The UN has promised it will try to be carbon neutral within a few years.

According to a Reuters report, it claims the UN hasn’t really set the example it perhaps should have.

“We are behind. We’re obviously not the first. We can make a difference with the quality of the carbon offsets we use,” Janos Pasztor, the U.N. official heading the programme, said in a telephone interview.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described plans to make all U.N. premises and operations “climate neutral” in a letter addressed to heads of U.N. agencies earlier this month.

“We could add additional sustainable development criteria, for example to focus on energy efficiency or on projects in Africa, instead of buying HFC carbon credits,” he said.

“For our carbon offsetting programme I would say that Kyoto carbon credits are an absolute minimum criteria.”

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