Step one completed!

I must say, we're mighty proud!

Yes, we've finally done it, and this exactly one year after setting out - we are now completely carbon neutral!

May we be the world's first carbon neutral dive shop?
Dunno and frankly, don't care. The important aspect is that we've not done this by purchasing anonymous and thus suspect carbon offsets, but that we have been an integral part of the process by sponsoring the restoration of Mangrove forests, a vital and endangered marine habitat in close cooperation with Fijian grassroots organizations, villages and Government departments.
Mangroves may well be the world's best biosequester and whilst the blue carbon movement appears to be engaging in the usual games of meetings tourism, committees and working groups, we've gone ahead and shown that the job can be done with zero bureaucracy and zero squandering of money, but lots of personal initiative and dedication instead.
Like our Fiji Shark Project, our latest initiative is yet again an example of how business interests and conservation can co-operate to create results where all the parties benefit.


Yes as usual it has been quite a Process!
BUT - our tally now stands proudly at 33 hectares or 330,000 Mangrove trees that are being counted in the 1 million trees campaign and also represent our personal, hands-on contribution to Fiji's involvement in the International Year of Forests.

AND!
We have already embarked on step two, and that is to offset the carbon footprint our clients generate by traveling to Fiji!
Yes if you fly to Fiji to dive with us, we will offset you carbon footprint by sponsoring the planting of Mangroves on your behalf - at no additional cost to you!

So, what are you waiting for! :)

Mangroves for Fiji!

Well here it is - and yes, we’re mighty proud of ourselves!
Might we even be the first to do this?

This is the result of a dinner conversation with a fellow ecotourism operator.
We were musing about the necessity and the advantages of offsetting one’s carbon footprint and how it would be nice if we could do it locally instead of financing the international carbon trade. Having subsequently inquired, I discovered that nobody in Fiji is currently offering any such opportunity and having explored the international options, I was frankly dismayed by their apparent pervasive lack of transparency and by the fact that they came across as being principally geared towards making money rather than being aimed at propagating genuine climate change mitigation.

Despite of our best efforts, we at BAD emit uncomfortably high amount of greenhouse gases.
This is principally due to our need for operating our vessels and vehicle, and to a high power bill stemming from our compressor and various air conditioning units we need to run to protect our electrical hardware. Inevitable as they are, those emissions remain highly disturbing, and it would have been nice to find an elegant way of becoming carbon neutral, the more as we deeply care for the environment and market ourselves as an ecotourism operator.

But Carbon Offsetting is controversial as it always carries the stigma of being a convenient escape mechanism for not assuming responsibility.
Critics claim that instead of being forced to tackle the root of the problem and reduce their carbon footprint, culprits are instead being encouraged to take the easy way out by paying somebody else for cleaning up the ecological mess they have caused.
With that in mind, we set out to become an integral part of a domestic solution.

Our choice quickly fell onto Mangrove Restoration.
As a friend writes, these are more than just muddy plants, they are natures multi million year perfect solution to coastal erosion, fish nurseries, carbon sequestration, and more.
Mangroves are a largely overlooked excellent carbon sink that sequester multiple amounts of carbon when compared to tropical and temperate forests. They are also vital habitats that not only protect the coasts against tsunamis, hurricanes and Sea level change, but directly benefit the adjacent reefs by exporting life-building carbon and above all, by being the nursery areas of countless marine organisms from crustaceans all the way to Sharks.

In that sense, restoring mangroves complements ideally what we have been doing all along.
We believe that any dive shop needs to assume the stewardship of the reefs it dives and from where it obtains its sustenance, and Mangals are essential extensions of those habitats. The project also dovetails beautifully with our ongoing conservation projects that stipulate that in order to attain sustainable results, one has to involve and compensate the stakeholders.

The rest has been, well, a process.
We are obviously not climate change and carbon offsetting specialists and had to first obtain the required know how. Following that, we had to explore practical ways of attaining tangible results, this against the backdrop of the reservations of the public against what is still regarded as being worthless and unattractive, and against the interests of coastal developers that continue to destroy Mangroves for tourism developments.

We were lucky insofar as 2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity.
This has prompted the IUCN to roll out MESCAL and the Department of Forestry, to decide to plant 1 million trees, among which mangroves, to commemorate the event. They have been invaluable supporters, as have been our traditional partners in the Fisheries Department and least but not least, our friend Helen of Marine Ecology Consulting who has already been quietly restoring Mangroves for a very long time indeed and was willing to share her unequaled know how in the matter, as have several friends at the USP.

As of today, we have run a successful pilot project and sponsored several more, and are rapidly approaching the status of being the first completely Carbon Neutral Business under this project.
We will however not stop there: once we have managed to completely offset our direct emissions, we will then offset the carbon emissions our customers have incurred when traveling to Fiji, making this an ongoing undertaking.


Having done the legwork, we have decided that we might as well share the project with equally intentioned industry peers but also, with other eco-friendly businesses in Fiji.
Named Mangroves for Fiji, this is now a country-wide undertaking aimed at elevating Fiji’s diving industry to the next level. Like last year’s Fiji Shark Conservation and Awareness Project, it is open to anybody and our role in it will be simply to act as facilitators, with no gain whatsoever to us apart from having done the right thing.
Having assembled a small project team, they stand by to assist.

Please take the time to explore the website.
Kudos to web designer Shivam of Niuwave Media and to our charming administrator Lexi for having created a first-class product! As I said, we’re not specialists – but to the best of our knowledge, the technical information contained therein is factually correct. Does it strike you as being surprisingly simple? Actually, if one boils it down to the essentials, it is!
Also, planting Mangroves is really not rocket science – anybody can do it!

Comments, suggestions and amendments?
Always welcome, the latter best directly to the project team – please bear with us, this is still somewhat progress in action!
Thank you!

To our Fijian readers.
If you are a dive shop or a smaller eco-friendly business, please feel free to contact us and join! If you are eager to do something for Fiji and earn some money in the process by becoming a mangrove planter, please read the relevant pages and get in contact! And please, tell your friends and community!
Let’s all work together towards making this a better Fiji!

Anybody want to replicate this elsewhere?
Please contact us and we will be happy to share our website for free. We’ve also secured the URLs of several Pacific locations and will be happy to pass them on to you – maybe we can all together establish a Mangroves for Oceania? Could this even eventually become a template for the dive industry in all tropical and subtropical locations? This can get as big as we want!
Time, as always, will tell.

Enjoy Mangroves for Fiji.