Met with a member of cohort 1, a small estate agency in Halesworth. Interesting to tease out business drivers for change which included an oligopolistic market structure i.e. competition amongst the few. If they become carbon neutral territory then other agencies may follow suit which whilst negating the benefits would also make it hard to stop courtesy of a kinked demand curve.
Really interesting meeting with John Burton, Roger Wilson and Neil Williams at World Land Trust (WLT), a leading conservation agency based just down the road in Halesworth, Suffolk. Initially sceptical, they eventually seemed to come round to the idea of a crowd-sourced, long-tailed technology-supported method to help small organisations reduce carbon emissions and/or balance them with their land purchase schemes. The latter are largely in highly vulnerable forests overseas and they put compelling arguments why these are better than investing locally in Suffolk, i.e. significantly cheaper and far better value in terms of bio diversity.
What was interesting (and surprising)was the pragmatic approach that offsetting / balancing was acceptable for assuaging guilt as opposed to rewarding behavioural change. They were also happy with limited levels of offsetting with limited accuracy providing there was a safety zone.
