By curating the very best environmental projects the world has to offer, Eden Greenspace aims to restore trust in funding the restoration projects that we cannot afford to ignore, maximise the potential that every pound of private finance has to address these crucial issues, and do so without absolving ourselves of responsibility for past failings. These are our core principles, our Principles of Governance.
When it comes to environmental finance, there is an unavoidable problem: no individual can watch every tree being planted or every piece of ocean plastic being collected. Nor can they calculate and measure every gram of carbon being drawn down by every inch of peatland or forest or coral reef. In their essence, environmental projects are complex, highly varied and take place across the world in a host of different ecosystems, and we cannot independently justify all our beliefs about them, just as we cannot independently justify our belief in climate change or environmental degradation.
Instead, we must rely on the evidence and research of others, and our own ability to infer the truth. This problem, known as the problem of epistemic dependence, is pervasive throughout many commonly held beliefs. Yet there are few examples where it is more pertinent than our beliefs about environmental projects and their efficacy. This is no surprise, when recent greenwashing scandals have eroded our trust again and again. No one wants to fund a project which they cannot trust, but it is incredibly difficult to be completely certain that a project is doing what it says it does.
As a curation platform, Eden Greenspace aims to restore this trust, by investigating and monitoring the efficacy of projects on behalf of others. This trust directly depends on the strength of the principles and practices we employ to carry out our work. The following Methodology sets out those principles. In particular, three core topics need to be covered.
Firstly, a methodology must explain the principles and means by which it identifies credible and effective environmental projects.
Secondly, it must explain the necessary criteria which donors must meet in order to fund those projects.
Thirdly, it must explain the ways in which it funds and monitors the environmental impacts created by the projects. In Eden’s view, only once these questions are answered can we expect others to place their trust in us, and by extension, in environmental projects more generally.
It is important to remember the overarching reason why it matters for us to have trust in environmental projects at all. Namely, because our planet is under threat. By the latest IPCC estimates, we are on track to surpass 2°C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, the direct result of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and the degradation of our natural carbon sinks. Although awareness of the climate and nature crises has never been higher, human civilisation is falling vastly short of meeting the required targets with respect to global carbon emissions, biodiversity loss and global pollution. We also know that merely cutting carbon emissions will be insufficient to address the climate crisis. Instead, in order to limit warming to 1.5°C, halt biodiversity loss and promote sustainable consumption, humanity must rapidly take action to simultaneously decarbonise, stop polluting, increase biodiversity and restore our natural carbon sinks. We need to restore our planet, and this requires vast amounts of funding to be channelled into effective environmental projects across the world. There’s no time to waste.
Principles of Governance
Eden’s methodology is the direct result of our core values as a social enterprise and non-profit. Everything we do stems from these core beliefs. Together, they form a necessary moral basis for being anti-greenwashing.
Trust and Transparency
Our work aims to channel funding to environmental projects that can be 100% trusted to do what they say they do. This requires trust in the project itself as well as trust in our oversight of the project’s work.
Effective and Holistic
A project cannot just be trustworthy, it must also be effective. And the most effective kind of funding is holistic – funding whose impacts are spread across a range of projects, addressing a range of environmental issues (climate, nature, pollution etc) simultaneously.
Anti-Offsetting
While we strongly support the funding of climate projects, we are strongly against schemes which allow companies to shrug off responsibility for their environmental harms. ‘Carbon neutral’ or ‘carbon offsetting’ claims, for example, can distract and delay internal decarbonisation efforts, and can therefore be greenwashing: https://edengreenspace.co.uk/articles/anti-greenwashing-methodology