carbon credits from some forest conservation projects are being inflated, and may not actually be offsetting even close to the amount of emissions they’re claiming
To the surprise of literally nobody who has been paying any attention to this issue over the years. It’s why I’m extremely sceptical of Brisbane City Council’s claims to be one of the largest carbon-neutral organisations in the country. That neutrality is achieved by purchasing offsets, and offsets vary wildly in efficacy.
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https://piped.video/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0
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tries to commodify a counterfactual — a thing that hasn’t happened
Reminds me of the cultural burning program where allegedly burning higher swathes of the country deliberately in a “cool” fire will somehow prevent further carbon release in an uncontrolled fire.
Both are just ways to side step making actual impacts to carbon emissions.
Reminds me of the cultural burning program where allegedly burning higher swathes of the country deliberately in a “cool” fire will somehow prevent further carbon release in an uncontrolled fire.
I mean, that’s definitely not the main reason for cultural burning or hazard reduction burns, but it kinda makes sense that it would be, to some extent, a byproduct. When doing a hazard reduction burn, you burn off a relatively small amount of underbrush to reduce the fuel load and help reduce the chance of out-of-control bushfires during the fire season. As a result, the total amount of area that gets burnt will be less than if a massive bushfire ended up burning huge swathes of bush and rural & suburban land, thus releasing less carbon. But it very much needs to be stressed that that is, at best, a byproduct. It’s certainly not the purpose.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Record land and ocean heatwaves, shrinking Antarctic and Arctic sea ice, extreme bushfires: if we needed reminding why greenhouse gas emissions must come down fast, 2023 is putting on a masterclass.
Research published today in Science has found that carbon credits from some forest conservation projects are being inflated, and may not actually be offsetting even close to the amount of emissions they’re claiming.
As companies use these carbon credits to wipe their own emissions ledgers clean, millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are released to the atmosphere unaccounted for, according to the study.
ABC’s Four Corners program earlier this year found logging operations were felling timber in REDD+ project areas run by American company NIHT in Papua New Guinea.
Polly Hemming, director of the Australia Institute’s Climate and Energy Program, said that organisations still using REDD+ offsets can’t claim to be ignorant of the cloud that hangs over their integrity.
The review also questioned the findings of the Guardian article, and claimed that an earlier study from 2020 which found that REDD+ projects decreased deforestation by 47 per cent over five years was more reliable.
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