Carbon offsetting

How effective is carbon offsetting?

Carbon offsets give fake solace to those wanting easy answers to the climate crisis.

The idea that one entity can continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere because they pay someone else to do the opposite, diverts us from efforts to end our fossil fuel dependence – meaning more of the floods, wildfires and heatwaves we are already experiencing due to climate chaos.

What is the problem with forest carbon offsets?

Land-based offsetting schemes – where polluters claim their fossil fuel emissions have been nullified because they’ve paid for carbon to be temporarily locked in trees or land – are innately flawed.

This has been proven by recent studies which show that most forests offset schemes don’t help forests or the climate.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years, and intensify the present climate emergency. In contrast, emissions removed by forests are only stored for decades. In many cases, as one scandal after another has revealed, emissions are not removed at all. At the heart of these schemes is the promise that vast amounts of carbon dioxide will be drawn from the atmosphere in the future – ignoring the variables and uncertainties that await us.

One investigation found that 90 per cent of the rainforest protection schemes approved by Verra, the world’s largest carbon offsets standards agency, were “worthless” from a climate perspective. The researchers found evidence that deforestation had been reduced only in a minority of the company’s rainforest projects.

What’s more, such schemes often threaten the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous and other local communities living in the project areas.

What is the EU doing on offsetting?

Despite the growing evidence of the damage wrought by forest offsets, the EU is considering to boost the trade in them.

To achieve its target of climate neutrality by 2050, the EU has proposed a Carbon Removal Certification (CRCF) law. It aims to establish new standards for calculating carbon dioxide removals from forests, farms or still undeveloped industrial carbon capture projects.

Giving an EU stamp of approval to those trying to use forests to offset their emissions is laden with dangers and a reversal of the foresight shown when the EU excluded forest offsets from its Emissions Trading System (ETS), because of concerns over abuses.

What is the solution?

The EU must not give a new lease of life to a failed climate solution.

They must focus instead on supporting Member States to drastically reduce their emissions, while financially supporting countries and local communities to protect their forests.

Instead of letting the major polluting governments and corporations who threaten present and future generations’ security off the hook, the EU must promote transformative land-use practices, such as clarifying land tenure and using close-to-nature forestry (CNF) methods.

What Fern and partners work on

Civil society assessments of the social and environmental risks of carbon offsetting, including those posed by the EU’s CRCF law, are essential.

Fern and our partners highlight the dangers of using forests for offsets, including the scramble for Africa’s forests by a company from the United Arab Emirates, which has struck deals with African governments to acquire huge swathes of land.

We also work on alternative solutions. This includes supporting foresters and local communities to take lasting steps to protect forests and biodiversity.

What has been achieved so far

Since Fern was founded in 1995, we have been a leading voice highlighting the damage caused by including forests in carbon markets. We were instrumental in preventing forest carbon offsets from being included in ETS. We also successfully promoted a separate target for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector to incentivise the sustainable removal of carbon dioxide from land and forests. All our work focusses on ensuing respect for the many incredible roles forests play for wildlife and communities, even when it is more technical issues such as improved accounting rules and negotiations around practical policy tools to increase forest restoration and reduce the drivers of forest loss.

What are the next steps?

Fern will advocate for effective alternatives to forest offsetting. This will require Member State financial support for forest restoration activities and the promotion of resilient and sustainable forest management practices.