Measuring Carbon Footprint Reduction in Fiji: Independent Verifiers Wanted?

News Corporation Ltd has launched their campaign known as 1 Degree and a parallel focus campaign has been activated in Fiji, complete with their flashy own website and for emphasis of its local presence(a registered Fiji domain).




It appears that News Corp's local representative, The Fiji Times has adopted the corporate green shenanigan of reducing their carbon footprint.





This 1 degree campaign in Fiji has very little to do with reducing carbon emissions in Fiji, but more to do with the News Corp's corporate carbon trading credits.

Particularly when there is no independent verifier to measure the magnitude of Fiji Times' carbon reduction. This fleeting fiasco is similar to Fiji Water's carbon trading program, which the earlier SiFM post commented on.

Recently Fiji Water came up with their own website called Fiji Green and blog. Treehugger online magazine published a 2007 article that calculated the true cost of Fiji Water, prompting Fiji Water LLC to release their own calculations, hence the news, as covered by a recent Market wire article.

Tree Hugger also reviews Fiji Water's released calculations in a April 4th 2008 article.
The excerpt of Tree Hugger article:

FIJI Water Leads Bottled Water Industry In Looking Green(er)
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 04. 9.08
Science & Technology

From the "That's one way to handle it" files: today, FIJI Water announced that they've done a lot of research and ready to fully disclose the carbon footprint of its products. They've joined the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, and launched a new website at Fijigreen.com in support of their efforts to become carbon negative. That's right: following the notion that measurement is the first key step to managing emissions, a bottled water company is branding itself green.

But, as we've seen time and again, bottled water is not green, from the humongous carbon footprint to the tremendous amount of unnecessary waste it creates to the world of reasons not to drink it. Even if there are pharmaceuticals in your water, its not a better choice. So what is FIJI Water trying to pull?

It's sort of a new brand of greenwashing, or at least a fresh take from the bottled water industry. They're right; measuring your carbon footprint is the first step to managing emissions, but can they account for being in a "business that is fundamentally, inherently and inalterably unconscionable," according to Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network. TreeHugger Llloyd called it out and out greenwashing when they announced their carbon negative goals in late 2007, but, as several commenters noted, it was still a step in the right direction.

Today's press release cites some interesting stats in an attempt to show this last point, that they are making steps in the right direction, but it comes off in a "see, not all our fault or our problem" sort of way. They note that the company, "calculated its carbon emissions across every stage in the product lifecycle," and that "this comprehensive, supply chain view is important because approximately 75% of FIJI Water’s emissions result from the operations of supply chain partners, e.g. raw materials suppliers, rather than from the company’s own operations." You can take this one of two ways: that the company isn't all at fault, or that the bottled water industry, with its transportation, raw materials inputs, packaging waste, etc., is a filthy, landfill-choking, carbon-emitting mess. Either way, it doesn't really look very good for them.

As part of its greening strategy, which includes reducing actual greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2010 by reducing packaging 20%, supplying at least 50% of the energy used at its bottling facility with renewable energy and optimizing logistics to take advantage of more carbon efficient modes of transportation, the company has partnered up with Conservation International to create carbon offsets through reforestation of Yaqara Valley, Viti Levu, Fiji. That work wouldn't necessarily get done without FIJI Water's involvement, so it's nice that they're doing it -- let's face it, the planet needs all the help it can get -- but it's not so nice that it's at the behest of a bottled water company. It's pretty tough for us to get past that.

So, perhaps the best way to sum this one up is: TreeHugger is glad to see that FIJI Water is paying attention to their carbon emissions -- because there are a lot of companies, in the bottled water industry and elsewhere, that are not -- but not very glad to see that they're using the opportunity to sell more bottled water. It's smart marketing and we suspect more bottled water companies will follow in their footsteps, but that still doesn't make it very green.

Social Bookmarking

Club Em Designs

Fiji Water's Carbon Trade- A Can of Worms?

The issue of trading carbon off-sets has forced Fiji Water to come clean with their proposal, amid the mass hysteria of their shipping practices.
Blog-TerraPass comments on Fiji Water's environmental track record.

"Understand that the carbon community holds Fiji Water in roughly the same regard they do Hummers. That is, with a disdain that borders on the irrational[...]"

The issue of carbon foot print is a contenscious issue also facing California's jet-setting Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger according to Sacramento Bee article. Excerpt of Sacbee article:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger crisscrosses the globe in a private Gulfstream 400 jet, advocating environmental virtues after signing a significant global warming reduction bill last year. He says he offsets his plane's greenhouse gas damage by financing projects that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere.

But the governor refuses to reveal how much money he has spent on emissions credits, making it impossible to determine how much he has reduced his carbon footprint. The governor also refuses to say how many hours he has flown.

"As is the case with most public officials, personal and financial details of their life are often kept private," said Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear. "It's important that a public official is able to have some kind of a private life, and that's why we have a policy not to discuss his private financial life."

Schwarzenegger's Gulfstream 400 plane emits as much as 4.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide per hour, according to the online luxury journal Helium Report, roughly the equivalent of what a small passenger car produces in one year over the course of 8,000 miles.

New York Times article excerpt:

[...]The Fiji Water Foundation, led by Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Fiji’s owners, has also pledged money to protect the Yaqara Valley watershed, the main source of Fiji Water, and to preserve the Sovi Basin, a vast lowland rainforest owned by native Fijians that is home to many plant and animal species.


The Yaqara is important to Fiji Water, but the Sovi Basin is important to all of Fiji,” said Glenn T. Prickett, a senior vice president of Conservation International, a nonprofit group that has been helping Fiji Water devise and carry out its programs. “The Fijians are poor people, and without this money, logging would be their only economic alternative”[...]

The question of who actually benefits from the carbon offsets; is something the displaced native landowners have to ask themselves.

Although, Conservation International Vice-President was correct in stating that most of Fiji's native inhabitants are poor. It is also worthwhile to pursue the parameters of that statement carefully because it infers erroneously that, Fiji Water's carbon trading plan will converted to cash and bundles will be handed out to "the people" as if it grew on trees. Whether it is the citizens of Fiji or the native owners of Yaqara; both segments should not bank their hopes or prayers on corporate trickle down economics.
How many native landowners or Fiji Citizens are part of this Fiji Water Foundation? Is the entity more of a convenient tax deduction vehicle; recognized by the IRS and not Fiji's Inland Revenue agency, because Fiji does not have double taxation agreements with the U.S Government according to a website that publishes an alphabetical list of countries that have maintained tax treaties with the US.

In fact, Fiji Water does not pay royalties(using volumetric standards) directly to any landowning unit. The ownership of Yaqara is also in question and appears to be one of those blotches on the conscious of Fiji Water and the Government.

The issue of ownership of Yaqara has been addressed by a post by S.i.F.M.



Seed Newsvine









Club Em Designs