As expected, in South and Central America, the number of flights has considerably decreased since the meetings required for the merger into one Latin American team in 2018. However, a huge increase in flights has been recorded in West Africa and DR Congo due to programmes starting in new areas, and safety issues. Also, in Indonesia, the number of flights has strongly increased.
The 2018 carbon offsetting money was spent on a project in Benin, that was implemented in 2019. We supported farmers in further testing the standards of the Sustainable Rice Platform and promoting more ecological cooking stoves to process rice.
This year, we will allocate the carbon offsetting money to Rikolto’s Innovation Fund. Because of this new structure in our bookkeeping, the project that will be funded with the 2019 carbon offsetting money will be selected after the International Board meeting in November.
Besides offsetting, our main priority for the next few years is unchanged: to fully focus on high-quality, efficient ICT infrastructure to reduce physical meetings. The slow internet connections in some regions (especially in Africa) remain the biggest obstacle to effective communications, e.g. through videoconferences, but we gradually see connections improving.