CharitiesCool Earth
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Cool Earth aims to fight global warming through fighting deforestation in the rainforest.

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Addressing climate change

Cool Earth aims to reduce the impacts of climate change by combating deforestation in a variety of rainforest locations — including the Ashaninka and Awajun Projects in Peru, the Lubutu project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Orangerie Bay Project in Papua New Guinea, the Awacachi Project in Ecuador (completed), and the Madeira Project in Brazil (completed). 

Cool Earth does not buy rainforest directly, but rather establishes sustainable agreements with local communities to ensure that local communities opt not to sell the nearby forest to loggers. These agreements aim to improve the lives of these communities to the point where they can withstand pressure to sell to loggers, and are based on the needs and specific requests of the community. They have previously involved support for local industries such as cacao and coffee, technical assistance, funding for local schools, provision of boats for emergency health evacuations, and targeted maternal healthcare. Based on this, Cool Earth’s work also contributes to economic empowerment at a community level.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of Cool Earth?1.

We don't currently have further information about the cost-effectiveness of Cool Earth beyond it doing work in a high-impact cause area and taking a reasonably promising approach.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.

We have varying degrees of information about the cost-effectiveness of our supported programs. We have more information about programs that impact-focused evaluators (some of which our research team expects to investigate soon as part of their evaluator investigations) have looked into, as well as programs that we’ve previously included on our list of recommended charities. We think it’s important to share the information we have with donors as we expect it will be useful in their donation decisions, but don’t want donors to mistakenly overweight the extent to which we share information about some charities and not others. Therefore, we want to clarify two things:

  • When we include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this may not be the only evidence that exists. It is simply the evidence the GWWC research team has at this time.
  • When we don’t include information about an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, this does not necessarily mean there is no such information. However, it does mean the GWWC research team isn’t privy to any more information at this time.