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Big Polluters Dodged Their Duties at COP29; Will the ICJ Hold Them to Account?
Rich countries must pay up for the climate action needed to halt the climate crisis they have created and remedy the climate harms that they have inflicted.
Dec 13, 2024
The recent COP29 climate finance deal is a stark example of how wealthy historical emitters continue to evade their responsibilities to pay for climate action and remedy climate harm. But they cannot escape rising demands for accountability. In the historic hearings on states' climate obligations at the International Court of Justice, which are drawing to a close, developing nations are forcing them to face the law.
The timing of these ICJ hearings, on the heels of yet another failure of the United Nations climate talks, underscores what's at stake.
The headlines have called COP29's climate finance deal a triumph of diplomacy, but this could not be farther from the truth. Wealthy nations responsible for the majority of cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have carefully engineered an escape from their climate obligations through a deal the terms of which are too loose, and that offers too little, too late.
We know rich countries can deliver the grants they owe to the Global South. They can raise well over $5 trillion a year by ending fossil fuel handouts, taxing the rich, and changing unfair global financial rules.
It's too loose: Despite the deal's reference to two finance figures, $1.3 trillion and $300 billion, both constitute a hollow promise. The text fails to hold developed countries to their legal duty to provide climate finance to the Global South. Actors are merely "called upon" to work toward scaling funding to $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, without any binding commitments. Even the $300 billion annual goal has been carefully worded to avoid any concrete obligations. Developed countries are only required to "take the lead" in "mobilizing" these funds, which can come from private finance, multilateral development banks, and other "alternative" sources.
As multiple states including Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Seychelles emphasized during the ICJ hearings, this vagueness disproportionately impacts debt-stressed nations already struggling to fund climate action. If rich countries can pass the buck to the private sector and Global South, the most climate-vulnerable nations may be forced to take on more loans and private investment schemes rather than grants, deepening the historic debt crisis already affecting 93% of them.
Private finance cannot cover the costs of climate action in the Global South. That approach has been tested and failed. Nor can carbon markets fill the gap. Yet, the deal leaves the door open to carbon finance being wrongly counted as climate finance, allowing polluters to claim other countries' climate action as their own through carbon offsets rather than requiring them to pay up and phase out fossil fuels at home. With under 16% of carbon credits currently achieving actual emission reductions, this doesn't underwrite climate ambition, it undermines it.
It's too little: Contrary to what UNFCCC lead Simon Stiell has suggested, what was agreed at COP29 is not a tripling of climate finance. When adjusted for inflation, the $300 billion target is no meaningful increase compared to the $100 billion annually promised by 2020—which rich countries failed to meet. As the decision's own preamble acknowledges, the scale of need in developing countries is on the order of trillions, not billions, annually for climate action between now and 2030. And that figure is neither unreasonable nor out of reach. For context, rich nations currently spend $378 billion yearly on fossil fuel subsidies alone, and fossil fuel companies raked in an average of over $1 trillion in annual profits over the last 10 years. The money exists—it's just being invested in climate destruction rather than climate action.
It's too late: Waiting until 2035 for full implementation of climate finance goals essentially writes off this critical decade for climate action.
The inadequacy of this climate finance deal means planning for failure when it comes to fossil fuel phaseout, and therefore locking in climate catastrophe. The necessary global transition away from fossil fuels can't happen at the speed and scale required unless the biggest polluters pay. The ink has barely dried on the agreement, and wealthy nations are already on the offense. E.U. Climate Commissioner Woebke Hoekstra suggested in De Telegraaf that the E.U. could reduce its share of climate finance contributions since "other country contributions count too." Meanwhile, U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband reframed the entire deal as an "investment opportunity," suggesting that private sector funding could cover the bill—precisely the kind of responsibility-shifting the agreement's language enables. Hoekstra celebrates the deal as 'the start of a new era for climate finance'. Sadly, this is true. A new era where the E.U., U.K., and other rich nations dodge their responsibility to pay—one where everyone is responsible and thus no one is.
But we know rich countries can deliver the grants they owe to the Global South. They can raise well over $5 trillion a year by ending fossil fuel handouts, taxing the rich, and changing unfair global financial rules.
We also know failing to provide needed climate finance doesn't just condemn Global South countries suffering most acutely from a crisis they didn't create. It undermines our collective future.
As the International Court of Justice deliberates on states' climate obligations, this inadequate finance deal illustrates exactly why judicial scrutiny and legal clarity is needed. The world cannot afford another decade of wealthy nations dodging their responsibilities while climate disasters mount.
We reject this deal for what it is—a carefully constructed escape hatch for wealthy nations. It's high time for the biggest polluters to stop hiding behind voluntary pledges and using the climate regime to protect themselves from climate accountability, rather than to protect people and the planet from climate destruction. Rich countries must pay up for the climate action needed to halt the climate crisis they have created and remedy the climate harms that they have inflicted. Doing so is not just a moral imperative, it's a legal obligation.
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COP29: A Long Way to Go
Despite what was and was not agreed in Baku, meaningful climate action will only become more urgent than ever.
Nov 24, 2024
After extra time of exhausting negotiations, the 29th U.N. Conference on Climate Change is over.
First, a quick refresher of what COP29 was meant to achieve: dubbed a ‘finance COP,’ countries were expected to come to Baku, Azerbaijan ready to present in good faith various finance deals to strengthen the global response to climate change.
Signs call for for the Global North to "pay up" during a COP29 action in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
The final agreement
After two slow-moving weeks of climate talks, COP29 ended with a woefully inadequate agreement on a new annual public climate finance goal of US$300 billion by 2035, a dismaying offering. The final agreement overall also included disappointing loopholes on carbon markets and little climate action, but no backsliding on the COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. The final outcome in Baku removed the references to the Make Polluters Pay principle at the last hour, further disheartening civil society and countries already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
A Greenpeace projection Photo Booth in the Civil Society Hub at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan with portraits and images of climate impacts sends a message to country delegates that the time for action is now. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
COP29 was an opportunity to agree on a significant climate finance goal and follow up on what was promised at COP28 and the Biodiversity COP16. But that did not exactly happen. Despite what was and was not agreed in Baku, meaningful climate action will only become more urgent than ever.
