The World Heritage Committee meets every year. The General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention elects 21 representatives of governments to take part in the meeting. The 48th session of the World Heritage Committee will take place in Busan, South Korea from 19 to 29 July 2026.

One of the decisions to be made during this year’s meeting involves the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Maasai who live in Ngorongoro are facing mass evictions — in the name of conservation.

Before the World Heritage Committee meeting, Survival International set up an email action demanding that the Committee take this seriously. More than 6,400 people have sent the email to members of the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee.

“UNESCO confirmed that following this, it raised concerns directly with the Tanzanian government,” Survival International writes.

On the World Heritage Convention website, UNESCO states that,

UNESCO has consistently stressed that forced evictions are unacceptable and incompatible with international human rights law and related international obligations.

But Survival International argues that the evictions are taking place with UNESCO’s support:

For years, UNESCO's reports and World Heritage Committee decisions have framed Maasai as the main threat to the environment in the area, providing legitimacy and arguments to the evictions. The Tanzanian government has explicitly cited UNESCO reports and World Heritage status in official justifications for the evictions.

Survival International’s response to World Heritage Commission’s draft decision on Ngorongoro is that it is “still way too weak”. Survival International states that the decision:

• doesn’t oppose the evictions: It only “notes” that the Tanzanian government decided to rely on “voluntary relocation” in Ngorongoro.

• talks about “consultation” – not consent: As Indigenous peoples, the Maasai have the right to say no to decisions about their land. The draft never asks for that.

• ignores the actual threats to Ngorongoro: Tourism development threatens the environment and pushes the Maasai off their land.

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The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance has written to the World Heritage Commission, calling on them to respect Indigenous Peoples rights and international law.

Ngorongoro, 16 July 2026

To the attention of the Members of the World Heritage Site

Re: Draft Decision on Ngorongoro World Heritage Site

An important decision is about to be made by the World Heritage Committee (WHC) on the status of Ngorongoro. This decision will shape not only the future of Ngorongoro but our future as Maasai Indigenous Peoples, our culture, and our very survival.

We, the Maasai of Ngorongoro, of other parts of Maasai land and our international allies, are writing to express our deep concerns about the current content of the draft Decision 48 COM 7B. 67 on Ngorongoro World Heritage Site, to be adopted at WHC meeting in Busan, Korea. We urge you to take all necessary steps to strengthen it and ensure it is aligned both with the stated wishes of our people and with international human rights law. Our six main concerns relate to:

1. The Multiple Land Use Model (MLUM): We contest the State party position that co-existence between Maasai pastoralists and wildlife is no longer possible. We reaffirm that protecting the rights of Indigenous communities is a founding objective of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), which must remain a priority and cannot be subordinated to tourism development. In line with Decision WHC/25/47.COM/ para. 5 which stated that the WHC “Reiterates its view that the continued implementation of a MLUM, developed in consultation with all stakeholders and rightsholders, and which ensures a clear human rights-based approach, is appropriate in principle”, we call on the WHC to explicitly support the continuation fo the MLUM in its decision.

2. Relocation as a principal response: We reject all forms of relocation and reaffirm our determination to stay on the land. Despite serious human rights abuses, suffering, suffocation of social services, harassment and violence in the last five years, the large majority people of Ngorongoro have decided to remain on the land. Any form of relocation is contrary to the will of our people. We call on the WHC to explicitly reject any form of relocation, be it “voluntary” or human-rights based, in its decision on Ngorongoro.

3. Free, Prior and Informed Consent: We reject the formulation of paragraph 3 of the draft decision which insists on the importance of “full and effective consultation with all stakeholders and rightsholders, including those who oppose relocation” before making any changes to the MLUM. This formulation is weak and undermines our right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). We call on the WHC to acknowledge and assert our right to FPIC, as Indigenous Peoples under international law. This includes the right to full and effective consultation but goes beyond it. It entails the right of all community groups to be involved and the right to say no. Any investment, decision or discussion on the future of Ngorongoro should seek and respect our FPIC.

4. The Presidential Commissions of Inquiry: We appreciate the request that the State Party should submit to the World Heritage Centre the full reports of the commissions of inquiry. However, we draw your attention to the fact that the Maasai community has repeatedly contested the terms of reference and recommendations of the Presidential Commissions and denounced a process that was conducted without reflecting the views of the community but only to justify already made decisions to force our people out. We call on the WHC not to recognize the reports of the Presidential Commissions as a legitimate and valid basis to determine the future of Ngorongoro.

5. Tourism carrying capacity: We denounce the fact that the draft decision is completely silent on the issue of over-tourism, despite earlier decisions clearly calling on the Tanzania government to pause further developments in absence of environmental impact assessments and a new General Management Plan (GMP). The growing influx of tourists and pressure by tourism investors is threatening the very existence of Ngorongoro. Government plans to massively expand tourism in the area are the main cause and driving force behind the ongoing forced relocation. We call the WHC to reinsert concerns about over-tourism in the decision including a moratorium on new developments until proper participatory assessments are conducted.

6. General Management Plan: We are highly concerned about the fact that Ngorongoro has been managed for the last 10 years without a General Management Plan (the last one expired in 2016) and has not engaged the people in a participatory process towards the development of a new one. We call on the WHC to insist that a new GMP be urgently developed in a participatory manner, with full involvement and consent of the people.

Any decision adopted by the WHC which ignores our concerns will be in clear violation of our fundamental rights and threaten our livelihoods and future, contravening both the principles of the WHC and international standards.

UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee’s structural failure to ensure the respect of human rights enshrined in international law raises fundamental questions on whether the NCA satisfies the ethical and governance standards expected of World Heritage Sites.

We urge you to take our concerns seriously and amend the draft decision to ensure it is aligned with international human rights standards and respects our demands as Peoples. We have been engaging with UNESCO and IUCN over the last four years and are deeply dissatisfied to see that the draft decision completely fails to acknowledge our priorities. Your failure to do so would make you complicit in the human rights violations that would inevitably ensue.

The future of Ngorongoro cannot be determined without the Maasai people. Conservation without rights is not conservation. Heritage without justice is not heritage.

The Maasai International Solidarity Alliance

“The energy transition is expected to massively boost demand for minerals and metals, requiring an estimated $1.7 trillion in global mining investment.” That’s the World Bank in 2022, arguing in favour of expanding extractivism in the Global South which “could contribute to economic growth, jobs, and local development”. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, the demand for minerals such as graphite, lithium, and cobalt to “meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies” could be five times larger than today.

But a new report by the Oakland Institute argues that the critical minerals race is not actually about a green transition. “Instead, it is largely driven by countries seeking strategic inputs for their industries — particularly the military — and by corporations seeking growth and profits,” the report states.

The report is titled, “RUSH: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet” and is written by Frédéric Mousseau and Andy Currier. The report finds that more than 70% of mineral demand comes from industries outside the energy transition. These include the aerospace, military, Big Tech, and AI sectors.

In a press release, Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, says,

“Securing access to critical minerals is reshaping international relations and foreign aid as competition between the US and China becomes a new geopolitical battleground. The costs are being borne by communities around the world as this global race drives wars and violence, results in land grabs, forced displacement, devastating pollution, and the irreversible destruction of lands and livelihoods.”

Project Vault

In February 2026, the fascist Trump regime announced a US$12 billion programme called Project Vault, to create a stockpile of critical mineral in the US. US$10 billion will come as a loan from the US Export-Import Bank and US$2 billion from private capital. Companies involved include General Motors, Alphabet, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. These companies will gain preferential access to minerals in case of shortages.

The Trump regime has signed more than 20 bilateral critical mineral deals, with countries including Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

In July 2025, the Oakland Institute published a report about the peace agreement signed between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, brokered by the Trump regime. The Oakland Institute explains that,

Profit off Peace? Meet the Corporations Poised to Benefit from the DRC Peace Deal exposes how the deal could further enrich Western mining firms with dubious records around human rights violations, environmental damages, and financial crime – in addition to billionaires like Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and mercenary Erik Prince. It examines the deep connections between Trump and several of the key players set to profit, raising legitimate concerns over the influence of business and foreign interests on Trump’s international agenda.

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The AI boom and demand for minerals

Between 2026 and 2030, the AI boom is expected to double the capacity of data centres. The AI industry is setting up its own mining companies — to secure the minerals needed for these data centres.

For example, a company called KoBold Metals was incorporated in the tax haven of Delaware in 2018. The company uses AI to explore for minerals.

Funding for KoBold Metals comes from Breakthrough Energy, which was launched by Bill Gates in Paris on the sidelines of COP21 in 2015. Breakthrough Energy is backed by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Benioff, Aditya Mittal, Andrew Forrest, and Michael Bloomberg.

Other investors in KoBold Metals include Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. (Andreessen is also a major backer of Substack.)

The company has more than 70 projects across five continents, the Oakland Institute notes.

KoBold is developing the US$2.3 billion Mingomba copper mine in Zambia.

In April 2026, KoBold Metals started exploring for lithium in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company has acquired 13 exploration licenses and will carry out airborne surveys over an area of 30,000 square kilometres. KoBold Metals will spend about US$50 million by early 2027, including US$20 million it has already paid to secure the permits.

Kurt House, KoBold’s CEO, claims that the company is “the largest American investor in the ​country”. He describes KoBold’s operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo as “the most ​ambitious mineral exploration ⁠programme ever attempted”.

Before setting up KoBold, House worked in the fossil fuel industry. He was CEO of C12 Energy, which uses carbon dioxide to extract more oil from mature oil fields (and which KoBold describes as “carbon sequestration”). He was also a partner at Phase Change Resources, a private equity-backed oil and gas acquisition platform.

KoBold’s president, Josh Goldman, also worked at Phase Change Resources, before which he worked for McKinsey.

“The stakes could not be higher”

“The report issues a resounding call to challenge this false narrative to stop the untenable rush for minerals before it becomes an irreversible global catastrophe,” the Oakland Institute’s Frederic Mousseau warns. “The stakes could not be higher. If left unchecked, the global mining rush will trigger hundreds of new mines in a short period. The resulting human and planetary devastation will be at a scale never seen before – livelihoods will be destroyed, millions will be displaced, and environmental destruction will become irreversible.”

In its report, the Oakland Institute highlights three significant threats posed by the mining rush:

1. Escalation of competition between global powers, particularly the United States and China, for the control of mineral supply chains. While growing competition may improve bargaining power for resource-rich countries, it also creates major risks of conflict and supply disruptions, as seen in China’s export restrictions in response to US tariffs.

2. Competition for critical minerals between energy transition and military applications. Minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt are essential for both renewable energy systems and the defense industry. US stockpiling programs such as Project Vault, combined with the Trump administration’s disregard for climate action, constrain mineral availability for renewable energy deployment.

3. The intensification of social and environmental harms caused by extraction on an unprecedented scale. Expanding extraction will require fast-tracking new mines, threaten Indigenous lands, exacerbate water scarcity, and dramatically increase toxic waste contamination. The cumulative environmental footprint – from deforestation, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss to air and water pollution – will intensify, while the social toll, including displacement, human rights abuses, conflict, and impact on human health, will come at an extraordinary cost.

Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian billionaire who made his money through the steel industry. In 2006, his company Mittal Steel bought Arcelor to form ArcelorMittal, which is currently the world’s second largest steel manufacturing company. Mittal got the nickname “King of Steel”.

In 2008, Mittal was the richest man in Europe, worth US$45 billion. (According to Forbes he is currently worth US$30 billion.) In 2008, he bought a £117 million house in Kensington for his son Aditya. The house was, at the time, Britain’s most expensive house. Mittal lived in a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, one of the most expensive residential streets in the world, long known as “Billionaires’ Row”.

From 2008 to March 2026, he was a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs.

His daughter’s wedding cost £55 million — more than Jeff Bezos’ wedding.

Mittal currently owns a Bombadier Global 7500 private jet. According to the BBC he often flies for more than 1,000 hours a year in his jet. In one week in June 2026, he flew between New York, Geneva, Paris, and London.

He also owns a 112 metre luxury superyacht.

While he donates to charities, including the Prince’s Trust and the NSPCC, and to the UK Labour Party (£5 million while Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were prime ministers), Mittal prefers to avoid paying tax. His houses are owned by companies registered in the tax haven of Jersey.

In November 2025, after three decades living in the UK, Mittal left the country. His move followed the government’s crackdown on non-domiciled UK residents. People with non-dom status could avoid paying UK tax on foreign income and gains. The Times reported that inheritance tax was another reason for Mittal leaving the UK.

Mittal is now resident in the tax haven of Switzerland where he owns a huge chalet overlooking St Moritz. He is reported to spend much of his time in Dubai, where he owns a mansion and property in a luxury development on Naia Island, Dubai.

Last week, Mittal wrote an article in the Financial Times in which he argued for the reform of the EU Emissions Trading System to protect Europe’s steel industry. “Low-cost, low-emissions energy sources for steel and other energy-intensive sectors remain elusive,” Mittal wrote.

[T]he issue of greatest concern for the steel industry and other “hard to abate” energy-intensive industries is the rapid and large increase in planned ETS costs over the next five years. By the early 2030s, assuming no free CO₂ allowances and a carbon price of €150 a tonne, we calculate the cost of steel made in the EU will have increased by about 50 per cent. This will be a direct result of the additional CO₂ costs imposed by the ETS.

The Belgian think tank Sandbag has been monitoring the EU Emissions Trading System since 2008. In a recent briefing, Sandbag challenges the claims that the steel industry is harmed by the ETS and argues that the opposite is true. “EU steelmakers will greatly benefit from the EU’s carbon market,” Sandbag states.

But while Mittal is critical of carbon trading when his company has to pay, another Mittal company, Aperam, a stainless steel manufacturer, generates carbon credits from its vast eucalyptus monocultures in Brazil.

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Aperam BioEnergia’s monocultures

Aperam BioEnergia is a Brazilian subsidiary of Aperam that produces charcoal from eucalyptus plantations to feed blast furnaces for iron production. Aperam BioEnergia owns about 124,000 hectares of land in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley, Minas Gerais, of which two-thirds is covered with monoculture eucalyptus plantations.

Aperam gains carbon credits by applying biochar to the soil in its plantations. According to the Puro Earth the company can generate 70,000 carbon credits per year. Buyers include Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, International Workplace Group (formerly Regus), The All England Lawn Tennis Club, Deutsche Bank, and Carbon Finance Labs.

Aperam claims to be “carbon neutral” or even “carbon positive” because it uses charcoal from plantations which are replanted. But when the charcoal is burned, it releases the carbon stored in the wood to the atmosphere — which contributes to global heating. In addition, in 2023, Aperam used 6.5 million litres of diesel, 475,000 litres of petrol, and 1,300 MWh of electricity.

The plantations have their origins in Brazil’s military dictatorship. In 1976, the state handed over almost 100,000 hectares of land to Acesita, the state-owned steel company. Some of the land was used by local farmers, but it was legally owned by the state. The Cerrado savanna ecosystem was converted to monocultures of eucalyptus to produce charcoal to fire Acesita’s steel mills.

In 2011, Acesita and its plantations were bought by Aperam.

FSC greenwashes water sucking monocultures

Communities in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley have seen their water sources dry up since the eucalyptus plantations were established. “Almost all the springs have dried up, and the Rio Fanado, the only remaining river, is polluted,” one resident of Alto Jequitinhonha Valley told Mongabay.

Among the communities living in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley are quilombos, settlements set up by formerly enslaved Africans. They are among the most marginalised communities in the valley.

In a 2025 Mongabay article, Daniel Camargos, Emmanuelle Picaud, and Simone Fant write that,

While hundreds of quilombola families struggle to secure water for farming and daily needs in this drought-prone region, Aperam labels its forestry operations as sustainable. Yet its certification by the Forest Stewardship Council has been criticized for failing to address water security issues and community needs.

The plantations were first certified in 2006.

A 2022 study by researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais documents how the fast-growing tree plantations have dried out water supplies for local communities. Forestry operations are highly mechanised and Aperam has created few jobs.

The Vicente Nica Center for Alternative Agriculture (CAV) supports more than 2,500 farming families in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley. CAV has been urging Aperam to address the impacts of its plantations for more than a decade.

In November 2020, CAV and 40 other organisations from Brazil, Italy, and Switzerland filed a complaint with FSC. They demanded the suspension of Aperam’s FSC certificate. Bureau Veritas, a certifying body under the FSC system, raised a “minor non-conformity” about local water supply and recommended that Aperam carry out a study.

In 2024, FSC commissioned Assurance Services International (ASI) to carry out a compliance assessment of Bureau Veritas. ASI found that Aperam’s environmental impact assessments were inadequate and failed to address water depletion issues.

Camargos, Picaud, and Fant write that,

ASI also flagged BV’s failure to gauge the seriousness of CAV’s allegations and whether these claims constituted a “minor or major non-conformity” — an issue that, if left unresolved within the time frame for the assessment, should have led to a suspension of Aperam’s FSC certification. In August 2024, Aperam replaced BV with another FSC-accredited body, the Brazil-based Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora). Aperam has until May to provide more detailed documentation of its environmental impact.

In January 2026, ASI raised four “minor non-conformities” with Imaflora’s certification of Aperam. ASI states that these non-conformities “indicate areas for improvement” but took no action against Imaflora as long as Imaflora subsequently addresses the non-conformities. Aperam’s water sucking monocultures remain certified as “well-managed” under the FSC system.

Aperam did not respond to Mongabay’s specific questions, instead listing a series of social and environmental programmes that the company carries out.

IFC funding

In 2025, the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm announced a US$250 million funding package. This consisted of a US$150 million loan from the IFC and US$100 million from other lenders, including the Dutch bank ING.

Aperam BioEnergia will use the money to expand its plantations and nursery operations and expand charcoal production capacity, improve kiln efficiency, and set up a bio-oil business line using by-products from charcoal production.

