Part 11 - Climate Neutrality

Climate neutrality can be achieved if CO₂ emissions are reduced to a minimum and all remaining CO₂ emissions are offset with climate protection measures. If climate-damaging greenhouse gases are completely avoided or if gases that have already been emitted are saved elsewhere, this is referred to as "climate-neutral".

The SCNiiC Climate Neutrality Strategy was first presented at the Boschendal Wine Estate in the Western Cape Province of South Africa on 5th January 2011 (page 98 Blackgoo-Blockchain). In the absence of a standard sustainability framework at the time, a framework was constructed using a combined input from the WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), providing ten variables: Water; Energy; Health; Agriculture; Biodiversity; Waste, Industry; Buildings; Transport, Forestry.

Note the correspondence with the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), accepted by UN member countries in 2015.

The first five variables were submitted by the WBCSD to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. The second set of variables were extracted from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007.

Further climate initiatives are:

The Climate Neutral Now Initiative is one of several initiatives launched by the UNFCCC secretariat to increase climate action by engaging non-Party stakeholders (sub-national governments, companies, organizations, individuals). It was launched in 2015 based on a mandate to promote the voluntary use of carbon market mechanisms recognized under the Convention.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty addressing climate change, negotiated and signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. It has evolved to become a much wider tool for awareness-raising, capacity building, partnership development, promoting and facilitating the estimation of carbon footprints, the reduction of those footprints, and voluntary compensation (offsetting).