A moment of hope
Not all is lost though. The final outcome fell short of what was hoped for, and what is needed to battle the climate crisis. But the people power in Baku made its presence felt. Navigating tight guidelines and pushback on peaceful protest for a third year in a row, civil society got creative to still make its demands heard, and will return even more determined next year. The time for debate is over; decisive action is the demand of the hour.
A close-up of hands with "pay up" written on them at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
What comes next for climate action
COP30 will return next year, in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil, with high expectations for renewed climate action.
A sign of "persistir," Portuguese for "to persist," sends a signal that the work must continue onto COP30 in Brazil. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)
But climate justice will only be delivered when there is adequate, and then some, finance for climate-vulnerable communities, and not just distributed for loss and damage, but for adaptation and mitigation too. A future with climate justice means the production and consumption of oil and gas has been ended, forests protected, and polluters paying for the damage, destruction, and deaths the climate crisis is causing.
Baku might have stumbled on climate justice, but we will persist in the fight for our future.
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After Ending in Overtime, COP29 Called 'Big F U to Climate Justice'
Critics of the "COP of false solutions" said that instead of much-needed funding, developing nations got "a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit."
Nov 23, 2024
It was early Sunday by the time the United Nations climate summit wrapped up in Baku, Azerbaijan after running into overtime to finalize deals on carbon markets and funding for developing countries that were sharply condemned by campaigners worldwide.
"COP29 was a dumpster fire. Except it's not trash that's burning—it's our planet," declared Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law. "And developed countries are holding both the matches and the firehose."
Recalling last year's conference in the United Arab Emirates, Oil Change International global policy senior strategist Shady Khalil highlighted that "the world made a deal at COP28 to end the fossil fuel era. Now, at COP29, countries seem to have been struck with collective amnesia."
"With each new iteration of the texts, oil and gas producers managed to dilute the urgent commitment to phase out fossil fuels," Khalil said. "But let's be clear: Rich countries' failure to lead on fossil fuel phaseout and to put the trillions they have hoarded on the table has done more to imperil the energy transition than any obstructionist tactics from oil and gas producers."
This year's conference began November 11 and was due to conclude on Friday, but parties to the Paris agreement were still negotiating the carbon market rules, which were finalized late Saturday, and the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance.
"The carbon markets in Article 6 of the Paris agreement were pushed through COP29 in a take-it-or leave-it outcome," said Tamra Gilbertson of Indigenous Environmental Network, decrying "a new dangerous era in climate change negotiations."
As Climate Home News reported, they establish two types of markets: "The first—known as Article 6.2—regulates bilateral carbon trading between countries, while Article 6.4 creates a global crediting mechanism for countries to sell emissions reductions."
The outlet pointed to expert warnings that "the rules for bilateral trades under 6.2 could open the door for the sale of junk carbon credits—one of the weaknesses of the previous crediting mechanism set up by the U.N. known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)."
Jonathan Crook of Carbon Market Watch said in a statement that "the package does not shine enough light on an already opaque system where countries won't be required to provide information about their deals well ahead of actual trades."
"Even worse, the last opportunity to strengthen the critically weak review process was largely missed," he continued. "Countries remain free to trade carbon credits that are of low quality, or even fail to comply with Article 6.2 rules, without any real oversight."
As for Article 6.4, “much lies in the hands of the supervisory body" that's set to resume work in early 2025, said Crook's colleague, Federica Dossi. "To show that it is ready to learn from past mistakes, it will have to take tough decisions next year and ensure that Article 6.4 credits will be markedly better than the units that old CDM projects will generate."
"If they are not, they will have to compete in a low-trust, low-integrity market where prices are likely to be at rock bottom and interest will be low," Dossi added. "Such a system would be a distraction, and a waste of 10 years worth of carbon market negotiations."
Some campaigners suggested that no matter what lies ahead, the embrace of carbon markets represents a failure. Kirtana Chandrasekaran at Friends of the Earth International said that "the supposed 'COP of climate finance' has turned into the 'COP of false solutions.' The U.N. has given its stamp of approval to fraudulent and failed carbon markets."
"We have seen the impacts of these schemes: land grabs, Indigenous peoples' and human rights violations," Chandrasekaran noted. "The now-operationalized U.N. global carbon market may well be worse than existing voluntary ones and will continue to provide a get out of jail free card to Big Polluters whilst devastating communities and ecosystems."
Chandrasekaran's colleague Seán McLoughlin at Friends of the Earth Ireland was similarly critical of the conference's finance deal, asserting that "Baku is a big F U to climate justice, to the poorest communities who are on the frontlines of climate breakdown."
"COP29 has failed those who have done least to cause climate change and who are most vulnerable to climate breakdown because the process is still in thrall to fossil fuel bullies and rich countries more committed to shirking their historical responsibility than safeguarding our common future," he said. "Now it's back to citizens to demand our governments do the right thing. We must keep demanding the trillions, not billions owed in climate debt and a comprehensive, swift, and equitable fossil fuel phaseout. The struggle for climate justice is not over."
Campaigners and developing nations fought for $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance from those most responsible for the planetary crisis. Instead, the NCQG document only directs developed countries to provide the Global South with $300 billion per year by 2035, with a goal of reaching the higher figure by also seeking funds from private sources.
The deal almost didn't happen at all. As The Guardian detailed Saturday: "Developed countries including the U.K., the U.S., and E.U. members were pushed into raising their offer from an original $250 billion a year tabled on Friday, to $300 billion. Poor countries argued for more, and in the early evening two groups representing some of the world's poorest countries walked out of one key meeting, threatening to collapse the negotiations."
