About

Established in 1999, Planete Urgence is a French NGO that has pioneered the Solidarity Holidays programme, which allows working professionals to engage in a concrete humanitarian mission during their annual leave or other spare time. The programme’s objective is to support development projects, mostly on the African continent but also in South America as well as in India and Indonesia.

These activities, managed by grass-roots NGOs, schools, local administrations and community groups, focus on three areas: training of adults (computer skills, accountancy, management, tailoring etc., teaching support in schools and socio-educational workshops,and environmental volunteering (e.g. environmental research and field work in national parks).

Apart from the Solidarity Holidays programme, Planete Urgence is currently developing two additional initiatives:

• Locally-produced school kits to support schoolchildren suffering from economic hardship
  in West Africa;
• Reforestation projects to address the challenges of global warming and sustainable development, which also enable Planete Urgence to offer voluntary carbon offsets to its members.

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Strategy

Convinced that no development can be sustainable unless it takes into account the problems of climate change, and that non-governmental organizations have a decisive role to play, Planète Urgence has added a climate dimension to its activities.

Measuring emissions

In the interest of acting quickly and setting an example for others, Planète Urgence has chosen the Carbon Balance method, developed by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency. This methodology allows the organization to calculate the amount of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of its activities using a rigorous and internationally recognized approach. The quantification of these emissions will be carried out annually, in order to measure progress in the efforts to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

Reducing emissions

Aside from the efforts that have been made at the Planète Urgence headquarters to use less energy, the organization provides financial incentives for its employees to use public transport when commuting between their home and the workplace. Furthermore, for domestic and international business trips, traveling by train is given preference over air travel.

Carbon offset scheme

Air travel by volunteers of Planète Urgence to and from their missions in Africa, Asia and the Americas currently constitutes the largest source of emissions of greenhouse gases by the organization. Since it is impossible to directly reduce the volume of these emissions, Planète Urgence has decided to create its own carbon offset scheme: carbon sequestration in forest biomass.

Why reforestation?

The ecological role of forests : A stable climate and carbon sequestration: On a regional scale, a forest forms an ecological buffer zone that creates a stable local climate, unaffected by climate change occurring in external ecosystems. On a global scale, forests encapsulate carbon in their own biomass and trap it in the soil, thus reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Soil protection and the regulation of freshwater: Organic matter, resulting from biodegradation, has a beneficial effect on the stability of soil structure. The presence of root systems and a layer of humus increase the earth’s ability to retain water. Forests prevent the outflow of water and decrease the fluctuations in flow rate. By facilitating the absorption of water by the soil, forests also help filter out polluting substances and provide the ground water reservoirs with a stable supply of clean mineral water of organic origin.

Conservation of ecosystems:

At the moment, 1.5 million species of plants and animals have been scientifically described. According to the most conservative estimates, Earth is inhabited by between 3 and 10 million different kinds of species. One of the most remarkable aspects of forests, especially tropical forests, is their enormous biodiversity. It is estimated that 50 to 75 per cent of all species of living beings on earth originated in tropical rainforests. The range of the estimation is due to the uncertainty about the total amount of species. The economic role of forests: Forests are the source of a large number of products, beyond the wood and land they provide, including fruits, rubber, resins, bark, essences, fibers, medicinal substances, coloring substances, game… Arguably it is these products that first led men to explore tropical forests, long before timber became a basic necessity and an internationally traded commodity.

Raising public awareness Informing and sensitizing the general public are indispensable methods of making everyone aware of the problems caused by global warming and the available solutions. To achieve these goals, Planète Urgence has added a “carbon calculator” to its website that allows visitors to estimate the amount of greenhouse gases they generate by heating their house, using household appliances and traveling by car or plane.

The role of the private sector

As the private sector in the industrialized countries is crucial to the continued use of sustainable sources of energy, Planète Urgence invites companies to take part in its fight against global warming by supporting sustainable development in the countries of the South. The proposed methods are the calculation of emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as measures to reduce them and compensation schemes for emissions that cannot be avoided.

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