“Article 6 is not about saving the planet. The COPs are not about climate change. This is about profit.” Interview with Dr. Tamra Gilbertson of Indigenous Environmental Network

“Carbon markets fundamentally do not work, period.”

PHOTO Credit: IISD.

Interview with Tamra Gilbertson, coordinator of the climate justice programme for the Indigenous Environmental Network. The interview was conducted online on 5 November 2024.

REDD-Monitor: Can you start with a brief description of who you are, and how you’ve been working on carbon offsets over the years?

Tamra Gilbertson: I am currently the coordinator of the climate justice programme for the Indigenous Environmental Network. I have been following the carbon pricing, carbon trading, carbon offsets processes for over 20 years and have been one of a group of people that critique these processes and have unequivocally found over and over again that these systems are a distraction from real action, like keeping fossil fuels in the ground, or upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples, or in supporting the hundreds of other ways that communities work to combat climate change every day. Solutions to climate change are sidelined for profit-making.

Ultimately, we’ve found over the last years that carbon markets and the processes through which they are built are set up to distract away from real action on climate change.

And carbon markets are not working, right? They’re not designed to work. It was never set up to actually deal with climate change or biodiversity loss in any way.

But even with all of the evidence after 20 plus years, including evidence of fraud, human rights abuses, and land grabs, somehow it is still being reported as a solution to climate change. This is really a prime example of how systems of power function to replicate and continue destructive practices.

REDD-Monitor: You were one of the people at the Durban Group meeting in 2004. Can you say a bit about that meeting and the Durban Declaration that came out of that meeting?

Tamra Gilbertson: We were seeing a lot of people around the world who were witnessing or fighting against land issues and land grabs. And as the carbon markets were starting to be piloted, there were a lot of concerns. We predicted early on what would happen.

What was crucial about the Durban Group is that we represented many different perspectives, academia, Indigenous Peoples, social movements, land movements, movements organising against eucalyptus plantations, and communities fighting against inequalities near garbage dumps.

What we learned is that as these pilot programmes were being set up in the early days, they were not something new. They were an additional layer added to struggles that were already ongoing.

All of these ongoing colonial-development-racist struggles impacting Indigenous Peoples and communities who were living next to garbage dumps, or fighting against eucalyptus plantations, or coal-fired power plants, or land grabs, suddenly had to also organise against the carbon markets being set up to extend the life of the destructive industries even more effectively rendering it even more difficult to fight against these industries, because it was giving these corporations more power, more legitimacy and ultimately, undermining real action on the ground.

To put it more clearly, carbon markets added another layer of difficulty to fight these colonial power structures.

We came together in the Durban meeting to share what was being experienced in different parts of the world, and found that there were commonalities between and solidarity between these struggles. There was real social power and international solidarity built in that moment.

Although there were different corporations, different sectors, and they were coming from different parts of the world and different political structures, we were finding that most of the pilot projects were financed by similar banks and similar institutions. We were able to follow the money and make important linkages.

And so what was unique about the Durban meeting is that we were really able to start to pull down some of the veils and look behind and see who was driving this, which helped us answer the question of why was this happening, who was behind it, and who would profit?

It became starkly clear to us that this was a scheme being set up to ensure the longevity of these types of destructive colonial-capitalist processes.

The Declaration really spells it out. It is still very relevant today, and maybe even more so because of the timing. Because at that point in 2004, we were just seeing the pilot projects being implemented and we were able to start to critique how the system was inevitably going to fail.

And right now, we’re less than a week away from COP 29, which is going to likely be our last moment to push back on Article 6. There is a parallel here 20 years later of another system that is really very similar in some ways, but it is much more far reaching.

The Durban Declaration that we wrote in 2004 is just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago. As we are fighting against Article 6 coming online and then into next year’s implementation process, if the texts are approved.

REDD-Monitor: Please describe exactly what Article 6 is and why we should be concerned about it.

Tamra Gilbertson: Article 6 is divided into three sections.

Article 6.2 is what’s called cooperative approaches. It will function basically by what is sometimes referred to as the registry database, where all Parties/countries will record their greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately.

Countries will upload information on their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement.

I think some history is really important here. When the Kyoto Protocol was built, back in those days there was something within Kyoto that was built into the carbon markets that was called “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Common but differentiated responsibilities meant that within the carbon markets, or the so-called flexible mechanisms at the time, the emissions trading systems were only meant to be built by countries in the Global North or developed countries that were historically responsible for causing climate change, for emissions since the Industrial Revolution.

Common but differentiated responsibility upheld the understanding that countries in the Global South or developing countries were not responsible for historic greenhouse gas emissions that have accumulated in the atmosphere and caused climate change, as well as an understanding that countries in the Global South still have a right to development.