While Simon Stiell, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change, celebrated the NCQG as "an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country," Chiara Martinelli, director at Climate Action Network Europe, put it in the context of the $100 billion target set in 2009, which wealthy governments didn't meet.
"Rich countries own the responsibility for the failed outcome at COP29," Martinelli said. "The talk of tripling from the $100 billion goal might sound impressive, but in reality, it falls far short, barely increasing from the previous commitment when adjusted for inflation and considering the bulk of this money will come in the form of unsustainable loans. This is not solidarity. It's smoke and mirrors that betray the needs of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis."
Also stressing that "it's not even real 'money,' by and large," but rather "a motley mix of loans and privatized investment," Oxfam International's climate change policy lead, Nafkote Dabi, called the agreement "a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit."
"The terrible verdict from the Baku climate talks shows that rich countries view the Global South as ultimately expendable, like pawns on a chessboard," Dabi charged. "The $300 billion so-called 'deal' that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous—a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown."
Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists, who is in Baku, took aim at not only rich governments, but also the host, saying that "the Azerbaijani COP29 Presidency's ineptitude in brokering an agreement at this consequential climate finance COP will go down in ignominy."
Cleetus' group is based in the United States, which is preparing for a January transfer of power from Democratic President Joe Biden to Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who notably ditched the Paris agreement during his first term.
"The United States—the world's largest historical contributor of heat-trapping emissions—is going to see a monumental shift in its global diplomacy posture as the incoming anti-science Trump administration will likely exit the Paris agreement and take a wrecking ball to domestic climate and clean energy policies," Cleetus warned. "While some politically and economically popular clean energy policies may prove durable and action from forward-looking states and businesses will be significant, there's no doubt that a lack of robust federal leadership will leave U.S. climate action hobbled for a time."
"Other nations—including E.U. countries and China—will need to do what they can to fill the void," she stressed. "Between now and COP30 in Brazil next year, nations have a lot of ground to make up to have any hope of limiting runaway climate change."
Ben Goloff of the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity called out the departing Biden administration, arguing that it "should be going out with at least a signal of its moral climate commitment, not copping out ahead of the Trump 2.0 disaster."
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Climate Campaigners Demand COP29 Free of 'False' Finance Solutions
"We are hurtling toward 3° of warming; human rights can't withstand dangerous distractions," said one climate justice advocate.
Nov 11, 2024
The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference has been called the "climate finance" conference, with participants expected to establish a new annual target for providing funds for the Global South to confront the climate crisis—but campaigners on Monday expressed concern that on the first day of the summit, there are already signs leaders will push for "false solutions" that only perpetuate planetary heating.
An annual climate finance target of $100 billion was set by policymakers in 2009, but that pledge expires at the end of 2024 and advocates say it's just a fraction of what is needed to help developing countries invest in climate crisis mitigation and adaptation to planetary heating.
Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, which includes more than 1,900 global civil society groups, told The Guardian that "a down payment of $5 trillion" annually in climate finance is needed, noting that "the debt is much larger."
But Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law, said the Azerbaijani presidency of the 29th Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) is already looking "to speed up the endorsement of new standards on carbon markets."
"This is extremely alarming. If this moves forward, it would be a real cop-out by governmental delegations gathered in Baku," said Duyck, referring to the capital of Azerbaijan, where COP29 is being held over the next 11 days.
Duyck pointed to new standards that were passed ahead of COP29 by a supervisory body with the aim of operationalizing and expanding carbon markets—pricing mechanisms that allow governments and other entities to trade greenhouse gas emission "credits."
"Fully operationalizing carbon markets on Day 1 would set a terrible precedent for the next two weeks, starting COP29 on a disastrous note and eroding the trust needed to achieve a bold, transformative agreement on finance," said Jax Bongon, climate justice policy officer for IBON International.
Proponents say carbon markets allow wealthy countries or corporations to purchase "carbon credits" from countries in the Global South; in exchange, governments in developing countries are paid to build renewable energy infrastructure, plant trees, or take other sustainable steps.
Those steps are thought to "buy time" for the wealthy country or company to cut down on their own pollution. But the scheme has been exposed as allowing companies to continue polluting without the supposed "offsets" actually helping to mitigate the climate crisis.
Lise Masson, climate justice and energy advocacy officer at Friends of the Earth (FOE), emphasized that "carbon markets are not climate finance, and we cannot accept these neocolonial schemes to be propped up as a success of COP29."
"Decisions at COP29 threaten to open the floodgates for a global carbon market that would have devastating impacts on communities in the Global South, on Indigenous peoples, and on small peasant farmers first and foremost," said Masson.
Marta Scaaf, who directs Amnesty International's climate justice program, warned COP29 delegates may "bypass accountability norms on Day 1 and issue recommendations to govern carbon markets, which are essentially pollution permits."
Essop suggested that carbon markets are being pushed as a false solution in order to save wealthy countries from having to provide what is needed for the Global South to mitigate the climate crisis and adapt to the hurricanes, flooding, drought, and other extreme conditions that have been linked to planetary heating.
"Five trillion dollars is what we come here to demand," Essop said. "Governments out there are absolutely capable of finding the money that does wrong in the world. They found the money for military spending. They found the money for the genocide in Gaza. They find the money to subsidize and support the fossil fuel industry. To come here and say that they do not have money is absolutely untruthful and unacceptable."
Meena Raman of FOE Malaysia stressed that climate finance "isn't charity; it's reparations for a climate debt long overdue."
"Grants must replace loans, and loss and damage funding must also be scaled up tremendously to meet the needs of impacted countries in the Global South," said Raman. "Debt cancellation for the Global South is essential to break cycles of injustice. The money exists: redirecting funds from global military spending and climate justice are paths forward."
The international human rights group Global Witness drove home the point by taking over the web address that some might arrive at if they were looking for more information about COP29.
Visitors to cop29.com on Monday were met with the words "Payback Time."
"We've taken over cop29.com to unite the millions of people demanding justice," said Global Witness. "This summer broke heat records again. Wildfires, droughts, and storms are killing thousands and driving up the cost of food, energy, and insurance. Worse is coming."
