Why your National Park Visit offsets your Amazon
Rainforest Carbon Emissions
A carbon offset
credit is a service that tries to reduce the net carbon emissions of people or
organizations by compensating their carbon emissions with measures for absorbing
greenhouse gases. A wide variety of offset actions are available; forest
planting is the most common, as the new trees very gradually absorb CO2 from the
air and convert it to carbon in their trunks.
But worldwide, far more CO2
gets blasted into the atmosphere from virgin forests being cut down. One of the
most effective ways of preventing forests from being cut down is protecting them
as national parks and nature reserves. But in order to do so, these forests must
produce at least some economic benefits.
Dear visitor, our website gives you info about
our
National Parks Tours,
our
Galapagos programs, the
Cuyabeno Loop,
as well as our
Cuyabeno and Cofan Lodges in the Amazon.
For those who want to combine the
Exuberant Nature of Ecuador with the Famous culture of Peru, we even have a
7
days Highlights of Peru extension! Our website
gives you the best information on the internet, because we are the only tour
operator run by professional biologists. Take a look:
OUR PARKS AND TRIBES ECO TOURS
(Scroll down for the full description of the current page)
STANDARD COFAN LODGE TOUR
Start your Cuyabeno journey on
Ecuador's most scenic wide Amazon tributary, the Aguarico River. Spend 3 nights in the Cofan Lodge,
exploring the lower Cuyabeno and Zábalo Rivers.
The Cuyabeno Loop explores
the breathtaking scenery of lower Cuyabeno and Zábalo
Rivers and the Cuyabeno Lake. Watch the amazing birds and
wildlife. Pass 2 nights with the amazing Cofan Indians in
the Cofan Lodge and enjoy 2 nights of comfort in the famous
Cuyabeno Lodge.
The Lagarto Cocha Expedition on hidden
creeks and lakes is the best Amazon journey in Ecuador!
Discover Indian tribes in Ecuador, Monkeys, Sloths,
Dolphins. No other Amazon rainforest in any of the
Amazon-Andean countries can match the wildlife viewing
of Cuyabeno and it is far better than Yasuní!
The Cuyabeno Lake Program
explores all the wild places surrounding the Cuyabeno Lake.
Bonsai-shaped Macrolobia trees with the whispering of the
mysterious prehistoric Hoatzin birds and the noisy Blue and
Yellow Macaws. Our Cuyabeno Lodge is on the best location,
because we were the first and chose the best location on a
seasonal island in the Cuyabeno Lake itself.
Our Northern Andes Tour lets you get a
taste of some of the best Andean National Parks,
visiting the highest groves in the world: the Polylepis
trees, the highest mountain in the world calculated from
the center of the Earth, the Chimborazo with Vecuñas and
Lamas, the highest active volcano in the world, the
Cotopaxi.
Our National Parks Tours take you on a fantastic
journey along the best possible sample of Andean and coastal
parks. They have been designed to complement
Galapagos and/or Amazon cruises. They can start from different places, particularly Quito,
Guayaquil and Cuenca. While the full program lasts 9 days, it is possible to
make a limited selection of parks, like the 6 days' "Andes
and Coast" module.
We have a fabulous selection of Galapagos
programs, including cruises, island hopping, scuba
diving or relaxing on one of the many different hotels
varying from modest inns to deluxe resorts.
A fabulous program for visiting the most
famous cultural highlights Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu and the
Sacred Valley. At the same time it serves as the Lima hub
for the Peru National Parks Tour. This module is an
extension to our National Parks Tour Ecuador and/or Galapagos National Park
and/or Amazon Cruises.
Assume a tropical forest has about
175 metric tons of Carbon in its trees. The carbon is fixed in the tree
trunks, leaves and roots. So, if a hectare of forest gets deforested, the wood
may first be used to build houses, furniture or produce paper, but eventually,
it will either rot away or be burned and eventually all the carbon of that
forest will be converted into CO2. The mass of CO2 is more than
3 times more than that of Carbon, so the 175 tons of carbon will produce
more that 500 tons of CO2.
Now, we only
believe in durable avoidance of the emission of CO2, if the emission avoidance
of carbon dioxide is really permanent. So in our opinion, you can only
permanently avoid the emission of CO2 into the air, if you set up an endowment
fund that would generate the capital interest from which management costs can be
financed permanently. Assuming a 7% return from the endowment fund, it would
take about $2,700,000 to prevent 500,000 tons of CO2 to be released into the
air, which is about $5 per ton. That is about as much as for the short-term
fixation of Carbon through forest plantations, whereas Carbon dioxide emission
avoidance through and Adopt-A-Ranger-Endowment fund would be permanent!
If you come from the USA, your
contribution to the CO2 emission from your flight will probably have been about
8000 kg CO2 per person; coming from Europe it will have been around 13,000 kg
CO2; averaging somewhere around 10,000kg. The total release of CO2 from the
jungle of Cuyabeno would be about 500 * 6,000,000 (ha) = 3,000,000,000 kg CO2.
Given the fact that ecotourism has
rescued Cuyabeno by going there and spending
their tourism dollars/euros to see the reserve. As the average amount of CO2
production from flights to Ecuador has been about 10,000 kg, one may argue that
the first 300,000 visitors to Cuyabeno may consider their flight fully
compensated by visiting Cuyabeno. Under the current level of visitation that
will allow for somewhere between 15 - 20 more years of AMAZON RAINFOREST
CARBON
EMISSIONS OFFSET and other forested national parks. This does not apply as much for
Savannahs - which only have 5 - 15% forest cover - and other protected areas
with limited forest cover such as Galapagos National Park.
You think this is not enough?
One of
our shareholders is an expert on Rainforest CO2 emissions offset contracted by
international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations and he
has written this page because this is his professional opinion. But of course
you are always free to buy additional Carbon credits, in which case we
recommend:
http://www.adopt-a-ranger.org.
PARKS & TRIBES Travel Agency
Street: Las Casas,
Side street: Jose Coudrin, 2 blocks above the Occidental Highway
Cantón Quito, Prov. Pichincha, Parroquia
Belisario Quevedo