One of the goal of the Beautiful World Tour was to visit the World without leaving a trace.
To do so, we had to offset our Global Carbon footprint, calculating our emissions in each region, considering transportation, accommodation, etc… which accounted for a total of 61.45 tons, then supporting Carbon emission compensation and future emission prevention projects in each of the region we crossed.
We decided to compensate 2.5x times our total emissions because westerners like have a “debt” compared to the emerging countries we visited, so this calculation accounts for their right to support their growth through emissions on their side.
We also decided to compensate the Carbon emissions of the family for the next 5 years to reach the COP21 goals, after considering the reduction we can already achieve by changing our lifestyle a bit, our consumption patterns, and using energy saving and production technologies.
Here are all the official certificates from the projects we carefully selected, showing this is not bullshit Green-washing, even if some people might challenge the actual impact of such personal initiative…
Of course, if we are the only one doing this, it has no impact, but anyone can now easily compensate its emissions of travelling, starting with airplane flights compensation which generally cost 2-3% of tickets costs. More and more airlines and travelling sites provide this Carbon compensation option in the check-out when you purchase online, so just click on it, pay attention to the Carbon compensation measures they propose (as some really are borderline): this is already a great first step that will fuel many sustainability initiatives around the world, and raise attention on the issue.
Then each of us can also calculate its own yearly emissions, and start shaping a simple action plan: driving slower and smoother, using more public transportation, cycling to work, buying energy efficient technology, eating local seasonal food and less meat, recycling as much as you can, etc… It’s not that complicated, and the education of people around you is as important as the reduction itself.
As St Exupery said:
“We don’t inherit planet Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our kids“.
Each small individual action will have an important cumulative effect, so it is important that each of us start this journey.
So here are the almost 200 tons of Carbon we compensated through many different initiatives!
Carbon Emission Offsetting in Costa Rica for our next 5 years emissions delta (vs. COP21 goals, 10 years ahead;-) = 40 tons of CO2
(the trees that the kids prepared are now planted)!
Well, it took a week to upload that video from India’s on & off Internet connection (thanks to the Monsoon), but hopefully you will appreciate watching it;-)
The video of our trip to Fraser island north of Brisbane, the largest sand island in the land and a beautiful piece of nature where the sand meets the forest and sea. Then Lady Elliot island, the most isolated island on the south of the Great Barrier Reef, with an incredible flight to get there, and mind blowing reef and marine life! Memories that the family will keep for a long time with lots of footage filmed from the sky!
As part of our commitment to leave a positive Carbon footprint in the regions we cross, we wanted to offset our Australasia Carbon emission (from our trip in New-Zealand, Australia and India) through projects in that same region.
With Thomas and South Pole Group advices, we picked two projects that are creating sustainable emissions reduction, as well as interesting social impact.
Prony wind farms, New Caledonia
The Pacific islands region, from Australia to Tahiti, faces increasing environmental and socio-economic pressures sharpened by global climate change. The UN recognizes small island developing states as being particularly vulnerable to climate change (like the Micronesian archipelago). Already severely affected by climate variability and extreme tropical weather events, they remain extremely vulnerable to future changes in the regional climate and to rising sea levels. Australia has already committed to welcome some of the very first climate change refugees coming from those small islands, and it’s already happening now !
Rich in wind resources, New Caledonia is reducing its dependency from fossil fuel with sustainable wind power. The two wind farms of Prony and Kafeate are using world first technology to green-up the national grid and provide socio-economic improvements for the communities, with 30 temporary and 28 permanent job creations favoring indigenous Kanak people.
In order to save nature and landscape partly disordered by former deforestation and mining activities, the infrastructure of the wind farms is based on existing roads only to limit erosion.
New Caledonia being located in a hurricane hot spot; the wind turbines used in the project are specifically designed for this type of climate, meaning that the whole wind farm can be tilted down within a few hours in the event of an extreme weather alert. This smart engineering approach makes the project a perfect match for the location and ensures that the nations green power supply can sustain an extreme climate event such as a hurricane.
The project activity lead to 32,000 tons of CO2 annual emissions reduction.
Micro-hydro plant, Indonesia
This micro hydro plant makes use of the natural flow of water to generate sustainable power for the island of Sulawesi, without the need for a retaining dam.
The project is utilizing the natural fall of water between the upper Moaat lake and the lower Iloloy lake to generate low impact sustainable energy. The hydro plant has an installed capacity of 3 MW only.
