COTAP is the climate change solution which also empowers you to fight global poverty. By offsetting your unavoidable carbon emissions through our certified forestry projects, you are not only taking action on climate change, but also creating life-changing income in regions where income levels are less than $2 per day.
Your support improves the livelihoods of economically vulnerable farmers who plant and maintain trees, on their own land, which capture and store your CO2 emissions. With COTAP, there is 100% transparency where your offset dollars go, and when.
How COTAP’s Climate Change Solution Also Alleviates Poverty
COTAP pools purchases of carbon offsets by individuals and organizations to support certified afforestation and reforestation projects which make payments to farmers in exchange for the planting and long-term maintenance of trees on their land. All of our projects are certified by Plan Vivo, the longest-standing forestry carbon standard in the world, and the only standard which requires that projects have detailed plans for direct carbon revenue sharing with participating communities.
Plantings and tree growth are monitored and verified, and farmers receive front-loaded, performance-based payments 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, farmers benefit from their trees’ fruit and nut crop income, increased food and fuel security, improved soil quality, and reduced erosion.
COTAP’s Place Among Other Climate Change Solutions
Carbon offsets are the market-based climate change solution through which you take responsibility for your unavoidable CO2 emissions from driving, flying, and home energy use. By buying offsets, you are taking responsibility for your personal contribution to climate change by indirectly compensating others for the performing the service of counteracting the emissions which you haven’t yet been able to eliminate. When you offset through COTAP, you’re going a step further by also transforming livelihoods of some of the poorest communities on Earth.
Offsetting should be done alongside other equally important personal climate change actions, like advocating for cleaner energy sources and reducing your carbon footprint. Offsetting, advocacy, and reduction efforts all work together. For example, the process of measuring offsetting your emissions helps to reveal opportunities for reducing your footprint as well as areas where we need cleaner energy sources.
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, Uganda, Malawi, and India. To customize your number of tonnes of CO2 and what portion of your transaction goes to each of our projects, please see the Offsetting Options 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.