In a statement, Olaf Schmidt, regional industry director at IFC, commented,

“We are pleased to establish this partnership with Aperam to foster innovative solutions in the steel industry. This investment underscores IFC’s commitment to sustainable development and environmental stewardship. By supporting such project, IFC aims to provide innovative solutions that benefit both the economy and the environment.”

Bank Information Center raises a series of concerns about IFC’s financing of Aperam ranging from lack of information and inadequate due diligence to social and environmental concerns.

Aperam will buy a total of 42,600 hectares of land with the IFC loan. The company has already bought 29,600 hectares of which one-third is already plantations. The remainder includes, Legal Reserves, Permanent Protected Areas, and land under natural regeneration.

Bank Information Center writes that,

IFC states that the company has refused to disclose to IFC the location of a 13,000 hectare property to be acquired as part of the project, citing that making this information public could impact its operation.

Aperam’s expansion could result in further damage to Quilombola livelihoods and lands. Quilombola communities are recognised as traditional people under the Brazilian constitution and laws, and under ILO Convention 169 — which guarantees their rights to land, consultation, and self-determination.

Because Aperam refuses to say where 13,000 hectares of its expansion will be, Quilombola communities don’t even know which communities will be affected.

In October 2025, Global Forest Coalition interviewed Karen Lang,1 a researcher and agroforestry specialist, who had recently visited communities in the Alto Jequitinhonha Valley. Lang spoke about the impacts of the plantations on water supply:

In the communities that I visited, many of them, most of their natural water springs have dried up. Many rely on municipal water trucks for their water supply during the dry season, which is terrible because there are issues about the quality of water. The water is not treated in most cases. These people have to leave their communities and go into the city to request the water truck, which can take two weeks, it can take a month to come. So you can imagine what it would be like for people to have to constantly ration their water.

Vietnam is one of the world’s largest exporters of timber and wood products. In 2025, the total export value from Vietnam’s wood industry reached US$17.2 billion. Vietnam is the largest supplier of wooden furniture to the US. About 55% of Vietnam’s total export value goes to the US. Japan and China are also key markets.

In 1999, Global Witness published a report titled, “Made in Vietnam — Cut in Cambodia”. The report documented how the Vietnamese garden furniture industry was a major consumer of illegally logged timber from Cambodia.

Global Witness wrote that,

By buying Vietnamese garden furniture consumers risk finding out that they are at best contributing to forest destruction in Vietnam, Malaysia, Burma and Laos; countries that in part provide some of the timber used in the manufacture of the furniture. At worst there is a direct link between much of this garden furniture and the enriching of military warlords and the political elite in Cambodia.

Things have improved since 1999, although things moved a lot more slowly than we might have hoped.

The Vietnam Timber Legality Assurance System

In 2020, Vietnam set up the Vietnam Timber Legality Assurance System (VNTLAS), which was established under the EU-Vietnam Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT).

A new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency describes the VNTLAS as “one of the more advanced timber legality assurance systems in the region” and praises Vietnam’s “commitment to strengthening forest governance, improving oversight and maintaining access to international markets”.

But the report also exposes how illegally logged timber from Laos and Cambodia is still being used in Vietnam’s wood processing sector. EIA’s report states that,

EIA investigations found that timber harvested in Laos and Cambodia may enter supply chains through mechanisms which are inconsistent with legal frameworks, including quota systems linked to infrastructure projects, concession-based logging and harvesting beyond authorised boundaries. In these contexts, timber from illegal sources is processed and documented in ways that allow it to enter formal trade channels.

EIA highlights the problem: VNTLAS relies on documentation issued in Laos and Cambodia to verify legality. EIA (somewhat euphemistically) notes that “governance conditions affect how such documentation is produced”.

EIA writes that,

This creates a structural tension at the heart of VNTLAS: while the system is designed to verify legality through administrative controls, it must operate across borders where the integrity of those controls cannot be assured.

Imports from Laos and Cambodia account for a small percentage of Vietnam’s total timber supply. However, EIA’s report reveals that Vietnamese importers and traders are “engaged in fraudulent sourcing, processing and documentation practices circumventing requirements on how timber enters Vietnam’s market”.

In Cambodia, EIA writes about a “parallel system” of economic land concessions, infrastructure developments, and politically connected companies. Large scale logging takes place in — and around — these concessions, including in protected areas. Logs are transported into Vietnam, using political protection, corruption, and cross-border coordination to evade domestic export restrictions.

EIA’s report includes a series of case studies in Laos and Cambodia, including one from the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia.

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Logging in the proposed Samkos REDD project

Two US-based companies, Wildlife Works Carbon and Wildlife Alliance, are developing the Samkos REDD project in Cambodia.

Both companies are also involved in the Southern Cardamom REDD project, which is notorious for the model of fortress conservation employed. The project has seen human rights abuses, evictions, conflict with local communities, and threats to Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods.

The Samkos REDD project is next to the Southern Cardamom REDD project and overlaps the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment is also involved in the project, which covers almost 300,000 hectares.

In July 2022, Wildlife Works and Wildlife Alliance produced a project description document for the project. The project document states that the “growing communities” living in the project area “present the biggest threats to the Samkos REDD+ project”.

But this statement reflects the prejudices of the organisations writing the project document rather than the reality on the ground. The Cambodian government is actually a far greater threat to the people and the forests in the project area.

Between 2010 and 2022, the government removed land from the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary 65 times for economic land concessions, land distribution to communities, and public infrastructure.

In 2023, the area of the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary was increased from 333,750 to 362,384 hectares, Mekong Eye reports. But the new boundary excluded 58,000 hectares of economic land concessions and development projects that the government had awarded inside the protected area.

One of these economic land concessions was re-designated as the MDS Thmor Da special economic zone — a partnership between the Cambodian MDS Group and Henghe, a Chinese company. MDS Group is linked to logging tycoon Try Pheap who “controlled a multi-million dollar timber smuggling operation in Cambodia” Global Witness writes. “Officials from government, the military, police and customs were all complicit in this operation.”

The office blocks in the 2,265-hectare MDS Thmor Da special economic zone are currently largely abandoned, following a crackdown on cyber scam operations.

Stung Meteuk hydropower dams

In June 2023, Cambodia’s National Assembly approved the construction of the US$440 million Stung Meteuk hydropower dams. This 150 MW, three-dam project is inside the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. The dams are under construction about 10 kilometres from the MDS Thmor Da special economic zone.

By January 2024, the Ministry of Environment had issued licences for a sawmill and forest clearance in the reservoir areas behind the dams.

A five-year licence was awarded to Stung Meteuk Hydropower Company to build the dams. The chair of the company is senator Ly Yong Phat, whose business empire includes hotels, casinos, infrastructure, sugar, and the media. His sugar company operations have led to some of the most violent land grabbing in Cambodia. Thousands of people have been evicted to make way for Ly Yong Phat’s sugar plantations.

Ly Yong Phat was also involved in online scams. In September 2024, the US imposed sanctions on Ly Yong Phat for his role in “serious human rights abuses related to the treatment of workers subjected to forced labor in online investment scam operations”.

In 2024, Cambodian environmentalists reported illegal logging taking place beyond the reservoir areas. And an investigation by Mongabay revealed extensive illegal logging and roads fanning out from the reservoir area into the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.

EIA reports that forest activists found three sawmills in operation, when permission had only been given for one. Local sources told EIA that “one of the main companies purchasing wood from the site was Angkor Plywood, which was shipping wood to Vietnam”. In September 2024, the government suspended forest clearance at the dam project. But 22 days later, provincial authorities allowed the sawmills to reopen and logging in the protected area restarted.

In early 2025, Koh Kong Hydropower Co, Ltd took over the project.

EIA writes that,

The construction of the hydropower dam continues, even though it will do little address the country’s energy needs as it will not generate any electricity during the four-month long dry season. To date the main beneficiaries have been the companies able to remove valuable timber from protected areas and those awarded lucrative contracts to construct the dam.

The Samkos REDD project is currently listed as “Inactive” on Verra’s registry.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has announced plans to lift a moratorium on the allocation of new industrial forest concessions. Lifting the moratorium, which has been in place since 2002, could open tens of millions of hectares of tropical forests to the timber industry.

More than 70 environmental and human rights organisations have written to the Prime Minister urging the government to immediately suspend all efforts to life the moratorium.

The letter is posted in full below.

A briefing accompanying the letter explains that lifting the moratorium “risks legitimising widespread illegal practices and triggering an uncontrolled expansion of forestry concessions”.

In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s president Félix Tshisekedi described the country as a “solution country” to the climate crisis.

But in July 2021, Eve Bazaïba, DRC’s deputy prime minister and environment minister, had announced plans to lift the moratorium. The plans were eventually shelved.

The briefing accompanying the letter points out that the legal conditions required to life the moratorium have not been met. In addition, DRC faces persistent weaknesses in forest governance, risks of land-use conflicts, the marginal contribution to the national economy of industrial logging, and the environmental and social impacts of new large-scale industrial logging concessions.

In a statement, Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, says,

“Opening these climate-critical forests to more industrial logging would severely undermine the DRC's standing as a 'solutions country' at a time when it has taken several positive steps to improve forest governance and recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities. The DRC and its international partners should stick to this path rather than pursuing failed extractive models that deliver little benefit for forests or rural Congolese communities.”

And Blaise Mudodosi Muhigwa of Actions pour la Promotion et la Protection des Peuples et Espèces Menacés (APEM) says,

“Most existing logging concessions have already been converted into conservation concessions, while more than half of those that remain have ceased operations. This raises a legitimate question: who would truly benefit from lifting the moratorium?”

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Here is the letter from more than 70 organisation to the prime minister. The letter and the full list of signatories is available here.

3rd July 2026

To Her Excellency the Prime
Minister of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Head of
Government of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Prime Minister’s Office
Kinshasa/Gombe

Copy sent for information to:

- To His Excellency the President of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Head of State.
Palais de la Nation, Kinshasa/Gombe
With the utmost respect.

- To Her Excellency the Minister for the
Environment, Sustainable
Development and the New Climate
Economy (MEDD-NEC).
- To the Secretary-General for the
Environment, Sustainable
Development and the New Climate
Economy (SG MEDD-NEC).
- To the Director-General of Forests
(DGFOR).
- To the Director of Forest Inventories
and Management (DIAF).
- To the Coordinator of the Technical
Committee for Monitoring and
Evaluation of Reforms (CTR)
All in Kinshasa/Gombe.

- To the international partners within
the Inter-Donor Group on
Environment and Climate in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
(GIBEC).
In Kinshasa/Gombe.
Au Secrétariat du Central African
Forest Initiative (CAFI).
A Genève/Suisse.

Subject: Maintaining the moratorium on the granting of new industrial forest concessions

Your Excellency the Prime Minister,

In the context of the ongoing forestry reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we, more than 60 Congolese and international organisations, are writing to express our serious concern over plans to lift the national moratorium on the allocation of new industrial forest concessions.

As organisations working for the defence of the environment and human rights in the DRC and globally, we commend the several steps the government has taken over the past year to reduce deforestation and improve forest governance. Recent initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment and National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, together with legal and policy reforms on forests, land-use planning and Indigenous Peoples rights and the creation of the Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor, are all positive examples of the DRC living up to its ‘solutions country’ reputation.

This is why we are deeply concerned that advanced plans to open potentially tens of millions of hectares of the DRC’s forests to the logging industry will undermine this progress. For reasons outlined in this letter and detailed in the attached briefing, we call on you to uphold the moratorium until key legal conditions have been met and broader forest and land sector reforms have been completed.

The importance of the DRC’s forests to the climate, biodiversity and the lives of tens of millions of forest-dependent people cannot be overstated. Introduced in 2002 and then reinforced by Presidential decree in 2005 against a backdrop of profound disorganisation in the industry, the moratorium remains an essential regulatory tool today as many of the structural weaknesses that justified its introduction persist: weak governance, inadequate oversight mechanisms, limited transparency and the still incomplete protection of the rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples.

The inclusion of the moratorium lifting in the first draft of the forestry code and the development of a draft legal decree therefore raise fundamental legal, moral, economic and environmental problems. First, these parallel processes present several significant legal and procedural concerns, not least that the preconditions set out in the 2005 presidential decree — particularly regarding geographical planning resulting from a participatory and transparent process — have not been met. The available documentation does not, as things stand, allow for a coherent allocation of land, nor does it prevent the risks of overlapping claims and conflicts of use.

Second, research shows that a hasty lifting of the moratorium could legitimise widespread illegal practices, fuel the uncontrolled expansion of forestry concessions, and worsen conflicts and rights violations. With weak governance and limited oversight, expansion would only deepen existing challenges for forests, communities and workers.

Third, it would also undermine climate and biodiversity commitments made by the DRC on the international stage and compromise several ongoing national land and forest related reform processes. As the President of the Republic himself reiterated during the Council of Ministers meeting on 22 May 2026, “Our country’s international credibility is also at stake [ . . . ] The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s natural leadership in these forums must be underpinned by coherent national policies, credible governance mechanisms and a clearly affirmed political will.”

Fourth, the expected economic benefits of expanding industrial logging appear limited. The industry contributes only marginally to national revenue and continues to face major compliance challenges. Its economic viability is also in question, as many operators have converted their titles to conservation concessions.

Finally, the environmental case for lifting the moratorium is similarly weak. While the causes of deforestation in the DRC are complex and multi-layered, the answer is not to hand over large, bounded areas as industrial concessions. Many existing concessions still lack government-approved management plans and a growing body of research highlights the risks associated with the industrial logging concession system, particularly the role that logging roads play in opening previously intact areas of forest to new forms of deforestation.

Under these circumstances, expanding this model risks exacerbating social and environmental harm without guaranteeing any significant developmental benefits for the national economy or local communities. Considering these factors, which are further detailed in this briefing, we respectfully call on you to uphold the national logging moratorium and advance the following measures:

• Halt current efforts to lift the moratorium, including removing it from the draft forest code and withdrawing the draft decree.

• Complete ongoing legal reforms on forests, land and Indigenous rights in line with international standards before reviewing the moratorium.

• Ensure lawful, participatory land-use planning that reflects community forests, climate goals and other priorities.

• Strengthen enforcement by investigating violations, prosecuting offenders and revoking illegal permits, alongside measures such as a log export ban and expanded independent and community monitoring.

• Prohibit new industrial concessions in the Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor.

• Expand support for community forests as a core part of forest management and land use.

• Mobilise international climate and development finance to support these actions.

We are convinced that such an approach, based on legal rigour, transparency and respect for rights, will enable the sustainable consolidation of forest governance in the DRC, whilst preserving its strategic role in the fight against the climate and biodiversity crises.

We remain at your full disposal for any further discussion or information you may require.

Yours sincerely,

[Full list of signatories is available here.]

In May 2026, a REDD+ Global Summit took place at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi. Organised by the UNFCCC secretariat, the meeting was intended,

“to provide a space for discussion on opportunities and challenges with accessing different sources of REDD+ results-based finance, and with combining them with other forest-related funds.”

Almost 100 people took part in the meeting, from 59 countries involved in developing REDD projects or programmes. Representatives from four donor countries, 13 international organisations working on implementing REDD, and three civil society organisations also took part.

A summary report produced by the UNFCCC secretariat reports that the meeting closed with a “forward-looking sentiment”:

the task of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 is demanding, but practical cooperation can accelerate progress. Building on the political momentum around the COP30 Presidency Forest Roadmap, participants expressed interest in sustaining peer learning and in continuing to refine how REDD+ delivers credible, inclusive and scalable outcomes across an evolving set of finance pathways.

This sort of sounds nice, except that it’s focused on hoped for future improvements to a mechanism that has failed to address deforestation, over a period of several decades.

The rate of destruction of primary tropical forests remains stubbornly high and is way off the target of stopping deforestation by 2030. In 2025, 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary forest were lost.

Predictably enough, the summary report of the meeting in Nairobi makes no mention of fossil fuels. Neither does it mention the climate crisis (or even climate change). Of course, there is no mention of the fact that Big Polluters are buying REDD carbon credits and using them to legitimise continued pollution.

And the fact that we simply cannot address the climate crisis by trading the carbon stored in forests against continued emissions from burning fossil fuels is nowhere to be found in the summary report.

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“Time is running out”

Kwami Kpondzo, Extractive Industries, Tourism and Infrastructure Campaign Coordinator at Global Forest Coalition, recently reported on the REDD+ Global Summit.

“Time is running out,” Kpondzo writes, “yet countries continue to pursue solutions that ultimately fuel the climate crisis by allowing polluters to carry on with business as usual. These so-called solutions include, among others, REDD+ and carbon markets.”

The three-day REDD+ Global Summit held in Nairobi from 19 to 21 May 2026 made it clear that REDD+ initiatives are primarily projects that facilitate the financialisation of nature. Countries are seeking opportunities to generate funding rather than addressing the root causes of the climate crisis.

Presentations at the REDD+ Global Summit came from the World Bank, Verra, Emergent, and Conservation International. Their approach, Kpondzo notes, was to draw countries’ attention to the supposed benefits of REDD, rather than focusing on the safeguards under the Warsaw framework. “Traditional and local knowledge were not at the centre of the discussion, even though it is a crucial issue in REDD+ projects,” Kpondzo writes.

The Warsaw Framework for REDD+

“The Warsaw Framework for REDD+, adopted at COP19 in 2013 and expanded at COP21 in 2015, includes measures on social and environmental safeguards,” Kpondzo writes.

The Warsaw Framework for REDD+ included seven decisions on REDD. One of these decisions was about how and when countries report on how safeguards are being addressed and respected. The safeguards, as Kpondzo notes, were agreed at COP16 that took place in Cancun in 2010.