Beyond the provision of the region with clean energy that replaces fossil fuel fired power, the project is also concerned with saving local landscape and nature. Upstream of the hydro station, trees have been planted to stabilize the river banks and reduce erosion and improve the soil’s water absorption capability, thus securing local water supply.
In addition, the local population benefits from the small hydro plant. During the construction phase, most of the building material was bought in the region. Heavy machinery in this sensitive environment was avoided during construction, generating an over-average level of temporary employment, thus providing about 200 people with safe income. In the operational phase, about 20 locals are employed as technicians. The power plant management is in female hands which makes for a strong signal of gender equality.
This microhydro plant serves as a good example for sustainable development in a remote region, at the same time benefitting global climate and local communities.
The annual CO2 emissions reduction is 8,500 tons.
For more information on those two projects, and want to offset your own Carbon emissions, please check the South Pole Group website.
ENGLISH: We are super proud to announce that the kids made it to the famous “Geo” for teenagers, the french equivalent of the National Geographic, where they could talk about their “Carbon Neutral World Tour” in their own words.
Their best memories, their worst, what they miss, and many more interesting thoughts on the Beautiful World Tour (but in french only;-)
Here is a copy of the 4 pages article with a PDF below to download it!
FRENCH: Nous sommes super fier d’annoncer la parution d’un article sur les enfants dans Geo Ado, 4 pages où ils racontent leur impression sur leur voyage “Eco-responsable”.
Leur meilleurs souvenirs, les pires, les amis et les choses qui leur manquent le plus…
A voir ci-dessus et avec le PDF en téléchargement: GEO_CarnetVoyage
Our second stay in Costa Rica was definitely the best, probably because we escaped the surf beaches to focus on the natural reserves. From Arenal volcanoes in the north, to Platanillo’s forests in the center, and Corcovado Natural Reserve beautiful hikes and dives deep south, you will find the whole “Wild Costa Rica” experience in this video!
ENGLISH: After planting trees near Platanillo, we end up to Drake bay, an amazing spot for nature, wildlife and sea.
Most of the people arrive to this place by boat from Sierpe, but we did manage to arrive by car although we had to cross 3 rivers. Hopefully it was still the dry season, and the rivers had little water allowing to cross them easily: it is always fun to cross rivers by car!
We took a boat up to the Sierpe river among the mangrove and we saw slots, hurler monkeys, squirrels monkeys, a boa really big and impressive, iguanas and different kinds of birds. Amongst this variety we particularly loved to see the Scarlet macaw (Aras).
His huge and colorful plumes are amazing! Adults stay in couple their whole life, up to 70 years old!
Then we went diving on the Isla Cana natural reserve where we saw a lot of wildlife including some sharks that impressed the kids.
Finally, we hiked the Corcovado natural reserve that is an amazing place to observe wildlife. This national park protects varied tropical ecosystems, and this is really we saw the most animals, including rare ones.
Drake bay was a great place to stop by and enjoy preserved wildlife. We really enjoyed walking around desert beaches, swimming and hiking in the jungle. We hope it will stay untouched for the years to come.
FRANCAIS: Après avoir planté des arbres et retrouvé un peu de fraicheur dans les hauteurs de Platanillo, nous avons roulé jusqu’à la péninsule d’Osa.
Notre Guest House se trouvait à Drake bay, entre la mer et la réserve naturelle du Corcovado. Magnifique endroit très bien préservé où la grande majorité des personnes arrivent par bateau depuis Sierpe.
Nous avons pris la voiture et avons dû passer trois rivières qui à cette saison ont un niveau d’eau bas et que nous avons donc franchis facilement mais toujours avec plaisir!
Le parc naturel du Corcovado préserve un écosystème tropical. Les environs regorgent d’endroits pour observer la faune qui y est abondante, aussi bien terrestre que marine.
En bateau, nous avons remonté la rivière Sierpe, où nous avons pu observer les habitants des rives de la mangrove. Nous avons pu observer : paresseux à trois doigts, singes hurleurs, singes capucins ou singes écureuils, un boa vraiment très bien caché mais impressionnant par sa taille, des iguanes, un basilic vert (ils courent sur l’eau grâce à sa rapidité) et même un crocodile de 3 mètres ça ne donne pas du tout envie de se baigner!!!
