In an unprecedented act, the Project-Developer-Forum that UPM is a member of, has decided to voluntarily offset the carbon emissions of all 10,000 expected delegates to the COP18 conference in Doha, Qatar. The total amount of carbon offsets required for this offset are estimated to be 25,000 tCO₂e. As member of the Project Developer Forum, UPM carries its share of the burden and has cancelled 500 CERs. This will offset the carbon emissions caused by the COP18-attendance of 200 of the 10,000 delegates.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has expressed her gratitude  in an open letter to the PD-Forum. She points out, that considering the carbon offset that the UNFCCC secretariat is also doing, COP18 is actually the first climate-positive Conference of Parties ever!

UPM is proud to contribute to this initiative and send a clear signal to the negotiators in Doha. Not only are the carbon markets in a serious situation and in risk of loosing the expertise that was build during the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, but also the our future is at stake! If we don’t act now, the costs for mitigation and adaptation at a later stage will increase exponentially!

 

Photo source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COP18_Doha_2012.jpg

 UNclimatechange