If you're the environmentalist friend in the group, chances are you've been asked countless times what each of us can do at an individual level to fight against climate change. While some might say you should buy a Tesla, I'd encourage you to first understand what your contribution to global warming is and how you can change it.

In general, there are 2 conflicting visions on what each of us can make to fight against climate change.

One would argue that our individual contribution to global warming is a drop in the ocean and that real change needs to come at a system level. The other would argue that change is in each and everyone of us. The truth is that both arguments are correct, but here I'll focus on the latter.

As excellently explained in this podcast, the halting of an individual’s contribution to climate change — aka its carbon footprint — won’t solve the problem. However, spreading the word and leading others by example can unlock a butterfly effect resulting in a sizable impact.

As this might seem too abstract to take action, I have come up with a list of actionable measures that all of us can take at an individual level.

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In a nutshell, here's the (not necessarily exhaustive) "shopping list" of actions to individually fight climate change:

1. Measure and reduce your carbon footprint
2. Give back to nature by (at least) compensating your footprint
3. Spread the word, inspire others and hold decision makers accountable

Let's dive deeper on the first two.

In order to reduce a personal carbon footprint, one has to first measure and understand it. To do so, one can rely on online calculators that, through a survey, provide the details of how large your carbon footprint is (i.e. tones of CO2e per year) and where it comes from (i.e. what activities are the most polluting).

While there are several calculators out there that will get the job done, many are designed at a country-specific level — therefore giving unreliable estimates for people living in countries with a fundamentally different energy mix — or just take way too long to complete. Cosora’s calculator lets you choose among 18 different countries (more to come in the future) and the survey takes less than two minutes to fill out.

While answering the poll's questions to discover my own footprint, I gathered that about half of my emissions come from travel. That's because in 2020 I moved to Indonesia, and just the flight from Barcelona to Bali alone was responsible for about 6 tones of CO2 emissions (note it’s counted as a round-flight, so half of those emissions haven’t actually occurred yet). So, despite the day-to-day actions I’m taking (namely recycling, being vegetarian, buying food locally, etc.) I cannot avoid most of my emissions, as there is no green aviation yet and I need to live in Indonesia for my job. So, what else can I do?

Well, that’s precisely where compensating your emissions comes into play. It's also where things get a bit more complex.

Carbon offsetting can have a tremendous impact on nature and climate change, but only if done in the right way. When done in the wrong way, namely investing in projects that have no additionality, it's just a cheap green-washing practice.

Therefore, it's of upmost importance to choose the projects in your carbon offset portfolio very carefully. There is no official criteria to determine the quality and integrity of a carbon offsetting project. After all, if you look at the description page of virtually any project, they will all claim to be high-quality.

That's precisely why I have been helping the team at Cosora to define a set of criteria that ensures the quality and integrity of a carbon offset portfolio:‍

1. 🌿 Real. All projects have to be measured, monitored, reported, and verified ex-post to have actually occurred.
2. 💝 Additional. Additionality is the degree to which the project wouldn’t have happened without the carbon-offset monetary contribution.
3. 📈 Based on Clear, Realistic, and Credible Baselines. A project’s baseline is the hypothetical scenario where the project never occurred and sets the ground for determining the volume of tradable carbon credits.
4. 🔒 Free of Leakage. For a project to be free of leakage, it shouldn’t shift the emissions it avoids anywhere else.
5. 🎁 With Co-Benefits. High-quality projects have positive effects beyond climate mitigation, such as preserving biodiversity or positively impacting the community around them.
6. 🗿 Durable. More durable projects make it so that their specified tons of carbon dioxide remain removed and stored from the atmosphere for longer.
7. ☝️ Exclusive. Once someone pays for an offset project and claims the corresponding emissions reduction, no one else should be able to claim that reduction too.
8. ✨ Transparent. Our users should be able to know what happens in the projects they contribute to and check on their progress by themselves.

Based on these strict criteria, we realized that more than 85% of all offset projects out there didn’t meet our quality requirements. Only those that provide solid proof that they protect nature and those that rely on advanced technological solutions passed the bar. Cosora reached out to the project developers behind them to create our offset portfolio and, with the aim to democratize carbon offsetting, we've made it available to everyone for free (i.e. no platform fee).

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We'll keep talking about all things offsets in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here's hoping this helps you take the leap and start offsetting your footprint with meaningful and effective projects! That is, if you aren't already doing so. :)