Nous ne nous sommes pas lassés d’observer les aras, magnifiques perroquets aux plumes longues et colorées de rouge, bleu, jaune et d’un peu de vert!
Nous avons profité de ce lieu aussi pour se promener le long des plages désertiques et découvrir la faune au cours de longues marches dans la jungle. Nous avons eu la chance d’observer le fourmilier et les enfants ont observé une sorte de loutre ou putois… nous n’avons pas réussi à trouver l’étrange animal!
Ballades, baignades, bateau, découverte de la faune…nous avons bien profité de ce lieu tranquille et magique!
Costa Rica is one of the few countries on Earth that has a real policy regarding nature protection, like the ability for any citizen to take defense for endangered ecosystems. After more than 6 weeks in the country, we could tell that this attention towards nature is most of the time true and visible, even if in some cases it gets close to « green-washing » or fake « eco-friendly » businesses…
Costa Rica has numerous natural reserves and parks, more wildlife than most countries have, lots of forests now fairly well protected, close to 95% sustainable energy production for electricity (making it the first country in the world to become « carbon neutral » in the next few years), and a progressive « Earth University » that is looking at the many challenges of ecosystems’ preservation and sustainable development, including carbon sequestration.
Beware of the “Green Washing”
Still, many ecological corridors are broken, some areas are suffering some « el Nino » drought that revealed the scale of the too many forest cuttings in the 70’s to favor cattle breeding (sponsored by the government at that time), and the whole country seems « for sale » with lots of semi-controlled « ocean view » real estate programs that are for sure challenging the nature’s protection laws (with apparently a lot of corruption of the authorities by the large land owners and promoters). Furthermore, in many “eco” places, especially along the coast, recycling is an hoax (no recycling capabilities beyond the trash containers), people dump trash all over the place, while Gringos (USA and other western countries’ tourists) turn the aircon at full power the windows opened in their hotels rooms or 4WD, all under the “eco-friendly” label… Costa Rica and visitors can improve to really live-up to the “eco” promise!
Looking for true Carbon Sequestration… in Costa Rica!
Those were interesting facts and thoughts as we were looking to go further with our Carbon Footprint reduction program, and through our research we found that Costa Rica was probably the right place to live the experience with different public and private initiatives.
As we explained in a previous post, having already compensated 2,5x times our world tour emissions, we were looking at compensating 5 tons of CO2 a year for the next 10 years to get closer to COP21 objectives ahead of time…
We therefore looked for a grass root NGO that would help us to do real Carbon Sequestration. Not just preventing future emissions (like we did with other programs), but really taking C02 from the atmosphere in the form of… trees!
Trees are indeed the only real Carbon Sequestration system that is working for now (even some industrial projects are starting to show some efficiency like CO2 injection into former geologic pockets of oil and gaz). That’s why it’s so important to protect forests wherever possible, but also plant trees and rebuild an ecosystem where it has been destroyed.
As we wanted to do and understand by ourselves, we contacted Jenny from AssociationCommunity Carbon Trees (ACCT) here in Costa Rica.
Jenny has been working in non-profit in Costa Rica for 15 years, and launched ACCT in 2008 with the triple ambition to :
1) Help companies and individuals sequestrate Carbon based on their emissions
2) Restore natural ecosystems and corridors through carefully selected tree species (not monoculture) and locations
3) Provide a positive social impact by employing locals and supporting sustainable economic development of rural areas.
We spent 2 days with the kids going through the whole process. Here is the story.
From ecosystem destruction to ecosystem restauration
Jenny took us to one of the association base-camps in a small village. On the way, we crossed several landscape that went from original Rain Forest, fairly humid and fresh, to completely dry and almost desertic pasture that did not retain any water and barely fed the skinny cattle.
Rain forest turned…
Rain forest turned…
…into red desert!
The contrast was shocking, but some restored parcels also showed us that what had been destroyed in a few years can also be restored in a few years. Nature is extremely resilient, but it needs the help of humans to return from desert to rain forest.
Reforesting means planting small species first to cast shadow on the ground, bring the temperature down, allow for the soil to regenerate a bit, and then only start replanting carefully selected species that can survive, play a specific role (like holding the ground), and bring back diversity that is needed to grow healthy forest that can sustain and host the wildlife.
Forest protected and restored: nicer, isn’t it?
Education and local sustainable economy
In this small village, the Association organized a game to let adults and kids learn about the different tree species of the region, the same ones that are being replanted. It was wonderful to see how knowledgeable the kids were !
