It brings together an interdisciplinary team of political and natural ecologists and ecosystem modelers and aims to comprehensively assess the quality of REDD+ carbon credits when it comes to reducing deforestation, generating high-quality carbon credits and protecting forest communities.
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is the project type with the most credits on the voluntary carbon market, accounting for about a quarter of all credits to date. The study focuses on five key programme elements: baselines, leakage, forest carbon accounting, durability and safeguards.
The researchers found that estimates of emissions reductions were exaggerated across all quantification factors they reviewed when compared to the published literature and an independent quantitative project assessment. They say: “As a result, current REDD+ methodologies likely generate credits that represent a small fraction of their claimed climate benefit. Safeguard policies, presented as ensuring “no net harm” to forest communities, in practice have been treated as voluntary guidance.”
While many studies have documented poor carbon offset quality, the new analysis goes a step further in exploring the underlying reasons credit quality is poor. In some cases, the researchers say the methodologies did not align with good practice. Moreover, when the requirements were vague or flexible, they found that developers commonly made methodological choices that led to more credits and the auditors commonly did not enforce conservativeness, accuracy and “even reasonableness”.
Their overall conclusion is that REDD+ is ill-suited to the generation of carbon credits for use as offsets. They suggest a number of other actions that private actors can take or support that together can help to reduce tropical deforestation.
*Photo credit: James Shook of Ulva Island, New Zealand, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The global move against internationalism has meant organisations like the Gates Foundation have had to adapt – to change their language, to look at where technology can make efficiencies and […]
A Gates Cambridge Scholar is working on a case involving the retroactive application of a law on restitution payments which comes before the US Supreme Court this week. Atticus DeProspo […]
Janani Mohan [2023] is at the centre of one of the biggest topics of our times – nuclear security. Janani is an expert in nuclear policy, having worked in the […]
A group of students, initially brought together by Gates Cambridge Scholars, and now expanding beyond both Gates and Cambridge, has formed the Palestine Educational Opportunity Initiative (Pal Ed) to support […]
