Washington: A few Euros, a couple of mouse clicks and a tree is planted - as air travel is increasingly becoming a source of guilt, consumers and companies are looking for other ways to ease their conscience and reduce their carbon footprint. While trees are an important tool for regulating the climate, reforestation alone cannot whitewash a companys carbon-emitting activity, say activists.8 million trees in nine years.He fervently advocates so-called "absorption", where "precise and sustainable" reforestation projects are identified and financed without the use of carbon credit systems, which are seen by some as more opaque and less effective. That is until technological advances that allow the efficient capturing and storage of CO2 from the air or developing jets that run on hydrogen."There will be a number of eligible carbon reduction schemes and airlines will be able to buy the equivalent tonnes of CO2 via these projects," says Nathalie Simmenauer, Air Frances head of environment and sustainable development.This is the principle that the civil aviation industry is adopting with its initiative CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) starting from 2020.
These are often fast-growing species such as eucalyptus, pines, because we need trees that store carbon very quickly, but it can end up causing problems of biodiversity, soil drying," Karsenty said.Large-scale reforestation also poses other problems: the planted trees may compete with local cultures and forests and may not necessarily be beneficial to the local environment."It at least lets you buy time.Reforestation alone is "insufficient", but still "better than nothing", and, for the time being it is just one tool among others to reduce emissions, the expert says.Jean-Francois Rial, the head of the environmentally friendly tour operator, Voyageurs du Monde, agrees.Shell has ploughed US dollar 300 million (270 million euros) into forest plantations to reduce its carbon footprint by 2-3 per cent, Italys ENI has set an objective of zero net emissions via its forestry investments, and Frances Total plans to set up a special "business unit" next year to spend US dollar 100 million annually on compensation efforts. Temporary storage can be a way to make the transition while waiting for breakthrough technologies," says KarsentyBeyond the grand statements, carbon offset schemes basically follow the same, simple mechanism. But Hallaire argues that reforestation must also be accompanied by better behaviour elsewhere.The aim is to reach "neutral carbon growth" -- that is to ensure future emissions are held at 2020 levels. Once marginal, the offset movement has even reached the arch-enemy of environmentalists: big oil.But as more polluting industries join efforts to offset their carbon emissions, the effectiveness of the approach is open to debate, with some critics suggesting that tree-planting schemes are nothing more than a fig leaf. Sixty-five countries have signed up to it so far -- equivalent to 87 per cent of all international activity in the sector."If you dont reduce your emissions and dont stop deforestation, youre not going to solve anything by merely planting trees," says Stephane Hallaire, president and founder of Reforest Action, which has planted 3. For just three euros, the company will plant a tree adapted to the local biodiversity and purchase part of a carbon credit for a foreign forest conservation project."Its a cop-out that
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