It was also great to see locals trading products that come from the ecosystem restauration, like certain foods…
Planting trees with kids
and teaching them to know the trees!
OK, should we plant trees ?
Well before doing so, Jenny wanted us to understand the whole process.
At her place, we had a passionate debate about the true efficiency of Carbon Sequestration through trees.
How do you mesure it ?
How do you assess the real impact of each species ?
What is the methodology to get to 100% reliable certification (not green washing) ?
How do you mesure the whole impact beyond carbon sequestration, like ecosystem rehabilitation (something you can not do through monoculture plantations) and positive social impact ?
Debate about the magic formula to calculate the CO2 sequestration per tree…
Many questions that have partial answers for now due to our current state of knowledge, but Jenny had a clear roadmap to get those questions answered with the help of the Earth University (where she got trained) and a certification program robust enough (e.g. statistically significant and accurate) to assess the actual CO2 sequestration of the different reforestation programs.
For now, Community Carbon Trees (ACCT) guarantees 1 ton of CO2 per tree after a guaranteed lifetime of 25 years, the optimal time to reach maximum sequestration potential under the tropics. Which is certainly largely underestimated as it’s a « lower average » not accounting for all the CO2 sequestered in the soil for instance…
First things first : the seeds
Restoring diversity goes through collecting diverse seeds. Jenny did show us a bunch of different seeds that each required a different treatment to imitate the way Nature would do. We had fun breaking dozens of Guava shells that contained « marshmallow like » sweet texture that monkeys love, and of course the precious seeds (that’s why the monkeys swallow those seeds, offering them free transportation across the jungle). To imitate monkeys contribution, we had to soak the seeds overnight…
The Guava shell
Collecting the Guava seeds
The magic of seeds, each completely different
Once the different kinds of seeds were extracted and prepared, we had to plant them in the nursery in humid and fertilized dirt.
Now planting those seeds!
Collecting the baby plants
The next step was to collet the baby trees that were a few weeks old and replant them into plastic containers that had also fertilized dirt and enough space to grow for at least a year. The kids were super-active filling the bags with dirt and compost, digging a hole and replanting the baby tree, organizing the space, and watering it all. In the nursery, we could see several generations of trees, and after lots of efforts and love (with some mortality though), trees reached the good age of 3 years old, ready for some action.
Collecting the baby trees
Dream team in action
Replanting
and watering (that was fun)!
The real thing : replanting the trees into the wild!
Jenny and a 3 yo tree ready to go!
This is the part we could not do ourselves as we were still in the dry season. But this is where the real job starts as it needs science and efforts !
Indeed, as explained earlier, you don’t just plant 3 yo trees randomly in nature, or you are guaranteed to reach 100% mortality within a year.
You need to walk long distance in the jungle (or the « desert »), prepare the ground by planting small species first to bring the temperature down and allow the soil to regenerate, start replanting the selected tree species that can survive, do some control testing a year after together with some cleaning of the lianas to avoid the teenager trees to die…
After 3 years, only then do you know the survival rate of the trees, and that the survivors will grow adult and do their job of sucking CO2 from the air to make beautiful organic construction that retain water, welcome the animals, and makes the air much fresher and breathable for humans…
We committed to « sponsor » 50 of those trees, and some of the seeds we planted will make their way to the mountain in the hands of the volunteers and workers of the villages. Hopefully, they will help to restore an ecological corridor and sequestrate those 50 tons that we want to offset, or even more;-)
Thanks Jenny
The 2 days with ACCT and Jenny were a wonderful experience. Challenging for the mind and the bodies, but delighting for the soul.
We met several likeminded people sharing the same aspiration to think and act differently in our everyday lives, hopefully giving a positive contribution for what it slowly but surely becoming mankind’s biggest collective challenge: Global Warming.
A big thank to Jenny for her contagious energy and for pioneering the « sustainable carbon sequestration » adventure as it will become increasingly important in a near future. We will all need it !
We will follow-up to see how our “Beautiful World Tour” trees are doing!
Following our Beautiful World Tour carbon footprint (emissions) offsetting and COP21 International gathering in Paris last December, we have calculated our day to day carbon footprint and decided about an action plan to reduce it upon our return, and take the path to the ambitious “Factor 4” targets to contain temperature increase below 2°C (which goes further than the 2.5X compensation we have done for this trip).
