Cool Earth is the most cost-effective charity working on mitigating climate change

The World Health Organisation estimates that by 2030 an additional 250,000 people will die each year due to the effects of climate change, with people living in extreme poverty will be affected the most.

Giving What We Can chooses Cool Earth.

A leading charity advisor called Giving What We Can has done extensive research about how ordinary people can do their best to prevent those deaths. The answer they have come up with is to support Cool Earth.

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is a movement that tries to find the most effective charities in the world. They have assessed lots of organisations that claim to reduce emissions through avoided deforestation. And they’ve decided that the most cost-effective is Cool Earth.

Their modelling shows current emissions will increase human mortality by at least one death per 258,200 tonnes of CO₂e emitted. That’s equivalent to the amount of carbon stored in 1,000 acres of rainforest.

Put another way, by protecting a patch of rainforest just three times the size of Hyde Park, we can reduce enough carbon emissions to prevent a future death. Pretty impressive stuff.

A river winds through lush tropical rainforest in the Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Supporting Cool Earth also mitigates the devastating effect on biodiversity and the natural environment that deforestation has.

It prevents the local and immediate human cost of deforestation. The areas where Cool Earth’s partnerships are located have high infant mortality, low life expectancy, and extreme poverty. As well as lessening the impact of climate change, Cool Earth’s supporters are increasing income, improving health, and lessening inequality in vulnerable communities.

“Cool Earth is the most cost-effective charity we have identified to date which works on mitigating climate change through direct action, and also the overall most cost-effective climate change charity which can reliably reduce emissions without risk.”