Green, Reforest and Carbon Trade Haiti, Business - Cambrian House, Home of Crowdsourcing

Summary

Domain:: greenhaiti
Members:: 4; View Original Idea

carbon green haiti money neutral trading trees

Start a carbon emission trading business/NGO in Haiti that plants trees to restore the natural ecosystems (and provide local jobs) and then sells the carbon credits to finance more trees/good deeds.

The program will:
1. Provide jobs to Haitians involved in tree planting/forest management.
2. Control erosions/prevent flooding and reduce resulting deaths.
3. Restore ecosystems that provide Haitians with food (wild animals)
4. Help combat global warming.
5. Fund itself

The program will be funded by:
1. Cap and Trade carbon trading. Carbon credits for planting trees can be sold on both the Chicago Climate Exchange and the European Climate Exchange.
2. Selling carbon offset for carbon neutral life style. There is a growing market in 'green' people paying others to plant trees to offset their carbon foot print. CO2 credits can be sold for more money here, but at less volume.

Initial Funding will be from
1. Foreign Economic Aide
2. Environmental group funding.

Why is this idea good?
------------------
It combines several other good ideas and may save the world!
Recently, influential leaders have started stating that just handing out foreign aid just leads to wasted money and no results (e.g corruption), and another approach needs to be taken to make sure aid money equals economic and social growth.

We'll can be that 'other approach' by providing jobs with a purpose that will directly and indirectly benefit Haitians. Tree planting provides real income to workers, while also restoring natural habitats that are capable of supporting food sources (e.g animals).
Jared Diamond (author of Collapse) theorizes that part of Haiti's problems are caused by the destruction of its ecosystems. We'll be reversing that.
Dr. Wangari Maathaa (Nobel prize winner) has spent years (40 million trees) running a tree planting program in Kenya which has had amazing success in providing jobs and preserving the environment.

In addition we can sell the benefits of these restored forests on the carbon trading market. This pays for further development.
Lastly, we can sell carbon offsets for a carbon neutral lifestyle.

Now is the time to do this. Haiti has a new government, and foreign donors (USA,Brazil, etc) are ready to start providing aid money to Haiti, which would provide the initial money to start tree planting.

The Math
-------------------
Note all numbers from wikipedia.

Basically the best place to plant trees for carbon sequestration is near the tropics.
A tropical tree removes 22 kilos of CO2 per year
46 trees removes 1 metric ton of CO2
1 metric ton sells for $3-4 on the Chicago Climate Exchange

$90 plants 900 trees (wikipedia figure), which removes 19.5 tons of CO2.
So our trees cost about $4.50 per ton of C02 to plant, but
can provide $3-$4 a year in income.
Yearly income almost covers the fixed costs of planting!

While it takes a few years (tropical tree grow fast) to reach full potential, after
that the trees are cash cows.

See more of the benefits of tree planting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset#Tree_planting

About Haiti
-------------
Haiti is the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere.
80% of the population lives in poverty, and the country
suffers from extremely high unemployment (>50%).
Haiti has a new government which is looking to improve
the livelihood of the Haitian people.

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October 18

justingiesbrecht has been invited to join the business (Green, Reforest and Carbon Trade Haiti) 12:58 PM

October 16

bparsons has been invited to join the business (Green, Reforest and Carbon Trade Haiti) 6:50 PM

October 15

Summertime has been invited to join the business (Green, Reforest and Carbon Trade Haiti) 1:42 PM

September 24

mcgee has modified the tags (haiti green carbon carbon trading money trees carbon neutral) for the business (Green, Reforest and Carbon Trade Haiti) 11:24 AM