September 26, 2018 Carbon Offsets: Not Just Good for Climate 

We’ve all heard the expression “one good turn deserves another.” Well, if the Likano project is any indication, one good turn might go A LOT further than that.

Rwanda is the country in Africa most densely populated by homo sapiens, whose deforestation habits have pushed their fellow hominids, the Virunga mountain gorillas, to the brink of extinction.

To reduce this deforestation, the Likano Project focuses on optimising one of the main culprits: the humble cooking stove. By selling Rwandans subsidized, locally developed and efficient cooking stoves, Likano is able to bring down firewood consumption by a whopping two-thirds.

Spin-off benefits

But gorillas are just one benefactor from the Likano project: It is also a Gold Standard certified international climate protection project. This means that the Likano project, in partnership with Myclimate, uses the CO2 emissions it prevents from firewood burning to effectively offset carbon emissions of its international customers from the business and private spheres. In addition to preventing CO2 emissions, the forests now left standing are then able to capture more CO2.

Then there’s the human impacts, whereby significant time cooking and gathering wood is saved for other tasks and education, firewood expenses are reduced, human health is improved and local jobs are created.

Good news for gorillas, Rwandans and the planet.