SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Agribusiness and big finance’s dirty alliance is anything but “green”
Published
3 years agoon

Just prior to Amaggi’s green bond, Brazil’s biggest producer of soybeans, SLC Agrícola, issued its own USD 95 million green bond for what it calls “regenerative agriculture”. SLC’s farms cover 460,000 hectares of land, mainly in the Cerrado,where it has deforested at least 30,000 hectares of native vegetation and where it has been fined several times by Brazil’s federal environmental agency for its activities.4
But the big financial companies want the public to bear the risks for their ventures. Green finance may be promoted by private financial companies but it depends heavily on governments. Only governments can generate demand by implementing laws and policies that force companies to make “green” investments, often in the form of taxes on carbon that are passed on to consumers and that disproportionately penalise the poorest.
One of the fastest growing instruments of green finance, “sustainability-linked” bonds (SLB) and bank loans, takes these weaknesses to an extreme. These bonds and loans are issued without specifying which projects the proceeds are destined for or what the social and environmental benefits will be.
To make this happen, agribusiness companies are working aggressively with corporations from other sectors and corporate-dominated spaces like the Food and Land Use Coalition, the World Economic Forum and The Food Systems Summit to push for so-called “nature-based solutions” with an emphasis on land use and the agricultural sector.27
Company
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Green finance mechanism
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Notes
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Green bond worth USD 94 million issued in 2020. It was raised in green agribusiness bonds (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to be applied in digital and low Carbon Farming Practices, Integrated Systems (Crop-Livestock) in its 460 thousand hectares of soy, maize and cotton monoculture plantations. The green bond was issued through Bradesco bbi, Itaú and Santander banks.
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The second party opinion (SPO), Resultante, listed in its report several passages linking SLC Agricola with environmental crimes and land grabbing. Although it was approved, the issuance of the green bond was validated with the recommendation of not allocating the funds to those questionable areas.
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Sustainability bond worth USD 750 million in 2021 to be applied to its 170 thousand hectares in a mix of environment projects such as renewable energy and land use, as well as in socio-economic activities as job creation. The bond was coordinated by BNP Paribas, Bradesco Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Itaú BBA USA Securities, Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Rabobank and Santander Investment.
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Amaggi group is the largest exporter of soybean from Brazil and is a major buyer of soybean from known deforesters like SLC Agrícola and BrasilAgro, and has not yet agreedto a 2020 cut-off date for land clearing in the Cerrado region.
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Green bond of EUR 75 million (USD 89 million). to be issued in Europe in 2021. Proceeds will be used for various activities including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding its farming operations.
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AgriNurture Inc. is a company based in the Philippines that received early backing from Cargill’s hedge fund Black River and the Far Eastern Agricultural Investment Company of Saudi Arabia. It has become one of the largest farming companies and agricultural exporters in the country through the development of large-scale farms and plantations, most recently for maize in Mindanao.
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Olam has secured three “green” loan facilities since 2018 from different consortiums of banks: a sustainability-linked loan of USD 500 million in 2018, a USD 525 million sustainability-linked revolving credit facility in 2019 and a USD 525 million sustainability loan in 2020– all to be used for general spending but with an interest margin dependent on Olam’s ability to meet various targets. In 2019 it launched the world’s first “digital loan” of USD 350 million.
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Olam is an Indian non-resident company based in Singapore. It is one of the world’s largest commodity traders and has invested heavily in farming operations and contract farming schemes, particularly in Africa and Latin America. It is part-owned by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Japan’s Mitsubishi. It claims to have 2.4 million hectares under direct management, including a controversial 144,000 hectare oil palm plantation concession in Gabon.
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Sustainability-linked loan with 20 banks, worth USD 2.3 billion in 2019. ING, BBVA and Rabobank acted as sustainability coordinators. ABN AMRO has acted as coordinator and facility agent.