Shortly after COP19 finished, I wrote a line-by-line explanation and critique of the COP19 decision on reporting on safeguards. I concluded that,

The Warsaw decision on summary of information on safeguards is staggeringly weak. Governments “should” provide a summary report every two years. Least developed countries don’t even have to do that if they don’t feel like it.

Before the Warsaw Framework, several REDD projects were implemented that resulted in “negative consequences” Kpondzo writes. He highlights two of these projects, the Mai Ndombe REDD project in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Guaraqueçaba Climate Action Project in Brazil.

The Mai Ndombe REDD project was set up by Ecosystem Restoration Associates and Wildlife Works Carbon subsequently took over the project. The project failed to carry out a meaningful process of free, prior and informed consent. “Communities were not adequately informed about REDD+,” Kpondzo writes, “and the project failed to consider customary land rights, preventing communities from claiming their rights to carbon.”

The project also failed to stop deforestation — deforestation increased quite dramatically two years after the project started.

When journalist Jonas Gerding visited the project in 2022, he found that communities living in the project area have seen few benefits.

The Nature Conservancy started the Guaraqueçaba Climate Action Project in 2001. The project is funded by three Big Polluters: American Electric Power, Chevron, and General Motors.

In 2009, investigative journalist Mark Schapiro reported from Guaraqueçaba. He found that many people that had previously lived in the project area had been forced to move. The Nature Conservancy’s local partner, Society for Wildlife Research and Environmental Education (SPVS), had forced villagers to stop using the forest and planting food crops.

In 2012, Fern carried out a series of interviews with people affected by the project. “There’s no more freedom here”, one man said. “They buy this, buy that, till there’s nowhere for us to go.”

REDD problems have continued since the Warsaw Framework

Many REDD projects implemented since the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ have faced similar problems, Kpondzo notes. He refers to a 2018 report by CIFOR titled, “Transforming REDD+: Lessons and new directions”. The report found a series of ongoing problems with REDD. “We point to critical issues and suggest how to move forward to make forest-based mitigation effective, efficient and equitable,” the report states.

Among the problems that CIFOR highlights are the following:

• A global carbon market – of which REDD+ was to be an integral part – never

  materialised. Finance for REDD+ has been provided by only a small group of

  countries and multilateral institutions, and readiness funding is drying up.

• Results-based payment has not been the driving force it was expected to be, due to a lack of finance and other challenges, including questions of what to pay for, whom to pay and how to set reference levels.

• Coordination, often cited as the solution to many challenges, is in reality hampered by the conflicting interests attached to land and forest use.

• Land tenure and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities have been prominent on the REDD+ agenda since its early days. Implementation has resulted in some progress on tenure, but not enough to ensure a proper functioning of REDD+.

• A review of the available evidence on policy impacts finds that national and

  subnational policies contribute to forest conservation, but their effectiveness is low on average, especially in the tropics.

Since the CIFOR report, a number of critical reports about carbon trading and REDD have been published. Recently Simon Counsell and Jutta Kill wrote a series of articles titled, “Crooked Carbon Business” which highlights 11 problematic forest carbon projects. Counsell and Kill also produced an overview of documentation of “inherent contradictions of carbon offsetting and how these consistently generate conflicts and ‘phantom’ credits”.

Kpondzo concludes his report on the REDD+ Global Summit as follows:

The first UNFCCC REDD+ summit held in Nairobi in May 2026 highlighted diminishing possibilities for accessing funding to continue forest conservation and carbon offsetting projects in the future. This raises an important question: Why invest existing funds in projects that fail to solve the climate crisis, destroy the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities, and distract countries from taking real climate action?

Instead of halting deforestation and forest degradation, REDD+ has commodified forests and forest life as carbon, rather than recognising their intrinsic value. These projects even count monoculture tree plantations as forests, misleadingly presenting reduced deforestation figures while ignoring the destruction of primary forests and biodiversity. In reality, monoculture plantations are harmful, are not true forests, and do not store carbon as primary forests do. Where do the carbon credits to be sequestered, sold, and turned into profit actually come from?

It is clear that polluters want to continue emitting CO₂, which is why they support REDD+ processes and carbon trading schemes. Is REDD+ truly a solution to climate change? We are losing forests at an alarming rate despite the proliferation of REDD+ projects. Now is the time to consider alternative approaches.

The Kajiado Rangelands Carbon project targets 1.5 million hectares of Maasai land in southern Kenya. The project is being developed by two US companies called Soils for the Future and CarbonSolve. Both companies share the same director and founder, Mark Ritchie. And both companies were incorporated in the tax haven of Delaware.

Ritchie was also one of the lead designers of the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project — a project that Verra suspended twice. Despite an ongoing court case against the project, and the fact that the project failed to carry out a process of free, prior and informed consent before starting, Verra recently reinstated the project.

Ritchie claims that, “it is possible to raise beef in ways that actually remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”.

On his LinkedIn profile, Ritchie has a post, the first sentence of which is “Climate positive beef!” This is beef industry propaganda — no need to improve diets by reducing (or eliminating) meat consumption, just buy “sustainable” meat. It’s the same nonsense as carbon neutral fossil fuels.

Ritchie has since deleted the post but the first six lines are still available on his profile:

Belcampo

Ritchie writes about a US meat company called Belcampo. The company claimed to sell “organic, pasture-raised and 100% grass-fed” meat. It owned its own farm, slaughterhouse, restaurants, and butcher shops.

Anya Fernald was the founder and CEO of Belcampo, which she started in 2012. “Ex-vegetarians are our target market,” Fernald told The New Yorker in 2014. “Whole foods plus vegetarianism isn’t going to get a lot of converts. Whole foods plus whole animals is a lot more fun.”

The headline of The New Yorker piece was “Élite Meat.”

In 2004, Fernald met Allan Savory. He’s a rancher from Zimbabwe who came up with an idea he calls “holistic management”. According to Savory, increasing the number of livestock and rotating the grazing can restore the land and address the climate crisis.

Savory’s ideas are not backed by science. But these are the same ideas underlying the massive carbon projects on Maasai and other Indigenous Peoples’ land in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ritchie helped produce Belcampo’s 2020 greenhouse gas inventory. According to a press release, the inventory “demonstrates that its burgers have a net negative impact on carbon emissions”.

By the time that press release came out, Belcampo was facing serious problems.

In 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle obtained 81 pages of US Department of Agriculture Belcampo noncompliance reports dating from January 2020 to November 2021.

These reports “paint a limited yet concerning picture of Belcampo’s plant”, Elena Kadvany, deputy food and wine editor at the San Francisco Chronicle writes.

Pieces of animal meat and fat were strewn throughout Belcampo Meat Co.’s processing plant: on hallways and rugs, the floors of restrooms and an employee break room. In some areas, ants crawled on the abandoned flesh.

Kadvany lists some of the problems revealed in the USDA reports:

• the discovery of a leaking, blood-covered box with “discolored” meat inside;

• mould growing on pallets;

• pork product giving off a “foul smell”; and

• improperly labelled meat.

In May 2021, Evan Reiner, a former butcher at Belcampo’s shop in Santa Monica, posted a series of videos on Instagram. The videos showed plastic wrapped beef from Tasmania, boxes of supermarket-brand chicken, and plastic wrapped turkey breast — all in Belcampo’s shop.

“It’s not grass-fed, it’s not organic,” Reiner says.

Reiner said the meat was labelled as organic from Belcampo’s farm, and sold at increased prices. Other Belcampo employees confirmed that the company had been selling mislabelled meat.

Following the scandal, in October 2021, Belcampo closed all its butcher shops and restaurants.

I’m just guessing of course, but I reckon this whole shambles is why Ritchie deleted his post about Belcampo on LinkedIn.

And if Ritchie’s carbon calculations accounted for the fact that Belcampo was selling beef flown in from Australia then I’m the Queen of Sheba.

Jadora

Ritchie was previously Chief Technical Officer at another US company, Jadora LLC, which was run by the notorious Blattner family. In 2021, David Blattner was convicted in the Democratic Republic of Congo of embezzling state funds. He fled to Belgium before the verdict and from there to a luxurious US$2.5 million waterfront apartment in Miami.

The Blattners’ Isangi REDD project in the Democratic Republic of Congo collapsed in 2024. The project had both failed to reduce emissions and failed to improve the livelihoods of the people living in the project area.

The Blattner family is currently developing another REDD project, the Tshopo Lomami REDD project — which is being developed by three companies registered at David Blattner’s Miami apartment.

In 2011, Ritchie wrote a short article in the Jadora LLC Newsletter under the headline, “The Mbirikani Grassland Carbon Project.” The article starts as follows:

Grasslands and savannah ecosystems can store nearly as much carbon in soils as forests do in more visually obvious wood. Changes in the way grasslands are managed could reduce global emissions by 10-15%, and so grassland management offers a new way to generate carbon offsets.

It may be true that changing the management of grasslands could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10-15% (although Ritchie doesn’t provide any evidence in his article). However, generating carbon credits from reduction in emissions wipes out any potential climate benefits, because the reductions are traded against continued emissions from burning fossil fuels elsewhere.

Ritchie explains that Jadora and Soils for the Future have developed a methodology “to generate carbon offsets by managing grazing animals and fire in grasslands and savannahs”.

Back in 2011, Jadora and Soils for the Future were working with the Mbirikani Group Ranch “to restore carbon to the soil of 100,000 ha” of savannah near Amboseli National Park in Kenya. Ritchie writes that,

We are employing a combination of herder education and infrastructure investment to improve water distribution to restore traditional Maasai methods of moving livestock in very large herds rapidly across the landscape.

In 2024, the Mbirikani Group Ranch partnered with the Chyulu Hills REDD project, which is run by Conservation International.

Kajiado

The Kajiado Rangelands Carbon project is already causing problems and generating conflict among the Indigenous Maasai living in the project area. Survival International reports Maasai people describing the project as “a scam to communities” and “neocolonial” in its approach.

They accuse Soils for the Future of luring and tricking people into signing agreements that they don’t understand, and only involving a small number of community members.

Protests broke out in 2025. The community in Oldonyonyokie Group Ranch is opposed to the carbon project. “It’s not transparent, it’s corrupt, and it’s not consent,” one Maasai man commented.

Greenpeace set up a petition in support of the Maasai, urging President Samia Suluhu to reject carbon credit projects. In a statement, Amos Wemanya of Greenpeace Africa says,

“This is climate colonialism, plain and simple. Communities that have lived in harmony with nature for generations are being pushed off their land so that foreign polluters can continue business as usual. Carbon offsetting is not a climate solution, it is a dangerous distraction that sells off our future.”

CarbonSolve and Soils for the Future responded by calling on Greenpeace “to cease and desist communicating any more about these companies or the associated carbon projects, to immediately apologize publicly for the errors in your reporting on your website, and retract your previous statement”.

Survival International

In September 2025, Survival International published a Public Comment on the proposed Kajiado Rangelands Carbon project. On 17 January 2026, Verra posted a redacted version of the comment on its registry.

The following is from the unredacted version of Survival International’s Public Comment.

Survival International notes that the project’s additionality claim is based on the argument that “The rangelands in Kajiado County have seen decades of overgrazing pressure.” But Soils for the Future provides no empirical evidence to support this claim.

Survival International states that,

The lack of any clear evidence for actual decline in vegetation under current Maasai grazing practices calls into question the entire additionality of the project, its future baseline scenarios and indeed its entire rationale.

The method of monitoring the project relies on using a model developed by Mark Ritchie to estimate levels of soil carbon storage from vegetation quality data from satellite images. But vegetation quality is largely dependent on how much rain has fallen. It could be extremely difficult to determine whether changes in vegetation quality (and therefore the amount of carbon in the soil) is a result of changes in grazing patterns or whether it is simply the result of changes in weather patterns.

Survival International points out that there are several legal disputes that could affect the project. One of these involves the 113,000 hectare Ogulului Group Ranch. A legal case is still ongoing about the 2018 election of the leaders of the Ogulului Group Ranch. The Kajiado project signed agreements with people who may not be the legal leaders of the Group Ranch. If new elections are held, there is no guarantee that the new leadership would sign the agreements with the project.

Leakage occurs when livestock in the project area graze elsewhere, or when cattle from outside the project area graze inside it. “Such leakage,” Survival International writes, “will with this project be extremely hard or impossible to monitor, as there are few physical demarcations of the project area”.

Here’s one of the maps that Northern Rangelands Trust produced to track leakage in the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project — which Mark Ritchie was also involved in developing.

In 2023, Journalist Tin Fischer wrote about the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project in Die Zeit. He comments that the maps “do not look reassuring”.

Survival International notes that project documents for the Kajiado project claim that the project will support a return to “traditional” Maasai grazing practices. This is misleading. According to the project document on Verra’s registry, the project will implement a “new system of more intense and higher impact rapid rotational grazing”. This new system is very different to the Maasai’s traditional grazing patterns and does not take account of long-standing cultural knowledge.

“The tradition is that there are no borders,” a Maasai community member from the area told Survival International. “But with the carbon projects, you are restricted on your own little piece of land.”

While the project makes claims about consultation and participation in the development of the project, Survival International’s field research revealed that participation in Soils for the Future’s meeting was limited. The wider community has not been involved, Survival International found.

The Kajiado project will generate carbon credits for Climate Asset Management, a UK-based joint venture between HSBC Asset Management and Pollination.

The project document states that Climate Asset Management’s investment with the project, “secures financial support by committing capital in exchange for the future flow of high-quality carbon credits generated by the project”.

But the agreement between Climate Asset Management and the project is not publicly available. Communities in the project area know nothing about the commercial agreements behind the project’s use of their land to generate carbon credits.

Very little information is available about the plans for benefit sharing. 70% of net benefits will go to communities. That’s after the project proponent and technical partners have taken their cut, validation and verification costs are paid, along with Verra’s fees, local taxes and any other fees that might have to be paid. It’s far from clear whether communities will benefit at all from carbon credits that are sold to Climate Asset Management.

Survival International writes that,

The document refers repeatedly to a “benefit sharing mechanism”, but nowhere describes what this is, how it works, who is involved, who makes decisions, who oversees it and who it is accountable to, etc. Again, this seems to run a very high risk of promoting corruption and other malpractices and fueling community tensions.

The project is currently “Under validation” on Verra’s registry. Survival International concludes that “the project cannot and should not be validated” and that Verra should formally disassociate itself from Soils for the Future and remove its projects from its registry.

This is the sixth in REDD-Monitor’s occasional series of REDDisms. Each post consists of ten quotations, nine of which are recent and one of which comes from my collection of REDDisms dating back to 2009.

“The President still needs to learn the [moratorium] concept better.”

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of the Indonesian REDD+ Task Force, February 2011 (one month after the moratorium should have started)

“The basic idea was that we could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority. But maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means. And this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics.”

Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, October 2010

“Additionality is, in itself, questionable as a scientific concept. At a fundamental level, offsetting as a practice substantiated through the concept of additionality can never be established as ‘scientific fact’, as it is always established through counterfactual and hypothetical reasoning. Thus, the carbon accounting that the VCC relies on is opened up to negotiation and subjective judgement by partisan auditors and stakeholders.”

Nicholas Beuret (University of Essex), Matilda Fitzmaurice (Lancaster University), and David Harvie, December 2025

“I have another concern, really. Carbon credits, they just, they seem like a bit of a scam.
“And I don’t want to be crude, but they seem like a scam — because would we not be better off spending the money on actual projects on our own island here that can store carbon, or can better improve the environment? As opposed to trying to buy pieces of paper to say, Oh, we’re the best child in the class.”

Albert Dolan, Irish member of parliament, May 2026

“There are a lot of carbon cowboys, like I would call them, who are promising the world to both governments and to local communities but who rarely deliver.”

Lee White, former environment minister of Gabon, May 2026

“Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help fill GHG data gaps, but may also amplify uncertainty and reduce transparency if not carefully validated, a webinar heard on Tuesday.”

Stewart Mior, Carbon Pulse, May 2026

“Leading carbon credit registry Verra has announced a major, multi-year partnership with tech giants ServiceNow and Docusign to overhaul its customer service and contract infrastructure and integrate AI.”

Violet George, Carbon Herald, June 2026

“The Bank’s priority is reducing GHG emissions from physical operations. Carbon credits are not intended to be used to meet the Bank’s 2030 and 2035 interim milestones and have not been used to evidence progress against the 2040 decarbonisation trajectory.”

Bank of England, June 2026

“The total global flow of finance to nature reached an estimated US$220 billion in 2023, of which public finance through domestic government expenditure, official development assistance and debt-for-nature swaps accounted for US$197 billion. By contrast, private finance for nature amounted to just US$23.4 billion, of which the compliance and voluntary carbon markets contributed approximately US$0.9 billion and US$0.4 billion, respectively.”

Lian Pin Koh, National University of Singapore, June 2026.

“Musk got this money from piggy backing on other people’s success, busting trade unions, moving to low tax states, selling carbon credits from Tesla to highly polluting companies and getting government contracts for SpaceX. He is a grifter, a narcissist, a crypto fascist and a hypocrite. He advocates for outright race war in Britain. In short – he is a perfect representative of late stage capitalism.”

Simon Hannah, Anti*Capitalist Resistance, June 2026

A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, looks at whether carbon projects aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation also benefit forest ecosystems. Here’s the abstract:

Reducing deforestation is proposed as a global climate action, yet it remains unclear whether carbon projects based on such interventions also maintain forests’ ecological conditions. Here we evaluate 133 projects against matched controls using five ecological-integrity indicators, to show that most projects have mixed, negligible or negative impacts relative to control areas. Results highlight fundamental shortcomings of these climate solutions that limit their ability to safeguard healthy ecosystems and sequester carbon.

The study was written by Kelly Ong, Tao Chen, Zhimin Chen, and Yiwen Zeng of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Carlos T. Pérez-Brito of the World Bank.

