Carbon Neutral - Fundación Futuro

At Fundación Futuro we are convinced that climate change is a multiplier and catalyser of threats to life. This situation caused by unsustainable human actions is putting at risk all our achievements in conservation and human development in recent years. For this reason as a pragmatic response to the climate crisis, we ACT to tackle climate change…

Join us! We invite you to be part of this great initiative and take climate action now.

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We created a financial mechanism that allows us to offset the carbon emissions of our companies in the forests of the Andean Chocó bioregion in Pichincha Province and other areas of conservation interest, favoring the financial sustainability of these voluntary conservation efforts.

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With the funds generated, we conserve and connect forests to protect the habitat of different species and facilitate their migration and adaptation to climate change.

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In order to promote community resilience and the adaptive capacity of inhabitants of the surrounding lands, we articulate local processes of good governance, education, production and sustainable consumption that facilitate a harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature.

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Finally, we regard the work of creating awareness and acting collectively in cities as key, since citizens are, more often than not, responsible for the harmful impacts on the rural environment. We work to generate awareness in all our companies’ team members while generating value through regenerative practices in the business models of the companies.

Why do we join the fight against climate change from Ecuador?

In a global environment of shared concern for such an urgent problem, we consider it essential that the Grupo Futuro, through the Futuro Foundation, responds to this problem by taking advantage of Ecuador’s potential: its high biodiversity and its high carbon sequestration capacity.

Currently, climate change is the main threat to sustainable development. This phenomenon affects us all, all over the world and regardless of our level of “responsibility” in the problem. However, the impacts will be differentiated, being greater in the most vulnerable groups.
The Kyoto Protocol, ratified in 1997 by the international community, served to amplify and solidify the fight against climate change, and in 2015, the Paris Agreement built upon previous treaties, and for the first time brought all nations into the cause of combating climate change and supporting developing nations in doing so. The central goal of the agreement was to keep global temperature rise this century below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (1.5 degrees if possible), and to set up the framework for a low carbon future. Up until June 2018, 195 countries had signed the agreement. In this global climate of shared concern over this most urgent of problems, it was only reasonable that Fundación Futuro should join the fight.

Ecuador is the country with the highest capacity for the absorption of carbon.

Ecuador gets 12 hours of sunlight daily, and it does not have seasons in the sense that we understand them, only a dry season and rainy season.

As such, its plant life absorbs carbon all year-round. This is not the case in countries that have 4 seasons, where plants become dormant prior to the onset of winter in order to protect themselves, with the consequence that they are unable to absorb carbon several months out of the year. Because the Ecuadorian climate allows for the permanent absorption of carbon, an offsetting program is more efficient, and a better investment.

Ecuador is one of the countries with the highest biodiversity per square unit.

Ecuador is one of the megadiverse hotspots of the world, with a high concentration of wildlife in a relatively small space. According to Soto-Navarro C et al. (2020) the Andean moist forests are some of the main regions with the highest biodiversity value in the world.

Ecuador, this mountainous Andean nation, experiences a phenomenon called altitudinal zonation, or the natural layering of ecosystems that occurs at different elevations due to varying environmental conditions, in turn creating a microhabitat per layer. Each of these habitats is home to its own set of species, contributing to Ecuador´s biodiversity. This would explain why, although Ecuador is located at the same latitude as Congo (to give an example), the latter is not nearly as biodiverse, nor does it have the variety of microhabitats found in Ecuador.

This is key in the sequestering of carbon, as all species capture carbon, and it also means that instituting a carbon offsetting program in Ecuador automatically translates into protecting and promoting biodiversity, which in turn ensures that there will be a higher capacity for carbon absorption in the future, creating a virtuous cycle for the environment. By offsetting locally, we grant you the luxury of offsetting your carbon footprint in a rich, biodiverse forest rather than, for instance, a monoculture eucalyptus plantation. Martin PA et al. (2013) explain that “tropical forests contain between half and two-thirds of terrestrial global biodiversity, and approximately 37% of the global terrestrial carbon pool.” This is why we believe that an offsetting initiative should be done through forest conservation, a fact that is recognized within the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations’ REDD+ initiatives.

Fundación Futuro’s offsetting program is as much about people as it is about the environment.

Investing in our offsetting program means investing in biodiversity and conservation, but it also entails supporting the local communities of the Ecuadorian Chocó Bioregion. At Fundación Futuro, we recognize that carbon offsetting needs to go hand in hand with the propping up of local communities, so we are aligned within the Ecuadorian legal framework as well as that of the United Nations (REDD+ Ecuador) in the implementation of our program, which foresees a number of measures or “safeguards” to ensure that a program is carried out sustainably and inclusively.

Do you want to know more about our compensation program?

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