Being a family of 4, we emit 15.8 t of carbon a year, which is 5.4 t below the national average, thanks to the friendly climate of the south of France, the numerous improvements we did to the house, our “organic and local” food habits, and some “lifestyle” choices we made like going to work by train and bicycle…. But our emissions could be much better if we were travelling less (we are 30% above national average…). And I’m not accounting for the dramatic business travelling I’ve been doing each year, for which the company should do something in the future (e.g. less traveling and carbon compensation that I will challenge upon my return).
Having looked at the details of where we have room for improvement, we decided to apply the following action plan when back home in August 2016 to reduce our yearly emissions by 16% (2.5 tons).
House Energy Efficiency Improvements
This is always the first thing to do before trying to add more renewable energy in the mix. We will do a(nother) complete energy efficiency analysis to confirm the remaining insulation works needed (after having already done most of what we could do).
Probably we will have to do further roof insulation.
Consumption & Emission reduction
We need to finalize our 55 lamps (!) switching process to low-energy ones (80% completed).
Put drastic energy control devices for our electronic devices that now account for 15%+ of the total appliances consumption (more than lighting like for most family): this is the dark side of Digital! We will install automatic switchs with time controler for all equipments!
Decrease warm water temperature, warm water usage (shorter showers and almost no baths) and dishes / clothes washing temperature down to 30°C.
Install a Nest smart thermostat that enables to better manage the house temperature (15% savings expected)…
We might install a solar water boiler or AeroVoltaic solar pannels depending on the analysis results.
Green Energy Switch
We are looking at installing solar panels even if the technology in not fully mature yet with rapid efficiency gains happening. The current best solar panels convert up to 21% of the solar energy, but some technologies under development claim we could reach 40% in a short time-frame. We have a special interest in the brand new AeroVoltaic solar pannels as they convert another 50% of the solar energy into heat. The question is therefore: what is the best time to invest into those rapidly changing technologies (might be worth waiting a little)?
Electric storage has always been the key issue of solar electricity production, but with Tesla’s recent announcement of a battery system (Tesla Wall) proposing incremental storage cost at +0,064 € per kWh (2,5x cheapper than competition), our hopes to be one day “off-the-grid” seems to be more and more realistics.
We have dropped the idea of installing a wind turbine as the instalation process in a semi-urban area is rather complex with uncertain output.
While trying to consume less and become more and more energy self-sufficient, we will switch to a 100% renewable energy provider for the remainder of energy needed.
Transportation?
This is the most difficult part as it accounts for 55% of our total emissions, and there are (yet) few possibilities available as the is the one domain where we can’t / don’t wish to reduce the amount we travel (like many families I guess). Still, we will look at:
replacing the car doing the most distance with a Plug-In Hybrid: i’m still evaluating the potential impact (probably around a ton a year)…
compensating our vacations traveling like we did this year during the world tour through active carbon sequestration: planting trees!
This action plan should reduce of emision by 16%(2.5 tons) down to 13 tons per year in 2016/2017. If we are ambitious and stick to COP21 decision, we should reduce the average emission by a “Factor 4” by 2050 to contain temperature increase by 3°c by the end of the century. Factor 4 means to reduce our emisions by 75 % in 45 years (3% a year until 2050), reaching 5.2 tons for the family…. While we are probably on track, we will need some efforts on Appliances and Transportation.
Clearly, transportation is the #1 challenge to tackle, with 55% of total emissions (8.77 tons), of which 55% is related to vacations traveling in airplanes… This is where we need a revolution for car & air transportation. So until technologies are available, the only real solution is our active Carbon Compensation for which we are looking at planting 50+ trees which under tropical climate sequesters on average 25 kg of Carbon per annum, helping to offset another 5 tons of CO2 a year.
A boat is a fantastic laboratory to observe the impact you have on nature and understand how much resources and energy you consume.
As a family, we were expecting to learn a lot from our day to day consumption and reflect on it. And we did!
Waste management
Selective recycling (when possible)
Waste management on a boat is a challenge. We started to clearly separate plastics / metal / glass / paper / organic waste, like we do on land, to finally understand that very few islands have recycling capabilities (actually, we could only do selective recycling in Martinique).