The researchers compiled data for 196 forest carbon projects. They compared the project areas with matched controls in the surrounding areas in the same biome. They excluded a 10-kilometre zone around each project area to account for local-scale leakage (where forest destruction is displaced from the project area, to the area immediately around the project).

Of the 196 projects, the authors write, “133 achieved good post-matching balance (standardized mean differences (SMD) <0.25) and were large enough to support pixel-level matching and were retained for analysis”. This number was subsequently reduced to 116 projects for which the researchers had “sufficient data to make direct comparisons between avoided deforestation project areas and unprotected forests”.

They used five indicators to evaluate the ecological integrity of each project in comparison to control areas:

• biodiversity intactness index (community-level response to human

  pressures),

• forest landscape integrity index (measures anthropogenic

  pressures and degradation intensity),

• forest fragmentation (quantifies structural fragmentation based on patch configuration),

• canopy height (vertical structure and forest age),

• and GHG net flux (indicator of ecosystem function and carbon permanence).

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Mixed, negligible or negative impacts

Of the 116 projects, only nine (8%) showed positive effects across all five ecological-integrity indicators.

29 projects (25%) showed positive effects for at least one ecological-integrity indicators, with all remaining indicators showing no significant differences. “This can be attributed to the carbon-centric design of most accounting frameworks,” the researchers write, “which prioritizes carbon storage over maintenance of ecological integrity.”

13 projects (11%) in New South Wales, Australia show no significant differences in any ecological-integrity indicators. The authors note that these projects are in areas with “low agricultural productivity and limited human activity”. In other words, these forest carbon projects faced very low risk of deforestation.

46 projects (40%) show a mix of positive, negative, and non-significant results over the five ecological-integrity indicators.

19 projects (16%) showed “poorer ecological conditions than the surrounding unprotected forests”.

The authors point out that,

[C]arbon finance can sometimes exacerbate existing social tensions, reinforcing the need for strong safeguards. For example, the Purus Project (VCS963) in Brazil faced unresolved land tenure issues and lacked formal regulatory mechanisms to manage disputes, undermining enforcement capacity and community support despite achieving Climate, Community and Biodiversity certification. These challenges contributed to continued deforestation and conflict, limiting ecological gains despite carbon finance inflows.

The authors conclude that forest carbon projects “can maintain ecological integrity under specific conditions” but “their performance is inconsistent overall”.

Oddar Meanchey as an example of “ecological integrity”?

The authors write that improved ecological integrity is “often linked to approaches that emphasize community engagement, local participation and livelihood-improvement programmes”.

More broadly, success also depends on governance conditions, including secure land tenure, effective regulatory frameworks and socio-political contexts shaped by population pressures and conflict.

That seems reasonable.

However, as an example of these approaches, the authors refer to the Oddar Meanchey REDD project in Cambodia.

The project has completely failed to prevent deforestation. Large areas of community forests that were part of the REDD project were cleared by the Cambodian military. In 2014, Shalmali Guttal of Focus on the Global South sent a series of photographs of the destruction to REDD-Monitor:

The Oddar Meanchey REDD project consisted of 13 community forest areas. Of these, only one succeeded in preventing deforestation.

Timothy Frewer wrote his PhD dissertation at the University of Sydney on the Oddar Meanchey project, conducting almost 300 interviews as part of his research. Frewer notes that the one community forest that prevented deforestation is run by a “charismatic monk” who “governs the forest in a near-despotic fashion”.

The authors of the new study in Nature Climate Change refer to a 2014 paper written by Ian Baird of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to support their claims about the Oddar Meanchey project involving community engagement and local participation.

But Baird’s paper is quite critical of the Oddar Meanchey project. Baird notes that “one of the main structural weaknesses of the project is that it has not been able to provide locals with secure long-term tenure, or access, over forests, only 15-year agreements that provide limited community control”.

These agreements could be revoked at any time by the Forest Administration and villagers “have to organize community forests following the FA’s framework”. Baird adds that, “Communal land tenure for agricultural lands has not been established in Oddar Meanchey . . . ”.

Baird also writes that “there have been considerable problems” with the REDD project, including the clearing of “large amounts of forests in the REDD project area” by the Cambodian military, “causing so much damage to the forest that some feared the whole REDD project could be derailed as a result”.

Baird concludes that,

[I]f we assess this project using the concepts of access and exclusion, it can be concluded that it has been unsuccessful, as communities have not achieved secure long-term access to their resources, and they are having increasingly serious problems excluding others from encroaching on their forests.

The Oddar Meanchey REDD project has not sold any carbon credits since 2015. The project’s status is currently listed on Verra’s registry as “Late to verify.”

The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project is “the world’s largest soil carbon removal project” according to Northern Rangelands Trust, the organisation running the project.

It is also one of the most controversial carbon projects anywhere in the world. The carbon certifying company Verra has suspended the project twice, first in 2023, and again in 2025.

Last week, Verra reinstated the project despite a 2025 court ruling that two of Northern Rangelands Trust’s largest conservancies had been established unconstitutionally. The court ruled that the conservancies had no basis in law.

In a statement about Verra’s decision to reinstate the project, Survival International writes that one of these conservancies, Biliqo Bulesa, contributes about 20% of the carbon credits generated by the project. “The court ruling could potentially be applied to half of the other conservancies involved,” Survival International notes.

Survival International’s response to Verra’s decision to reinstate the project is posted in full below.

“Tricks and dishonest dealings”

Last week, Survival International put out a press release stating that “Indigenous people reject attempts to re-start troubled carbon credit project.” The project severely restricts the traditional grazing practices of Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous people accuse Northern Rangelands Trust of “tricks and dishonest dealings”.

Maasai and Rendille people living in the Leparua and Melako conservancies told Survival International that Northern Rangelands Trust is coercing them into signing agreements.

These agreements could reduce community control over their ability to graze their livestock and to manage their own lands. Survival International has seen drafts of the agreements, which “introduce stricter obligations on Indigenous herders, expand the number of parties involved in decision-making and allocate a significant share of future carbon revenues to local county authorities. This could create new conflict over land use and revenues, while further weakening Indigenous peoples ability to manage their own lands.”

Survival International quotes Jackson Lokadelio of Leparua Conservancy who says that,

“As the Leparua Conservancy community, we do not understand this NRT carbon project agreement. We also cannot accept being called just to sign a document without knowing what is inside it. . . .

“Because if we sign the document without understanding what is inside, it will be like we have agreed to give away our land. I also ask everyone not to be misled by money.”

Northern Rangelands Trust has sold more than 6 million carbon credits. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the project has raised between US$42 million and US$90 million from sales of carbon credits, depending on market prices. Meta and Netflix are among the companies that have bought carbon credits from the Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project.

But the project was set up without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples living in the project area. “Without their free, prior and informed consent, there is no legal basis for the carbon project,” Survival International notes.

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Controversial carbon credits scheme in Kenya re-certified by Verra for the second time — Survival International response

Survival International, 22 June 2026

Last week, the carbon credits certifier Verra reinstated for the second time a hugely controversial carbon credit scheme in Kenya led by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT), despite a court ruling from 2025 that two of the largest conservancies set up by NRT had been established unconstitutionally, with no basis in law.

One of these, Biliqo Bulesa, contributes about 20 percent of the carbon credits to the project. The court ruling could potentially be applied to half of the other conservancies involved.

Despite the enormous question mark this ruling raises over NRT’s entire operation, Verra decided last week to reinstate the whole 2-million-hectare project on the basis of a “ratification” process carried out in just one community — without even waiting for the final outcome of the court case, which NRT has appealed and which is still ongoing. This is not only absurd, but potentially damaging for the rights of Indigenous peoples everywhere.

The supposed ‘ratification’ project claimed to secure communities’ FPIC — free, prior and informed consent. But that has to come before a project starts, not be bolted on 14 years later, once a court has ruled the whole thing was built on illegal land grabs. NRT and Verra are not simply patching up a paperwork error; they are trying to retroactively legitimize a project that should never have existed in the first place.

If other communities still say no, what then? Will Verra finally scrap the project — or just keep looking for new ways to get to “yes”?

This is the real scandal: under Verra’s rules, you can sell carbon credits derived from violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights under international law, let companies like Meta and Netflix buy and trade them for years, and then – once you’re caught – simply fix the paperwork retroactively and carry on as if nothing happened.

That’s not integrity, that’s impunity. And it’s a warning for every company still buying Verra credits, anywhere: if this is what “compliance” looks like, the whole system is little more than a rubber stamp for greenwashing abuses against Indigenous peoples.

The project is currently being restructured in an attempt to make it consistent with Kenya’s laws — raising the question as to how it was ever authorised under Verra’s system, and how it issued millions of credits when it was clearly not compliant with Kenyan law – and in order to obtain communities’ FPIC. Survival has learnt that this is being strongly resisted by some communities, and is far from over. Verra’s decision to reinstate the project has completely pre-empted this process.

The Mangrove restoration and coastal greenbelt protection in the East coast of Aceh and North Sumatra Province, Indonesia is run by the Paris-based investment vehicle Livelihoods Funds. The carbon project has been operating since 2011 and was registered under Verra’s carbon certification system in April 2020.

While Livelihoods Funds claims that the project is “revitalizing coastal villages” a letter from 72 organisations paints a very different picture. The impacts are “severe” the letter states. “The project threatens the very existence of Indigenous peoples and their role in the autonomous protection and use of the forests.”

The letter calls on the Livelihoods Funds to stop trading carbon credits from the mangrove forests on the east coast of Aceh.

In October 2025, Verra and the Indonesian government signed an agreement to “expand the country’s access to climate finance and strengthen the integrity of its carbon markets”. Under the agreement, projects can be registered under both Verra’s system and Indonesia’s national registry system (SRN-PPI). The carbon credits will be accounted in Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.

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The letter is posted here in full:

Stop carbon credit trading by the Danone Group in Aceh’s mangrove forests!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Mangrove restoration and coastal greenbelt protection in the East coast of Aceh and North Sumatra Province, Indonesia project, run by the investment vehicle Livelihoods Fund and the carbon standards body Verra, has been operating since 2011.

According to its own figures, this project has restored more than 5,000 hectares of degraded mangrove forests and has already been validated and verified under Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standards.

The stated aim of the project is to improve the ecological capacity of the mangrove ecosystems along the east coast of North Sumatra in order to enhance carbon sequestration, reduce the risk of natural disasters and strengthen local livelihoods.

This Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project is intended to generate 124,706.67 tons of CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e) from projects to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF registered the project on the Verra platform on April 6, 2020.

In October 2025, Verra signed an agreement with the Indonesian government to speed up the integration of local projects into the global carbon market and to ensure alignment with Indonesia’s SRN PPI certification system. As a result, the project is considered one of Indonesia’s most significant blue carbon initiatives.

The impacts, however, are severe. The project threatens the very existence of Indigenous peoples and their role in the autonomous protection and use of the forests.

Livelihoods Fund, based in Paris, is an SICAV-SIF impact investment fund designed to generate returns for investors from CO₂ emissions. Major corporations are involved, including Danone (founding member and investor), L’Oréal, Mars Incorporated, Schneider Electric, Crédit Agricole, Michelin, Hermès, SAP, La Poste and Veolia.

Verra, based in Washington, D.C., USA, is a global carbon standards organization that certifies climate projects. Verra’s CCB standard is regarded as a certification framework intended to ensure that land management projects reduce CO₂ emissions while also delivering positive impacts for local communities and biodiversity.

What are the negative impacts of this carbon project?

Emissions trading projects give large corporations the option to continue damaging the environment by buying carbon credits instead of making the direct emissions cuts that are actually necessary.

Emissions trading, including under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), often has negative ecological and social consequences.

Some of the long-term impacts include:

• Risks of greenwashing and low effectiveness

Many carbon projects, especially those based on offsetting mechanisms, do not actually reduce emissions in the long term but merely shift the burden of emissions. Some studies show that forest project credits (such as those in the Verra system) are frequently overvalued, so that real emissions are higher than the claimed reductions. Emissions trading by the Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF via Verra has weakened the governance of Indonesia’s mangrove forests.

• Threats to Indigenous and local communities

Forest projects often spark land conflicts with Indigenous communities. These communities’ rights to their traditional lands and forests are frequently ignored in favor of ‘conservation’ projects that generate carbon credits for foreign actors. In this case, the forest rights of Indigenous communities along the east coast of Aceh have not yet been officially recognized. At the same time, certain groups and institutions have already parceled up the mangrove forests and are trading carbon credits from them. The trade in carbon credits by the Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF via Verra is already threatening the existence of Indigenous communities and their ability to protect and use the forests on their own terms.

• Commercialization of nature (land grabbing)

Emissions trading turns the forest’s life-giving role into a tradable commodity. This can restrict Indigenous communities’ access to forest resources they have depended on until now. Emissions trading by the Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF via Verra deprives Indigenous communities of the right to protect, manage and use mangrove forests independently.

• New environmental problems

Emissions trading can distract from the need to phase out fossil fuels. On top of this, local carbon projects do not always succeed in maintaining forest cover in the long term. Emissions trading by the Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF via Verra has created new environmental problems, further eroding the Danone Group’s role and responsibility in cutting emissions and moving away from fossil fuels.

Demands

On the basis of the above data and facts, the Aceh Wetland Forum – a nonprofit organization that advocates for the protection, management and use of mangroves by Indigenous and local communities along the east coast of Aceh – calls on the Paris-based Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF, in particular its founding member Danone Group, and the Washington, D.C.-based Verra to take the following action:

Stop trading carbon credits generated from mangrove forests along the east coast of Aceh, especially in the districts of Aceh Tamiang, Kota Langsa and Aceh Timur.

We call on the Indonesian government and, in particular, the Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia to:

1. exclude the mangrove belt along the east coast of Aceh from the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) with Verra;

2. upgrade the status of the 45,000-hectare mangrove area to an Essential Protection Area (Kawasan Perlindungan Esensial) or Essential Ecosystem Area (Kawasan Ekosistem Esensial, KEE), as this area has high biodiversity value and plays an important role in protecting, conserving and ensuring the sustainable use of biodiversity;

3. grant forest rights to the Indigenous communities in the districts of Aceh Tamiang, Kota Langsa and Aceh Timur.

For the protection, sound governance and just, sustainable use of mangrove forests!

Yours faithfully,

(For more information please see annex on page 6)

Co-signed by
1.Aceh Satu Media, Indonesia
2.Aceh Waste Platform, Indonesia
3.Acehnesia, Indonesia
4.AcehNet, Indonesia
5.AMAN Tano Batak, Indonesia
6.Apel Green Aceh, Indonesia
7.ARA, Germany
8.Auriga Nusantara, Indonesia
9.AWF, Indonesia
10.Balkan Centre for the Rights of Nature, Serbia
11.Biofuelwatch, United Kingdom
12.Centre d’Actions pour le Développement, Republic of the Congo
13.Chafran, France
14.change.org, Kenya
15.Coal Action Network, United Kingdom
16.Colectivo Voces Ecológicas, Panama
17.Dauerwaldstiftung in Pommern, Germany
18.Earth Thrive, United Kingdom
19.ECODEV, Cameroon
20.FIAN Deutschland e.V., Germany
21.FIAN Switzerland, Switzerland
22.FLIGHT: Protecting Indonesia’s Birds, Indonesia
23.Forum Ökologie & Papier, Germany
24.Forum Penjaga Hutan dan Sungai Harimau Pining, Indonesia
25.GRAIN, Spain
26.GREEN BOOTS, Switzerland
27.Igapo Project, France
28.Indonesia for Global Justice (IGJ), Indonesia
29.Inisiasi Masyarakat Adat (IMA), Indonesia
30.Institut für Ökologie und Aktions-Ethnologie e.V., Germany
31.JARINGAN ADVOKASI TAMBANG, Indonesia
32.JATAM SULTENG, Indonesia
33.JPIC Kalimantan, Indonesia
34.JPIC SVD Ruteng, Indonesia
35.Jumu’eha renda keruhu - Centro de Formação Saberes Ka’apor, Brazil
36.JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF), France
37.Komunitas Meubumoe, Indonesia
38.Korjuang, Indonesia
39.Lembaga Teraju Indonesia, Indonesia
40.LinkAR Borneo, Indonesia
41.Mangrove rescue forest, Indonesia
42.Not1More, United Kingdom
43.Organisation pour la Protection de l’Environnement et des Droits Humains, Republic of the Congo
44.Partner Indonesia, Indonesia
45.Penggiat Lingkungan, Indonesia
46.Perkumpulan Hijau Jambi, Indonesia
47.Rede Cooperação Latina de Educação Comunitária com Pedagogias Próprias, Brazil
48.Regenwald-Institut e.V., Germany
49.Rettet den Regenwald, Germany
50.Rettet den Regenwald - Schweiz, Switzerland
51.RIAO-RDC, Democratic Republic of the Congo
52.SAN Germany, Germany
53.Save Our Borneo, Indonesia
54.SDE (School of Democratic Economics), Indonesia
55.Selamatkan Hutan Hujan, Indonesia
56.Setara Jambi, Indonesia
57.Stadtwaldfreunde Lübeck, Germany
58.Stiftung Asienhaus, Germany
59.Sumatera Environmental Initiative, Indonesia
60.Tasha Research Institute Africa (TASHA), Uganda
61.The Coalition Against Mining in Aceh, Indonesia
62.The Gaia Foundation, United Kingdom
63.Tuxa ta pame - Conselho de Gestao Ka’apor, Brazil
64.Unir en Haití, Haiti
65.WALHI JAKARTA, Indonesia
66.WALHI Nasional, Indonesia
67.WALHI NTT, Indonesia
68.WALHI Sumatera Utara, Indonesia
69.Watch Indonesia!, Germany
70.World Rainforest Movement, Uruguay
71.Yayasan Insan Hutan Indonesia, Indonesia
72.Yes to Life, No to Mining global solidarity network, United Kingdom

ANNEX with additional information to the Letter “Stop carbon credit trading by the Danone Group in Aceh’s mangrove forests!”, sent to Livelihoods Fund SICAV-SIF, VERRA, Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia

16 June 2026

General information about the Livelihoods Funds carbon project in Aceh/Northern Sumatra and its certification by VERRA:

The Livelihoods Funds mangrove restoration carbon project in Aceh/Northern Sumatra was certified to the international Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) program of VERRA. It is registered in VERRA´s database under project number 1493. The local organisation, hired by Livelihoods Funds to implement the project, is called Yagasu.

