Cemasys Facilitates Climate Park for the Fashion Industry
Mads Nørgaard is the first fashion house in the Nordics to establish a Climate Park in Myanmar, launching a new concept within climate compensation.
“The world must undergo a difficult and rapid change to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, and here the fashion industry has a great responsibility. Planting mangrove trees is a positive and simple tool to compensate for our CO2 emissions and one of several tools we, as a responsible fashion house, must use”. Foto: CEMAsys.com.
Annually, Mads Nørgaard compensates for their greenhouse gas emissions both from their own operations and from their value chain by purchasing official carbon credits. This year, for the first time, the fashion house is establishing a Climate Park in Myanmar, where they will plant five mangrove trees per tonne carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted. One mangrove tree can sequester one tonne CO2 over the course of 20 years, this means that Mads Nørgaard is laying the foundation for carbon dioxide sequestration five times their total annual emissions. The process has already started and by Autumn 2020 the planting of 20,000 mangrove trees will be completed.
Some climate experts believe that technological development is not enough to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and that the planting of trees to sequester CO2 will be an important contribution to the climate fight. Greta Thunberg and scientists point out that we do not have time to ignore the simplest solutions – which is to make the planet greener.
Climate Park Benefits
The restoration of destroyed mangrove forest has many positive impacts on the climate and the environment, as well as local socio-economic conditions. Some of these benefits are:
● Mangrove forests protect coastal areas, animals, humans, and property from extreme weather, such as cyclones.
● Mangrove roots filter contaminated water and protect sea grass and coral reefs.
● Mangrove forests increase seafood production by up to 50% and are important habitats that promote biological diversity of endangered animal and plant varieties.
● Planting mangrove forests create local jobs both directly through breeding and planting, but also indirectly by strengthening the local community.
● Planting new mangrove forests binds CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and thus contribute to reducing climate change. A new mangrove tree can bind approx. 1 tCO2 over a 20-year period.
● Mangrove trees bind up to 5 times more CO2 than other types of tree species.
Mads Nørgaard has entered into a collaboration with CEMAsys.com, who works closely with the Worldview International Foundation and Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park in Myanmar.
"We at Mads Nørgaard are proud to plant mangrove trees. Using nature's own mechanism to bind CO2 (photosynthesis) is a cheap and effective way to reduce CO2 from the atmosphere. We are proud to be able to contribute to such a great project. The world must undergo a hard and rapid change to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, and here the fashion industry has a great responsibility. In addition to the climate effect, the project provides work and income to the local population, better protection against floods/tsunamis, and restores the ecological balance in vulnerable coastal areas. This is a positive and simple tool to make up for its CO2 emissions and one of several tools we as a responsible fashion house must use " - Mads Nørgaard.
"A mangrove tree captures up to five times more CO2 greenhouse gases than other types of wood and stores CO2 permanently in the soil. This is the world's most cost-effective method. Since 2015, the Worldview International Foundation has planted 9 million trees on 20,000 acres. We work with local communities in the coastal areas to meet the UN's sustainability and climate goals. As a result, we now have access to plant on 500,000 acres. This corresponds to the capture and storage of 2.5 times more CO2 than annual Norwegian emissions. The collaboration with CEMAsys.com and others can make this possible. It's time for action!” - Dr. Arne Fjørtoft, Secretary General of the Worldview International Foundation.
The Project
Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park - Restoration of mangrove forest
The Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park project aims to restore and plant new mangrove trees in the Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar where only 16% of the former mangrove forest remains (NASA, 2013). The destruction of mangrove forests in tropical areas is an ecological crisis for the people who live there. From 2019 to 2023, the Thor Heyerdahl area will grow from 2,100 hectares to 75,000 hectares. The goal is to plant 300 million trees by 2023 that can potentially absorb up to 300 million tonnes of CO2.
The project supports the following UN Sustainable Development Goals:
