Com­pen­sa­tion

The car­bon foot­print of an event should pri­mar­i­ly be reduced by mak­ing more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly choic­es than before. After you know your emis­sions and have checked all oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, you can com­pen­sate your emis­sions through a ser­vice of your lik­ing. Many events offer­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­grammes com­pen­sate their artists’ flights or car­goes, mean­ing that they buy cli­mate units for an amount cor­re­spond­ing the dam­age caused. When eco­log­i­cal dam­age is caused in one area, the aim is to com­pen­sate for it in anoth­er area. Com­pen­sa­tions are direct­ed to car­bon assim­i­la­tion, such as in plant­i­ng trees, pro­tect­ing wet­lands or oth­er nature sites.

Some domes­tic busi­ness­es offer­ing com­pen­sa­tion are for exam­ple Nordic Off­set, Green Car­bon and CO2Esto. Among inter­na­tion­al oper­a­tors offer­ing com­pen­sa­tion is for exam­ple My Cli­mate foun­da­tion. Read more on My Cli­mate web­site.

You can donate to the Finnish Nat­ur­al Her­itage Foun­da­tion and, for exam­ple, buy a piece of primeval for­est. Read more on the web­site by Finnish Nat­ur­al Her­itage Foun­da­tion.

Some­times an event com­pen­sates for emis­sions from its prof­its, some­times it turns to the vis­i­tors. In many events, already when pur­chas­ing the admis­sion tick­et the vis­i­tors can choose a small addi­tion­al fee for eco­log­i­cal com­pen­sa­tion, which the event then redi­rects to a tar­get of their choice. There are already a few car­bon-neu­tral events in Fin­land, and many events have declared that they strive for being car­bon-neu­tral dur­ing the 2020s, which is pos­si­ble pre­cise­ly by uti­liz­ing com­pen­sa­tion. Some events that have declared them­selves as car­bon-neu­tral are the Helsin­ki-based Flow Fes­ti­val and Provinssi in Seinäjo­ki. Both events have a long his­to­ry of enforc­ing envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty even before com­pen­sat­ing emis­sions.

A great local com­pen­sa­tion tar­get is Kesytön met­sä, found­ed by Oulu Urban Cul­ture. The cam­paign encour­ages cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions to par­tic­i­pate in estab­lish­ing a con­ser­va­tion area in North­ern Ostro­both­nia as a part of Oulu’s jour­ney in becom­ing the Euro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture 2026. Read more about the Kesytön met­sä cam­paign.

More Infor­ma­tion & Tips

You can read more about the leg­is­la­tion regard­ing eco­log­i­cal com­pen­sa­tion on the web­site of the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment.

If you want to ensure the reli­a­bil­i­ty of com­pen­sa­tion activ­i­ty, you can learn more by read­ing the Finnish Envi­ron­ment Institute’s info pack­age on com­pen­sat­ing emis­sions.