"COP29 is our moment," added the group. "The loss and damage fund was created to help developing nations that are being hit hardest by climate chaos... Fossil fuel companies rake in billions. They must pay into the fund to help communities rebuild, adapt, and repair some of the damage they've caused."
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The New White House Carbon Offsetting ‘Principles’ Lack Teeth
The administration should find the courage to reverse course and acknowledge that carbon offsets are a dangerous and damaging distraction.
Jun 06, 2024
As U.S. President Joe Biden seeks to regain American leadership in the global fight against climate change, his administration has embraced using “carbon offsets” in international carbon markets.
Acknowledging widespread criticism of the reliability of these offsets, on May 28, the administration issued a “Voluntary Carbon Markets Joint Policy Statement” signed by the secretaries of the Treasury, Agriculture, and Energy, among other officials. However, nothing in the statement overcomes the inherent flaws that make carbon offsets a dangerous distraction.
The urgency of the climate crisis means that the planet does not have time to engage in illusory market-based trading schemes that pretend to counterbalance—rather than actually reduce—greenhouse gases emissions.
The Administration’s Policy Statement lays out a set of aspirational “principles” for certification of carbon credits to allegedly ensure they “meet credible atmospheric integrity standards and represent real decarbonization”:
• Additional. The activity would not have occurred in the absence of the incentives of the crediting mechanism and is not required by law or regulation.
• Unique. One credit corresponds to only one tonne of carbon dioxide (or its equivalent) reduced or removed from the atmosphere and is not double-issued.
• Real and Quantifiable. Claimed emissions reductions or removals represent genuine atmospheric impact that is determined in a transparent and replicable manner using robust, credible methodologies. Relevant activities are designed to prevent emissions from occurring, being shifted, or intensifying beyond their boundaries as a result of the activity (‘leakage’).
• Validation and verification. Activity design is validated, and results are verified, by a qualified, accredited, independent third party.
• Permanence of greenhouse gas benefits. The emissions removed or reduced will be kept out of the atmosphere for a specified period of time during which any credited results that are released back into the atmosphere are fully remediated.
• Robust baselines. Baselines for emissions reduction and removal activities are based on rigorous methodologies that avoid over-crediting, prioritizing the use of performance benchmarks…
However, this list of goals highlights why reliance on carbon credits has only produced illusory benefits and counterproductive results.
The Biden administration is not proposing enforcement mechanisms that would ensure these core qualities are reflected in international credit transactions, because such mechanisms do not exist. Without enforcement these “guardrails” are merely a wish list, tantamount to a store combatting shoplifting only by putting up signs that say, “Do Not Steal.”
It is also clear that the amount of money these carbon markets are poised to generate, bolstered by Biden administration support, is enormous. The temptation to game a multi-billion-dollar system that has no enforceable rules is overwhelming and will help keep us addicted to business-as-usual emissions.
At the same time, the urgency of the climate crisis means that the planet does not have time to engage in illusory market-based trading schemes that pretend to counterbalance—rather than actually reduce—greenhouse gases emissions.
Experts who have studied carbon offsets, like Barbara Haya at University of California, Berkeley, have found they are inherently flawed for a host of reasons and cannot be reformed. A clear indication that carbon offsets are unfixable is that virtually all carbon offset projects created to date are built on activities that were already happening, for reasons other than the generally low and volatile price of offset payments. And, to date, no one has even proposed a reliable way to distinguish those activities that would have happened anyway. In addition, since carbon offsets must be based on activities that are not legally required, they create a perverse incentive to delay appropriate regulation.
With forest projects, these problems are compounded by their impermanence, which is heightened by warming-accelerated wildfires. In addition, the integrity of forest projects is easily undercut by demand shifting. If one forest is preserved but demand for wood is not reduced, another forest will be cut.
Together, these factors highlight that the administration’s wish list of guardrails is completely out of touch with the reality of carbon offsets. As California is discovering, reliance upon its highly touted carbon credit market is resulting in far more emissions than an effective regulatory program.
The administration should find the courage to reverse course and acknowledge that carbon offsets are a dangerous and damaging distraction. Offsets undermine our ability to adopt effective strategies to achieve our climate goals. These include ending fossil fuel subsidies and supporting enforceable regulations. Other key provisions would be transparent polluter-pays carbon pricing, programs to ensure energy affordability during a transition away from fossil fuels, public investments in clean energy transmission and transit, and international agreements with easily measurable results. Effective U.S. leadership would mean developing a national climate law worthy of the moment and building public support for its enactment. This country’s environmental laws have transformed our nation and been influential elsewhere. They should be our inspiration.
We understand that carbon credits seductively offer to harness powerful market forces and raise money for climate-positive projects. However, this siren’s call has all the integrity of a Ponzi scheme. In short, as the U.S. has repeatedly experienced, meaningful reductions in pollution require the inescapable hard work of designing programs with reliably measurable outcomes and enforcing them.
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Africa’s Carbon Deals Must Serve Those Most Vulnerable to the Climate Crisis
Several mega-transactions negotiated recently in tropical forested countries in sub-Saharan Africa place a spotlight on who is missing from these market opportunities—the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that have, against all odds, kept the forests intact.
Mar 08, 2024
Carbon markets have all the allure of a new investment option—mainly, that they have not failed yet. The idea of paying for conservation activities to offset polluting industrial activities, and then trading credits for those activities, sounds like a win-win solution to the climate crisis. But, in practice today, it looks like fool’s gold. That may be why the European Union included “carbon offsets” in new regulations that limit the use of sustainability buzzwords in promotional activities.
Several mega-transactions negotiated recently in tropical forested countries in sub-Saharan Africa place a spotlight on who is missing from these market opportunities—the Indigenous Peoples and local communities that have, against all odds, kept the forests intact. Although these carbon credit deals were announced last year, they have yet to be finalized and, instead, their grassroots opposition has gained traction.
