A report by the Rainforest Foundation UK, FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme calls for a shift away from only market-based approaches for the protection of tropical forests.
While carbon markets, offsets, or carbon trading may align well with general discourses of our time, there are doubts about their effectiveness both regarding raising sufficient funds, their inclusiveness and actual conservation impacts.
Carbon markets are often presented as an easy and efficient approach to raising money and directing it to most effective initiatives both when it comes to promoting forest conservation and carbon sequestrations.
Recently, doubts regarding these carbon markets increased, when information about accounting practices or human rights violations became available.
The report lists other, more general critical aspects about carbon markets, such as
Permanence: How is it guaranteed that the forest is preserved and sequesters carbon over a longer period of time?
Equivalence: Can greenhouse gases emitted through e.g. burning of fossil fuels (that had previously been in the Earth for thousands of years (near-permanent)) be considered equivalent to land-based reductions and removal activities that at best absorb greenhouse gases for some hundred years (non-permanent)?
Additionality: Did the mitigation activity only happen because of the incentivising carbon credit payment, or would it also have happened otherwise?
Carbon budget: As emissions need to decrease to as close to zero as possible, any ongoing emitting activity is problematic, regardless of whether it is offset or if credits are bought for it.
Justice dimension: carbon and biodiversity markets fail to recognise historical and present inequalities, such as e.g. who is mainly responsible for causing climate change and who suffers from consequences (or mitigation activities).
Volatility and falling prices of carbon credits
However, there are alternative approaches to be considered. For instance, the Paris Agreement includes a broad call for “integrated holistic and balanced non-market approaches”.
The report by RFUK, FERN and FPP emphasises particularly the importance of building partnerships with indigenous groups and local communities, empowering them as environmental stewards. Studies cited in the report show that giving those groups ownership titles to their land and a better recognition of collective land tenure systems is one of the best ways to prevent deforestation.
Currently, only a small proportion of funding from philanthropic or government pledges actually reaches indigenous communities. When looking for example at the money disbursed so far by the Forest Tenure Funders Group, which Norway is a part of, less than 1% went to indigenous-run and local organisations.
Proposed alternatives to carbon markets are e.g. payments for ecosystem services, where long-term financial support to communities helps them to halt deforestation and to achieve conservation. The money needed can be raised by redirecting harmful subsidies or installing more progressive tax regimes, such as taxes on windfall profits or by eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This can be combined with other several measures, such as debt cancellation.
This is not to make conservation even harder or complicated, but because the easy fix (in this case carbon markets) is often just not working. As the report states: “As market-based approaches falter, there is an opportunity to press for holistic solutions to climate, biodiversity and community needs”.
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