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It was the largest loan by an agricultural trader. The loan is linked to a general year-on-year improvement target of ESG performance, assessed by SPO Sustainalytics and increasing its traceability of Brazilian agri-commodities. In late 2020, the World Bank’s International Financing Corporation (IFC) began subsidising the traceability of the direct suppliers of soybean in Matopiba, in the Cerrado region (Brazil).
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In July 2021, Samunnati issued a USD 4.6 million agricultural green bond via the market platform Symbiotics. The proceeds are to be “fully allocated towards climate smart agriculture.”
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Samunnati is an Indian micro-credit lender for farmers and agribusiness. Its investors include the US pension fund TIAA and the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation.
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A ten-year loan of USD 50 million to soybean suppliers in Cerrado to support a deforestation-free target. This is Santander Bank and The Nature Conservancy (“TNC”) financial mechanism that is not formally considered as green finance, but that links the expansion of soy to a “compliance with environmental law” in Brazil.
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The Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) and the Soft Commodities Forum Platform, bring together giant agribusiness traders (ABCD, Cofco, Viterra -ex Glencore Agriculture) to issue new “green” agribusiness debt instruments for the expansion of soybean plantations over pasture areas.
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Cargill
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Land Innovation Fund, created with Cargill’s USD 30 million to support the expansion of soybean over degraded pasture areas in Argentina and Paraguay’s Cerrado and Grand Chaco. The fund is incorporating the suppliers into a traceability chain for measuring soil carbon emissions. The Bank of Cargill is increasing its use of agribusiness bonds to fund soybean suppliers, with a rise of 30% in 2020 in Agribusiness Letters of Credit. The company is part of the Brazilian Initiative
for Green Finance to support the emission of green bonds in agriculture.
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Cargill is perhaps the soybean trader most linked to deforestation and fires in their supply chain. In 2019, Nestlé stopped sourcing all of its purchases of Brazilian soy from Cargill with the trader not being able to trace soybeans from its suppliers. In 2020, Norwegian Grieg Seafood did not allow any funds from its Green Bond worth USD 103 million to be used to purchase feed supply from Cargill until the company had significantly reduced itsrisk of soybean-related deforestation in Brazil.
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Onesustainable transition bond worth USD 500 million issued in 2019 through BNP Paribas, ING and Santander, to purchase deforestation-free cattle from direct suppliers in Amazonia.
Onesustainability-linked loan worth USD 30 million in 2021 as part of green financing to support Mafrig’s transition to a no-deforestation requirement across its entire chain.
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The first labelled “transition bond” issued in the world, after the green bonds held by one of the world’s biggest beef producers were refused by investors. The bond was re-labelled to support high-emitting companies that do not fit green bonds requirements to clean up their supply chain. Only two other transition bonds of this kind were issued in 2020 due to the lack of reliability.
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Green bond worth USD 5 million issued as a green agribusiness bond (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to support the expansion of regenerative and organic agriculture production in its 1200 hectares located in São Paulo, Brazil. It was structured by the financial consultancy Ecoagro.
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The first certified agriculture green bond issued in the world, according to the new CBI principles for the agriculture sector. According to Rizoma’s founding partner, Pedro Paulo Diniz, regenerative agriculture has the potential to offset “more than 100% of human carbon emissions” and often “has more biodiversity than a native forest”.
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Ventisqueros
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Chilean salmon farmer Ventisqueros announced at the end of 2020 that it had landed a USD 120 million green loan from banks Rabobank and DNB. The proceeds will fund the expansion of production from the current 40,000 metric tonnes to 60,000 metric tonnes.
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In 2019, there was a massive escape of salmon from one of Ventisqueros’ farms in Chiloé leading to a complaint from the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) before the Superintendency of the Environment and in court. The company has also refused to comply with a sentence issued by the Council for Transparency ordering them to provide Oceana with data on their use of antibiotics in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
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Mowi
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Mowi completed a USD 165 million green bond in 2020, the first green bond issued by a seafood company. The proceeds will be used for green projects as defined by Mowi’s green bond framework.
