Stopping the Carbon Offset Fraud

Climate policy experts say carbon offsets work only if they trigger a carbon reduction that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, while this is true, however trees that already exist are pulling carbon from the air and unless they have already been counted in another program, they deserve to be qualified into carbon credits – otherwise you risk incentivizing landowners to cut existing trees and plant new ones in order to qualify.

There should be a global registry of existing trees – ideally accounted for through national forest reserves and sold as credits through the public realm. This will enable the government better manage and protect existing national forests.

Then the private sector offsets should be focused solely on new tree planting. Offsets should be used towards reducing Scope 3 emissions and combined with other more direct measures to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions of the biggest polluters – it should ideally not represent more than 10% of any organizations net zero emissions strategy.

This is important so as to bring about direct behavioral changes that may not otherwise arise.

We also need to stop adding Green House Gases directly into the atmosphere in addition to working to remove what has already been added.

Governments should implement policies that encourage terrestrial and marine uptake of carbon and these efforts should be integrated into other mitigation efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions such as promoting renewables.

In conclusion, in order to solve the fraud in the Carbon offset market; there should be a global registry of all existing trees globally which should be managed under a public program. The private sector should have its own registry for trees it helps plant.