The objective of the project is to generate carbon credits, certified by VERRA-accredited auditors and issued by the carbon certification body VERRA. According to Livelihoods Funds, approval by the VERRA registry would give credibility to the carbon credits issued to the project. The credits are used by corporations – most from Europe - that have invested in Livelihoods Funds. They want to claim that their products or their business is “carbon neutral” or “CO2-neutral” – understood by its customers to mean that the product does not damage the climate. At the time the project in Sumatra started, in 2011, the companies involved in Livelihoods Funds were: Danone (the creator of Livelihoods Funds), Schneider Electric, Crédit Agricole S.A., Michelin, Hermès, SAP, Groupe Caisse des Dépôts, La Poste, Firmenich, Voyageurs du Monde.

The VERRA website makes information available about the so-called ‘issuance’ of credits (that is, the credits approved within VERRA’s certification system), and which of these credits were ‘retired’ (that is, used) by companies/entities to offset their emissions. Credits from Livelihoods Funds’ carbon projects are specifically aimed at offsetting the emissions from those companies/entities that have put money in the Livelihoods Funds.

VERRA offers buyers the possibility to make purchases anonymously, without their name appearing on the public part of the VCS registry. Interestingly, among the few buyers who are identified, is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF is not a direct investor in Livelihoods Funds.

A key part of the VERRA documentation is the carbon project description and the carbon calculations and, in this particular case, the calculation of how much CO2 the project hopes to remove from the atmosphere and store in mangrove trees that the project claims will be planted. These documents form the basis for the first of two certification audits, the so-called validation, in which auditors accredited by VERRA assess whether the project is in conformity with the Verra standard and methodology requirements. According to Verra’s VCS registry, US-based consultancy SCS Global Services validated the project in December 2015. In parallel to the validation, SCS Global also carried out the first verification audit. This second audit procedure determines the volume of credits issued to a carbon project for the time period audited. The Livelihoods Funds project in Aceh has been verified twice; the first verification audit covered the time between 14 June 2011 to 30 September 2015. The second verification audit was carried out by consultancy TUEV Nord CERT GmbH, and covered the period of 1 October 2015 to 31 July 2019. No audits appear to have taken place since then, with the second verification audit report by TUEV Nord CERT dated 6 February 2020.

Since 2011, the Livelihoods Funds carbon project in Aceh/Northern Sumatra claims to have planted mangrove trees in 2,600 plots, totalling 5,000 hectares. The plots are distributed over an area of 497 km along the coast of Aceh/Northern Sumatra crossing 13 districts: Aceh Besar, Banda Aceh, Pindie, Pidy Jaya. Bireun, Lhoksemawe, Aceh Utara, Aceh Timur, Langsa, Aceh Tamiang, Langkat, Medan and Deli Serdang.

The project claims that it will remove from the atmosphere 2,494,121 tons of CO2, on average 124,706 tons of CO2 per year, during the project´s lifetime of 20 years (2011-2031) by restoring “more than 5,000 ha of degraded mangrove ecosystem by planting at least 16.5 million new mangrove trees”.

The first verification report over the period 2011-2015, published by SCS Global, reports an amount of 125,391 carbon credits (called VCUs in the reporting) to be issued. The second verification report, over the period 2015-2019, issued by TUEV Nord CERT, confirmed an amount of 271, 680 credits.

By 2019, VERRA had thus issued 397,071 carbon credits which were available to the corporations that invested in the Livelihoods Funds. Livelihoods Funds holds the property rights to any credits generated by projects that are part of the Funds.

Communities are blamed for mangrove forest destruction

To have its project certified by VERRA’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the project proponents Livelihoods Funds and its local partner Yagasu need to argue that the actions they plan to implement in the project area in Northern Sumatra, would not have taken place in the absence of their project.

According to Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu, the plots to be restored under the ‘project scenario’ are areas that were deforested to set up fishponds that, later on, were abandoned. The baseline scenario of the project is that without the carbon project, the mangrove restoration would not have taken place.

In the very first pages of the project document summary, Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu already make clear who they think is to blame for deforestation in the project region: the coastal communities.

While mentioning the objectives of training and capacity building activities they intend to do with the local communities, Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu state that capacity building, among other things, is about: “Implementing awareness programs among local communities to increase their appreciation of the long-term value of biodiversity and their understanding of the impact of their activities to the mangrove ecosystems.”

Several other statements in the project documents suggest a condescending attitude towards communities’ knowledge and care of mangrove forests. They depict communities as in need of knowledge that they, the project proponents, can provide through ‘capacity building’. For example, Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu claim that the project “shows the locals how to go about the plantation and naturally regenerated mangroves in a scientific manner, so that these resources have better chances of survival, and the people are equipped with the knowledge base to manage their forests in the future” (p. 39). Other examples from the project documentation include: “local people’s commitment is low, an awareness program needs to be implemented in order to help people understand the importance and value of the mangrove trees in supporting their livelihoods” (p.54); “lack of intensive awareness for local people” (p. 37); “weak community awareness on the totality of the functions of mangroves” (p. 20).

Strong indication that ‘climate benefits’ are overestimated

According to the project documentation, 16,500,900 mangrove trees have been planted, covering 5,000 hectares, in the period 2011-2015, and maintenance and replanting activities have allegedly taken place. An additional planting of trees on 278.1 hectares in the years after 2015 supposedly also took place. This brings the total area planted, according to the project proponents, to 5,278.1 hectares.

The second monitoring report (2015-2019) submitted to the VCS standard was prepared by the consultancy company Agreste S. Coop. In the report, 1,975 hectares of the total area of 5,274 hectares planted since 2011 with mangrove trees are classified in the stratum “low crown cover and high mortality” of trees . The monitoring report thus explicitly acknowledges a high mortality of trees planted but that this ‘only’ took place on 37 percent of the planted area.

An analysis of Google Earth images between 2023 and 2025, 4-6 years after 2019, the end of the second monitoring period end date, suggests that the CO2 removal claimed in 2019 does not seem to match the carbon removal still observable through Google Earth 2023-2025 images. This gap between the information contained in the 2019 monitoring report and the Google Earth images from 4-6 years later, suggests that the amount of carbon dioxide allegedly removed by 2019 as a result of the Livelihood Funds Aceh project was overestimated.

There might be two reasons:

Biased sampling – The evidence of a much bigger tree mortality might not appear in this 2nd monitoring report due to a biased sampling of the plots – that is, the sampling might not have been as “random” as is suggested in the project documentation. In fact, while the method is described as random, the report itself admits that because of “high sampling uncertainty” (p.47) the stratification/classification used in the second monitoring report was different from the one used for the first verification (2011-2015). Because of the heterogeneity of the area, the proponents claim that the number of plots required for obtaining a low sampling error was “too high” and “not feasible” (p.51). Therefore, the sampling decisions had to be taken based on “expert criteria” and on “previous experience” (p.51). These admitted limitations might explain the much lower reported tree mortality in the 2nd monitoring report, compared to the tree mortality rate shown on Google Earth images.

Non-permanence – Yagasu or the VCS auditors could claim that the higher tree mortality shown on Google Earth 2023-2025 images is due to mortality after 2019. High tree mortality has been reported in other mangrove restoration projects and there are many causes that can lead to high mortality in such projects. These include diseases, lack of maintenance in the years following planting, or planting in areas too far from the tidal zone. In any case, the higher tree mortality based on the Google Earth 2023-2025 images suggests that a third monitoring report would have to apply a much higher ´non-permanence´ risk rating than the 13 percent risk used for the first two reports. Besides, it shows the risk of tree planting projects: carbon that the project proponents claim was stored in restored mangrove plots in 2019 has already been released into the atmosphere again, calling into question any compensation claim made by those who bought carbon credits from the project.

In their verification report from 2020, the consultancy firm TUEV Nord CERT basically confirms the methods used and findings of the aforementioned 2nd Monitoring report of the project, including the estimated CO2 removals. The auditor´s calculation of CO2 removed is slightly less because they excluded 119.67 hectares from the project, they argue due to land use change.

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Box: Livelihoods Funds mangrove restoration project in Senegal: overestimating carbon credits

In Senegal, Livelihoods Funds is also involved in a mangrove restoration project of planting trees. The project has also been certified by VERRA. Livelihoods Funds claims it has restored 10,000 hectares of mangrove forest in the Sine Saloum and Casamance deltas.
However, research by professor Juliene Andrieu from the Côte d´Azur University in France, showed a very different picture. In an article published in 2026, he states that “36% of the mangrove plots failed completely. The remaining 64% had at least some surviving mangroves, but survival within these plots was low. Overall, only 18.3% to 20.5% of the planted mangroves survived across the project area”.
“Because so many trees died or never grew,” Andrieu writes, “the total amount of carbon stored in the trees was overestimated.” As a result, Andrieu’s research team estimates that about 168,000 carbon credits were “ghost carbon” and “this has no benefit to people or the environment”.

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Communities are object in a project benefiting polluting industries

According to the VERRA documentation, the Livelihoods Funds mangrove tree planting project in Northern Sumatra was validated as a project that also meets the requirements of the CCB (Climate, Community and Biodiversity) standards. The CCB standards would ensure the project supports and generates positive benefits for communities. The Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu project was even awarded for the highest level of this certification standard, the so-called ‘gold standard’, which stands for “exceptional benefits”.

However, an analysis of one of the 198 MOU’s (Memorandum of Understanding) which Yagasu signed with community groups and which this research had access to, shows that the main beneficiaries of the project are Livelihoods Funds and the companies that are members of the fund. The MOU states that “The Second Party [read: Yagasu] has the right on every unit of carbon sequestration resulting from the project period”, that “will be transferred to Livelihoods”. In return, the First Party [read: the community group] “benefit from mangrove forests, seafood products and land use, except for carbon credit rights”. The supposed socio-economic benefits for the community group are described as mere promises, rather than explicit commitments of the project proponents. By contrast, the obligations and restrictions for communities are quite explicit: providing labour for the project; following the conservation plan as stipulated by the project proponent; not cutting any of the trees planted as part of the carbon credit project; and committing to not carry out any activity that could change, that is interfere with, the mangrove forest.

Besides, the project does not seem to be connected to the wider process of struggle and mobilization in Indonesia and Sumatra for more social justice in mangrove forest areas that indeed are facing many threats of destruction such as large-scale industrial oil palm projects. In the Livelihoods Funds/Yagasu project, communities are rather objects in a top-down approach that fully benefits the polluting companies behind Livelihoods. And although Yagasu claims in the project documentation that it carried out a process of consultation in the coastal communities, applying the Free, Prior and Informed Consent principle, no evidence can be found that the perverse logic behind this and other carbon offset projects was explained.

Communities are expected to provide cheap labour to the project proponents, to plant the mangrove trees as stipulated by the project proponents. According to the project documentation, village people were involved in all planting activities – and priority was given to the participation of women and youth/students. Everyone would have received training on how to do the tree planting.

Community people are also hired as patrols, with the objective to avoid that other people ‘invade’ mangrove areas. Beyond the 5,000 hectares of land on which the project claims to have carried out restoration activities, the project proponents claim to protect a total of 25,000 hectares of mangrove forest. The monitoring report of the project mentions 241 ‘illegal’ activities detected, 77 percent of which were supposedly in connection with illegal logging. No information, however, is provided on whether they were community members using the mangrove as they have traditional done, or illegal loggers from outside the community. The monitoring report only says Yagasu cooperates with the District Forestry Department and the local police.

As one of the community benefits, the project claims that “people have management right to land”. This sounds strange: would a project supposed to provide ‘exceptional’ benefits for communities not assure that communities have and retain right to land, their autonomy and control over the land and forest they depend on? However, this perspective does not seem to be part of the project proponents’ approach.

Finally, the project claims it contributes, through training and capacity building, with small business development inside communities, for instance, supporting women to become entrepreneurs running their own small businesses. Despite the impressive number of such activities presented and supposedly carried out, including 1,417 village meetings, 360 district meetings, totalling 23,573 people involved, many doubts remain of the real impact of the trainings and capacity building activities. On the one hand, the numbers of meetings are detailed, with village names and mentioning several registering methods which in principle ensure that the impressive figures are not just ‘hot air’. On the other hand, the project documentation states that “all raw data, reports of analysis and supporting spreadsheets will be stored [ . . . ] for at least 2 years”. It means that after two years these files might simply be deleted from the records. Another remark is that the project documentation does not make clear if and how follow-up to all the training and capacity building activities has in fact taken place, that is there is a lack of evidence that community people improved their lives and livelihoods thanks to the training and capacity building of the mangrove restoration project.

On 10 June 2026, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation announced a call for inputs from Indigenous Peoples on their experiences with carbon finance in their territories.

Until 30 June 2026, Indigenous Peoples are invited to fill in a survey form. In addition to the ridiculously short period available for inputs (just 20 days), other aspects of this call for inputs are deeply problematic.

FAO states on its website that,

This initiative directly responds to the call made during the 23rd Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) by the former Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, who expressly called for a “moratorium” on carbon credits until adequate safeguards are explicitly required to comply with Indigenous Peoples' rights.

The call for a moratorium on carbon markets

REDD-Monitor reported on the call for a moratorium on carbon markets in April 2024.

At a meeting during the 23rd session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, Francisco Calí Tzay, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples called for a moratorium on carbon markets. Tzay said,

“My recommendation on this is very clear. I believe that a permanent moratorium, or at least a moratorium, can be a solution for stopping human rights abuses of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in these carbon markets.”

Five days later, Amnesty International put out a statement in which Chris Chapman, Amnesty International’s Advisor on Indigenous Rights, said,

“The UN Special Rapporteur is right to raise human rights concerns about the workings of carbon markets. Polluters can use them to offset – rather than actually reduce – their greenhouse gas emissions by buying carbon credits for schemes involving Indigenous Peoples’ lands. These schemes do little or nothing to benefit Indigenous Peoples, and in some cases actively harm their rights.”

At a side event at the 2025 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, repeated the call for a moratorium on carbon markets and other false solutions. Goldtooth said,

“Carbon markets provide the loophole that the fossil fuel industry needs to continue extraction, combustion, and a fossil extractive economy that is wrecking the harmony of Mother Earth and Father Sky.

“We are long overdue for demanding a permanent moratorium on false solutions being negotiated in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.”

And the report on the 25th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which took place from 20 April to 1 May 2026 includes the following statement:1

The Permanent Forum is deeply concerned about environmental degradation caused by extractive and emerging market-based mechanisms, including carbon finance and carbon markets, where activities are often undertaken without free, prior and informed consent, contrary to article 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Such developments risk undermining Indigenous Peoples’ rights to lands, territories and resources, and are closely linked to deteriorating physical and mental health conditions and the erosion of traditional livelihoods.

FAO’s call for inputs

FAO claims that its call for inputs “directly responds” to former Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Calí Tzay call for a moratorium on carbon markets.

But FAO’s call for inputs comes more than two years after Tzay’s call for a moratorium.

And FAO is not calling for inputs in order to support the call for a moratorium on carbon markets.

Instead, FAO explains that the responses “will serve as the basis for a High-Level Expert Seminar at FAO Headquarters to take stock of Indigenous Peoples’ experiences with carbon finance and their perspectives on its potential implications, benefits, and risks”.

The seminar will take place at FAO’s headquarters in Rome. That’s very convenient for FAO staff, but far less convenient for Indigenous Peoples.

The FAO further explains that the seminar will contribute to “the development of guiding principles to ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ engagement in carbon finance is aligned with a human rights-based approach”.

The seminar is, in other words, all about ensuring that carbon markets continue. Putting in place a moratorium on carbon markets is extremely unlikely to be on the agenda.

We shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, FAO’s theme for this year’s International Day of Forests was “Forests and Economies,” with the tagline “Forests mean business.” Global Forest Coalition responded by pointing out that “Forests mean life, not business”:

Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about a cookstove project in Myanmar. The project was the first to be approved by the UN’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body to issue carbon credits under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism.

The post was based on a report titled “Carbon credits under fire” published by the Global Forest Coalition, Myanmar Policy Institute, Plan 1.5, Biofuelwatch, and Gibson Climate Justice Lab.

The report highlights the fact that since the attempted military coup in January 2021, Myanmar has been in a civil war, with nearly 100,000 people killed and 3.8 million people displaced.

To carry out the carbon project, a South Korean NGO called Climate Change Center works with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation which is under the control of Myanmar’s military junta.

The report quotes Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar, who points out that,

“Partnering with MONREC in a project tied to international carbon market mechanisms lends false legitimacy to the military junta and whitewashes its international crimes.”

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REDD-Monitor received the following statement from the Climate Change Center. It is posted here in full:

Statement by the Climate Change Center on the Myanmar Improved Cookstove Programme (PoA 10471)

Recently, certain international civil society organizations published a report titled “Carbon Credits Under Fire” (hereinafter “the report”), raising concerns regarding the Climate Change Center’s Myanmar improved cookstove programme (PoA 10471). The Climate Change Center recognizes that international carbon market projects must uphold high standards of environmental integrity, transparency, and social responsibility, and we also acknowledge that scrutiny and critical review of such programmes are a necessary and legitimate part of their operation. Our position is set out below.

