UN Climate Change News, Bonn, 25 January 2018 – After touring the UK earlier this month, Norwegian DJ and producer Matoma continues his “One in a Million” tour in the USA. Before taking to the road, Matoma and his team measured, reduced and overcompensated the carbon footprint of the tour, making it not only climate neutral but climate positive.

Due to transportation, energy use and participation of the public, large-scale events represent an important source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Global greenhouse emissions must peak soon, and the balance between the output of man-made greenhouse gases and absorption –  known as “climate neutrality” –  must be reached by the second half of this century for the international community to achieve the central goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, namely to limit global warming to well below 2°C and as close to 1.5°C as possible.

For this reason, Climate Neutral Now, an initiative of UN Climate Change, is helping event organizers to turn their projects into a climate neutral experience.

Matoma worked in collaboration with Norwegian company Chooose and the Climate Neutral Now initiative to make this possible.

"Since I started making music and putting on shows, all I ever wanted to do is spread the love and for people to come out and just have a great, positive time. Now making my concerts climate positive is a powerful way of taking this mission to the next level and raising awareness on an important issue”, said Matoma.

The process included:

• measuring greenhouse gas emissions linked to the crew’s travel and the participation of the public,
• reducing emissions as much as possible, by using optimized travel itineraries,
• compensating the remaining carbon footprint twice over using UN Certified Emission Reductions, with the purpose of creating a positive impact on climate.

 “We are thankful for Matoma’s commitment to raising awareness about the importance of climate action, and for his contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Following on his desire to help people feel happy, he now takes on ensuring the long-term well-being of our society by moving us closer to the climate neutral society that we need to avoid the worst impacts from climate change and support sustainable development,” said Niclas Svenningsen, who leads the Climate Neutral Now initiative of UN Climate Change.

For further information, please contact climateneutralnow@unfccc.int.