There appears to be an unholy alliance emerging of voluntary carbon market (VCM) interests desperate to expand carbon markets at any cost, corporations eager for an easier way to claim they are on track to net zero, and a fiction being accepted by some developing countries who have long been owed the finance that has proven elusive to date.
Last week, a group of 10 West African countries weighed in on the debate that exploded a couple of months ago, when the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Board of Trustees, announced that the SBTi would allow companies with science-based targets to use carbon offsets to meet their Scope 3 targets. In doing this, the Board overstepped its authority and ignored established procedures which give authority over such matters to technical bodies.
Following widespread condemnation from SBTi staff, Advisory Committee members and civil society actors concerned about the integrity of the SBTi, the Board issued a clarification. But the damage was done and VCM interests and carbon cowboys everywhere are salivating over the prospects of a new source of demand for carbon credits to revive the flagging market.
According to media reports, the West African countries sent a letter to the SBTi calling on them to allow offsets to meet net-zero commitments, and said that criticisms of offsets “were the work of « misguided activists ». But ECO has read the science and pored over numerous reports over the last year and therefore knows that quite the opposite is true.
These countries also went a step further and stated that “carbon markets is climate finance”. This contradicts the position of the West African Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance, which these 10 countries are members of and which recently stated that carbon markets are “distinct but complementary to climate finance”.
Conflating carbon finance with climate finance would allow the absurd outcome that developed countries and corporations could increase their emissions while counting the offsetting cost towards their finance obligations. ECO wonders how exactly this increases ambition or helps developing countries meet their NDCs or Paris implementation? After all, isn’t that a key part of climate finance? This seems to just be another excuse for developed countries to shirk their responsibility to not only take the lead on ambitious climate action (a full, fair, fast fossil fuel phaseout), but also to pay up on their climate debt.
This would be a perverse win-win-win outcome: a win for carbon cowboys; a win for double counting offsets as climate finance, and a win for corporations and countries looking for an easy way out of their climate obligations. The losers are, unfortunately, the global climate, humanity, and the planet.