Carbon Offset

“Be a Leader in Preventing Global Climate Change”

At Geoversity we do our best to stay carbon neutral. Our Life Changer programs take place on our almost self-sustainable off-grid conservation campuses and travel on the Life Changer grid is done mostly by sailing, mountain biking, trekking, paddling, and horseback riding. Even so, international participants will normally produce a flight carbon footprint that we recommend you neutralize by using our Flight Carbon Offset mechanism.

This calculator guarantees that the CO₂ footprint from your round trip flights are offset within two years and managed sustainably for another eight years.

However, the full range of carbon offset opportunities with Geoversity and the Mamoní Valley Preserve goes beyond this and can be observed here.

Offsetting by CO₂ sequestration (Carbon Benefit)

If you follow our recommendation to compensate for the estimated carbon footprint from your air travel and make it considered CO₂ neutral, then it works by financing what it costs to plant the number of bamboo seedlings needed for their culms to sequester, within a two-year period, the same amount of CO₂ as your flight emissions. The Flight Carbon Offset Calculator tells you how much it costs Geoversity to plant and maintain the required bamboo for this period. As a bonus, Geoversity nurtures the bamboo until it reaches an adequate age for harvesting (an additional 6 years) and then converts it into bamboo structure building material. For this reason, the sequestered CO₂ remains consolidated, for as long as the bamboo structure lasts, which could be 25 years when adequately taken care of.

Your specific calculation can be observed in the details section after you have included your flight hours in the carbon offset calculator.

Note: Your individual average emission of CO₂ used in the flight calculator is 125kg per hour. The guadua bamboo we use for the offset and as a building material has an impressive CO₂ sequestration capacity of 20 kg of CO₂/year/cluster (source). Even so, you should be aware that you are only genuinely carbon neutral if you do not travel anywhere else for the next two years as you will otherwise keep accumulating and postponing the full compensation into the future. Therefore, at Geoversity, we recommend that you make fewer but longer stays at our Life Changer grid in Panama.

 Offsetting with Non-Carbon Benefits

Geoversity is the only organization in the world that offers an alternative way to compensate for your carbon footprint through a mechanism called “non-carbon benefits”. In this case you dedicate what it would have cost you to compensate for your CO₂ emissions by carbon sequestration in bamboo, but rather than planting bamboo you finance activities with the same amount in non-carbon benefit projects.

Non-carbon benefit projects are defined this way: 1) they make the traditionally known carbon sequestration projects sustainable by creating local ownership and incentives or 2) produce on their own a direct positive climate change impact. Whichever of these two approaches, the non-carbon benefit activities must, by its definition, create local socio-economic, environmental, biocultural, or governance benefits and a positive global climate effect.

Non-carbon benefit offsetting is a voluntary mechanism (cannot be used for mandatory offsets) and is particularly attractive to sustainability-oriented individuals, organizations, and businesses as they allow for compensation through a wide range of activities prone to accommodate particular interests.

The mechanism has become possible through Geoversity because we were chosen by the European Union’s EUROCLIMA+ program to define how this UNFCCC Global Climate Change mechanism promoted by the Paris Agreement can work.

These are the opportunities you have to offset your flight carbon emissions:

• Reforestation with bamboo in the Mamoní Valley Preserve (carbon benefit)
• Satellite and community-based forest monitoring (non-carbon benefit)
• Shared conservation initiatives with Guna and Emberá indigenous peoples (non-carbon benefit)
• Securing land for local families’ sustainable living (non-carbon benefit)
• Support for local community defined development priorities (non-carbon benefit)·        
• Institutional support for Geoversity’s climate change mitigation efforts (non-carbon benefit)
• Contact me about a tailor-made offset package in keeping with my business profile

Benefits from offsetting your carbon footprint with Geoversity

• Assistance in calculating your carbon footprint
• Becoming carbon neutral by offsetting CO₂ emissions
• Ability to observe and share online imagery of your offset location 
• An offset certificate and visually attractive maps (digital satellite and drone imagery)
• Ability to visit your offset and project area out of our science and leadership training center in the Mamoní Valley Preserve, based on discounted rates
• Supporting the vision of the Preserve and the Geoversity School for Biocultural Leadership
• Provided with outstanding conservation stories from local communities and the preserve
• Contribute to global climate change mitigation
• The first companies to choose non-carbon benefits for their offset can be promoted at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow on 1 – 12 November 2021