LHLThe Luxury Hospitality LibraryOn the record
Part X — Satellite Houses/LHL-S-274
LHL-S-274

Soneva Foundation

GROUP XIX · CONSERVATION TRUSTS & PROTECTED HOUSES
Active record
Trust deed30 July 2010
JurisdictionUnited Kingdom
AnchorLHL-124 Soneva
FoundersSonu and Eva Shivdasani · LHL-P-017 Sonu & Eva Malmström Shivdasani (pair)
StatusActive record · August 2026

1 · Position

Its purposes as filed are the conservation and improvement of the physical and natural environment, particularly through clean-energy projects, together with the relief of poverty, the advancement of education and the relief of sickness. In practice its two best-known programmes are a Gold Standard carbon project in Myanmar and a coral restoration programme in the Maldives.

2 · Why it is in the Library

The financing is the authorship. Soneva levies a mandatory carbon charge on its own room revenue and routes it to the foundation, which then applies impact-investment principles so that funds can be recovered through carbon finance and reinvested. A hotel taxing itself, at a rate it sets and cannot quietly drop, is a different instrument from a donation box.

3 · Candour

Carbon offsetting as a mechanism is contested, and a levy set by the company that pays it can be revised by that company. The Library records the structure and the trust deed date, both verifiable; it does not assess the offset claims, which are outside what a hospitality register can competently judge.