On most islands, trash is dumped in a few locations, and burned at best, with many islands having close to zero trash management and simply burying them…
We were expecting those small islands to have adopted intense recycling ahead of some countries because of the sustainability challenges they have, but they have not (yet). We were even surprised to witness little ecological consciousness with older locals throwing trash anywhere… But you clearly see the younger generation being educated and now paying attention to those issues, which should start to improve the pollution problems.
In the end, we try to pay attention to the stuff we purchase to minimize waste, and try to pack the trash to drop it onto the bigger islands that have more treatment capabilities.
Pollution
Beach cleaning the way the Surfrider Foundation does it!
Because of bad trash management and challenging cultural habits, some of the islands do get dirty. On the large ones, the trash is of course located around the populated areas, but it also impacts the less populated areas and even some small and inhabited islands…
Cleaning on Mayreau island
On one of the most beautiful islands, Mayreau, the most beautiful mooring of the island was quite polluted with diverse waste, from glasses to metal and plastics, lots of plastics, both on the beach, in the mangrove and under-water. The waste was clearly a mix of local dumping, remote populated islands pollution, but also sailors own waste !
Underwater waste collection
With the Kids, we went for a large Beach & Underwater Cleaning initiative to clean the place and leave it in a better shape than how we found it.
In the process, it raised many questions from the locals and (some) help.
Here is the video of our cleaning to restore Mayreau bay back to the post card picture everybody loves;-)
Energy
Solar panel as the unique electricity source
Another challenge as we took our bad habits from the land on board…
With solar panels as the sole source of energy, we had to change the way we consume energy… and use electronic devices !
After minimum computer and cell phone recharge, energy is spent to power the fridge first, then the water circulation system within strict shower time, and of course the navigation instruments.
Electric power is also generated from the petrol engine running, but we tried to minimize the use of the two diesel engines to the bare minimum while not moving fast enough in light winds (even if we have used the engines too much in my opinion). Still, we sometimes had to turn the engines on to produce and stock a bit of electricity.
Water
The boat 2×300 liters water tanks
This was maybe the toughest challenge. With 600 liters on board, we had to implement tight water usage rules on board. 30 seconds showers to rinse after having done the largest cleaning in salt water, salt water washing up with little clean water rising, etc…
Some of our guests had a hard time coping with those rules, and we suspect some pirate consumption of the ladies while everybody was snorkeling;-)
We did run out of water for a few days twice, which created some interesting tensions, the guys clearly accommodating better than the girls who apparently needed more personal care…
Some boats have salt water filtration systems, but they have intense energy consumption and require to run the engines. The best solution would certainly to have better rain water collection systems on board as mother nature is providing all that is needed from the sky…
Expedition to refill our drinking water
Drinking water involved some regular islands expedition to refill and supply the minimum of 1.5 liters per person a day needed to keep the bodies hydrated.
Eco-trip
Our floating “consumption laboratory”
In the end, living one month on our boat “Calebasse” was a fantastic experience to better understand the energy and resources we consume everyday without any limits while on land.
Consuming less is possible as long as you become aware of how much you consume and what you truly need without wastage. Same goes for waste management. Lots of packaging is not really needed, and plastics bags are a worldwide plague as they kill many animals (turtles in the first place) and create long lasting and visible pollution underwater and on land.
We have another 45 days on “Calebasse” to improve the way we use our resources onboard and will certainly bring back some good practices back on land!
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The Rosier Family Carbon Positive World Tour in Search of Beauty
Rich in wind resources, New Caledonia is reducing its dependency from fossil fuel with sustainable wind power. The two wind farms of Prony and Kafeate are using world first technology to green-up the national grid and provide socio-economic improvements for the communities, with 30 temporary and 28 permanent job creations favoring indigenous Kanak people.
The project is utilizing the natural fall of water between the upper Moaat lake and the lower Iloloy lake to generate low impact sustainable energy. The hydro plant has an installed capacity of 3 MW only.
In addition, the local population benefits from the small hydro plant. During the construction phase, most of the building material was bought in the region. Heavy machinery in this sensitive environment was avoided during construction, generating an over-average level of temporary employment, thus providing about 200 people with safe income. In the operational phase, about 20 locals are employed as technicians. The power plant management is in female hands which makes for a strong signal of gender equality.
As we wanted to do and understand by ourselves, we contacted Jenny from Association Community Carbon Trees (ACCT) here in Costa Rica.
The 2 days with ACCT and Jenny were a wonderful experience. Challenging for the mind and the bodies, but delighting for the soul.
BEAUTIFUL WORLD TOUR 