“The term carbon offset is scientifically absurd.”
To stabilize global temperatures, the Paris Agreement promised a transition to a net-zero emissions world by 2050, with a 45% reduction by 2030. To achieve these goals, forests are our best ally, but also the main challenge in a true geopolitics of carbon. Alain Karsenty, economist at CIRAD and specialist in the field, explains.
Read the first part of this interview on deforestation “Deforestation: Part of the solution lies in international trade” on the University of Montpellier website.
Can we talk about the geopolitics of forests?
Forests and vegetation as a whole absorb around a quarter of the carbon emitted by human activities, with oceans absorbing another quarter. The remaining half remains stored in the atmosphere, causing global warming. It is therefore more accurate to talk about the geopolitics of carbon in terms of the ecosystem services provided by natural environments.
However, global deforestation continues to increase, rising by 4% in 2022 (Le Monde 23/10/2023). Are forests still carbon sinks?
Estimates are difficult to make, but it is thought that the Amazon is no longer a net carbon sink. In Asia, deforestation has been so extensive that forests are now net emitters ofCO2. The last tropical carbon sink is undoubtedly the Congo Basin.
What about French forests?
We have the fourth largest forest area in Europe after Sweden, Finland, and Spain, and the third largest timber stock in Europe after Germany and Sweden. We are counting heavily on our forests to achieve France's carbon neutrality targets by 2050, but we are seeing that in 2021, French forests absorbed 31.2 MtCO2, or about 7.5% of national emissions. This is almost half as much as ten years ago (57.7 MtCO2). French forests are expanding, but due to fires, droughts, heat waves, diseases, and parasites, the carbon sink is becoming less and less effective. With French Guiana, France has a large area of tropical forest and therefore a large stock to preserve, but it is undoubtedly no longer a carbon sink, partly because the temperature is often too high. The forests that absorb the most carbon today are young boreal and temperate forests.
The international community has been mobilized since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, but are the mechanisms put in place not working?
The Kyoto Protocol launched the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in the early 2000s, a system allowing companies in industrialized countries to purchase carbon credits from projects in developing countries. These companies could offset their emissions by financingCO2 reduction or absorption projects in the Global South, for example by installing wind turbines or planting trees. A carbon credit thus corresponds to one ton ofCO2 avoided or removed from the atmosphere. Many of these credits are considered dubious because it is extremely difficult to verify the reality and permanence of these reductions. Furthermore, as the number of projects likely to generate carbon credits is very high, the excess supply has caused prices to fall, with the majority of transactions taking place at less than one dollar per credit. Today, there are more than a billion credits that have still not been sold, and most of them never will be.
In 2005, the UN launched the REDD+projects , which you are also quite critical of. Why?
This mechanism allowed countries that reduced their deforestation to request compensation or sell carbon credits. The problem is that a reference point must be agreed upon: how do we calculate the reduction in deforestation? The choice of the reference scenario adopted to measure this reduction was left to the discretion of the countries. As these are counterfactual scenarios, they cannot be verified or disputed by the payers. For example, Brazil chose as its reference a part of the 2000s, when deforestation in the Amazon was in full swing, in order to show a maximum reduction in deforestation. Many countries in Central Africa, which consider themselves to be only just beginning deforestation, are basing their calculations on forward-looking scenarios and want to be paid for "avoided deforestation," i.e., relative declines (compared to the scenario), which generally mask absolute increases in deforestation.
REDD+ is an intergovernmental mechanism, but it also involves private companies that want to offset their emissions.
Unlike the Clean Development Mechanism, under the UN mechanism only governments can sell REDD+ carbon credits. The priority at the national level is to prevent deforestation from simply being displaced from one area to another (known as "leakage") and to encourage states to implement policies that promote conservation and sustainable forest management. This has greatly frustrated carbon investors who want to profit from the sale of their credits, and some NGOs that use the REDD system to finance biodiversity conservation.
So they set up a kind of parallel market?
Yes, projects that use the REDD+ label, but are private and have nothing to do with the UN mechanism. They are certified by private labels, the best known of which is VERRA-VCS, which certifies avoided deforestation projects in particular. In fact, the vast majority of forest credits you will find on this voluntary market are certified by VERRA.