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Norway-based Mowi is the world’s largest aquaculture company and largest salmon producer. It is notorious for the aggressive tactics it deploys against critics and for the damage it has caused to the environment, particularly to wild salmon stocks.
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Long-term loan for the recovery of degraded pasture areas by soybean planting via the Reverte programme, led by Syngenta in partnership with TNC and Itaú bank. Although not formally a “green loan”, the Itaú bank already reserved USD 86 million to “restore” 30 thousands hectares in Cerrado with soybean and other inputs provided by Syngenta.
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The Reverte programme announced by Syngenta aims to “restore” 1 million hectares by 2025. In addition to using green finance to sell inputs and the obligation to use the traceability system, the Syngenta Group traded the seeds in exchange for the soybean harvest (barter operation) and operated the export of the company’s first cargo ship of soybeans from Brazil to China.
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Three Green bonds totalling USD 639 million in 2020 and 2021 coordinated by Morgan Stanley to produce ethanol from maize and produce 100% renewable energy.
One sustainability-linked bond worth USD 26 million with Credit Suisse Bank and one sustainability-linked loan of USD 33 million in 2020 with Santander bank, conditioned to: reducing the carbon footprint; improving the traceability of suppliers, and disclosure and transparency in its annual reports.
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This was the first green agribusiness bond for the bioenergy sector, called Agribusiness Receivable Certificates (CRA). The company produced 100% of ethanol for maize. The bioenergy sector, along with the forestry sector, is one of the biggest issuers of green and sustainability bonds.
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Suzano S.A.
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Four Green bonds since 2016 totalling USD 1.6 billion for pulp and paper industrial forestry. The offering was coordinated by J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, BNP, Crédit Agricole, MUFG, Santander, Rabobank, SMBC Nikko, Scotiabank and Mizuho.
Two sustainability-linked bonds (SLB) totalling USD 1.2 billion in 2020 and another USD1 billion SLB issued in June 2021, through BNP Paribas, BofA, J.P. Morgan, Mizuho, Rabo Securities and Scotiabank.
Onesustainability-linked loan worth USD 1.6 billion in January 2021 operated by BNP Paribas.
Both SL bonds and loans are linked to reducing the company’s direct emissions and water consumption across all its operations and purchases (scopes 1 and 2) and also have an “inclusion” target to have woman in leadership positions.
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Suzano was the first issuer of green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds in Brazil and has 37% of its debts tied to green finance. Suzano S.A has more than 1 million hectares of industrial pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in Brazil and is historically linked to a series of human rights violations against local communities and the labour rights of its workers.
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Sustainability bond worth USD 95 million issued in 2018 by the USAID initiative Tropical Landscapes Financing Facility (TLFF) through BNP Paribas in partnership with WWF. The bond was issued to fund 88 thousand hectares of rubber plantation for PT Royal Lestari Utama (RLU), an Indonesian joint venture between France’s Michelin and Indonesia’s Barito Pacific Group.
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Asia’s first sustainability debt instrumentand part of the Memorandum of Understanding between UN Environment and BNP Paribas that was signed at the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017. The target is to reach USD 10 billion of innovative sustainable finance by 2025 for projects that support sustainable agriculture and forestry in ways that help solve the climate crisis.
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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
‘Left to suffer’: Kenyan villagers take on Bamburi Cement over assaults, dog attacks
Published
1 week agoon
March 22, 2025
- The victims are aged between 24 and 60, and one of them has since passed on.
- Many were severely injured and hospitalized following brutal attacks, unlawful detention, and physical assault by Bamburi’s security personnel.
Editor’s note: Read the petition here.
Their hopes for justice seemed to be slipping away after initially taking on a multinational corporation and failing to hold it accountable for the brutal injuries they suffered.
The death of one of their own cast a shadow of despair, making it seem unlikely that they would ever bring the corporation to justice for the crimes they alleged.
However, 11 victims of dog attacks, assaults, and other severe human rights violations are now challenging Bamburi Cement PLC’s role in these abuses in court.
