Are Carbon Credits a Cure for Saving the Planet, or “Market Fetishism”?
Foodthink’s Note
The logic sounds elegant. But in MIT Technology Review‘s list of the eight biggest tech failures of 2024, the voluntary carbon market featured prominently. The “net zero emissions” myths manufactured by countless projects are unravelling into one scandal after another.
According to a report by The Conversation, of the 37 rice-based emission-reduction projects revoked in China in August this year, at least more than half were “ghost rice projects” that were never actually implemented—yet the bogus carbon credits they generated had already been partly used by major corporations for carbon offsetting.
When carbon markets become a profit machine for “dual-carbon” enterprises, when companies under pressure to cut emissions buy these hollow “indulgences” and pollute with a clear conscience, and global emissions rise instead of fall—who bears the consequences?
At the root of it all, can humanity use the tools of capitalism to tackle a crisis that capitalism itself created?
This article takes the plight of a community forest in Cambodia as its starting point, presenting the diverse perspectives and debates on carbon credits among community members, conservation organisations, and scholars. The original article was first published on Mongabay on 5 January 2024 under the title “Can Carbon Credits Really Help Communities Protect Their Forests?” Foodthink translated the article with the author’s permission.
At dawn, the calls of red-cheeked gibbons pierce the silence of the forest canopy. By daytime, the buzzing of male cicadas and the wing-beating of females weave into a deafening roar. None of these sounds would be found on land where the forest has been felled.
For the Bunong people, of whom Langheng is a part, this forest supplies not only fruit, honey, mushrooms, medicine and resin, but also a measure of income. It is also home to sacred Bunong sites.
Langheng and the other villagers of Plong Village spent years working for this 2,282-hectare “sea of forest”, and in 2016 they finally secured its official recognition as Ngleav Krach Community Forest. Beside a road built in 2012, Langheng points proudly on a topographic map to the boundaries of the 2,282-hectare “sea of forest”. The designation means the land is to be permanently protected and enjoys official backing from the Cambodian government.
Yet when Langheng speaks of the threats now facing the forest she loves so deeply, tears slide down her face. For years there have been rumours that 650 hectares within this forest will be cleared to make way for 230 families and a new settlement. Then, in early April last year, the sound of chainsaws did break out.
To avoid being spotted by the villagers of Plong Village, the loggers mostly work in secret under cover of darkness. Plong Village opposes their destruction of the forest. The cleared land bears blackened, scorched marks—the result of the loggers trying to burn the felled trees and undergrowth.
“I just want to die. I am so disillusioned with all of this,” Langheng says. “I grieve for the forest I have lost and for the wild animals.”
She says she has raised protests about the matter with Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Land Management, Ministry of Agriculture, and Ministry of the Interior, as well as the Anti-Corruption Unit, and has even travelled to Phnom Penh to appeal to government officials. But she has received almost no support and has been accused of “opposing development”—she was even briefly arrested. (When Mongabay interviewed her in April last year, she reported that she had been released on bail.)
Langheng says she had heard of a forest-protection initiative to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries called REDD+, and learned that communities near Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri Province were benefiting from it. The sanctuary is not far from her roadside café, which she rents out on Airbnb, or her traditional thatched-roof Bunong house.
REDD+ could not only convert the carbon stored in Bunong community forests into ongoing protection of the land, but also fund local education, healthcare and employment. Langheng says she does not fully understand how REDD+ works, but the idea interests her.
“Our education level is not high, so the land and the forest … are the source of income for our indigenous community,” she says.
Research shows that, despite widespread poverty, indigenous peoples and local communities like Langheng’s hold the key to living in sustainable coexistence with forests. Their stewardship often maintains—or even enhances—the climate benefits forests provide, let alone the other ecosystem services and biodiversity habitats that healthy forests sustain.
According to World Bank data, lands owned by indigenous peoples around the world harbour 80 per cent of global biodiversity. A 2018 report by the global coalition Rights and Resources Initiative further found that these lands store nearly one-fifth of the world’s forest carbon. Yet in many parts of the world, including Cambodia, indigenous land rights remain very weak, even where they are formally recognised in law.
REDD+ works by supporting community-managed forest stewardship in the face of logging and agricultural encroachment. The carbon emissions that are reduced can then be sold externally as carbon credits, with some of the proceeds earmarked to fund forest conservation.
Yet this approach has proved highly contentious. Investigations and research have shown that many projects may deliver fewer climate benefits than claimed. In the pursuit of profits from carbon trading, some community members have been forced off their land, and in other cases project staff have faced accusations of abuse of power. These issues have prompted calls for reform of REDD+ and the voluntary carbon trade, with some even suggesting that REDD+ be scrapped altogether.
I. Rewarding Forest Guardians
Yet for people like Langheng who live close to the forest and hope for support, it remains unclear which communities and forests qualify for REDD+. Project managers working with REDD+ also concede that a focus on areas under urgent threat means not everyone can be helped.