The Climate Change Center’s Myanmar improved cookstove programme (hereinafter “the programme”) was initiated in 2018, prior to the 2021 military takeover, as a CSR-linked initiative and formally implemented from 2019 as an international greenhouse gas mitigation programme. The programme was designed to improve household cooking conditions for vulnerable communities in Myanmar by distributing improved cookstoves, thereby reducing fuel consumption compliance and contributing to greenhouse gas mitigation. Beyond carbon credit generation, the programme aimed to deliver tangible co-benefits, including improved energy access, reduced household fuel expenditure, reduced pressure on forest resources, and reduced health-related burdens and improved living conditions, particularly for women and children.

The Climate Change Center has never implemented this programme for the purpose of supporting or legitimizing any political actor or governing authority in Myanmar. The origin of this programme lay not in political considerations, but in a civil society–based climate cooperation initiative aimed at improving the living conditions of climate-vulnerable communities and households in developing countries, and at achieving both greenhouse gas mitigation and sustainable development outcomes through the use of private climate finance.

We fully recognize the seriousness of Myanmar’s political, security, and human rights situation. We also take seriously the concerns raised regarding the continuation of the programme following the 2021 military takeover, and we acknowledge the need for careful review and clear explanation of these circumstances.

Following the military takeover, CCC did not simply assume that programme activities should continue unchanged. The organization undertook internal reviews of the evolving political, security, and humanitarian situation, including consideration of potential risks to participating households, implementation feasibility, and whether the programme could continue to deliver meaningful benefits to local communities without creating additional harm. Based on this comprehensive assessment, the decision to continue implementation was made only in locations where local conditions were assessed to allow responsible implementation.

While changes in political and security conditions are important factors in programme assessment, such changes alone do not automatically justify the termination of ongoing community-level development activities. Even in contexts of political instability, the daily lives of local communities continue. Households must still cook, access energy, and cope with fuel costs, indoor air pollution, and dependence on forest resources. In such environments, the need for basic energy, health, and livelihood support may in fact be even greater.

The Climate Change Center believes that communities facing energy poverty, environmental degradation, and climate vulnerability should not automatically lose access to climate and development support solely because of political circumstances beyond their control.

The Climate Change Center considers climate action and development cooperation to be mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory. In particular, for vulnerable populations affected simultaneously by energy poverty and climate impacts, an integrated approach that combines emissions reduction with improvements in living conditions is essential.

International development and climate programmes are often implemented in politically and socially fragile contexts. What is essential is not a political stance toward such contexts, but whether programmes deliver tangible benefits to communities and are implemented responsibly in accordance with applicable international standards.

The programme was established and approved under the pre-2021 government framework, and relevant host-country administrative procedures continued to be required under applicable carbon market rules even after the military takeover. Such procedural continuity should not be interpreted as political endorsement or support for any military authorities.

The report raises concerns regarding conflict in areas where the programme was implemented. However, the cited conflict data is typically aggregated at township or regional level, and conditions vary significantly at the village level within the same administrative area. The Climate Change Center assessed implementation feasibility at the community level and excluded or adjusted programme areas where security risks or conflict conditions made effective implementation difficult.

The report also questions the reliability of verification due to limited physical access. It is important to distinguish between project monitoring and third-party verification. Due to COVID-19-related restrictions and deteriorating security conditions in Myanmar, on-site access for third-party verifiers was limited in certain areas. However, this does not imply the absence of monitoring or verification procedures. The programme operated a structured monitoring system, including on-site field visits and assessments conducted by local implementation teams, as well as data management and quality assurance procedures. These activities covered the documentation of stove distribution, installation, and continued use, in line with applicable programme and methodological requirements.

In addition, the independent third-party verifier conducted its assessment based on a comprehensive review of monitoring data, sampling results, supporting documentation, and remote interviews. In light of the prevailing conditions in Myanmar at the time, the verifier utilized approved alternative procedures available under the applicable international carbon market rules. Although on-site verification is generally preferred, this remote approach was authorized under these exceptional circumstances. The subsequent verification, review, and issuance processes proceeded in accordance with mechanism requirements, including the Article 6.4 review process for the transitioned PACM issuance

The programme also maintained monitoring mechanisms to identify natural disasters and safety incidents. To date, no reports have been confirmed through the programme monitoring system indicating that participating households experienced direct safety incidents or harm in connection with programme participation.

The carbon market is an international cooperation mechanism designed to mobilize private finance for climate action in developing countries. Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement includes independent verification and oversight processes to ensure environmental integrity and transparency. The Climate Change Center has complied with these procedures in implementing the programme.

With respect to claims of over-crediting, the report’s estimates are based on external academic analyses applying independent assumptions and recalculation methodologies. These results differ from those obtained through the approved methodologies and formal validation, verification, and review processes under the relevant carbon market framework. While methodological improvements remain an ongoing area of work under UNFCCC processes, the Climate Change Center supports efforts to enhance scientific rigor and accuracy. Uncertainties arising in areas where methodologies are still evolving and subject to refinement should not be interpreted as evidence of project-level deficiencies or misconduct.

The report also raises concerns regarding potential misuse of programme revenues or financial flows to Myanmar’s military authorities. The Climate Change Center is a public-interest foundation and confirms that no programme revenues have been transferred to the military authorities or any affiliated entities for the purpose of supporting government operations. Programme-related funds have been managed in accordance with applicable accounting standards and used exclusively for programme implementation and public-interest purposes. No private or institutional actors have derived improper financial benefit from the programme.

International mitigation projects involve a wide range of costs, including stove production and distribution, local implementation, monitoring, verification, and administrative operations. All expenditures were directed toward these legitimate programme-related activities. Administrative procedures required under host-country regulations were conducted in accordance with applicable legal requirements and should not be interpreted as constituting political or financial support for any governing authority.

The Climate Change Center reiterates its strong commitment to environmental integrity, transparency, and social responsibility in carbon market activities. We recognize the importance of constructive criticism and independent scrutiny in strengthening the credibility of international climate mechanisms. However, such assessments must be based on verifiable facts and a clear understanding of institutional and operational contexts.

The report does not sufficiently distinguish between Myanmar’s broader political, security, and human rights crisis and the operational realities of the programme, and in several instances connects these contextual conditions to project implementation as part of a single narrative without sufficient evidence of a direct causal relationship.

Constructive criticism and independent scrutiny are both necessary and important for the development of international carbon markets. However, the Climate Change Center does not agree with approaches that characterize the purpose and operational realities of the programme as inherently contrary to human rights, or that attribute such intent to all participating entities without sufficient examination of the underlying facts.

In particular, we regret that no factual verification process or request for clarification was made to the Climate Change Center during the preparation of the report. In our view, this limits the opportunity for a more balanced and evidence-based assessment and risks presenting a simplified interpretation of complex field conditions and institutional contexts, which may unintentionally reinforce negative perceptions of the programme and its implementing organization.

The Climate Change Center will continue to operate in accordance with applicable international standards and procedures, while ensuring transparent disclosure of relevant programme information and maintaining a strong focus on environmental integrity and community-level co-benefits. We will also continue to actively contribute to ongoing efforts to strengthen the integrity of international carbon markets, including methodological improvements, enhanced monitoring systems, and the development of more robust safeguard frameworks.

Furthermore, the Climate Change Center remains committed to advancing climate action grounded in its original purpose — addressing climate change and improving the livelihoods and well-being of vulnerable communities — rather than political considerations. We will continue to pursue responsible climate action even under challenging operating conditions.

June 15, 2026
Climate Change Center

In April 2024, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) came under criticism after SBTi’s Board of Trustees put out a statement that opened the door to allowing companies to use carbon offsets to address scope 3 emissions.

The statement came without any consultation with staff working at SBTi or with the SBTi Technical Council.

Doreen Stabinksy, Professor of Global Environmental Politics at College of the Atlantic, is a member of the SBTi Technical Council. “This isn’t a science-based decision,” she told Reuters.

My favourite response to the statement came from Frederic Hache of the Green Finance Observatory:

In a shocking turn of events, a corporate and financial institutions’ climate action organisation decided to favour corporate and financial institutions’ economic interests.

Here are the organisations that partner with the SBTi — none of these organisations is critical of carbon trading:

In July 2024, SBTi published a synthesis of evidence submitted to SBTi on the effectiveness of carbon offsets. The synthesis report was “SBTi’s bombshell rebuke to offsets,” Joe Romm at the University of Pennsylvania commented.

In February 2025, 29 scientists wrote to the SBTi urging SBTi not to allow corporations to use carbon offsets.

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“Ongoing emissions responsibility”

This week, SBTi published version 2 of its Corporate Net Zero Standard.

And surprise, surprise! Carbon credits are in there.

SBTi has come up with something it calls an “ongoing emissions responsibility” recognition programme.

“Companies will continue to emit GHGs on the path to net-zero,” SBTi writes in its new standard. Ongoing emissions responsibility is aimed at recognising companies that buy carbon credits and make other climate contributions.

SBTi describes ongoing emissions responsibility as “a balanced approach to the use of high-integrity carbon credits and other climate contributions as a complement and not a substitute to companies reducing their carbon footprint, through a voluntary recognition program”.

SBTi does not define which “high-integrity carbon credits” will be allowed. The new standard sets “minimum criteria” for companies in the ongoing emissions responsibility framework. And it states that,

The SBTi will develop criteria and processes to recognize relevant third-party frameworks, standards, and programs where applicable.

Other climate contributions refers to using a contribution budget. Companies should set a price per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent ongoing emissions. This sets a “contribution budget” which is to be used to fund “verified mitigation outcomes and other eligible climate actions”.

There are three levels of ongoing emissions responsibility:

• Engaged: companies that cover at least 1% of their emissions by buying carbon credits or using a contribution budget;

• Advanced: companies that cover 10% of their emissions by buying carbon credits, or set a carbon price of US$20 per tCO₂e for the contribution budget; and

• Leadership: large companies that cover 100% of their emissions by buying carbon credits, and set a carbon price of US$80 per tCO₂e. Small companies have to cover 10% of their emissions and set a carbon price of US$80 per tCO₂e.

From 2035, large companies have to buy carbon dioxide removal credits, starting at 1% of ongoing emissions and increasing to 100% by the net zero target year.

“Best efforts”

SBTi’s new standard allows a loophole for companies that fail to achieve their net zero targets. “The updated Standard is built on a best-efforts framework,” the new standard explains.

Under the new rules, a company that fails to meet its target can argue that it made “best efforts”.

“The one property that gave the system its meaning,” Robert Nasi, CIFOR’s director general, comments, “is that a target was something you could fail.”

“Whether the new architecture constitutes pragmatic realism about scope 3 or a managed retreat dressed in the language of implementation will be decided entirely by documents the SBTi has not yet written, and that is itself the finding: the standard's credibility is now a forward contract on its own future guidance.”

SBTi will not publicly disclose companies that fail to meet their targets.

Big Tech lobbying

The Financial Times reports that Big Tech companies lobbied the SBTi to allow companies to buy certificates linked to lower-carbon products — even though the companies did not buy or use these lower-carbon products.

Under pressure from the industry, SBTi dropped proposed rules that would have made it difficult for Big Tech to claim that their massively polluting gas-fuelled data centres were running on renewable energy.

Kenza Bryan writes that four people familiar with the decision told the Financial Times about SBTi’s decision to drop the proposed rules. Bryan writes that,

Companies argued that the proposal was too onerous and could backfire by discouraging clean energy investments, the people said, despite research showing that such a policy could slash emissions.

A group of 26 NGOs wrote to the SBTi’s CEO David Kennedy describing the weakening of the standard as “unacceptable”. The NGOs urge SBTi to follow the science rather than corporate pressure. They write that,

If it stays on this current disappointing path, it will be a self-admission that the SBTi has become an unscientific target setting body without real credibility in the climate and clean energy space. It will be an irreparable self-inflicted wound to its integrity, utility and relevance going forward.

In February 2026, the UN’s Article 6.4 Supervisory Body approved the first carbon credits under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism. The project generating the credits is a so-called “clean-cooking” project in Myanmar. The project distributes efficient cookstoves that are intended to reduce smoke inside homes and use less wood, therefore reducing pressure on forests.

In a statement, Simon Stiell, the UN climate change executive secretary said,

“The first credits to be issued through the UN carbon market under the Paris Agreement come from a clean‑cooking project, and they show how this mechanism can support solutions that make a big difference in people’s daily lives, as well as channeling finance to where it delivers real-life benefits on the ground. The opportunities presented by this UN carbon market across all regions are vast, particularly now that strong environmental safeguards, robust standards, and a clear system for redress are in place to ensure integrity, inclusiveness and efficiency.”

But a new report about the project notes that the project is “being implemented in regions ravaged by conflict, displacement, and state-sponsored violence”. The approval of the project’s carbon credits under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism “signals a profound disconnect between the lofty rhetoric of ‘high integrity’ carbon markets and the complex, often devastating realities on the ground”.

The report is published by the Global Forest Coalition, Myanmar Policy Institute, Plan 1.5, Biofuelwatch, and Gibson Climate Justice Lab, and is titled, “Carbon Credits Under Fire: Myanmar, Crimes Against Humanity, and the Crisis of Credibility Facing the UN’s “High-Integrity” Carbon Markets.”

Civil war and human rights violations

On 1 February 2021, a civil war started in Myanmar following an attempted military coup. The military violently cracked down on mass anti-coup demonstrations. Nearly 100,000 people have been killed in the civil war and 3.8 million people have been displaced.

The cookstove project started generating carbon credits one month before the military coup. The project is run by a South Korean NGO called Climate Change Center (CCC). Apart from that first month, all the carbon credits generated from the project were issued during the civil war.

The UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) has reported allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Myanmar carried out by the military regime. Since the coup IIMM has received many reports of massive rights violations including torture, sexual assault against people in custody, aerial bombings, attack, and killing of prisoners of war.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan issued an arrest warrant against Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the Myanmar military regime, for crimes against humanity committed against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

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Working with the military junta

The new report points out that the cookstove project is operating in some of Myanmar’s most conflict-affected regions. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) is under the control of the military junta and is under EU sanctions for contributing “to the funding of the military regime”.

MONREC is responsible for the exploitation and trade of gemstones, pearls and other mineral resources, and timber from Myanmar. Much of this trade is illegal. MONREC is the implementation partner for the cookstove project. CCC continued working with MONREC after the military coup, as if nothing had happened.

The report quotes Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar, saying that,

“Partnering with MONREC in a project tied to international carbon market mechanisms lends false legitimacy to the military junta and whitewashes its international crimes.”

Companies including Korea Electric Power Corporation, SK Group, and Industrial Bank of Korea, are buying carbon credits from a military regime that is committing horrific human rights abuses.

The report raises concerns about whether the carbon credits represent genuine emissions reductions. Analysis carried out by Plan 1.5, Carbon Market Watch, and the Carbon Trading Project at the University of California Berkeley concluded that the cookstove project may have been over-credited by seven times despite the supposedly more rigorous emissions calculations under Article 6.4.

In a press release, Global Forest Coalition’s Oli Munnion says,

“The UN has presented Article 6.4 as a new generation of high-integrity carbon markets. If the very first project approved under the mechanism raises this many questions about human rights, governance, monitoring and emissions accounting, then the credibility of the entire system is at stake.”

The report makes a series of recommendations to the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body about the cookstove project (PoA 10471):

• Immediately suspend any further issuance, transfer, or use of credits associated with PoA 10471.

• Conduct an independent review of the project’s compliance with all applicable methodological, environmental, and social requirements.

• Revoke all credits issued under PoA 10471 and disqualify it from future issuances under PACM if the review determines that the project has failed to meet PACM requirements and safeguards, or that issued credits do not represent genuine and verifiable emissions reductions.

Danny Cullenward, a Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, has resigned from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Independent Standards Board.

“The Protocol is openly violating its own rules,” Cullenward writes on BlueSky, “and has effectively delegated forest carbon accounting standards to a secret, industry-led working group.”

Cullenward posted his resignation letter on BlueSky — it is also available in full below.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol was launched in the late 1990s. It is run by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development. It is the leading standard for corporate carbon accounting with more than 22,000 companies using its methodologies to report their emissions.

The land sector standard

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol has been working on a land sector standard for several years. In January 2024, The Washington Post reported that the draft guidelines, published in autumn 2023 were criticised by dozens of environmental groups and academics. The proposed rules would allow companies to claim destructive products such as timber, paper, beef, and milk are “carbon neutral” by making small changes that don’t actually reduce emissions.

William Moomaw, an environmental policy professor at Tufts University, told the Washington Post that,

“The process was incrementally eroded until it became fully captured by the companies who want to get credit for addressing climate change without changing what they are doing.”

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“Kafkaesque”

Kate Dooley, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a member of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s technical working group on forest carbon accounting. In April 2026, she spoke to Emily Pontecorvo, a journalist with Heatmap, about a discussion over how companies should account for carbon emissions from harvesting forests, land management and buying wood products.

There were two proposals, one from forest industry and landowner organisations and one from independent scientists. The technical working group held a series of meetings over a six month period, but could not reach consensus.

In spring 2025, the technical working group gave both proposals to the Independent Standards Board. But the board also could not reach consensus. In January 2026, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol published the land sector standard without any guidance for forest carbon accounting. Companies could use whatever method they wanted, Heatmap reports, as long as they disclose how they calculated the emissions.

Dooley and other scientists in the technical working group referred to scientific papers that supported their position. Another member of the group, Nathan Truitt, executive vice president of climate funding at the American Forest Foundation, argued that the same papers made the opposite point. It was “Kafkaesque,” Dooley told Heatmap.

In January 2026, Dooley received a copy of a formal complaint made by Truitt in April 2025 challenging the scientists’ expertise and impartiality. She also found out that the Independent Standards Board had asked outside scientists for their opinions on the two proposals. Dooley told Heatmap that she was shocked that she hadn’t known about this at the time.