The deals in question exemplify the 95 agreements announced since 2021, according to the consulting firm MSCI. They involve the governments of five countries, which agreed to hand over the development rights to sizable portions of their lands to a single international investment firm, UAE-based Blue Carbon—despite protests from those living on the lands in question.
For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities.
These transactions would cover 20% of the land in Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia and Zambia, 8% of Tanzania, and an undisclosed amount of land in Kenya. Blue Carbon would effectively gain control over the carbon stored in the soils and forests of these lands, which in effect surrenders control over the development rights to these lands.
Blue Carbon also started negotiations to acquire carbon rights with governments in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest tropical forest, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo.
In the short term, everyone—except for the Indigenous, pastoralist, and local communities who live on and claim these lands—can be expected to profit from these investments. In the long term, however, all will bear their costs.
For generations, these communities have sustainably managed their land and forests and hold primary responsibility for the carbon-rich ecosystems that make up the lion’s share of transactions in the carbon markets. But despite their contributions, they have limited means of ensuring that their rights will not be superseded by foreign investors claiming ownership of the carbon stored in their lands.
In eastern Kenya, for example, the Ogiek people have long faced threats of eviction and expulsion from their territories in the Mau forest—the largest high-altitude forest in East Africa. Recent evictions, with forest rangers destroying villages, have been connected to potential carbon rights transactions. This is despite national laws recognizing communities’ ownership to more than two thirds of this land.
In Liberia, communities worked tirelessly to pass one of the strongest laws protecting community land rights worldwide in 2018. At the time, we estimated that 40% of Liberia’s land had already been handed over in natural resource deals—for industrial palm oil plantations, mining, and timber extraction. The Blue Carbon deal would take an additional 10% from what is left—shrugging off the 2018 law’s protections.
A growing body of research directly connects strong Indigenous and communities’ land rights with lower rates of deforestation and forest degradation, which are significant contributors to global carbon emissions. The United Nations’ most recent report on climate change emphasizes community rights as a bulwark in climate change mitigation and adaptation. And the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework emphasizes the importance of respecting these rights in efforts to stave off rapid biodiversity loss.
In a world where tropical deforestation has yet to be tamed— we lost 50% more tropical forest in 2022 than we did 20 years ago—we cannot ignore the potential of carbon markets to improve conservation outcomes. But their benefits must reach the communities who are the primary custodians of these lands.
These carbon deals have been negotiated without meaningful community participation. And the lack of transparency on the terms and conditions of the contracts hides the implications for people and nature.
For carbon markets to work, companies must first respect the tenure rights of all Indigenous and local communities. They need to ensure access to objective, complete, transparent, and locally adapted information about the transactions and the lands they cover. The communities’ rights to free, prior, and informed consent must be upheld, and their effective and meaningful participation in the design, implementation, and monitoring of all transactions should be mandatory. Importantly, those who are impacted by these deals should have access to effective remedy.
These conditions should apply to carbon credit deals just as they apply to all natural resource concessions. Carbon markets must serve the interests of those who are most vulnerable to climate change, not those who created the crisis to begin with.
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Rich Nations Pursue Self-Serving Climate Solutions
Developed countries have long exhausted their ‘fair share’ of the world’s ‘carbon budget.’
Dec 05, 2023
Many in the wealthy West have misrepresented the causes of global warming, offering false solutions while claiming the moral high ground. This distracts attention from how they became wealthy while emitting greenhouse gases.
Tragedy or Farce?
Growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the industrial age have caused global warming, with their accumulation continuing to accelerate despite being close to exceeding 1.5°C of warming and its associated tipping points.
This is sometimes depicted as due to the failure to sustainably manage the atmosphere as a shared resource. The ‘tragedy of the commons’ refers to a community’s inability to manage a common resource sustainably.
One popular example is of individual herders benefiting by grazing more of their own animals on a limited piece of commonly shared land. Such selfish behaviour will eventually exhaust the grazing pasture, the shared common resource.
Even if the Global North achieves ‘net-zero,’ its cumulative emissions alone would still be thrice its 1.5°C ‘fair share.’
To address ‘tragedy of the commons’ claims, mainstream economists have advocated assigning property rights to more directly experience the negative ‘externalities’ or consequences due to excessive use of the limited resources owned.
Developed countries have long exhausted their ‘fair share’ of the world’s ‘carbon budget.’ Climate scientists identified 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide as the upper limit to stabilize the climate to prevent disastrous climate change.
Apportioning this carbon budget as quotas among the world’s countries has been described as allocating emission ‘rights.’ The Global North used up this quota in 1969, then overshot its 1.5ºC quota in 1986, and 2.0ºC quota in 1995!
Such quotas refer to the maximum accumulated carbon emissions, fairly shared among all countries, to ensure world temperatures do not rise over the preindustrial age average by more than 1.5°C or 2.0°C in 2100 respectively.
Even if the Global North achieves ‘net-zero,’ its cumulative emissions alone would still be thrice its 1.5°C ‘fair share.’ By contrast, at ‘net-zero,’ the Global South’s accumulated emissions would only use half its 1.5°C fair share.
Hence, the claim that developing countries lack ‘ambition,’ compared to the Global North, by not pursuing the same climate policies—such as carbon pricing—is misleading.
The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) makes such claims. It is not only onerous but also profoundly biased. The E.U. has been the world’s second-largest GHG emitter historically, long exceeding its ‘fair share’ of using the atmosphere as a carbon sink.
European Solution, Others Pay
Likely free riding poses a related problem. If GHG emissions are sufficiently penalized, global warming mitigation costs can be passed to individual GHG emitters.
The E.U. has the world’s oldest and largest Emissions Trading System (ETS). It functions by capping carbon emissions and auctioning GHG emission quotas to companies, who can trade such emission ‘rights’ among themselves.
The ETS claims to be raising costs or penalties for GHG emissions to reduce them by 55% by 2030. Thus penalizing emissions especially threatens energy-intensive industries which emit more GHGs.
