The Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) will help the organisations to measure, reduce and offset greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to achieve Carbon Neutral Tournament in 2022, a top official has said.
“We shall do this through a specific internationally accepted methodology using Global Carbon Trust (GCT), a voluntary ‘GHG Program’ initiative of GORD, which aims to contribute to a vision of sustainable and low-carbon economy and help organisations and people to preserve the environment and mitigate the impacts of climate change,” GORD’s Founding Chairman, Dr. Yousef Alhorr said.
“GORD will assist organisations to develop projects to measure and quantify GHG reductions of the projects in the MENA region. Upon successful certification by an internationally accredited third party-auditors confirming that GCT rules have been complied, the Steering Committee, a panel consisting of independent and international GHG experts, will issue carbon credits to the project. These carbon credits will be stored in the account of the project owner in the carbon credit bank, called as ‘GCT registry’, which is an electronic registry operated by ‘IHS Markit’, a leading US based international service provider. These carbon credits can be transferred to organisations to offset or neutralise carbon footprints of organisations or events or sporting tournaments,” he explained.
GCT provides opportunity to organisations in implementing greenhouse gas reduction projects and contributes to mitigation of climate change. It has developed stringent but simplified standards for the emission reduction calculations and monitoring of greenhouse gas reduction projects and measures by the organisations in the country and the region.
GORD supports and works with all local organisations by developing a methodology for carbon reduction. GORD will support organisations in their journey to achieve GHG reductions till the projects achieve success in certification of their emissions reductions, subsequently convincing GCT to issue carbon credits, intended for offsetting carbon footprints.
According to Dr Alhorr, GCT is the only voluntary GHG Program from the MENA region that has submitted a proposal for pre-qualification with United Nation’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), under their CORSIA Scheme, to support International Airlines to achieve Carbon Neutrality by offsetting their GHG emissions.
“GCT, the only programme from the MENA region to have submitted a pre-qualification proposal with ICAO, has been listed on the latter’s website,” he noted.
The Qatar Sustainability Summit taking place on October 27 and 28 will discuss more about the efforts for carbon neutrality and the areas for more collaboration. The summit has some of the leading international and regional experts discussing various topics related to it.
“The agenda for the summit is very diverse and will cover the built environment and sustainability, energy sector and carbon reduction, green transportation among others under the overarching themes related to sustainability policies. There will also be more collaborations and partnerships with local and international organisations. We will also sign several agreements with leading organisations for best green practices,” added Dr Alhorr.
