Pop''Offsets'' was a web-based, carbon offsetting project of
Population Matters. In 2018 the project was superseded b
Empower to Plan a crowdfunding project for supporting family planning providers.
Population Matters
Founded in 1991,
Population Matters is a leading
UK campaigning charity concerned with the effects of current
world population
In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded 8 billion in November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for th ...
growth on the
natural environment
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses ...
, particularly regarding
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...
. It advocates for population stabilisation through improved access to rights-based family planning schemes. Population Matters commissioned a research paper entitled "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost" which indicates that addressing unmet needs for family planning is the most cost-effective way of reducing CO
2 emissions and climate change – possibly less than one third of the cost of other technological fixes – without any environmental downsides. They estimate that every $7 (£4) spent on family planning saves one tonne of CO
2. A similar reduction would require a $13 (£8) investment in tree planting, $24 (£15) in wind power, $41 (£31) in solar energy and $92 (£56) in hybrid vehicle technology.
Launched in 2009, PopOffsets was the first and only carbon offsetting scheme worldwide investing its funds in rights-based family planning schemes, health programs, relationship and sex education. Population Matters considers that investing in family planning services is vital for environmental sustainability, with particular regards to women who have little or no access to these services. Every year there are 80 million unintended pregnancies in the world, which could be averted by making sex education and family planning services accessible to everyone.
How it worked
The PopOffsets web-project offered a step-by-step guide enabling contributors to make online donations to Population Matters, in order to support rights-based family planning schemes. Contributors could calculate their estimated annual amount of CO
2 emissions in their country of residence, using a "CO
2 calculator". The calculator divided the total amount of the chosen country's CO
2 emissions by the number of its citizens. The contributor could then decide to offset his/her annual CO
2 emissions or to opt for a "one-off" amount, by determining the exact amount of CO
2 that he/she is wishing to offset.
Funding
The funds gathered from online donations were distributed between rights-based family planning schemes, contraceptive services and supplies, sex and relationship education and health programs. Population Matters aims to use the majority of its funds to meet the needs of over 200 million women worldwide who do not have access to family planning services.
Media coverage
The launch of the PopOffsets project on 3 December 2009 received international media coverage from both print and broadcast media outlets, including in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'', ''
The Sunday Express'',
''The Telegraph'',
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was esta ...
,
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
.
The PopOffsets program received some criticism mostly on the grounds that an offsetter will still have released carbon from fossil fuel consumption while people in developing countries that do not have their own reserves of fossil fuel, while still being responsible for any population growth related habitat loss and deforestation, will typically have very low levels of fossil fuel consumption.
outputs by the wealthiest is a vital component of any strategy. Note that the replacement Empower to Plan scheme has no carbon offsetting component.