In response, some industries threatened to move abroad to less environmentally regulated countries. The E.U. gave free quota allocations to GHG emissions-intensive industries to gain political acceptance by cutting the costs of such transitions.
This is partly why the ETS can only claim credit for a mere 0% to 1.5% in annual GHG emissions reductions, failing spectacularly to reduce emissions rapidly.
Can Carbon Taxes Save Us?
To reduce GHG emissions by 55% by 2030, the E.U.’s new CBAM policy package promises to gradually phase out free ETS allocations.
To protect the profits of the E.U.’s GHG-emitting industries, importers will be required to pay higher prices. These are supposed to incorporate carbon taxes, to deter high GHG-emitting imports, especially from developing nations.
Developing countries’ exporters are required to pay carbon prices on their exports at rates determined by importing countries. Such measures are said to be fair, ostensibly by ‘levelling the playing field,’ but will actually mainly burden developing country exporters.
An UNCTAD study shows how CBAM discriminates against low- and middle-income countries. It found CBAM will only reduce worldwide carbon emissions by 0.1%!
The CBAM will thus get developing countries to pay E.U. members for their GHG-emitting exports. Such ‘carbon taxes’ may even be used to help finance the E.U.’s own green transition or for purposes unrelated to climate.
Ostensibly to address global warming, the new rules are very protectionist. The WTO dispute settlement tribunal may not approve them if it is allowed to function after years of being blocked by the U.S. But the outcome is uncertain as this would be the first time a climate measure would be so tested.
Freeriding?
Historically, rich nations have emitted many more GHGs. On a per capita basis, this is still the case today. Despite such huge differences in GHG emissions, and ignoring developing countries’ limited means, rich nations want to impose the same rules and requirements on them.
As Elinor Ostrom has shown, communities worldwide have avoided the ‘tragedy of the commons’ historically. They governed shared resources to meet current needs while sustaining them for future generations.
Many communities devised arrangements to prevent the exhaustion of common or shared resources. But many of these were subverted by colonialism to favor foreign powers at the expense of those ruled.
The urgent action now needed to address the climate crisis has become the new pretext for rich nations to insist everyone must sacrifice equally.
CBAM also contradicts the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR). CBDR refers to the different responsibilities of developed and developing countries for causing the climate crisis and addressing it.
Recognising CBDR, the UNFCCC’s Kyoto Protocol put the primary burden for mitigation on developed countries. Rich nations rejected and undermined CBDR, delaying climate action by decades. Most Western nations made little effort to meet their obligations while accusing others of freeriding on them.
Of course, this ignores rich nations effectively freeriding on developing countries for centuries through colonialism, domination and exploitation. And the urgent action now needed to address the climate crisis has become the new pretext for rich nations to insist everyone must sacrifice equally.
Self-Serving Solutions
Most developing countries urgently seek—but cannot get—affordable climate financing. They prioritize climate adaptation, rather than mitigation, which is what most of the limited climate finance resources from the Global North is earmarked for.
To be sure, claims of ‘carbon leakage’ have been very moot. The transition anxieties of high-emission industries are best addressed by targeted policies to rapidly decarbonize these industrial processes.
Rich country subsidies have bypassed the distributional equity and political problems posed by carbon pricing or taxation. For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies promote renewable energy and electric vehicles by lowering their costs to consumers.
Surely, by now, the world has learnt how to better cooperate to save ourselves.
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Study Exposes Forest Carbon Credit Schemes to Offset Fossil Fuels as 'Pipe Dream'
"Biodiversity, the climate, and Indigenous people or local communities are losing out on what should have been a system to drive meaningful financial flows to the forest conservation projects that so desperately need it," said one expert.
Sep 15, 2023
Echoing previous warnings from climate advocates and studies, an environmental watchdog on Friday released research from experts at the University of California which shows that trying to offset fossil fuel emissions with popular forest carbon credit projects "is a pipe dream."
As the new Berkeley Carbon Trading Project assessment—funded by Carbon Market Watch (CMW)—explains, "The voluntary carbon market generates credits, each nominally equivalent to one metric ton of carbon dioxide reduced or removed from the atmosphere, from a wide range of projects around the globe."
Critics have long argued that carbon credit schemes are "false solutions" that harm poor communities where such projects are based and enable companies worldwide to greenwash their polluting activity rather than implementing reforms or investing in action to actually combat deforestation and the climate emergency.
"Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is the project type that has the most credits on the voluntary carbon market—about a quarter of all credits to date," the assessment details. "These projects pay governments, organizations, communities, and individuals in forest landscapes (primarily tropical ones in the Global South) for activities that preserve forests and avoid forest-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions."
Over the past two decades, more than $3 billion has been poured into REDD+ and nearly half a billion carbon credits have been awarded, yet "deforestation is still continuing at an alarming rate," the report notes. Berkeley researchers' analysis of four methodologies that have generated almost all REDD+ credits—under Verra, the largest voluntary carbon market registry—revealed that estimated GHG emissions reductions were dramatically exaggerated.
"We found significant over-crediting from all of the factors we reviewed, the core causes of which are a combination of incentives and uncertainty," said Barbara Haya, who led the research. "Everyone involved in the voluntary carbon market, from the buyers and sellers of credits, to the registries who write the rules and the auditors who enforce them, all benefit from more credits."
"Large uncertainty in climate benefit calculations creates many opportunities for market participants to choose assumptions that inflate credits issued," Haya added. "Drawing on all evidence, we conclude that REDD+ is ill-suited for carbon offsetting."
As a CMW briefing published with the assessment summarizes:
- Project baselines are significantly overestimated, the research found, leading to the creation of carbon credits that represent imaginary emission reductions.
- Similarly, leakage is systematically underestimated by projects, which make use of flexibilities provided to them by the methodologies to downplay the risk of deforestation moving to areas outside of their project.
