By Peter Ngare
Carbon credits and other market-based approaches to conserve forests have failed to stop the destruction of trees and alleviate poverty, a new report by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) shows.
This comes at a time when carbon markets are projected to grow into a multi-billion-dollar industry as corporations increasingly turn to credits to meet their net-zero climate targets. But there are growing concerns about how much of that revenue poor communities might expect to see, with unscrupulous actors accused of exploitation.
“Market-based approaches may be appealing to policymakers but would not be a solution without also addressing the broader economic and governance challenges around forest management,” says the report’s lead author, Constance McDermott from the University of Oxford
President William Ruto has called Africa’s carbon sinks an “unparalleled economic goldmine” that could generate billions of dollars every year.
However, the IUFRO findings from a study conducted across 120 countries have found that trade and finance-driven initiatives such as carbon credits are making limited progress to stop deforestation and, in some cases, have led to more poverty.
“The evidence does not support the claim of win-wins or triple wins for environment, economy, and people…Rather our cases show that poverty and forest loss both are persistent across different regions of the world,” contributing author Maria Brockhaus from the University of Helsinki told AFP.
The report says that those involved in market-driven initiatives are more interested in short-term profits than long-term and sustainable forest governance.
The report said a $120 million project in the Democratic Republic of Congo had “reinforced entrenched interests” by restricting local people from forests without addressing logging by powerful businesses.
In Malaysia, indigenous groups, who were promised better livelihoods from a foreign-backed plantation venture on their customary land received no benefit.
In Ghana, deforestation rates have risen despite a lot of sustainable cocoa standards, corporate pledges, and carbon offset projects, while farmers are earning less today than decades ago.
According to McDermott, green trade policies imposed by wealthy countries, like the EU’s ban on imports linked to deforestation, might look good but do not consider the knock-on effects on affected communities such as coffee and tea farmers in Kenya or cocoa farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
