The dark side of carbon credits
By Lola Ogunbambi, St Leonard's College
5 years ago, this speech would have been an attempt to convince you of the looming apocalypse that is climate disaster. I would have explained how greenhouse gasses work and the problems associated with deforestation. Urging you to act.
Thankfully, we now live in a very different world. Today, nearly everyone acknowledges the reality of climate change. We, as consumers and voters, have created a world in which corporations proudly claim to be 'net zero'.
This discourse is optimistic, we love hearing it. When I see energy, mining, and aviation companies making net zero commitments, I feel a sense of enthusiasm. Surely, if these sectors are acting on climate, we will all be ok.
That’s the narrative. But if I look at this with a critical eye, that optimism is replaced by an underlying sense of mistrust and dread. How can companies burning coal, extracting minerals from the earth, and pumping jet fuel into the atmosphere possibly be carbon neutral? Intuitively, I have a sense that we’re being deceived. And that is because we are.
Whilst some are taking baby steps toward climate action, too much of their carbon neutrality plans rely on carbon offsets—a problematic solution. Carbon credits essentially serve as 'permission slips' for emissions. Companies buy these credits to balance out their CO2 emissions by claiming that somewhere else, an equivalent amount of CO2 is captured or prevented from being released, resulting a ‘net zero’.
Three problems here: environmental effectiveness, the treatment of traditional landowners, and regulatory incompetence.
Firstly, effectiveness. Many carbon credits are rainforest conservation projects. Creditors claim that without their intervention, these forests would have been logged or harmed. However, the environmental impact of these projects is often exaggerated.
Most of these operate in the Brazilian Amazon. Many of the calculations for forest preservation are outdated as they were conducted under the leadership of President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate villain, who supported logging and turning the Amazon into farmland. Carbon creditors were then working against the Bolsonaro administration. But now, the new government led by Lulu de Silva is actively protecting the rainforests, rendering the carbon creditor’s conservation efforts obsolete. Yet they still profit, as carbon offset companies have not updated their calculations, so they continue to claim ‘conservation’ that would have happened anyway.
Carbon creditors exaggerating their environmental impact is a major obstacle to genuine climate action. But this issue with transparency is much more insidious. A recent ABC four corners investigation revealed logging operations taking place within protected zones. It is deceitful to say that you are protecting forest whilst concealing the fact that logging operations are occurring.
So, whilst carbon credits and offsets can be environmentally beneficial, deceit undermines their effectiveness as tools for genuine climate action.
Secondly, the treatment of traditional landowners by carbon creditors is disgraceful, perpetuating a new form of carbon colonialism.
In Alto Mayo, Peru, people who have lived on and farmed the land for generations have been forcibly removed by park guards funded by conservation companies, losing their homes and livelihoods. This story is all to familliar from Uganda to Bangladesh, people’s lives are being ruined so that western corparations can earn what is – a green star.
In Papua New Guinea a carbon credit company, promised to pay traditional landowners for using their land. Yet despite making millions of dollars, traditional landowners’ community have only received pocket change. Let me be plain, they’re being taken advantage of and ripped off.
Thirdly, regulatory incompetence. The Australian regulatory body, Climate Active is often jokingly referred to as Climate Passive. Globally, carbon credits are regulated by the NGO Verra, but they are limited by a reliance on third-party auditors. A Guardian investigation revealed that 90% of the carbon offsets verified by Verra did not reduce deforestation.
The reality is, that Carbon offsets are one of the easiest ways to tackle climate change. They really do offer positive environmental impacts- Sometimes. What we need to do is make that always. And ensure that traditional landowners aren’t being taken advantage of in the process.
This can be done in two ways. We must better regulate carbon credits and offsets, and we need to generally, reduce our reliance on them.
As voters must call on the government to make climate active the robust regulatory body that their name implies. The body must be assertive in their judgment of effectiveness of carbon credits, and their impacts on traditional landowners.
Nevertheless, we are relying on carbon credits too much. Legislation should prioritize reducing gross carbon output, not just net carbon. We can no longer depend on the shallow solution of carbon credits and must seek new, genuine, and creative approaches. And I know that we can.