Skip to content
Menu
REDD-Monitor
  • Start here
  • About REDD-Monitor
  • REDD: An introduction
  • Contact
REDD-Monitor

Greenpeace slams California’s REDD plans: The fallacy of forest ‘offsets’

Posted on 25 July 20146 November 2015
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

“If protecting trees in Mexico so that companies can pollute more here sounds dubious, that’s because it is.” Amy Moas, Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace, wrote these words in a recent op-ed published in the California newspaper, Capitol Weekly.

The debate about whether California should include forest offsets in its cap-and-trade programme has been running for the past three years and has occasionally become heated. In 2012, Greenpeace put out a report titled “Outsourcing Hot Air”, that critiqued the idea of allowing REDD offsets to allow pollution in California to continue.

The article from Capitol Weekly is posted here in full, with permission.

    The fallacy of forest ‘offsets’

     
    By Amy Moas, Capitol Weekly, 17 July 2014

    When it comes to reducing California’s climate emissions, should we allow companies to pollute our local communities, while paying our neighbors in Mexico to clean up the carbon? Should we gamble our climate policies on saving trees in other countries that can easily be destroyed by forest fires, just so that we can indulge in our own emissions instead of reducing them responsibly? These are questions that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will need to answer when it votes on whether international forestry projects will be allowed as a way for businesses in California to offset local pollution later this year.

    The current proposal before the CARB is for companies that pollute in California to pay for forests to be protected in places like Chiapas Mexico, since forests are able to absorb carbon dioxide and convert it back to clean breathable oxygen. At face value that logic seems to make sense. If this were simply a numbers game, the forests in other parts of the world could offset the pollution here. That’s not how it works in reality.

    Using international forestry projects to “cut” California’s emissions is a lose-lose scenario for local communities here and indigenous communities in Mexico, that offers no long-term guarantees for the forest itself.

    Shell purchased 500,000 so-called carbon offset credits last year from a forest project outside of California in order to allow its refinery here in Martinez to keep polluting. For each of those credits, Shell’s refinery released an additional ton of carbon dioxide, which causes global warming, into the air. If CARB blesses this kind of work-around as a part of California’s new emissions trading scheme, companies like Shell will have little reason to invest in cleaner technologies that not only bring down the emissions causing global warming, but also cause asthma and respiratory illnesses right here in our local communities.

    If protecting trees in Mexico so that companies can pollute more here sounds dubious, that’s because it is. In reality, it’s impossible to guarantee that the forests used as offsets would remain standing over thousands of years. Tropical forests face the same threat as those in California, which has lost large tracts of forest to fires and other causes. Yet CARB has identified projects in Chiapas Mexico, and Acre in the Amazon as potential first suppliers of credits.

    Fires, droughts and illegal activities are not the only problems that make forests unsuitable as part of carbon offset schemes. Tropical forests are home to millions of people. In recent years offset projects have repeatedly led to serious human rights violations and threatened the livelihoods of local communities and indigenous people living there. In Chiapas, for example, the promise of payment from the offset scheme has already threatened to fuel conflict over control of local land. In other areas, offset schemes are violating indigenous people’s rights to free, prior and informed consent over changes to the land they customarily own.

    None of these problems are new, which is why virtually all other emissions trading schemes around the world have explicitly ruled out the use of forest offsets. California risks becoming the only place pushing for a scheme that everyone else has abandoned because of its social and environmental risks. Greenpeace applauds all efforts to find innovative ways to finance the protection of the world’s forests. But CARB needs to vote against this particular proposal, and push for clean air and real emissions reductions at home instead.
     


    Ed’s Note: Dr. Amy Moas, a Senior Forest Campaigner for Greenpeace, holds a doctorate in Environmental Science from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a Masters Degree in environmental policy from Oxford University.

 

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE!

Enter your email address to receive notification of new posts.

Recent themes
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

REDDisms

“Eat less meat and fish, drink less milk. No request could be simpler, or more consequential. Nothing we do has greater potential for reducing our impacts on the living planet. Yet no request is more likely to elicit a baffled, hurt or furious response.”

— George Monbiot, The Guardian, October 2015

Recent Posts

  • Anatomy of a ‘Nature-Based Solution’: Total oil, 40,000 hectares of disappearing African savannah, Emmanuel Macron, Norwegian and French ‘aid’ to an election-rigging dictator, trees to burn, secret contacts, and dumbstruck conservationists
  • Coalition for Rainforest Nations announces sale of 6,106 REDD credits from Papua New Guinea to Blackstone Energy Services
  • Carbonballs: Nigel Farage, carbon offset lobbyist
  • Kevin Conrad signs REDD deal with Papua New Guinea
  • Court of Appeal upholds conviction of Paul Moore, Michael Moore, and Haydon Driscoll, the men behind the Burbank of London carbon credit investment scam

Recent Comments

  • Abel Ateu on The return of the carbon cowboys: How NIHT Inc failed to get free, prior and informed consent for REDD in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
  • Sander van den Ende on Kevin Conrad signs REDD deal with Papua New Guinea
  • Eyedeal on “Returns up to 895%” and other misleading statements from Property Frontiers about investments in EcoPlanet Bamboo and Silva Tree
  • Chris Lang on Carbonballs: Nigel Farage, carbon offset lobbyist
  • Steve Zwick on Carbonballs: Nigel Farage, carbon offset lobbyist

Issues and Organisations

AB 32 Boiler rooms Bonn California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Deforestation FCPF FERN Financing REDD Forest definition Fossil fuels FPP Friends of the Earth FSC Greenpeace Guest post ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations Poznan R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer Sustainable Forest Management The Nature Conservancy Ulu Masen UN-REDD UNFCCC World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Germany Guatemala Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Laos Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Republic of Congo Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam West Papua
©2021 REDD-Monitor | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!