Why ERA isn't just a carbon-centric project developer, but a holistic impact developer
Today we certainly live in a "carbon-centric” world, exaggeratedly focused on the control of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to the detriment of a more systemic understanding of our contemporary challenges, creating approaches that are sometimes reductionist. This statement certainly does not presuppose that mitigation and adaptation to climate change are not a matter of the first order, but that without an integrated vision with other factors, any strategy or environmental policy will be ineffective or even a hoax.
In 2009, a group of scientists from the Stockholm Resilience Center proposed a conceptual framework that indicated nine planetary boundaries, seeking to understand the complex contours of our environmental crisis, which include:
climate change,
biosphere integrity,
ocean acidification,
ozone layer depletion,
atmospheric aerosol pollution,
biogeochemical fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus,
freshwater use,
land system change, and
chemical pollution with new substances (including metals, radioactive materials, microplastics and others).
Such boundaries were even used for the conceptualization of the “Doughnut Economy”, proposed by Kate Raworth, a British researcher at the University of Oxford, which has become increasingly popular as a benchmark for sustainable development models.
Note that of the planetary limits mentioned above, it is argued that four of them (climate change, biosphere integrity, Earth system change and biogeochemical cycles) would have already been irreconcilably exceeded, so that we live in full rupture of almost half of the cycles necessary for a balanced life on earth.
Despite the complexity of these postulations, climate change has long occupied the center of this dystopian stage described above, driving important debates about the environmental crisis triggered by the industrial revolution (although the genesis of the rupture of many planetary boundaries is much earlier).
In this sense, ERA, has been positioning itself as an “impact developer”, considering that the term has a connotation beyond just the central environmental factor, that is, carbon emissions.
Our carbon credits project in the form of REDD (“Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”) looks clearly and firmly at all the environmental and socio-economic co-benefits that can be generated with the new ecological economy that revolves around forests and vegetation. preserved natives. We are passionate about carbon markets and the possibilities that this market mechanism offers for mitigating the effects of climate change.
It's definitely a powerful tool.
But we are going further, our mission is truly to catalyze payments for environmental services (PES) in a broad and innovative way, bringing new ways of measuring impact and directing financial resources to actions with positive socio-environmental impacts. A new agenda is being designed, involving the generation of new “standards” and “currencies” for biodiversity and social impact, creating a new channel to channel these investments to those who need it, whether traditional communities, rural producers or conservationist landowners.
With these horizons in mind, we are dialoguing and working together with companies, certifiers and pioneering platforms such as VERRA, Social Carbon, Regen Network and the W+ Standard, seeking to bring new values and innovation to the agendas of climate change, biodiversity and female empowerment. Our aim is to offer a wide range of PSAs to all sorts of providers of such services. We want to look back with pride and realize that we contributed to all the conventions born out of ECO-92 (the famous UN convention held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992); the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
By enabling payment for environmental services and directing resources towards ecological conservation and restoration, community empowerment, environmental education and biodiversity protection, we are convinced that an ecological economy is possible!
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