- The creation of low-quality carbon credits is further fueled by exaggerated estimates of the quantity of carbon stored within the trees that are protected by projects.
- The risk that the trees protected by REDD+ projects will die in the future is also drastically underestimated by projects, which again use methodological flexibility to misrepresent the real deforestation threat that forests will face in the future.
- Finally, the safeguards implemented by Verra are weak, do not protect communities from harm, and are not properly upheld by the validation and verification bodies.
Inigo Wyburd, a CMW policy expert on global carbon markets, said that "we welcome Verra's willingness to engage with our research and hope that it will take on board our findings and implement all of our recommendations."
"Businesses are offsetting their emissions on the cheap by buying low-quality carbon credits connected to forest protection projects in the Global South," the expert added. "When only 1 in every 13 carbon credits represents a real emissions reduction, their action is lost in the forest."
Meanwhile, as Gilles Dufrasne, CMW's policy lead on global carbon markets, highlighted, "biodiversity, the climate, and Indigenous people or local communities are losing out on what should have been a system to drive meaningful financial flows to the forest conservation projects that so desperately need it."
"Offsetting should be axed," he argued. "It cannot work in its current form, and carbon markets must evolve into something different. The focus should be on getting money to the right place, rather than getting as many credits as possible."
As Patrick Galey, senior fossil fuels investigator at Global Witness, pointed out on social media Friday, the new research was released as the African nation Liberia is preparing to sign an offsetting agreement conceding 10% of its territory to Blue Carbon, a private company in the United Arab Emirates led by a member of an Emirati royal family.
Middle East Eye reported late that month that the deal for "control of one of the most densely forested territories" on the continent "would violate a number of Liberian laws, including the 2019 land rights law." Additionally, as CMW policy expert Jonathan Crook told the outlet, "there's no clarity as to what will be done to calculate what emission reductions have taken place."
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African Climate Leaders Say Nairobi Summit Fell Victim to Corporate Interests, False Solutions
"The solutions do not lie with private capital and the age-old profit driven model," said one advocate.
Sep 08, 2023
The historic Africa Climate Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya this week marked the first time leaders from across the continent convened to focus on the climate crisis, but campaigners on Friday said the voices of the most vulnerable were largely silenced during the three-day summit while leaders drafted a declaration that critics say fell prey to "distracting false solutions."
While the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action was applauded by advocates for its call to boost Africa's renewable energy capacity to 300 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, critics said leaders across the continent showed they are still too eager to bend to the interests and desires of the fossil fuel industry and its financial backers.
The declaration's demands include:
- A global carbon tax on fossil fuels, maritime transport, and aviation;
- Financial reforms to help fund climate action in Africa and the end of a system in which African countries are forced to pay more to borrow climate funds, leading to recurrent debt crises; and
- Stronger regulations of the harvesting and processing of the continent's minerals.
But groups including the think tank Power Shift Africa (PSA) said the commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars by international governments and development banks for carbon markets initiatives were "essentially, a diversion, and even wastage, of money that could go into investment in real climate solutions."
PSA called the African Carbon Market Initiative "a wolf in sheep's clothing" in a report released this month, warning that "polluters and investors" have for decades promoted carbon markets—in which fossil fuel companies claim to "offset" emissions by investing in conservation initiatives or sustainability—but the system enables "the wealthy to continue polluting, while giving an illusion of commensurate carbon neutralization through questionable accounting methodologies."
As Al Jazeera reported, the continent earns less than $10 per ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere in its existing market initiatives, while other regions can receive over $100.
Joab Bwire Okanda, a senior adviser at Christian Aid, welcomed the declaration's call for a global carbon tax but told the BBC that "to make polluters really pay, false solutions like carbon credits that allow polluters a free ride without taking meaningful action need to be consigned to the dustbin."
350.org said the summit should have ended with a renewable energy commitment that was far greater than 300 GW by the end of the decade, calling for 11,000 GW—"the level required to limit global heating to 1.5°C" over preindustrial levels.
"This is a good starting point, but it falls short of expectations," said Charity Migwi, regional campaigner for 350Africa.org. "As Africans grapple with the debilitating impacts of the climate crisis, African leaders engage in rhetoric and false solutions such as fossil gas and carbon markets that seek to delay meaningful climate action and the much-needed just transition away from fossil fuels, that is central to the fight against the climate crisis. African nations must walk the talk in regards to limiting global warming by shunning fossil fuels."
Zaki Mamdoo, campaign coordinator for StopEACOP, which aims to end French oil company TotalEnergies' East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project, said the Nairobi Declaration "says little about the need to halt the development of new fossil fuels on the continent," even after a Human Rights Watch report in July showed the project has threatened the homes of more than 100,000 people in Tanzania and Uganda, caused food insecurity, and pushed children to leave school while also likely having "devastating environmental effects."
"This summit has provided a platform for governments to flirt with big business while [advocacy groups], trade unions, [and] youth organizations are confined to the fringes with little influence on the outcome of high-level deliberations," said Mamdoo. "If we are to use the crisis of climate as an opportunity to simultaneously uplift our people out of poverty and ensure the well-being of all—then we need the interests of these groups to be at the forefront of decision-making. The solutions do not lie with private capital and the age-old profit driven model."
Others agreed that "local voices" of people who have been most impacted by the climate emergency were missing from the summit.
"Their stories of hope, perseverance, suffering, and disaster were glaringly absent, hidden away behind security barriers and military armament," said Yegeshni Moodley, climate and energy justice campaign lead for Friends of the Earth South Africa. "The use of top-down, technocratic false solutions negates the value of local knowledge and traditional practices that have sustained generations on their land. We must decry and lament the situation Africa has been placed into, where her lands and riches are once again being sold away to the distress and poverty of her people.”
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month when the summit opened, a report by Oxfam found that wealthy nations have provided a small fraction of what East Africa needs to fight and adapt to the climate crisis—just $2.4 billion in aid in 2021, compared with the $53.3 billion needed annually to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement.