Cullenward and Keith’s formal complaint

In April 2026, Cullenward wrote a report about the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s governance structure published by the Kleinman Center. He wrote that,

Limited representation from scientists and environmental NGOs, along with an opaque grievance process, risks undermining the enforcement and integrity of the Protocol’s own governance rules.

He recommended mandatory representation from independent scientists and environmental NGOs in the Protocol’s decision-making bodies and that additional transparency measures should be put in place.

Cullenward and another board member, Heather Keith, an Australian forest ecologist, filed a formal complaint with the leadership of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Cullenward wrote in the Kleinman Center paper that the complaint alleges “multiple violations of the Protocol’s governance rules”.

A spokesperson from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol told Heatmap that an independent review found “some process shortcomings” but “no material breach” of the organisation’s rules.

“They buried it,” Cullenward writes.

Cullenward’s resignation letter:

08 June 2026

Geraldine Matchett
Chair, Steering Committee
Greenhouse Gas Protocol

Craig Hanson
Managing Director
World Resources Institute

Dominic Waughray
Executive Vice President
World Business Council on Sustainable Development

Dear Ms. Matchett, Mr. Hanson, and Mr. Waughray,

I write to resign my position on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Independent Standards Board, effective immediately. I no longer have any confidence in the Protocol’s governance structure and strenuously object to your organisations’ treatment of scientific information — and scientists themselves — in the deliberations over forest carbon accounting.

Last year the Board received two competing proposals from the experts appointed to a technical working group. One proposal was authored by the group’s independent scientists and the other was produced by landowner and forest industry organisations.

Remarkably, the forest industry proposal would assign carbon removals to forest harvests. This is the opposite of what physically happens when a forest is cut down: forest harvests and wood consumption cause emissions, not removals. But under the industry rule, recycled paper would be counted as a climate harm while cutting down an old-growth forest to produce virgin paper would be counted as a climate benefit.

The independent scientists in the technical working group gave you consistent feedback that the industry proposal would create severe environmental impacts. They stressed that it is scientifically invalid and far exceeds already-incorrect claims that wood use is “carbon neutral” — a position that has been widely rejected by forest and climate scientists, including in comments to the Protocol from the European Academy of Sciences.

These concerns should have been addressed by the Board in a careful deliberation that centers scientific integrity, as is required by the Protocol’s decision-making hierarchy. But before transmitting the competing proposals to the Board, the secretariat staff and Board Chair acted on a confidential industry complaint that falsely alleged the technical working group scientists were biased and unaware of relevant academic literature.

In response, the Board chair and secretariat unilaterally determined that the Board needed to hear from outside experts, who were presented as neutral arbiters of a contested scientific debate. What the Board was not told is that these outside experts were named in the industry complaint as individuals who would support the industry position.

Before filing a formal complaint in February 2026 about these and several other concerning matters, I worked with Mr. Hanson for months in an attempt to reach a resolution. Mr. Hanson stated his belief that my concerns would harm the reputation of the Protocol if they were made public, and I agreed to work with him constructively to resolve matters internally. I hoped that Mr. Hanson and the World Resources Institute cared sufficiently about scientific integrity to prevent this process from devolving further, but my efforts to pursue internal accountability were met with retaliation. I then had no choice but to file a formal complaint along with my Board colleague, Dr. Heather Keith — the only other Board member with scientific expertise in climate change and forest carbon accounting.

As Chair of the Steering Committee, Ms. Matchett had a choice about how to handle the complaint Dr. Keith and I filed, along with its 200-page appendix of primary sources. She chose to cover it up. She appointed an outside mediator who:

• Was not allowed to speak with the scientists on the technical working group;

• Had not read the full complaint when he met with me to discuss it;

• Refused to meet with me after reading the full complaint;

• Stated that he was only authorized for 30 hours of work, and that he did not have time to watch recordings of key Board meetings as a result; and

• Provided Dr. Keith and myself with a brief, 5-page response that we were told we cannot even share with other Board members without violating on our non-disclosure agreements.

Ms. Matchett then declared that the Protocol’s complaints and concerns procedure does not require any public documentation of “internal” Board member complaints (or their official responses) and closed the matter without any public accountability — despite disclosure being required for “external” complaints.

Meanwhile, it has been five months since the Land Sector and Removals Standard was published without any guidance on forest carbon accounting and more than a year since the technical working group shared its proposals with the Board.

Although the Board approved a set of questions for public comment earlier this month, Board members were advised that the Steering Committee may now be considering a public comment period that could last up to seven months. In nearly two decades of work in public and private regulatory processes around the world, I have never encountered a comment period of this length.

Rather than serve a legitimate purpose, I believe this delay will further delegate control to industry interests. And to be clear, these concerns are not speculative. At a Board meeting earlier this month, a World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) representative confirmed that forest carbon accounting is within the mandate of a joint working group operating between the Protocol and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). As documented in a recent report I wrote for the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, these new joint working groups operate with confidential membership that is heavily tilted in favor of industry interests. Specifically, the WBCSD representative said that the joint working group may draw on existing ISO standards that appear to allow the industry proposal to assign carbon removals to forest harvests and wood consumption.

After manipulating the Board’s decision-making process on forest carbon accounting and withholding the technical working group documents from the public for more than a year, the Protocol is now planning an extended public comment period on issues that have already been delegated to a secret, industry-dominated drafting process.

I again reiterate my request that the Protocol publish all documents from the forest carbon accounting technical working group, all related complaints and official responses, all pilot testing results evaluating the industry proposal, and any written agreement(s) documenting the Protocol’s working relationship with the ISO that may exist.

I regret that we have reached this impasse, but I will not be intimidated or silenced about what is happening. Nor will I take any further part in it.

Danny Cullenward, JD, PhD
Shleifer Senior Fellow
Kleinman Center for Energy Policy
University of Pennsylvania

The Livelihoods’ Mangrove Restoration project aims to restore degraded mangroves on an area of more than 10,000 hectares in the Sine Saloum and Casamance deltas in Senegal. The project has so far sold almost 500,000 carbon credits.

Most of the companies that have bought carbon credits from this project have done so anonymously. One of the few that has acknowledged buying credits is an investment firm called Robeco Institutional Asset Management.

Amaury Sport Organisation bought 5,500 carbon credits to offset the emissions of the 2014 Paris Marathon. Carbon credits from the project also offset emissions from the 2014 Michelin Bibendum Challenge in China and the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.

The project is run by the Paris-based Livelihoods Funds, which was created by food-products corporation Danone. 20 firms invest in the Livelihoods Funds, including Hermès, Michelin, La Poste, Schneider Electric, KfW, Crédit Agrocole, and Mars.

Colonial conservation

This project has appeared twice on REDD-Monitor. In 2024, journalist Jack Thompson wrote an article for Hakai Magazine following his research into the project and interviews with villagers who planted mangroves under the project. Thompson wrote that,

International companies and NGOs pay local workers substandard wages, obscure their own finances, and rarely involve communities in project designs. Local communities also receive no share of the revenue generated by the projects they contribute to, aside from meager wages for planting mangroves.

Only 5.2% of the project budget went to communities. “It’s an injustice that echoes the colonial model of many 20th-century conservation projects in Africa,” Thompson wrote.

Green grabbing

Earlier this year, the project featured in one of the “Crooked Carbon Business” briefings written by Simon Counsell and Jutta Kill. In the briefing, they refer to the work of Marie Christine Cormier-Salem and Jacques Panfili, both of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development.

In a 2016 paper, Cormier-Salem and Panfili wrote that,

[T]he extensive planting of a single mangrove species, Rhizophora mangle, is a means of green grabbing. The buying of carbon offsets by industrial conglomerates has disempowered local communities . . .

Counsell and Kill note that carbon credit ratings agency BeZero gave the project a “BBB” rating, meaning “a moderate likelihood of avoiding or removing 1 tonne of CO₂e”. BeZero highlighted the risk of non-permanence and “notable over-crediting risk due to potential over-estimation of soil carbon”.

Counsell and Kill also note that a 2017 verification reports for the project states that,

not all project areas are completely covered with trees as rd. 25% of the sample plots measured in the course of the 2nd verification period showed an almost 100% loss of tree cover. Subsequently the accuracy of the calculation of the emission reductions are negatively impacted.

The auditing firm TÜV SÜD South Asia recommended planting with another species of mangrove, Avicennia. The next verification report, carried out by TÜV NORD CERT in 2021 noted that no such replanting had taken place.

To make matters worse, in the third monitoring report the project proponent used a significantly higher value for carbon stored in the soils of the replanted areas. Counsell and Kill report that this resulted in nearly 40% more carbon credits than anticipated in the initial project document.

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“Ghost carbon”

Julien Andrieu is a professor of geography at Côte d’Azur University. In 2020, he was lead author of a paper published in Forest Ecology and Management looking into natural regeneration of mangroves in the Saloum Delta based on remote sensing and botanical field data.

The authors found that 96% of mangrove regeneration is “spontaneous and linked to the rainfall recovery”. They conclude that,

[T]he mangrove ecosystem has shown resilience to rainfall and salinity variation, which advance our understanding of potential future climate change impacts to mangroves and their ability to recover from drought-induced mortality. We estimate that the diverse process of replantation contribution is diminutive to the spontaneous regeneration of mangroves in the Saloum Delta, and that the merit of replantation programs should be reevaluated. Narratives regarding the degradation of the Senegalese mangrove, the contributing pressures of human activity, and environmental politics should also be revised to reflect the findings of scholarly research.

Andrieu’s aim in his research is “to see if there were any lessons that could be learned to improve future restoration efforts”.

In a recent article in The Conversation, Andrieu writes that,

We recently discovered that more than a third of the restoration plots were a complete failure. There were no surviving mangroves at all in this area. On the rest of the land, the results ranged from less than 5% to a real success (100%).

The failure rate of the trees was not properly taken into consideration when calculating how much carbon dioxide they could capture. This meant the climate benefits were overstated.

Andrieu argues that the carbon project was “based on a poor understanding of ecology”. Part of the 10,000-hectare project area was not fit for mangroves. The project instructed villagers to plant mangrove seedlings in salty mudflats. These are not suitable for mangroves unless they are regularly flooded by the tides. The project planted areas covering up to 55 hectares that were too far away from tidal channels.

Some plots were up to 9 kilometres away from existing mangrove areas. The sites had different ecological conditions from natural mangrove habitats. “Replanting should have started closest to existing mangroves,” Andrieu writes.

As a result, 36% of the mangrove plots failed completely. The remaining 64% had at least some surviving mangroves, but survival within these plots was low. Overall, only 18.3% to 20.5% of the planted mangroves survived across the project area.

The consulting firm Agresta carried out the monitoring reports for the project. Agresta measured a sample of mangrove trees to calculate how much carbon the trees stored. They assumed that all the trees across the 10,000-hectare project area had survived and grown.

“Because so many trees died or never grew,” Andrieu writes, “the total amount of carbon stored in the trees was overestimated.”

Andrieu’s research team estimates that about 168,000 carbon credits were “ghost carbon” and “this has no benefit to people or the environment”.

I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to talk about an article published in The Times last week.

Really? I didn’t have you down as a Times reader.

Generally speaking, I’m not. Let’s just say I’m not a fan of Rupert Murdoch and his climate denialism. Or of billionaire-owned newspapers in general. Which is not to say that everything in The Times is rubbish, of course.

Why do you want to talk about this particular The Times article?

Well, Jeremy Freund, Chief Climate Officer at Wildlife Works, referred to it in a post on LinkedIn. He writes that the article “refreshingly captures a dichotomy that has been building for years and I’m thrilled to see it finally get some exposure”.

Let’s start with what The Times article says. We can come back to Freund later on.

The Times article starts with this sentence: “Milton Friedman called it ‘the suicidal impulse of the business community’.”

We’re diving straight into the neoliberal deep end then.

Oh yes. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given that the author of The Times article is Ryan Bourne, an economist at the Cato Institute.

Remind me. What is the Cato Institute?

It’s a neoliberal think tank based in Washington DC. It was founded in 1974 by Charles Koch, Murray Rothbard, and Edward Crane.

The Cato Institute’s position on the climate crisis, is that “Global warming is indeed real, and human activity has been a contributor since 1975.”

1975?

The Cato Institute doesn’t give any source for this date. Obviously, human activity, largely through burning fossil fuels, has influenced the climate since long before 1975. A 2016 paper in Nature found that greenhouse gases began warming the world’s oceans in the 1830s.

The Cato Institute is only out by 145 years.

Cato Institute’s “Global Warming” statement hasn’t changed since at least January 2013 — the first time it was saved on the Internet Archive.

I don’t hold out any hope at all that they’ll correct it now just because of some peer reviewed scientific paper in Nature from 10 years ago.

Anything else about the Cato Institute’s position on “Global Warming”?

I’m afraid so. According to the Cato Institute, “global warming” is a “very complicated and difficult issue”.

The Cato Institute is reading straight from the tobacco disinformation playbook, then.

Yes. In the 1950s, the tobacco industry launched a public relations campaign to cast doubt on the science that provided mounting evidence of the health dangers of smoking.

In 1969, an internal memo from tobacco firm Brown & Williamson stated that,

Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy . . . if we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health.

The fossil fuel industry has used the same strategy — even employing the same PR agents that the tobacco industry used.

It gets worse, believe it or not. Despite the urgent need for immediate action to address the climate crisis, the Cato Institute argues that “there is ample time” to develop the technologies needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The reality, of course, is that we need to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

I don’t suppose there’s any mention of fossil fuels in the Cato Institute’s “Global Warming” statement, is there?

No, of course not. And here’s why: Between 1986 and 2015, the Cato Institute received more than US$17 million from various Koch Foundations.

The Cato Institute was originally incorporated under the name “The Charles Koch Foundation, Inc.” and was funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch (who died in 2019). Koch Industries, the Koch family business, is a huge conglomerate that generates its profits largely from fossil fuels, but is also involved in chemicals, cattle, pulp and paper, and synthetics.

Koch Industries is one of the biggest climate villains on the planet — not only because of its greenhouse gas emissions but because of the millions that the Koch brothers have poured into organisations promoting climate denial. The Cato Institute is just one of these organisations.

The Koch brothers also assembled a network of more than 600 libertarian wealthy donors, which US historian Nancy MacLean described in 2025 as “the largest private political network in the world”.

This network has become a powerful delivery vehicle for its libertarian and increasingly authoritarian agenda. We’ve seen its fingerprints in the Brexit campaign, in billionaire support for fascist parties in Europe, in the growing collaboration of far-right parties and neoliberal think tanks, and in the ascent of the Trump administration itself.

Nice guys, the Koch brothers.

I suppose so, if you’re keen on fascism and the destruction of the planet’s living ecosystem.

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Let’s go back to Ryan Bourne, the Cato Institute economist, and writer of The Times piece. Any more on him?

Before he moved to the Cato Institute, he was head of public policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs in the UK.

The IEA was formed by Anthony Fisher, a former banker, World War II pilot, and chicken farmer. He read the 20-page edited version of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” that was published in Readers’ Digest magazine in April 1945.

Fisher didn’t like the post-war Labour government’s economic policies. Apparently, he took a particular dislike to the Egg Marketing Board.

Fisher visited Hayek at the London School of Economics. He told Hayek he believed his arguments and asked him what he should do. Hayek advised him not to go into politics, but to set up a think tank.

First Fisher needed money. He brought factory chicken farming from the US to Britain and expanded his operations to more than 1 million birds. He made enough money to set up his think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The IEA has been extraordinarily influential. Its 2025 accounts reveal that it appeared on British media more than 4,000 times, or an average of almost 11 times a day, in the previous 12 months. (That’s down from 14 times a day in 2023.)

In 2019, LBC radio presenter James O’Brien described IEA as a “hard-right lobby group for vested interests of big business, fossil fuels, tobacco, junk food”. When the IEA complained to the UK media regulator Ofcom about O’Brien’s comments, Ofcom cleared LBC of any wrongdoing,

Anything else we need to know about Fisher, before we get back to The Times article?

In 1981, Fisher founded the Atlas Network. It promotes limited government, free enterprise, personal liberty, and personal responsibility. It promotes neoliberalism, in other words.

Nearly 500 think tanks worldwide are Atlas Network partners.

In 2024, writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot outlined the Atlas Network’s links to right wing politicians including Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei, and Donald Trump. Project 2025 was written by the Heritage Foundation, a member of the Atlas Network.

Also in 2024, Anne-Sophie Simpère investigated the Atlas Network’s links with — and funding from — ExxonMobil, and its role in playing down the climate crisis.

Needless to say, the Cato Institute is also a member of the Atlas Network.

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So, we know who wrote the article. What did Bourne actually write?

Bourne, as you’ll remember, opens his Times article by referring to Milton Friedman.

In 1989, Friedman won the National Association for Business Economics’ Adam Smith Award. He gave a lecture titled, “The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community”.

Friedman argues that “corporations, and especially large corporations, seeking to pursue through political means what they regard as their own interests, do not do a good job of evaluating their interest. The policies they pursue and promote are very often adverse to their own interests.”

In his lecture, Friedman argues against tariffs and protectionism, against banking regulation, for the privatisation of education, and against regulation of Big Tech.

“When it comes to politics and philanthropy, businessmen often fund causes that work not just against their company’s interests,” Bourne writes, “but against free enterprise itself.”

Bourne apparently doesn’t consider the fact that he’s working for a think tank funded by massively polluting businesses. Neither does he consider what Friedman might have thought about corporations funding right wing free market think tanks, like the Cato Institute.

In his Times article, Bourne gives the example of Big Tech and the current resistance against AI data centres. According to Bourne, for two decades Big Tech has “helped bankroll a climate activist ecosystem persuading Westerners that fossil-fuel energy, industrial expansion and economic growth were pushing the planet towards catastrophe”.

Wait, are you seriously trying to tell me that resistance to AI data centres is a result of Big Tech’s funding for climate organisations?