Around the world, leaders of indigenous peoples and local communities have spoken out in support of REDD+. In May, a coalition of international indigenous organisations publicly endorsed the initiative. They argued that while REDD+ is far from perfect, it recognises the efforts communities make to protect their forests and provides funding for those efforts—safeguarding not only their culture and traditions but also supporting economic development.
“We believe the carbon market is an important tool, but it needs to be redesigned,” Levi Sukre Romero, a Bribri indigenous leader from Costa Rica and coordinator of the Alliance of Central American Peoples and Forests, told reporters at the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference. “We need to refocus the carbon market on a foundation of respect for indigenous rights, and open up a more transparent dialogue with carbon credit buyers.”
“REDD+ provides communities with the tools to continue protecting their forests,” said Jerman Kage Sadojeka, a Datooga and project manager of REDD+ in Yaeda Village in northern Tanzania. Before the village partnered with the UK-based social enterprise Carbon Tanzania, his home village had been struggling with a surge of outsiders who had no deep bond with the land.
“Indigenous peoples really are the guardians of their own village forests—guardians who have protected these forests for centuries,” Sadojeka said. With the project’s support, community members in Yaeda Village received legal recognition of their customary occupancy rights. “This has helped the community strengthen its protection of the land and the forest, and in turn safeguarded villagers’ livelihoods,” he added.
From 2012, as part of a REDD+ programme led by the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bunong communities living around Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary became among the first in Cambodia to receive collective land titles under the country’s 2001 Land Law.
Experts say these land rights are essential not only for protecting the forests of Keo Seima and other areas, but also for carbon storage and biodiversity conservation. Projects in Tanzania and Cambodia have also provided support for education, healthcare and employment.
“We are deeply grateful that the world is beginning to recognise and acknowledge the contributions of local communities and indigenous peoples,” Sadojeka said.
Yet many indigenous leaders say that, despite this recognition, they still feel their voices are not being heard. They want a say in which forms of support are most useful for their communities and how funding should be distributed.
“We absolutely need to push forward with climate solutions,” said Debora Sanchez, a member of the Miskitu indigenous community in Honduras and the organisation’s coordinator for forests, climate and biodiversity in the Alliance of Central American Peoples and Forests, which signed the May 2023 open letter on REDD+. “But at the same time, we need to push for those solutions to respect the rights of the people who live on this land and in these forests.”
Other rights advocates have echoed similar concerns. To some degree, the world depends on these communities to sustain the last remaining terrestrial carbon sinks so that people in wealthier regions can carry on with their high-emission lifestyles. These projects, they argue, can in effect be viewed as a form of “carbon colonialism.”
II. Communities Face the Challenge of “Carbon Cowboys”
Mongabay first reported in November 2021 on an agreement to monetise forest carbon and other ecosystem services in Sabah, Malaysia. The deal was brokered and signed behind closed doors by several state leaders and company representatives from Australia and Singapore, involving rights over roughly 2 million hectares of natural capital.
The agreement covers more than a quarter of the state’s land area, yet Peter Burgess, CEO of Terra Australia—one of the companies involved—told an interviewer that most of the state’s indigenous people were unaware their forests had been set aside for protection.
The deal provoked outrage among indigenous and human rights organisations in Sabah and beyond. Local groups said they could have supported a more transparent and inclusive approach to marketing these ecosystem services in order to drive sustainable economic development in the state. Yet many observers saw the agreement as little more than a land grab designed to enrich a select few. Although the deal’s proponents have still failed to clarify its key terms, more than two years after it was signed it continues to advance.
Elsewhere too, engagement with local communities has lacked the depth needed to fully communicate the potential impact of such agreements, which may endure for a century or longer. In Congo, an Indian company called KMS, despite having no experience in carbon markets or REDD+, began seeking local communities’ permission to commercialise forest carbon credits at the end of 2021.
Mongabay’s reporting revealed that KMS quickly gathered residents’ consent forms, completing the discussion in a mere 35 minutes. KMS also obtained carbon rights in Papua New Guinea, home to the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest. Mongabay has put repeated questions to KMS since May 2022, but the company has yet to address specific concerns about the projects.
Driven by fears of losing land rights, the indigenous-led Alliance for the Path of Change and Transformation has called for a moratorium on land-based carbon credit trading.
Critics of REDD+ and the voluntary carbon market say a lack of consideration for indigenous peoples and local communities is a fundamental problem, meaning their representatives have been left out of project planning from the very beginning.
“In many cases, it is plain that indigenous peoples and local communities are not treated as equal partners,” said Catherine Lough, a senior researcher on human rights and climate change at McGill University in Canada, at a panel discussion in September. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires states to consult and co-operate with indigenous peoples before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them, and to ensure their right to free, prior and informed consent.
“The real challenge is that these communities and peoples must not only be heard as a matter of law, but genuinely taken into account—this is where ‘free, prior and informed consent’ comes into play,” said Marco Aurelio Chávez Coyoy, legal coordinator for Guatemala’s Community Forests Association (Utz Che’) and a member of the Maya K’iche’ community, at the same panel.
Indigenous and local community leaders have also argued that they deserve more funding to support their efforts. According to a 2021 report by Rainforest Foundation Norway, less than 1 per cent of climate-related aid goes towards indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land and rights issues. Even where efforts have been made to channel funds towards these groups, they have fallen far short of expectations.
