A system that allows big corporations to buy carbon offsets in rain forests to cancel out their harmful emissions is essentially “worthless,” an analysis by several media organisations showed Wednesday.
Buying carbon credits by financing projects to protect rainforests has become a popular way for companies to claim they are carbon neutral, even though their activities generate gases that cause global warming.
However, some 90 percent of credits offered by the world’s leading provider, Verra, are likely “phantom credits,” said the study by British newspaper The Guardian, German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial, a nonprofit investigative journalism organisation.
Their nine-month investigation, including an analysis of existing studies into Verra’s rainforest schemes and on the ground reporting, found that the offsets largely did not lead to effective reductions in deforestation or any climate benefit.
“Only a handful of Verra’s rainforest projects showed evidence of deforestation reductions, according to two studies, with …