Top-flight Compensation Projects: The Climate, People, and Animals All Benefit

Offsetting CO2 emissions is a good thing – but there is still a hint of a “sale of indulgences.” Coop has found a solution: The Swiss retailer only invests in development projects that are either developed by the WWF according to the Gold Standard or which are supported by the WWF. They stand for maximum quality.

Khasti Devi, a farmer from the village of Mankanthpur in northern India, is happy. She has a new kitchen. But she is not pleased because she has conveniences such as a dishwasher, refrigerator, and steamer. Khasti has a new oven that runs on biogas instead of wood. The family uses a new biogas plant to produce the biogas from the manure of its two cows. This was not cheap: The family contributed 40 percent of the total cost of around 400 Swiss francs. They had to spend 17 francs on a compost site. The rest of the money – amounting to just over 200 francs – comes from carbon-offsetting compensation from Coop.

The retailer uses biogas plants such as this to offset part of the emissions caused by flying-in fresh produce. Coop and the WWF intend to build several thousand biogas plants in India. The WWF has already successfully implemented similar projects for Coop in Nepal. This helps families and the climate, as a family uses around 25 kg of wood for fuel each day. The forest – as a valuable CO2 storage facility – is also protected. The Devi family alone has reduced its CO2 emissions by around four tons per year, thanks to the biogas plant. This corresponds to the average annual output of a car, that is, around 15,000 km traveled.

The small village of Mankanthpur, where Khasti lives, is in northern India, half an hour to the east of the Corbett National Park in the Terai region. The fertile 800 km-long valley stretches along the south of the Himalayas in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. In this region, many people still rely on wood as their main fuel. The pressure on the forests is therefore huge. But the Terai region also has the world’s highest density of tigers. It is estimated that there are around 16 animals per 100 sq km. But because their habitat is being reduced as a result of deforestation for agriculture, settlements, and fuel, conflicts are inevitable. At least for Khasti, these are now a thing of the past.

Thanks to the biogas plant, the family’s safety and health has improved. “The kitchen and all the pans used to be black with soot, the air in the house was permanently smoky,” she says. Everyone used to suffer from tears in their eyes and chronic coughs. Smoke in living quarters is one of the most frequent causes of death in many developing countries – almost half the world’s population still cooks on an open fire or with primitive stoves. According to the organization Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a person dies from the consequences of this toxicity every 16 seconds. Today, the walls in Khasti’s house are bright, and the air is clean. “And cooking is much easier,” she says while pouring tea for her guests. It takes just a few minutes to heat the water on the new gas stove.

Devi says that it’s easy to use the biogas plant. She places 25 kg of manure and about the same quantity of water into the fermenter. Fermentation produces methane gas in the tank, which can be used for cooking. The residue is ejected by pressure in the tank. This is a valuable, non-odorous fertilizer. Producing plants like this so that people no longer have to deal with dangerous conditions is one of the goals of the WWF in the Terai region of India. But it is far from the only one. “If conflicts between people and animals can be avoided, nature also benefits,” says K.D. Kandpal, a representative of the WWF in India. One of the WWF’s goals is to double the tiger population worldwide in the next 10 years: 100 years ago, the world’s tiger population was put at around 100,000; they now number around 4,000, of which 1,700 live in India. But tigers need space. Depending on the availability of prey, a tiger’s territory can stretch over 30–50 sq km. “If fewer people enter the forest, that’s better for the tiger,” says Kandpal.

For Khasti Devi and her family, the facility is certainly a blessing. Now that she no longer needs to enter the forest she has time for other things. “Now I have more time to work our land, and look after the children and the house.” Her smiling face shows that her life really has improved.