People across the continent are facing the effects of the climate crisis, which has been blamed for a famine in Madagascar and has forced more than 1 million people in Somalia to leave their homes as a prolonged drought has overtaken the country.
Advocates say that Africa must be recognized as a key ally in providing solutions to the climate emergency rather than cast aside as a victim.
"Our leaders need to know that people across Africa are waking up to what needs to be done," said Essoklnam Pedessi of the Renewable Energy Coalition in Togo. "We are calling for less talk and more action. We need to break away from the failed approaches and distracting false solutions. Africa has abundant wind and solar to power up for 100% renewable energy."
"What it needs," she added, "is climate funding to unlock this potential."
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Alliance of 60+ Groups Demands Farm Bill That Rejects False Climate Solutions
"There's no way around it—we have to actually cut fossil fuel emissions," said Food & Water Watch.
Mar 16, 2023
Dozens of climate action, Indigenous rights, and public interest groups on Thursday announced an alliance that plans to engage with lawmakers ahead of this year's congressional debate on the Farm Bill, calling on them to pass legislation that rejects carbon offsets, carbon markets, and other policies that perpetuate a planet-heating agricultural system.
Food & Water Watchconvened more than 60 groups including the Farmworker Advocacy Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), all of whom have been disturbed in recent months by the passage of "at least three pieces of legislation that promote carbon offsets and dirty energy, propping up corporate ag interests and factory farming."
As Congress prepares to debate the Farm Bill, which is passed every five years and includes a range of nutrition, agriculture, forestry, and conservation policies, lawmakers must "transition away from false solutions to the climate crisis," said the alliance. "Carbon trading and offsets are inherently flawed and allow fossil fuels to continue polluting. Therefore, related carbon trading corporate-backed schemes have no place in Farm Bill legislation."
The groups are calling for a Farm Bill that will "further biodiverse, regenerative, sustainable agriculture and food systems; reduce fossil fuels and pesticides in farming practices; and promote a community-based food system that is more resilient to climate change."
"Flawed policies promoted under the guise of 'climate smart agriculture' threaten to entrench the polluting status quo, and worsen the climate crisis."
In such legislation, they said, lawmakers must exclude carbon offsets—tradable "rights" that allow purchasers to claim credit for an activity that removes carbon from the atmosphere or prevents emissions. The groups said the Farm Bill should reject:
- Soil offsets, which store carbon in soil and remain "underdeveloped, inconsistent, and unable to accurately account for differences in carbon storage related to specific climates and geographies";
- Forest offsets, which include forest protections that proponents claim prevent future deforestation, but which critics say "mask true emissions reductions by claiming sequestration and biodiversity gains"; and
- Methane offsets, which proponents claim can "tackle the methane emissions from animal waste—typically cow or pig manure—using either separation equipment or anaerobic digestion."
Offset proposals are "incompatible with sustainable agriculture and may drive further consolidation of farms and agribusinesses," said the organizations, adding that the methane offset approach "wrongly supposes that significant methane emissions from farms are inevitable, as well as ignores the litany of co-pollutants from farms poisoning the air and water of nearby environmental justice communities."
As the Center for American Progress (CAP) said in a report about fraud in the market last October, there is mounting evidence that "many carbon offsets do not actually represent permanently removed carbon or avoided emissions."
In some cases, forests targeted by carbon offsets have been logged or burned or, "conversely, were never at risk of being deforested," reported CAP. Some businesses have also purchased 40-year contracts to protect forests, rendering the offset unvalid because carbon can remain in the atmosphere for a century.
"Carbon offset markets are fatally flawed," said Ben Lilliston, director of climate strategies at IATP, on Thursday. "The scientific consensus does not support them. They are riddled with fraud. The economics don't work for anyone, least of all farmers and landowners. The urgency of the climate crisis demands that we put this failed experiment aside, and focus on what we know can benefit farmers and the planet."
Jim Walsh, policy director for Food and Water Watch, said carbon markets and offsets are driven by "wishful thinking" that is "fanciful at best."
"Flawed policies promoted under the guise of 'climate smart agriculture' threaten to entrench the polluting status quo, and worsen the climate crisis," said Walsh. "Real climate action in the Farm Bill means breaking up factory farms, decoupling conservation programs from the private sector to directly serve the public good, and putting a stop to the Big Ag monopolies trampling our climate for private gain."
Food and Water Watch suggested carbon offsets and markets aim to help businesses and policymakers avoid making "real climate progress."
The alliance also said the Farm Bill must not include public funding for methane digester technology that "perpetuates pollution and contamination and continues abuses in dairy and meat farms," conservation programs that include carbon credits sales and trade, the overuse of pesticides, and policies that encourage farmers to produce as much as possible even as the practice depresses prices and allows "agribusiness companies to buy raw materials at far below cost, while farmers struggle to pay mounting bills."
The groups said they plan to attend congressional briefings and meet with lawmakers to urge them to pass a Farm Bill that:
- Respects and uplifts traditional Indigenous knowledge (TIK) in regard to farming and ranching practices;
- Broadens opportunities and support for BIPOC farmers and low-income communities to grow their own food;
- Invests in and improves existing conservation programs to help transition farmers to more ecologically based agricultural practices and systems;
- Broadens opportunities for small and medium-sized farms to access crop insurance and increases safety net funding;
- Emphasizes the importance of building biodiverse, healthy soil;
- Ensures fair competition and treatment in the agriculture sector to ensure better living wages for all farmers and farmworkers;
- Decouples conservation programs from the private sector to directly serve the public good; and
- Tightens and enforces antitrust laws to prevent further monopolization and consolidation of the food system.
"This Farm Bill represents the greatest opportunity in a generation to position American agriculture as a solution to the climate crisis," said Jason Davidson, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "But we cannot do this through carbon markets and offsets underpinned by decades of failure, or through more handouts that further entrench Big Ag's stranglehold on our food system. We need Congress to pursue strategies that support farmers in building a truly regenerative, resilient and equitable food system."
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