Carbon Credit Casualties in Cambodia, Daily Brief February 29, 2024

The idea of carbon offsetting originally sounded pretty good to many people concerned with climate change.

With Earth’s temperature rising quickly because of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation, carbon credits were proposed as a way to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given the critical changes we’re seeing in our environment – like increasingly devastating heat waves and hurricanes – many still support offsetting and credits as part of the solution.

How it’s supposed to work is straightforward enough. A carbon credit is a unit of measurement equal to 1000 kilograms of carbon dioxide theoretically removed from the atmosphere or prevented from reaching it. Companies can buy – or be compelled through regulations to buy – these credits to offset the emissions they create in their business activities.

For example, an airline may purchase carbon credits to claim it offsets the harmful emissions from its planes.

The carbon offsets are supposed to be generated by forest, conservation, or clean energy projects. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so, plant some trees, and we’re golden, right?

The problem is, too many carbon offsetting projects are ineffective globally and abusive locally.

First, many carbon credits currently available for purchase stem from offsetting projects that cannot show they generate any savings at all in carbon dioxide emissions. They fail this most basic test.

Second, some carbon offset projects have been linked to serious human rights violations. Indigenous peoples have been displaced from their land, and violent repression has been used against those opposing these projects.

A new report describes some of the human rights harms such efforts can lead to, looking in detail at a major carbon offsetting project in Cambodia.

Carried out by the Cambodian Ministry of Environment and the conservation group Wildlife Alliance, the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project encompasses half a million hectares in the Cardamom mountains. (That’s about the size of the US state of Delaware or twice the size of Luxembourg.) It’s an area of rainforest that’s been home to the indigenous Chong people for centuries.

Yet, somehow, the nature conservation project operated for more than two years without consulting the local Chong people on whether they agreed to its design or implementation. It is no surprise that when such a massive undertaking is decided without meaningful input from those impacted, it leads to harms. Chong people have faced forced evictions and criminal charges for farming and foraging in their traditional territories.

The situation has evolved over the years, and the good news is, there have been some encouraging – if limited – developments.

Wildlife Alliance has committed to taking positive steps such as giving their rangers human rights training, but it does not recognize that abuses have taken place nor that they’re responsible for remedying them.

Our report triggered an ongoing investigation into alleged abuses by the company that certified the project, Verra, during which no new carbon credits from the project will be issued. However, despite Verra certifying the project met many stringent social and environmental standards, the reality on the ground was quite different. Why did Verra not catch this sooner? 

This Cambodian example demonstrates the wider issue and the serious problems seen in numerous carbon offsetting projects around the world. Faced with a worsening climate crisis due to our own actions, humanity desperately needs to lower our carbon dioxide emissions. But not like this.