They are represented by the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), which on January 29, 2025, filed a legal claim before a constitutional court in Kenya, seeking to hold the multinational accountable for the harm suffered by the victims—residents of land parcels in Kwale that Bamburi claims ownership of. KHRC worked with the Kwale Mining Alliance (KMA) to bring this case.
The victims, aged between 24 and 60, include Mohamed Salim Mwakongoa, Ali Said, Abdalla Suleiman, Hamadi Jumadari, Abdalla Mohammed, and Omari Mbwana Bahakanda. Others are Shee Said Mbimbi, Omar Mohamed, Omar Ali Kalendi (deceased), Abdalla Jumadari, and Bakari Nuri Kassim.
Bamburi had hired a private security firm and deployed General Service Unit (GSU) officers to guard three adjoining land parcels, covering approximately 1,400 acres in Denyenye, Kwale. The GSU established a camp on the land, which has historically been accessed by residents who have long used established routes to reach the forest and the Indian Ocean.
For decades, these routes provided them with access to resources such as firewood, crops, and fish, which they relied on for their livelihoods. However, five years ago, when they attempted to collect firewood, harvest crops, and access the ocean through the land, Bamburi accused them of trespassing. The company’s private guards and GSU officers responded with force, setting dogs on them and assaulting them.
Many were severely injured and hospitalized following brutal attacks, unlawful detention, and physical assault by Bamburi’s security personnel. These incidents occurred despite the lack of clearly defined boundaries and the fact that the traditional access routes had never been contested.
According to the petition, GSU officers and private guards inflicted serious injuries by kicking, punching, and beating the victims with batons. Those who were arrested were neither taken to a police station nor charged with any offense. Despite their injuries, they were denied emergency medical care.
These actions were intended to intimidate residents, prevent them from accessing the beach, and suppress any historical claims to the land, the victims tell the court. Local police in Kwale failed to investigate the abuses, visit the crime scenes, or arrest any of the perpetrators, they add.
Now, the victims are seeking compensation for these violations. They have also asked the court to declare that their rights were violated through torture inflicted by Bamburi’s guards and GSU officers. Additionally, they want the court to rule that releasing guard dogs to attack them during arrests constituted an extreme and unlawful use of force.
Source: khrc.or.ke
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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
River ‘dies’ after massive acidic waste spill at Chinese-owned copper mine
Published
1 week agoon
March 22, 2025
A catastrophic acid spill from a Chinese-owned copper mine in Zambia has contaminated a major river, sparking fears of long-term environmental damage and potential harm to millions of people.
The spill, which occurred on February 18, has sent shockwaves through the southern African nation.
Investigators from the Engineering Institution of Zambia revealed that the incident stemmed from the collapse of a tailings dam at the mine.
This dam, designed to contain acidic waste, released an estimated 50 million litres of toxic material into a stream feeding the Kafue River, Zambia’s most important waterway.
The waste is a dangerous cocktail of concentrated acid, dissolved solids, and heavy metals.
The Kafue River, stretching over 930 miles (1,500 kilometres) through the heart of Zambia, supports a vast ecosystem and provides water for millions. The contamination has already been detected at least 60 miles downstream from the spill site, raising serious concerns about the long-term impact on both human populations and wildlife.
Environmental activist Chilekwa Mumba, working in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province, described the incident as “an environmental disaster really of catastrophic consequences”.
The spill underscores the risks associated with mining, particularly in a region where China holds significant influence over the copper industry.
Zambia ranks among the world’s top 10 copper producers, a metal crucial for manufacturing smartphones and other technologies.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has appealed for expert assistance to address the crisis. The full extent of the environmental damage is still being assessed.

A river died overnight
An Associated Press reporter visited parts of the Kafue River, where dead fish could be seen washing up on the banks about 60 miles downstream from the mine run by Sino-Metals Leach Zambia, which is majority owned by the state-run China Nonferrous Metals Industry Group.
The Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation said the “devastating consequences” also included the destruction of crops along the river’s banks. Authorities are concerned that ground water will be contaminated as the mining waste seeps into the earth or is carried to other areas.
