbonisation.

On the other hand, we should not stop our effort for increasing the content of carbon in the soil because 'healthy' amount of carbon in the soil is paramount for soil functioning. Less than half of the cumulative carbon emissions have been derived from the soil, and, we need to get that carbon (or part at least) back to the soil, where it had been accumulating for centuries before we started ploughing the land. Soils are important for a range of process we rely on, starting with food production, but also including water purification and other functions. Thus we need to use any effort for its restoration.

At the same time, I believe, we should not think of offshore carbon capture projects as something that is not a local solution. What is local in the current world? We import part of our goods from other countries. We also import a lot of plant-based products from areas, which were a rainforest or a savannah once. The carbon emissions related to products we import are thus part of our economy carbon emissions too. We are also partially responsible for these environmental damages and will be for long time, because we have set a wrong example for many countries around the globe, such as lifestyle based on over-consumption and over-exploitation of natural resources.

We did not know about our wrongdoing then, but we know now, so there is no excuse for not starting massive decarbonisation and clearance of the mess we made.

And absolutely, we need to start at home. We need to set the 'NEW EXAMPLE', a better one, on how to live in balance with nature and using their resources wisely. The decarbonisation is just the begging of a bigger change to come starting at home, whatever it costs.