That’s Bourne’s argument, not mine. Incidentally, Bourne doesn’t mention that the Cato Institute has received funding from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Brian Merchant, who writes the excellent Blood in the Machine Substack met some of the protesters against data centres when he attended at a recent city council meeting in Monterey Park, California.

He describes them as “a remarkably diverse group” of people concerned about higher electricity costs, noise, and air pollution. In return they see temporary jobs and a technology that would profit others, quite probably at their direct expense. Some of them raise concerns about AI involvement in surveillance and the US war-machine. At least one raises concerns about “techno-fascism”.

“In that context,” Merchant writes, “it seems condescending to imply that affluent environmentalists are running this movement.”

Does Bourne provide any evidence to back up his argument about Big Tech’s funding driving the opposition to AI data centres?

No. But he mentions a “recent Wall Street Journal column by Barton Swaim” about former Google CEO Eric Schmidt being booed after comments about AI that he made during a graduation speech at the University of Arizona.

Swaim’s article is titled, “The Panic Industry’s New Target.” It’s almost certainly where Bourne got the idea from for his Times article.

Swaim claims that many of the people opposing construction of data centres are attached to “501(c)(3) organizations” (charities and foundations) who “got their talking points from national nonprofits supported by some of the same moneyed outfits the Schmidt and Gates foundations spent the last two decades bankrolling.”

This claim is not held up by reporting by Blood in the Machine, or Inside Climate News, or More Perfect Union, or Wired to name just a few of the publications writing about the impacts of AI.

Do we need to know who Swaim is?

He’s a conservative opinion writer at the Wall Street Journal. Which, incidentally is owned by Dow Jones, a division of Murdoch’s News Corp. He writes of “climate alarmism” and “climate-change ideology”. He argues that it “should have been obvious” that climate science is “in no way settled”.

Hmmm. Another climate denier at a Murdoch newspaper. So what does he have to say about Schmidt being booed?

Swaim writes that, after being booed,

Schmidt then continued with his prepared remarks: “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” He went on to urge graduates not to let fear rob them of personal agency — a fine, saccharine message.

Except that Schmidt was probably being booed because many of the graduates have not been able to find jobs. Many are blaming AI.

Instead of considering the impact of AI on graduate jobs, Swaim asks “Where does Mr. Schmidt thing young people got the idea that ‘the climate is breaking’?”

A sensible answer to this question would be from climate scientists, NASA, the IPCC, or even from reading newspapers not owned by Murdoch.

Swaim’s answer is that the fear comes in part from the “scores of climate-panic groups” that the Schmidt Family Foundation’s 11th Hour Project has funded over the past two decades.

“One detail particularly amuses,” Swaim writes, “When 11th Hour first appeared, in 2006, it funded screenings of Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ a documentary designed to terrorize viewers with 90 minutes of bleak prophecies, now happily exploded.”

That’s not true. Gore got most things right, and exaggerated a few.

And to state the obvious, the climate crisis has not gone away.

Both Bourne and Swaim end their articles by trying to tell us that AI is good for us. We need data centres, they say, to watch Netflix and football, make online payments, and buy airline tickets.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency looks at energy and AI. It finds that energy consumption for AI queries (such as simple text queries) has “declined massively” in recent years with improved software and hardware. However, new energy-intensive AI applications such as video generation, reasoning, and agentic tasks are increasingly being used. The International Energy Agency reports that, “These kinds of tasks can consume hundred or thousands of times more energy per query than simple text generation.”

Do Swaim or Bourne mention any of the problems with AI data centres?

Swaim mentions the vast increase in the numbers of data centres to meet AI’s demands. And the increase in energy needed.

Bourne mentions the water needed for cooling, but writes that “water use is localised, and cooling can often use recycled water”.

Localised water use is clearly a problem if you happen to live next to a data centre that is sucking away your drinking water. The water for cooling systems has to be clean, to prevent bacteria growth or corrosion in the cooling system. That means using mostly drinking water. And most AI data centres use evaporative cooling. Closed loop systems cost more and use more energy.

AI data centres consume water for both cooling and electricity generation.

In October 2025, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water, Pedro Arrojo Agudo, called for a moratorium on new data centres:

States and international institutions should promote a moratorium on the development of data centres and provide clear information on their water and energy consumption and the risks that they pose to climate change, the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems, the human rights of impoverished populations and the survival of vulnerable productive sectors.

And in December 2025, more than 230 organisations in the US demanded a moratorium on data centres in the US.

Bourne tells us that the effect of data centres on electricity bills depends on “whether governments allow enough reliable generation and grid capacity to be built”.

So governments should massively expand electricity production and grid capacity to meet the surging demand of AI data centres? Whether that involves coal, oil, gas, nuclear, or biofuels?

According to Bourne, yes. Of course, the Cato Institute’s position on “global warming” is that “there is ample time” to develop the technology that will miraculously stop the climate crisis. In the meantime, then, it’s drill baby drill.

Many of the new AI data centres currently being built are powered by fossil gas. Many are following the model developed at Elon Musk’s Colossus AI data centre in Memphis. Musk installed 35 “mobile” gas turbines to power the plant. As a result communities living near the plant are increasingly suffering from asthma, cancer, and respiratory diseases.

In Texas, for example, about 300 data centres are currently operational. 100 more are under construction and 100 more are planned. Texas has 80 GW of fossil gas power plants under construction. About half of these plants will provide power exclusively to data centres without connecting to the Texas electrical grid.

One of the new AI data centres, GW Ranch, will generate almost 8 GW of fossil gas electricity. That’s enough to provide electricity for more than half the homes in Texas. All of that electricity will be off the grid — entirely for that one data centre.

This may relieve pressure on the electricity grid and avoid increases in electricity bills, but it will also result in additional very large greenhouse gas emissions.

These fossil gas operations also generate fine particulate matter which are detrimental to human health. One study of the healthcare related costs for people living near to a similar data centre in Virginia could be between US$53 million and US$99 million per year.

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So, why on earth is Wildlife Works’ Jeremy Freund so “thrilled” about this piece of pro-AI, pro-pollution, climate denialism in The Times?

Read Freund’s LinkedIn comment yourself — here it is in full:

Wow. That’s quite a ride. Capitalism for good, eh?

One of the problems that carbon market proponents have always had is that they need a very large, very polluting, expanding industry to buy carbon credits. That’s why carbon traders have always been close to the fossil fuel industry. And the aviation industry. The AI boom has everything the carbon traders have ever dreamed of — a huge increase in fossil fuels to power data centres, vast amounts of money, commitments to “net zero”, and a complete disregard of the impacts on either people or the environment.

Which explains why we have a carbon trader publicly admitting that he couldn’t care less about the climate crisis, or about extractivism, logging, mining, industrial agriculture, fossil fuels, water supplies, human health, or the impacts of AI — as long as the extractivists buy carbon credits.

Joe Sanberg, the co-founder of fintech bank and carbon trading company Aspiration Partners, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for defrauding investors and lenders. In October 2025, Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud resulting in losses of US$248 million.

In a statement, first assistant US attorney Bill Essayli, said,

“This serial fraudster used his Cinderella-like background, impressive educational credentials, and virtue signaling skills to swindle investors and lenders out of hundreds of millions of dollars. This criminal case serves as a warning: Anyone can get duped by a con man.”

REDD-Monitor first wrote about Aspiration in 2022, after the company partnered with the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm.

The deal was part of IFC’s Carbon Opportunities Fund, which IFC described as, “a global investment platform that will raise private capital for an innovative model to source, tokenize and sell high-quality, verified carbon credits”.

It appears that the IFC’s due diligence did not pick up on Sanberg’s fraud.

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Sanberg’s fraud

Sanberg’s scheme ran from 2020 and continued into 2025. He used his large share of Aspiration stock to defraud lenders and investors.

In 2020 and 2021, Sanberg and Ibrahim AlHusseini, who were both on Aspiration’s board of directors, fraudulently obtained US$45 million in loans from two lenders, by pledging shares of Sanberg’s Aspiration stock.

Sanberg and AlHusseini falsified AlHusseini’s bank and brokerage statements, fraudulently inflating his assets by more than US$200 million at one point.

Starting in 2021, Sanberg concealed from investors that he was the source of millions of dollars paid to Aspiration. Sanberg recruited companies and individuals to enter agreements with Aspiration. The companies and individuals committed to pay tens of thousands of dollars per month to Aspiration for tree planting services. The money for these payments came from Sanberg.

Reporting by Bloomberg reveals that these companies included:

• Young Israel, an orthodox synagogue in Beverley Hills that agreed to pay US$25,000 per month to Aspiration for tree planting.

• A non-profit called the Hidden Light Institute, that produces documentaries about Israeli figures and events, agreed to pay US$300,000 per month to Aspiration for tree planting. That’s almost ten times Hidden Light’s revenue for the whole of 2021.

• A company called 539 N. Alta Vista LLC, apparently named after a house in Los Angeles, agreed to pay US$50,000 per month.

• ETZ Partners LLC was formed within days of its deal with Aspiration by another LLC that was registered anonymously in Delaware. ETZ agreed a multimillion-dollar tree planting deal with Aspiration.

Sanberg made other deals were with an actor, several retired footballers, and a model, all from Colombia.

As a result of these sham deals, Aspiration’s financial statements fraudulently showed much higher revenue than the company actually received. Sanberg continued to try get investments in Aspiration into 2025.

Aspiration under investigation

In 2023, Meta signed a deal to buy 6.75 million carbon credits from Aspiration. In a July 2023 blog post about the deal, Aspiration wrote that,

Meta selected Aspiration for this partnership in large part due to the company’s rigorous standard for evaluating nature-based carbon removal initiatives — ensuring that the projects it supports are high quality with verifiable carbon removal and well-managed risks to the durability of carbon storage.

The following year, the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission started an investigation into whether Aspiration had misled customers about the quality of the carbon offsets it was selling.

At the time, Aspiration listed three projects from which it was buying carbon offsets:

• Renewable Wind Power Project by Adani, Gujarat, India

• Northern Kenya Improved Grasslands, Samburu County, Kenya

• Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project, Mai Ndombe Province, Democratic Republic of Congo

All of these projects are extremely problematic.

Climate Home pointed out in 2024 that,

Experts have long written off the vast majority of credits produced from renewable energy as junk because they often already provide the cheapest sources of power in most of the world and selling offsets to fund them does not have any additional impact on emissions.

The carbon credits ratings agency Calyx Global gave the Adani wind project an E rating — its lowest possible score. “Calyx Global has Low Confidence that the carbon credit reliably represents a unique and permanent metric tonne of emission reduction or removal.”

The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon project in Kenya has been suspended twice by Verra, the Washington DC-based carbon certification company. The project covers an area of almost 2 million hectares and is carried out by the Northern Rangelands Trust.

More than 100,000 people live inside the project area, including Indigenous Peoples who are pastoralists whose livelihoods depends on cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. The project imposes “planned rotational grazing” which is a concept dreamed up by a Zimbabwean rancher called Allan Savory but which has little or no scientific backing.

The Mai Ndombe REDD project in the Democratic Republic of Congo is run by Wildlife Works. The project was set up without a meaningful process of free, prior and informed consent of the people living there.

The number of carbon credits generated by the project was exaggerated by selecting a reference area 600 kilometres away that has been almost completely deforested.

Local communities have received few, if any, benefits from the project.

Calyx Global gave the Mai Ndombe project its lowest rating: E.

Two REDD projects in Brazil

We got another glimpse into Aspiration’s carbon deals with a court case between Zero Carbon Holdings and Aspiration. In 2021, Aspiration was trying to win a deal to offset emissions from the 2022 World Cup, held in Qatar. Aspiration was hoping to buy carbon credits for the World Cup deal from a company called Zero Carbon Holdings.

The carbon credits were supposed to be generated from two REDD projects in Brazil: the Zero Carbon Aripuanã Valley REDD project 1; and the 413 REDD project. But by December 2021, only feasibility studies had been carried out on the projects. Nevertheless, Zero Carbon Holdings convinced Aspiration to make an advance payment of US$29.5 million for 6.5 million carbon credits.

As security, if Zero Carbon Holdings did not deliver the carbon credits, Aspiration would take over the REDD projects in Brazil.

The REDD projects did not deliver the carbon credits. They have still not generated any carbon credits. Aspiration did not win the World Cup deal. The whole thing ended up in court.

The Clippers deal

And then there’s Steve Ballmer, ex-CEO of Microsoft and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

In September 2021, the Clippers announced a US$300 million partnership with Aspiration. The Clippers’ new arena, the Intuit Dome was going to operate “100 per cent carbon free”. The Clippers and Aspiration planned to launch a fund that would give fans the opportunity to “offset their own carbon impact” when they bought tickets to a game.

In September 2025, sports journalist Pablo Torre obtained 3,487 pages of internal corporate documents from Aspiration. It turned out that Aspiration had given a US$28 million endorsement deal to Clippers’ player Kawhi Leonard. Under the deal, Leonard did not have to do anything.

There is a salary cap under National Basketball Association rules, which prevents rich owners from persuading the best players to move to their team by offering bonuses, gifts, or donations.

Pablo Torre spoke to a former Aspiration employee who said that he was told that the deal with Leonard was “to circumvent the salary cap. LOL.”

The NBA is carrying out an investigation into the salary cap allegations.

Ballmer and the Clippers deny any wrongdoing. Leonard also denies wrongdoing. “I understand the full contract and services that I had to do,” he said in reply to questions from reporters about the Aspiration deal. “Like I said, I don’t deal with conspiracies or the click-bait analysts or journalism that’s going on.”

In April 2026, Ballmer’s lawyers sent a letter to the judge ahead of Sanberg’s sentencing. The letter states that “Sanberg flagrantly defrauded Mr. Ballmer, and his actions have significantly damaged Mr. Ballmer’s reputation.” Ballmer invested US$60 million in Aspiration.

The Clippers also lost US$20 million that was held in escrow to buy carbon offsets. Aspiration neither delivered the carbon offsets nor returned the money.

Ballmer’s lawyers wrote that,

Sanberg’s representations turned out to be lies, and what he promised by way of an environmental mission turned out to be nothing more than a lure to bilk Mr. Ballmer and others. As a result, Mr. Ballmer lost his entire investment in Aspiration — an investment that was intended to promote sustainability and benefit charitable causes.

ESPN reports that the judge, Stephen V. Wilson, said in the Los Angeles federal courtroom that Sanberg’s actions were “among the worst I’ve ever seen” in his 41 years as a federal judge.

“This case has touched almost every badge of fraud,” Wilson said.

The Indonesian government is currently carrying out the world’s largest deforestation programme. It’s taking place in West Papua, which has been subjected to Indonesian military occupation for more than 60 years. Currently there are 56,000 Indonesian troops in West Papua.

In 2025, the Papuan Church Council reported that there were 103,000 internally displaced persons in West Papua.

Indonesian government has deployed thousands of troops to Papua to force through the destruction of 2.5 million hectares of forest for industrial food and biofuel plantations. 1.3 million hectares will become rice fields. 560,000 hectares will produce sugar and bioethanol. 400,000 hectares will become palm oil plantations to produce biodiesel. A further 380,000 hectares will be used for cattle ranching.

A new film, “Pesta Babi: Kolonialisme di zaman kita” (Pig Feast: Colonialism in our time) documents the destruction of the forests and the resistance by Indigenous communities.

The film is directed by Dandhy Laksono and Cypri Dale. Dandhy previously directed “Sexy Killers,” a film about the coal mining industry in Indonesia, and “Dirty Vote,” about the 2024 presidential election. Cypri is an anthropologist. He is a research fellow at CSEAS Kyoto University in Japan and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.

Several organisation collaborated in the production of the film, including Watchdoc, Ekspedisi Indonesia Baru, Yayasan Bentala Pusaka, JubiTV, Greenpeace Indonesia, and Legal Aid Institute of Papua Merauke.

The film is deeply shocking. The scale of the destruction is vast. Indigenous communities have lost their land, forests, hunting grounds, and livelihoods. Fertiliser and herbicides sprayed onto the industrial crops run off into rivers polluting the water that villagers previously used.

On 22 May 2026, the film was posted on YouTube where it has been watched more than 9.7 million times.

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The film starts with the Awyu community in South Papua. They are building an enormous wooden cross in the forest. The red-painted cross is one of more than 1,800 that communities have built over the past 10 years as a form of resistance against the Indonesian government’s destruction.

One of the villagers explains:

“We believe that if we are unable to resolve a problem, in this case preventing a company from entering our land, we ask for help from our ancestors and God. On the crosses we inscribed or drew the attributes of war that are meant to show that we strictly prohibit anyone from entering or disturbing our territory. If anyone breaches these signs, or threatens or ancestral land rights we are prepared to fight a war.”

The first that Indigenous communities knew about the government’s plans for their forests was when ships docked in their villages carrying hundreds of excavators along with the Indonesian military.

The film-makers uploaded the film to YouTube after the Indonesian military targeted several screenings of the film in Indonesia. Screenings were disrupted or cancelled in several cities.

On 7 May 2026, a screening at the University of Mataram was stopped after deputy rector Sujita said the film was not suitable for students. “This film is not fit for screening,” Tempo reported Sujita as saying. “It is better to watch football together.”

The following day, a screening in Ternate, North Maluku, was dispersed by soldiers.

According to Rettet den Regenwald, which will show the film in Germany and Switzerland in September 2026, 30 screenings were banned around the country.

In a statement, Amnesty International Indonesia’s executive director, Usman Hamid, said,

“The series of bans and forced dispersals of screenings of the film ‘Pesta Babi’ in several regions of Indonesia not only shows the government’s anti-criticism stance, but also reveals the state’s efforts to suppress any alternative information that exposes systematic human rights and environmental violations in Papua. This is clearly an attempt to silence and suppress critical voices about Papua, as expressed through the film ‘Pesta Babi’.”