COTAP empowers you to fight climate change and global poverty by offsetting your carbon footprint through Plan Vivo-certified forestry projects which transform the livelihoods of communities in developing regions who live on less than $2 per day.
Your support creates life-changing income for economically vulnerable farmers who plant and maintain trees on their own land in order to offset your carbon footprint. With COTAP, there is 100% transparency where your offset dollars go, and when.
Carbon Offsets Are An Immediate Way To Take Action
When you purchase carbon offsets, you are indirectly compensating others for the performing the service of removing your unavoidable carbon pollution (from driving, flying, and home energy use) from the atmosphere. You are also taking ownership of your personal contribution to climate change. When you offset your carbon footprint through COTAP, you are going a step further by supporting community-based reforestation projects which benefit some of the world’s poorest people.
Carbon offsets should always be utilized as part of a larger climate change action plan. Individuals and organizations should also advocate for cleaner energy sources and take steps to reduce their carbon footprints. Carbon offsets are a market-based tool only to be used in conjunction with efforts to measure and reduce your carbon footprint, a process which provides the additional benefits of revealing the sources of your footprint, areas for improvement, and a means of tracking your progress.
How COTAP Carbon Offsets Alleviate Poverty
COTAP pools purchases of carbon offsets by individuals and organizations to support Plan Vivo-certified afforestation and reforestation projects which compensate farmers for planting and maintaining trees on under-utilized portions of land which they own. Farmers are paid over time as their plantings are successfully managed according to their project plan.
Farmers’ earnings from carbon credits are front-loaded, performance-based, and paid over a period of 7 to 10 years for carbon sequestration which is projected to take place over the course of 25 or more years. In addition to carbon earnings, farmers also benefit from fruit and nut crops from their trees, improved food and fuel security, improved soil quality, and reduced soil erosion.
Affordability & Tax-deductibility
Choose from the Quick and Easy offsetting levels at right, and your tonnes will be allocated according to our average $9.90/tonne rate and distributed evenly across our four projects in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Uganda, and Malawi. To customize your number of tonnes of CO2 and what portion of your transaction goes to each of our projects, please see the Buy Carbon Offsets section of our menu above. COTAP is a 501(c)3 non-profit, so offset transactions are 100% tax-deductible for U.S. residents.
Learn More about COTAP
To learn more, please see the Mission, Projects, How It Works, How We’re Different, Transparency, and Standards sections of our site and see our above menu.
