UNCCD goes green: towards “environmental neutrality” of COP 9

In response to the increasing challenge of climate change, several United Nations bodies and international and national organizations are starting to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated from their meetings and office operations and to take steps to control and compensate for them.

In the same vain, the Secretariat of the UNCCD and the Secretary of Environment of Argentina have taken action towards making the ninth session of the COP climate neutral, partly using sponsorship for offsetting its greenhouse gasses emissions, and partly relying on voluntary carbon offsets. This initiative is fully in line with the Strategy for a climate-neutral United Nations .

In view of their mandates, the Secretariat and the Host Country will go further than the EMG stipulations. The Secretariat and the Secretary of Environment of Argentina will endeavour to link the emission offsets to projects through which the offsets will be directly translated to real-life effects on the ground that are related to mitigation of land degradation and preservation of biodiversity. We are moving from climate neutrality towards full “environmental” neutrality, taking advantage of synergies among Rio Conventions at local level.

The two parties agreed to offset the emissions caused by the participation of United Nations staff and delegates from developing countries in the Conference. Other participants, including representatives of international organizations, civil society and the private sector are encouraged to make voluntary contributions and to complement the earmarked contributions of the Secretariat and the Government of Argentina. Income of this initiative will contribute to the implementation of two field projects located in Argentina (a reforestation project in Santiago del Estero, and a solar stove project in La Puna), which address land degradation, deforestation and desertification.

The total emissions of CO2-equivalent are estimated through an internationally recognized methodology and include emissions of air travel and local emissions caused by the Conference. Contributions required to offset those emissions are calculated in accordance with the actual carbon sequestration costs of the two projects .

The system will ask you to input your name, the country of origin of your flight (and any stopover required to get the final destination) and the dates of your travel. In turn, it will provide you with the total mileage of your trip, the duration of your stay in Buenos Aires, the total CO2-equivalent emissions and the amount of the contribution required to offset them. You may offset the contribution through a secure credit card system, and get a certificate for your voluntary contribution.

Should you not be able to offset your emissions beforehand, you may also do this when in Buenos Aires, at the COP 9 venue. You may use the same system and be assisted by our staff.

Join us in this endeavour towards environmental neutrality, offset your COP 9 emissions and come green to Buenos Aires…

1. The strategy was prepared by the Secretariat of the United Nations Environment Management Group and it is contained in document EMG/AM.07/06/Rev.1 dated 17 September 2007, whereby “climate neutrality is defined by the entire set of polices that an institution uses when it estimates its known greenhouse gas emissions, takes measures to reduce them, and purchases carbon offsets to neutralize those emissions that remain”.

2. The Top-down rather than the bottom-up methods have been used to estimate GHG emissions from travel that are given below. Furthermore, it is important to note that climate neutrality requires the use of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) radiative forcing index (RFI) In order to take into account the greenhouse effects of aircraft emissions other than CO2, such as water vapour and NOx.

3. For example, for the Renewables 2004 Conference, transport of participants accounted for 97.5 per cent of the total emissions of the event, with air travel contributing 98.5 per cent of the transport emissions.

4. The two projects went through an assessment of their capacity to offset carbon emissions [hyperlink to the assessment reports], undertaken by an external certifying company, Ecometrica Ltd [hyperlink to http://www.ecometrica.co.uk/].