“Prior to February 18 this was a vibrant and alive river,” said Sean Cornelius, who lives near the Kafue and said fish died and birdlife near him disappeared almost immediately.
“Now everything is dead, it’s like a totally dead river. Unbelievable. Overnight, this river died.”
About 60 per cent of Zambia’s 20 million people live in the Kafue River basin and depend on it in some way as a source of fishing, irrigation for agriculture and water for industry. The river supplies drinking water to about five million people, including in the capital, Lusaka.
The acid leak at the mine caused a complete shutdown of the water supply to the nearby city of Kitwe, home to an estimated 700,000 people.

Attempts to roll back the damage
The Zambian government has deployed the air force to drop hundreds of tons of lime into the river in an attempt to counteract the acid and roll back the damage. Speed boats have also been used to ride up and down the river, applying lime.
Government spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa said the situation was very serious and Sino-Metals Leach Zambia would bear the costs of the cleanup operation.
Zhang Peiwen, the chairman of Sino-Metals Leach Zambia, met with government ministers this week and apologized for the acid spill, according to a transcript of his speech at the meeting released by his company.
“This disaster has rung a big alarm for Sino-Metals Leach and the mining industry,” he said.
It “will go all out to restore the affected environment as quickly as possible”, he said.

Discontent with Chinese presence
The environmental impact of China’s large mining interests in mineral-rich parts of Africa, which include Zambia’s neighbors Congo and Zimbabwe, has often been criticised, even as the minerals are crucial to the countries’ economies.
Chinese-owned copper mines have been accused of ignoring safety, labour and other regulations in Zambia as they strive to control its supply of the critical mineral, leading to some discontent with their presence.
Zambia is also burdened with more than $4 billion in debt to China and had to restructure some of its loans from China and other nations after defaulting on repayments in 2020.
A smaller acid waste leak from another Chinese-owned mine in Zambia’s copper belt was discovered days after the Sino-Metals accident, and authorities have accused the smaller mine of attempting to hide it.
Local police said a mine worker died at that second mine after falling into acid and alleged that the mine continued to operate after being instructed to stop its operations by authorities. Two Chinese mine managers have been arrested, police said.
Both mines have now halted their operations after orders from Zambian authorities, while many Zambians are angry.
“It really just brings out the negligence that some investors actually have when it comes to environmental protection,” said Mweene Himwinga, an environmental engineer who attended the meeting involving Mr Zhang, government ministers, and others.
“They don’t seem to have any concern at all, any regard at all. And I think it’s really worrying because at the end of the day, we as Zambian people, (it’s) the only land we have.”
Source: www.independent.co.uk
SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
How Carbon Markets are Exploiting Marginalised Communities in the Global South Instead of Uplifting them
Published
4 months agoon
December 11, 2024
The billion-dollar fiction of carbon offsets
Carbon markets are turning indigenous farming practices into corporate profit, leaving communities empty-handed.
For Janni Mithula, 42, a resident of the Thotavalasa village in Andhra Pradesh, cultivating the rich, red soil of the valley was her livelihood. On her small patch of land grow with coffee and mango trees, planted over decades with tireless care and ancestral knowledge. Yet, once a source of pride and sustainability, the meaning of these trees has been quietly redefined in ways she never agreed to.
Over a decade ago, more than 333 villages in the valley began receiving free saplings from the Naandi Foundation as part of a large-scale afforestation initiative funded by a French entity, Livelihoods Funds. Unbeknownst to Janni and her neighbours, these trees had transfigured into commodities in a global carbon market, their branches reaching far beyond the valley to corporate boardrooms, their roots tethered not to the soil of sustenance but to the ledger of profit and carbon offsets.
The project claims that it would offset nearly 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over two decades. On paper, it is a triumph for global climate efforts. In reality, the residents’ lives have seen little improvement. While the sale of carbon credits has reportedly fetched millions of dollars for developers, Janni’s rewards have been minimal: a few saplings, occasional training sessions, and the obligation to care for trees that she no longer fully owns. These invisible transactions pose a grave risk to marginalised communities, who practice sustainable agriculture out of necessity rather than trend.
