Shaken Not Burned

Highlighting changemakers and solutions

Glossary - Insetting

The term indicates a company’s investment within its own value chain, rather than buying carbon credits or intervening in another sector or country. One natural fit is the commodities-dependent food and drink industry, which could invest in areas such as regenerative agriculture and community support.

Keeping such investments within the value chain helps transform the supply chain overall and hopefully avoid carbon leakage. Insetting is especially helpful in hard to abate sectors where no one party can solve all of the challenges in a carbon-intensive supply chain. Insetting can also build resilience and stability across the supply chain. 

Busting a myth

“planting a tree means you’ve addressed carbon emissions”

There is no doubt that tree planting – afforestation – can provide a useful approach to greenhouse gas storage, but it's not that simple. 

Some flights allow passengers to ‘offset’ the emissions of the flight through the purchase of carbon credits for a couple of pounds. But how robust is this credit?  For example, what type of tree is it (as different trees store different amounts of CO2), was it suitable for the land, did it grow, is it healthy, did it burn down? It’s not enough to plant a seedling, it also needs to grow and thrive. 

There has been a lot of research recently on how some carbon credit projects haven’t really had much impact, what matters is appropriate project design, proper monitoring and verification and a deep understanding of the scientific, economic and social systems that surround successful tree planting. 

It’s no longer enough to shrug it off but time for us all to start demanding clarity and transparency on what we’re buying, and whether it works.

What we’ve been reading this week

• UK set for yet another high court challenge on climate – this time its adaptation

  The UK government is in the news again for its failure to address climate change. The UK High Court has called for a judicial review of its adaptation plan. The point of the review is that the government’s plans fail to protect ‘people, property and infrastructure, from the impacts of climate change. The UK has been in court over its climate plans over the last few years – not least of which is the latest legal challenge to the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan from Friends of the Earth filed in February 2024 – and every time it goes back to the drawing board, it comes back with something that doesn’t quite work. 

  It’s important to remember however that the playing field has changed – a recent win at the European Court of Human Rights is a landmark case that demands action on climate for human rights purposes – with a ruling that is enforceable across all 46 Member States. Switzerland was “found to be in violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and Article 6 § 1 (access to court) of the European Convention on Human Rights.” There is a growing body of law pushing for action and that should be ignored at our peril.

• Better Cotton in Cerrado controversy

  Better Cotton, the multinational NGO looking to improve sustainability standards in the cotton industry, is in the spotlight over concern that three farms in the Cerrado certified as producers of sustainable cotton by Better Cotton have been linked to environmental and social damage. According to NGO Earthsight, this includes land grabs, deforestation and violence against local communities. Zara’s owner Inditex has demanded greater transparency from Better Cotton – especially as it seems to have been waiting for the results of an internal investigation, one has yet to be concluded despite the evidence from Earthsight. While Better Cotton says it is working to improve its due diligence, this story highlights the difficulty and the importance of supply chain management as well as the need for robust standards and monitoring in certification.   

• Insurance industry slammed on poor practice

  Even though insurers are increasingly refusing to provide cover in areas where the likelihood of extreme weather is too high (such as Florida), the industry still continues to support industry and practices that cause environmental damage. ShareAction’s latest analysis of the insurance industry Insuring Disaster 2024 warns that two-thirds of insurers are failing to exclude underwriting of damaging industries – continuing to enable extractive industries and industrialised agriculture to damage the ecosystem and increase GHG emissions. Not only is this damaging to the global economy overall, but is there any clarity about who is going to pay for climate damage? The real problem, as ever, is the dissonance between short term profit and long term survival and it's time the insurance industry took a closer look at itself.

• Circular economy boost as Apple to reuse components

  On a more positive note, Apple announced plans to address waste from its products, through the reuse of a number of its components that count as ‘pre-owned’. Given the historical difficulty of getting Apple products fixed without great expense, the company plans to expand its repair practices to allow both customers and third party repair shops to re-use existing components – keeping down levels of e-waste.

And a little extra something…

In a little addendum, Japan has proposed sustainability reporting standards, based on the framework outlined by the IFRS, with the final framework expected by March 2025. When these standards are implemented – there is an expectation that such reporting will become mandatory in Japan – the country will join Europe, the UK, California and China in demanding increased transparency on climate risk.