MENA region's first carbon offset start-up launches in Dubai, giving businesses the chance to become carbon positive

Dubai based start-up, Olive Gaea, the first carbon offset platform in the MENA region has just launched to offer businesses in the region the opportunity to become carbon neutral or even carbon positive by removing their own carbon emissions from the atmosphere in just a couple of clicks.

Olive Gaea calculates the carbon footprint of any individual or business through a simple, science-based questionnaire. It then provides dedicated plans and a list of carbon offsetting solutions and verified climate projects, even allowing customers to offset purchases made on e-commerce businesses including grocery orders, food and fuel delivery, and online stores, among others. The platform allows users to track progress and get rewarded driving more positive change through monthly and annual subscriptions.

Olive Gaea's Founder and CEO, Vivek Tripathi, pointed out, “We all share the responsibility to act in order to preserve our planet and, ultimately, our very future. The good news is that each one of us can now actually help solve this problem. Our goal is to make carbon offsetting affordable, helping everyone, anywhere, anytime to build a resilient climate future.”

Having the sixth largest per capita carbon footprint in the world, UAE residents and businesses will now be able to become carbon neutral. Olive Gaea only supports carbon offsetting projects that are handpicked and verified by third party agencies like Verra and Plan Vivo. The platform is also powered by precise geo-tagging and QR code tracking, so users can know the exact location and the impact they help to generate with new plantation projects in just a few clicks.

Olive Gaea's carbon offsetting is not about paying to eliminate a sense of guilt for excessive emissions or an unsustainable lifestyle. According to Vivek, offsetting carbon emissions must always go hand in hand with sustainable strategies that aim at reducing the environmental footprint in the first place. Yet, carbon credits are still needed to offset the remaining carbon emissions's balance.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries, including the UAE, have endorsed the global goal of limiting the rise in average temperatures to 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and ideally 1.5 degrees. To meet this target, global greenhouse-gas emissions should be cut by 50 percent of current levels by 2030 and reduced to net zero by 2050.

The UAE is one of the signatories of the Paris Agreement and has recently reaffirmed its goal to become a global leader in the green economy and address climate change. Having launched prominent strategic initiatives spanning from the National Agenda 2021 to the Energy Strategy 2050 and the Dubai 2040 Master plan, just to name a few, the country still faces an extremely high per capita carbon footprint.