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The very systems that could uplift them—carbon markets intended to fund sustainability—end up exploiting their resources without addressing their needs.
Earlier this year, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth (DTE) released a joint investigative report on the functioning of the voluntary carbon market in India. The report critically analysed the impacts of the new-age climate solution, its efficacy in reducing carbon emissions, and how it affected the communities involved in the schemes.
The findings highlighted systemic opacity, with key details about the projects, prices, and beneficiaries concealed under confidentiality clauses. Developers also tended to overestimate their emission reductions while failing to provide local communities with meaningful compensation. The report stated that the main beneficiaries of these projects were the project developers, auditors and companies that make a profit out of the carbon trading system.
Carbon markets: The evolution
On December 11, 1997, the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) convened and adopted the Kyoto Protocol with the exigence of the climate crisis bearing down on the world. The Kyoto Protocol, revered for its epochal impact on global climate policy, focused on controlling the emissions of prime anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). One of the key mechanisms introduced was the “Clean Development Mechanism”, which would allow developed countries to invest in emission reduction projects in developing countries. In exchange, the developed countries would receive certified emission reduction (CER) credits, or carbon credits as they are commonly known.
One carbon credit represents the reduction or removal of one tonne of CO2. Governments create and enforce rules for carbon markets by setting emission caps and monitoring compliance with the help of third-party organisations. For example, the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) sets an overall cap on emissions and allocates allowances to industries. A financial penalty system was also put in place to prevent verifiers and consultants from falsifying emissions data. The impact of these renewable projects is usually verified through methods such as satellite imagery or on-site audits.
Companies such as Verra and Gold Standard have seized this opportunity, leading the designing and monitoring of carbon removal projects. Governments and corporations invest in these projects to meet their own net-zero pledges. The companies then issue carbon credits to the investing entity. Verra has stated that they have issued over 1 billion carbon credits, translating into the reduction of 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. However, countless case studies and reports have indicated that only a small fraction of these funds reach the local communities practising sustainability.
Article 6 under the Paris Agreement further concretised and regulated the crediting mechanism to enable countries interested in setting up carbon trading schemes. However, the parties failed to reach a consensus regarding the specifics of Article 6 at COP 27 and COP 28. So, climate finance experts and policymakers were very interested in the developments taking place at the COP 29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. Unlike its predecessors, the COP 29 summit has seen a diminished attendee list, with major Western political leaders including Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, and Emmanuel Macron failing to make it to the summit due to the increasingly turbulent climate within their own constituencies.
From a post-colonial perspective, carbon markets have been viewed as perpetuating existing global hierarchies; wealthier countries and corporations fail to reduce their emissions and instead shift the burden of mitigation onto developing nations. | Photo Credit: Illustration by Irfan Khan
Sceptics questioned whether this iteration of the summit would lead to any substantial decisions being passed. However, on day-two of the summit, parties reached a landmark consensus on the standards for Article 6.4 and a dynamic mechanism to update them. Mukhtar Babayev, the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan and the COP 29 President, said: “By matching buyers and sellers efficiently, such markets could reduce the cost of implementing Nationally Determined Contributions by 250 billion dollars a year.” He added that cross-border cooperation and compromise would be vital in fighting climate change.
India has positioned itself as an advocate for the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group, with Naresh Pal Gangwar, India’s lead negotiator at COP 29, saying, “We are at a crucial juncture in our fight against climate change. What we decide here will enable all of us, particularly those in the Global South, to not only take ambitious mitigation action but also adapt to climate change.”
The COP 29 decision comes in light of the Indian government’s adoption of the amended Energy Conservation Act of 2022, which enabled India to set up its own carbon market. In July 2024, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), an agency under the Ministry of Power, released a detailed report containing the rules and regulations of the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), India’s ambitious plan for a compliance-based carbon market. The BEE has aimed to launch India’s carbon market in 2026.
