Our new study shows how REDD+, offsets, & the voluntary carbon market are failing
Kathleen Mcafee
Released Sept. 15, the report is already getting press.
About a quarter of all traded carbon credits have been based on REDD+ projects, most of them generated by the private company, Verra. Our study compares Verra’s data to published scientific literature and our own quantitative analysis and case-study research. We demonstrate that “current REDD+ methodologies generate credits that represent a small fraction of their claimed climate benefit" (p 1), while shifting the burden of climate-change mitigation onto rural communities and indigenous peoples.
While our core technical results focus on Verra’s carbon-crediting methodologies, our findings are germane to all land-based offsetting schemes, including jurisdictional REDD+. They cast doubt on offsetting and market-based management – selling nature to save it – more broadly. While other studies have shown that REDD+ and similar “nature-based” climate solutions commonly overestimate their impact manyfold, this study is wider in scope.
The authors include social scientists who consider the historical context in which carbon trading has evolved. The report discusses how REDD+, the flagship international conservation scheme, has failed to slow deforestation, and why most REDD+ projects are designed to change the behavior of the poor rather than to challenge the politically and economically powerful extractive industries that drive forest destruction. It describes how conflicts of interests in the self-regulating voluntary carbon market produce false claims of success, and how a race to the bottom in the offset industry is creating a flood of worthless credits.
As a lead coauthor, I'd be happy to talk or correspond about our analysis, especially as it pertains to the rationales this 'market-based management' approach and the development and global-justice dimensions of offsetting and REDD+.
Kathy
Kathleen McAfee
Professor Emer., San Francisco State University
New Study: Why REDD+ carbon offsets are failing