What is the problem with these avoided deforestation projects?
Last year, The Guardian (January 18, 2023) caused quite a stir by citing a study (PNAS September 14, 2020) conducted in Brazil, where scientists observed that the decline in deforestation was similar in areas with REDD+ projects and in non-REDD+ areas. The declines were not due to avoided deforestation projects, but to Lula's policies, which since 2004 have led to a 75-80% reduction in deforestation in the Amazon. Several NGOs also raise the risk of green colonialism. Blue Carbon LLC, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, has purchased exclusive carbon rights to 10% of Liberia's land area (Le Monde, September 2, 2023). Will they create protected areas? Logging concessions? We don't know yet.
Are there also tree plantations for carbon offsetting?
The term "carbon offsetting" is scientifically absurd; at best, it is a contribution to a collective effort, not an offset that would "erase" emissions. In an era of mega-fires and poor overall forest health, forest conservation activities and plantations may be a partial, temporary solution, but they do not in any way enable carbon neutrality, due to the very long residence time (around a thousand years) of a significant portion ofthe CO2 in the atmosphere. That said, some projects are useful and provide welcome funding in certain regions, which can also benefit local communities. The problem is that offset mechanisms claim to promise "emissions neutrality," which gives buyers of credits or consumers of products proclaimed "carbon neutral" a clear conscience.
What types of companies are involved in these REDD+ projects?
Large companies that engage in carbon offsetting beyond their regulatory obligations (when they have any). Most large listed companies are involved, from Microsoft to Shell, Delta Airlines, etc. Among them, a distinction must be made between those that are making genuine efforts to reduce their emissions and those that are not changing their activities and are simply buying carbon credits to claim to be "carbon neutral." In the latter case, it is clearly greenwashing. From 2026, the EU will effectively ban companies from calling themselves "carbon neutral."
Since the Paris Agreement, Article 6 risks reinforcing these private projects, doesn't it?
Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, whose main principles have been adopted but not the rules—the delegates at COP 28 were unable to agree on them—would, broadly speaking, allow certain private projects to enter the UN compliance market. It is a cleaner development mechanism in a more open version, which would specifically include certain forms of avoided deforestation. We will have to be careful, because once you are in the compliance market, a carbon credit is an emissions permit.
We know what we need to invest in: land tenure clarification, transforming unsustainable agro-sylvo-pastoral practices, energy systems (the problem of charcoal), land use planning, strengthening the rule of law, and delaying demographic transition in several countries, among other things. Then we can reward the quality, consistency, and implementation of policies and measures aimed at curbing the drivers of deforestation. Organizations and institutions that spend billions to curb deforestation should set up scientific committees of independent experts to assist them in these assessments. In a world where financial resources are limited, it is absurd to tie one's hands with inappropriate payment procedures and rules, which too often lead to rewarding countries for fortunate circumstances rather than for efforts translated into public policy.
Which countries or institutions are putting money on the table?
Norway is the best example. This country has developed numerous bilateral agreements with countries in the Global South. They were behind the CAFI (Central African Forest Initiative), a coalition of donors in which Norway is contributing over $500 million (France is contributing $6 million) to finance investment. But Norway attaches conditions to the disbursement of the promised sums. When Bolsonaro dismantled environmental policies in Brazil, Norway stopped its payments to the Amazon Fund, as did Germany. However, the Green Climate Fund, a multilateral institution, paid hundreds of millions of dollars to Brazil at that time for less deforestation than in the past, even though deforestation was on the rise again and laws protecting forests were being systematically undermined. It is virtually impossible to impose conditions that deviate from the adopted rules in a multilateral framework, where the money you put in no longer really belongs to you.
Countries in the Global South are asking the international community to pay for the environmental services provided by their forests. What do you think about this?
We have heard mainly from African countries on this issue, as they are the only developing countries that still have carbon sinks. However, Brazilian President Lula made a similar proposal at COP 28 (Le Monde , November 24, 2023). These are rent-seeking strategies, except that there aren't necessarily many people willing to pay these rents. The international community has always refused to pay for carbon stocks (standing forests). Once again, it is better to invest in effective policies, and there are huge financial transfers to be made. But let's do it on an intelligent basis.