CSE’s report highlighted the challenges and possible strategies that the Indian carbon market could adopt from other carbon markets around the world. Referring to this report, Parth Kumar, a programme manager at CSE, pointed out how low carbon prices and low market liquidity would be prominent challenges that the nascent Indian market would have to tackle.
The Global South should be concerned
Following the landmark Article 6.4 decision, climate activists called out the supervisory board for the lack of discussion in the decision-making process. “Kicking off COP29 with a backdoor deal on Article 6.4 sets a poor precedent for transparency and proper governance,” said Isa Mulder, a climate finance expert at Carbon Market Watch. The hastily passed decision reflects the pressure that host countries seem to face; a monumental decision must be passed for a COP summit to be touted as a success.
The science behind carbon markets is rooted in the ability of forests, soil, and oceans to act as carbon sinks by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide. This process is known as carbon sequestration, and it is central to afforestation and soil health restoration projects. However, the long-term efficacy and scalability of these projects have been repeatedly questioned. The normative understanding of carbon markets as a tool to mitigate climate change has also come under scrutiny recently, with many activists calling the market-driven approach disingenuous to the goals of the climate movement.
From a post-colonial perspective, carbon markets have been viewed as perpetuating existing global hierarchies; wealthier countries and corporations fail to reduce their emissions and instead shift the burden of mitigation onto developing nations. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, said, “Climate colonialism is the deepening or expansion of foreign domination through climate initiatives that exploit poorer nations’ resources or otherwise compromises their sovereignty.” Moreover, the effects of climate change disproportionately fall on the shoulders of marginalised communities in the Global South, even though industrialised nations historically produce the bulk of emissions.
There have also been doubts surrounding the claiming process of carbon credits and whether the buyer country or the country where the project is set can count the project towards its own Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Provisions under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement state that countries cannot use any emission reductions sold to another company or country towards their own emissions targets. However, this has become a widespread issue plaguing carbon markets. The EU has recently been criticised for counting carbon credits sold to corporations under the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) towards the EU’s own NDC targets. This has led to concerns over the overestimation of the impact of mission reduction projects.
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Carbon offset projects, additionally, alienate local communities from their land as the idea of ownership and stewardship becomes muddled with corporate plans on optimally utilising the land for these projects. For example, in 2014, Green Resources, a Norwegian company, leased more than 10,000 hectares of land in Uganda, with additional land being leased in Mozambique and Tanzania. This land was used as a part of afforestation projects to practise sustainability and alleviate poverty in the area. However, interviews conducted with local Ugandan villagers revealed that the project forcibly evicted the local population without delivering its promises to improve access to health and education for the community. These concerns highlighted how the burden of adopting sustainable practices is placed on marginalised communities.
While carbon markets are rightfully criticised, they remain a key piece of the global climate adaptation puzzle. Addressing the issues surrounding transparency and equitable benefit-sharing with local communities could lead to carbon markets having a positive impact on climate change. The system must ensure that larger corporations and countries do not merely export their emissions, but instead implement measures to reduce their own emissions over time. It is also imperative to explore other innovative strategies such as circular economy approaches and nature-based solutions that are more localised, offering hope for a just and sustainable future.
Adithya Santhosh Kumar is currently pursuing a Master’s in Engineering and Policy Analysis at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Source: frontline.thehindu.com
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- The Mouila Declaration of the Informal Alliance against the Expansion of Industrial Monocultures
- FORCED LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA TRENDS RIGHTS OF DEFENDERS IMPACT AND CALL FOR ACTION
- 12 KEY DEMANDS FROM CSOS TO WORLD LEADERS AT THE OPENING OF COP16 IN SAUDI ARABIA
- PRESENDIANTIAL DIRECTIVE BANNING ALL LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA
- FROM LAND GRABBERS TO CARBON COWBOYS A NEW SCRAMBLE FOR COMMUNITY LANDS TAKES OFF
- African Faith Leaders Demand Reparations From The Gates Foundation.
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