CARBON OFFSETTING AND REDD+ DECONSTRUCTED - 2. CORE ISSUES WITH REDD+

Summary

Encouraged by extravagant involved and the potential for effective claims about the climate mitigation potential ownership of forest lands (or at least the of REDD+ and other so-called nature-based ‘assets’ they contain) to be alienated to solutions, demand for land and carbon rights distant owners, financiers and markets. [...] determined by a mass of complex factors, However, there are signs that the combination including development and economic of market-based REDD+ projects and national policies, commodity prices and speculation, REDD+ schemes within the UN Framework demographics, infrastructure, conflicts could result in a major and long-lasting price and climate change itself. [...] For example, determination of additionality and baselines the price of voluntary carbon crashed to below for REDD+ projects extremely unreliable: did USD2 per tonne in 2022 due to an oversupply the project really introduce something that of credits and media revelations about project would not have happened anyway? What over-crediting and widespread failure to would have happened without the proje. [...] One of the key differences between biodiversity and carbon markets is that for the latter, there is a readily identifiable unit of trade – a ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent – whereas for biodiversity there is not and cannot be a single unit. [...] ALTERNATIVES TO CARBON AND BIODIVERSITY OFFSETS Considering the above and other issues there is very little evidence that REDD+, in its current form, has led to meaningful reductions in deforestation and degradation, much less of global carbon emissions, or that it has significantly contributed to the development of forest peoples.