The Trouble with Travel and Trees

Many of us will be familiar with carbon off-setting schemes as a potential mechanism for the reduction of the impact of air travel on greenhouse gases and climate change. Some of you may already have opted for such off-setting when booking air travel tickets. Certainly those delegates and organisations attending the recent Bali Climate Change conference made everyone aware that they were 'minimising' any potential impact by off-setting. A recent publication from IIED however highlights that such carbon off-setting schemes, involving tree planting and forest conservation, may lead to problems for people in rural communities in developing countries. Such problems as evictions and reduced access to forest products may arise especially for people and communities who did little or nothing to contribute to the problem of climate change in the first place.