UBoC has retired 786 carbon credits, originally generated from the Mjumita Community Forest Project in Tanzania. This decision reflects UBoC’s increasing focus to drive landscape restoration and inform policy, beyond carbon offsetting.
UBoC was founded in 2008 as a spin-out from the global forestry initiatives of Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate and Yorkshire Tea, and of the Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project. The University of Leeds joined as lead scientific partners in 2009 and registration as a charity followed in 2010.
An early aim of the charity was to make access to the developing markets in carbon credits easier for small organisations that did not have the infrastructure to access registries and acquire credits to offset their activity. As time has passed and the concept of carbon credits has become well established, access to registries and markets has become easier for smaller enterprises. This is a welcome development, but a result of this has been that the UBoC team have been handling fewer and fewer offsets over the year.
Over the last decade the focus of UBoC has also shifted. As well as offsetting, the initial intent of UBoC was to provide scientific support to inform reforestation policy. The charity has expanded to have a more direct role in large-scale landscape restoration and supports projects both in the Yorkshire region and globally. UBoC now works with a range of partners on a wide variety of projects, while still aiming to use research to leverage wider policy changes around woodland creation.
Volunteers planting trees for landscape restoration at Wild Ingleborough
With these developments in mind, the trustees and UBoC supported staff at the University of Leeds made the collective decision to withdraw from offering carbon offsetting services in 2024. At the time of this decision UBoC held 786 credits generated by the Mjumita Community Forest Project in Lindi, Tanzania, worth around £7000 at the start of the year. A further decision was taken to unilaterally retire these credits, removing them permanently from the registry.
UBoC is proud that its initial investment helped support the work of the Mjumita Community Forest, and of its work to provide access to offsetting services to over the last decade. This is also an exciting time for the charity as it looks to its next decade.
