Chasing carbon and ghosts

This week, The Guardian published an article claiming that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by the world’s biggest provider are worthless. The schemes appear to be significantly overclaiming their benefits for climate change.

While news like this is disheartening, I am not surprised and expect that there will be more exposés about carbon offsets in the coming year.

There are times when carbon schemes may benefit local people, but at ITF, we harbour strong reservations about many facets of the world of carbon offsets.

We believe that companies and individuals who want to be carbon neutral would do better to reduce their own emissions as far as possible and then support tried and tested approaches and organisations that we know make a difference for the planet.

The issue with using carbon calculation as the starting point is that it can mislead the public into thinking that tree planting is a simple business, where one’s carbon excesses can be absolved by a few clicks of the mouse. Instead, tree planting and reforestation take place in real time, on real land, involve real people, and have real impacts on local wildlife and hydrology - each of which has to be carefully considered.

I expect that there will also be exposés that reveal ghost trees and phantom forests. This happens where well-meaning money is given to tree planting and forest restoration but either the trees never get planted and no one checks them or they are poorly planted and maintained meaning that few survive.

At ITF, we are most concerned that there will be stories about forest restoration that happens against the will of local communities – where plantations of non-native species are established and local communities will be denied access to the land. This will only have a negative impact on local livelihoods, biodiversity and wider ecological systems.

We care deeply about the quality of what we do. We are continually trying to strengthen the quality of our work and are doing that in a host of different ways. For example, we are rolling out a set of independent quality standards that cover biological and socio-economic indicators across all ITF projects. We are developing ‘radical listening’ methodologies with our Africa team so that we can further enhance community leadership, particularly that of women. We are improving our use of mapping and monitoring technology and building community-level skills at the same time. We have established a ‘tree survival and sustainability fund’ to deal with situations where climatic shocks affect tree survival rates – a sort of insurance scheme. We are seeking to mainstream inclusion of threatened tree species across our work in Africa to ensure they don’t die out.

It is likely that there will be more stories in the coming year that give tree-planting and reforestation a bad name. Yet we know that when tree planting is done right it protects forests, restores landscapes and transforms lives. And that’s what we are striving to do.

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