The slow arrival of promised money and mounting frustration have driven indigenous groups to set up their own funds, such as the Nusantara Fund in Indonesia and the Central American Territorial Fund covering Mexico and Central America. These direct donors’ money to community-led climate action and conservation work.
Josh Tosteson, president of Everland, a REDD+ project marketing firm, believes that finding the right way to support these groups is the key to progress.
“Of course, the most important part of REDD+ is the on-the-ground work of transformation. This is work carried out by communities and other stakeholders together—a process of intervening in the systems that drive deforestation and shifting their dynamics, working alongside those very communities,” he says. “The vast majority of the money must flow to the stakeholders who can shape the future of the forests. That is where the key lies.”
III. What Counts as “Additionality”?
To qualify for a REDD+ project and secure follow-on funding through carbon credits, project developers must demonstrate that the project genuinely reduces emissions. In other words, they need to prove that those reductions would not have happened without the project. This additionality is increasingly regarded as a component of carbon credit integrity—credits are supposed to represent real progress in climate change mitigation.
Tosteson says that tools like REDD+ are designed to protect forests facing urgent threats.
“REDD+ is an emergency intervention. When you encounter a problem, you intervene through REDD+ and use its ‘prescription’,” Tosteson added. “For forests that do not face severe threats, REDD+ mechanisms actually cannot provide appropriate support.”
Forests and communities not under threat should therefore be excluded. Not everyone agrees.
“It is completely unjust. Their way of life is highly sustainable, and yet they are penalised for it,” said Samuel Njifor, director of the Centre for Environment and Development, a Cameroonian NGO, and author of the Alliance for the Path of Change and Transformation’s position paper.
Tosteson agreed that indigenous peoples and local communities who have protected their forests should receive support and compensation. “Their forests are not under threat because they are wise guardians,” he said.
Tosteson pointed to the Forest Peoples Partnership which, like the Nusantara Fund and the Central American Territorial Fund, aims to direct more funding towards indigenous and local communities while ensuring their participation in decision-making.
More broadly, being shut out could cause affected communities to lose trust in the entire process, said Frances Seymour, a former senior fellow at the World Resources Institute: “I worry that some people who are very deliberately upholding the environmental integrity of carbon markets may have forgotten that the real purpose of carbon markets is climate protection.” She now works at the Office of the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, though her views do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government or the Office.
“When indigenous people are risking their lives on the front line to defend their territories from illegal loggers, saying that does not meet the bar for additionality is an insult to those who put their lives on the line,” Seymour added. She has also served as chair of the board of directors of Verra, the organisation that operates the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).
At the national level, Guyana and Gabon are considered “High Forest Cover, Low Deforestation” (HFLD) countries. Although many factors have enabled these nations to retain vast tracts of forest, observers believe that one reason their forests remain relatively healthy is government intervention policies.
“If the rules governing carbon markets exclude indigenous peoples or examples like Guyana and Gabon—where governments have taken active steps to protect forests—and those rules ultimately lead to the loss of these forests, that is unreasonable,” Seymour said.
Some climate experts argue that the $750 million in carbon credits issued by Verra for Guyana does not represent the full climate benefits claimed, as it includes forests that do not face a severe threat of deforestation.
But Seymour said it is nearly impossible to predict accurately where the next forest under severe threat of deforestation will be.
“The pressure is relentless,” Seymour said. “We are already seeing deforestation rates in ‘High Forest Cover, Low Deforestation’ regions surge sharply.”
In addition to its conventional categories for carbon removal and emissions reduction, Verra has created a special category of Verified Carbon Standard credits for HFLD regions.
Sanchez likewise believes the debate over “additionality” is too short-sighted, as it overemphasises the sale of more carbon credits by proving a threat of deforestation.
“When we look at the map, the only forests that truly exist are the ones we live in, the ones we guard, and the ones we call home,” she said. “It is not always about carbon—it is about people and climate justice.”
In the past, outsiders came to the community in Sanchez’s hometown in Honduras and accused her father of being lazy because he had not cleared the forest, meaning he could neither raise cattle nor grow rich.
But her family, she said, valued the forest far beyond what livestock could provide. They used timber to build houses and canoes, gathered medicinal plants from the forest, and fished in the rivers and streams.
The Sanchez family’s experience reflects a fundamental difference in how many indigenous and local communities see forests. Compensation, she said, should go directly to those on the front line—exactly where Tosteson says the “work of transformation” takes place.
For some, REDD+ and the voluntary carbon market appear to offer a viable route towards that goal. But Sanchez pointed out that the value of healthy forests extends far beyond what these markets can capture. This is why the world is beginning to value indigenous conservation approaches as part of the response to the climate and biodiversity crises. These approaches are highly effective, she added, but in her view the designers of these projects have yet to fully grasp that.
“The Global North must learn to see the world the way we see it, just as we are learning to see it the way they do,” Sanchez said.
– Click here to read the original article–
Translation: Kairui
Editor: Yuyang