The Offsets Scam

In many cases, credits claimed due to deforestation were being made on the basis of preventing the felling of trees by arguing that this is enabling the protected trees to absorb extra carbon avery grey argument as most the deforestation activities on the basis of which the said credits were claimed were those related to trees that were under no threat at all. In many other cases, various other kinds of manipulations were being done in which the buyers of credit as well as credit agencies have been complicit

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Quick technological fixes have often been projected as an attractive solution to the impending climate crisis facing humanity. With scientific studies showing that the world has a meagre ten to twelve years of global carbon budget left before we cross the critical 1.5 C threshold beyond which the planet will face irreversible climate impacts, the urgency of addressing the climate crisis cannot be emphasized enough.

Successive Conference of Parties (COPs) at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have attempted to forge cooperative outcomes to realise actionable climate goals.

The most recent COP27 at Sharm-el-Sheikh managed to showcase a measure of success in this regard when the member countries agreed on a Loss and Damage Funding Facility after decades of demands by the developing countries.

The politics surrounding such a facility ~ still at a conceptual stage with, at best, sketchy details and attempting to dissociate developed countries of liability ~ is another matter altogether.

That such politics should persist, and tarnish cooperative outcomes is hardly surprising. That is why the term ‘greenwashing’ that gained credence in recent months at diplomatic fora appears to be apt.

It refers to practices and processes that are often deceptively passed off as being environmentally-sound with the aim of attracting investment, marketing and public support.

The term best applies to the carbon offset industry, which has come into prominence yet again with the rise of debates on how countries plan to achieve their respective Net Zero Emissions (NZE) targets.