Hello and welcome to Spectator Radio. I'm Kate Andrews. Today we're bringing you a podcast

on nature-based solutions to climate change, kindly sponsored by Shell. We're recording in the wake of COVID-19,

which has shut down almost

all normal policy discussion and has changed our habits and working routines completely.

Today's guests are all down the line and properly socially distancing, but we decided to

press ahead with the podcast because while COVID-19 is without question the only topic on the agenda right now,

when things do get back to some form of normal, and eventually they will,

we have no doubt that green energy and the target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will be back at the top of the government's agenda.

And while we don't know the pathway for how we'll get there yet, we do know all options

are being left on the table. That includes carbon offsetting, schemes that compensate for the

emissions we put out by making up for them elsewhere. Included in those schemes are nature-based

solutions, which are initiatives designed to protect, transform, or restore land.

Offsetting has been in the news agenda already this year, as celebrities jetted across the

world to go to climate change conferences and claim they were doing so in an environmentally

friendly way by paying to offset those emissions somewhere else.

But do offsetting schemes work? How can we properly measure their success?

And do they come at a cost of further polluting the planet? To discuss all this and more,

I'm joined today by Robert Quartz, MP for Whitney, and previously PPS to the Department for Environment,

Food and Rural Affairs, Tony Juniper, Chairman of Natural England,

and Harvon Yap, Global Origination Lead for Environmental Products at Shell.

So, Tony, can you tell our listeners quite simply what carbon offsetting is,

and talk us through the different types of offsetting, both for companies and for individuals.

...