That differentiated approach meant that in the best case scenario, it was meant to be that countries in the Global North or developed countries were the ones responsible for climate change and had to reduce their emissions.

So today, most of the ETS systems in the world are only operational in countries that are developed, including Japan, the EU, New Zealand, Canada, some subnational programs in the US, like the California cap-and-trade system or the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the northeast.

What that means is that most of the countries in the Global South do not have ETSs to link into the Article 6.2 registry database, or any type of greenhouse gas registry of any kind.

So one of the big issues on the table is how countries in the Global South, and the African Group of Nations has been really vocal about this, saying, we need capacity building workshops, we need time to build out our systems, we need to use the Article 6.2 registry database to register our greenhouse gas emissions and use that as our greenhouse gas clearinghouse, because we don’t have that.

So that’s one sticking point in Article 6.2.

Now, the other part that’s kind of confusing about Article 6.2 is that we can imagine for a moment that Canada in its registry says that they’ve produced more pollution than their Nationally Determined Contribution states and they have not met their goals.

And we can imagine that Ghana, for example, maybe has met their goals and has extra because they’ve reduced. That extra can be converted into what’s called Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes or ITMOs.

Those can then be traded between the emissions trading systems or through the registry database so that Canada can purchase those ITMOs and then say that it’s met its Nationally Determined Contribution goals.

Ultimately, it’s very similar to an offset, or very similar to a way that cap-and-trade has been working between polluting industries. But this is conceptualised as something a little bit different. ITMOs are traded between parties within the Article 6.2 registry database.

There are also questions on authorisation, sequencing, linkage to Article 6.4, first transfer, pulling and viewing, corresponding adjustments, privacy and other key issues that have not been decided. That’s a general overview of Article 6.2 and some of the sticking points. There’s more but those are some of the main pieces.

Article 6.4 is what will eventually take place of the Clean Development Mechanism, although the Clean Development Mechanism is still up and running and will be for a few more years.

Article 6.4 has been called the Sustainable Development Mechanism, but generally in the negotiations they call this the mechanism database.

I think it’s important that people remember whenever we hear the word mechanism, what they are talking about is financialisation and markets and trading. The word mechanism means nothing else inside of the walls of the UN besides financialised markets.

The sustainable development mechanism is sometimes what Article 6.4 is referred to, but ultimately what we’re talking about is carbon offsets. The Article 6.4 mechanism database is where offsets will be housed in a type of clearinghouse in a database that will be run by the UN, specifically under the UN.

Article 6.4 is different than the CDM. One difference is that all countries are invited to be included, to include their offsets. Remember, I spoke about common but differentiate responsibilities earlier? Well, projects in the CDM were undertaken in developing countries in the Global South to be sold to the Global North. Article 6.4 is an open free-for-all carbon offset mechanism. Another difference is that the voluntary markets that have been so fraudulent and so fraught with lies, violations against the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and land grabs, and on and on, will also be able to register their projects in Article 6.4.

One of the things that the private sector is saying and also that the negotiators are saying is, “We know there are problems in the voluntary markets, but this is why we need regulation like we are building in Article 6.4. It’ll be fine because we have set up all of these programmes that will allow for more regulation and that is all that is needed.”

We know this is just an excuse to justify more profit for the polluting industries, and more added layers to make it difficult to fight against colonial-development projects and structures that replicate and perpetuate land grabbing, pollution, forced evictions, and ultimately, climate change.

So a couple of sticking points here, and one that’s really important for REDD-Monitor, is that Article 5 under the Paris Agreement is where REDD lives. There are current discussions about including Article 5 in Article 6.4, which would mean that REDD for the first time ever would be included in a UN-backed carbon offset system.

That’s a huge thing we’re trying to fight against and it’s very worrying, very concerning.

A second area of concern with Article 6.4 is around removals, or greenhouse gas removals, or carbon removals. The removals issue is a big one.

We still do not know what will be included as a removal. We understand it to be two separate things. One is biological removals, which is forests, soils, oceans and waters, or what they call Nature-based Solutions. That would include agriculture, also for the first time in a UN-backed offsets programme.

Of course we had afforestation, reforestation in the CDM, but we saw very few credits ever really moved through the CDM for that. This would change that.

The big push for oceans and waters is also new. We’re very concerned about what that means. There have been previous ocean dumping or so-called ocean fertilisation projects that have failed miserably in the voluntary markets. But we’ve never seen it in a UN-backed system. Parallel to this, marine geoengineering is being amplified by carbon market financiers and international financial institutions. There is also a push for whale offsets and other animal offsets.

We’re challenging that on the geoengineering front. We’re challenging that on the agriculture front. We’re organising against more offsets for forests. So there is a lot going on regarding the biological removals side.

On the other side is what they call engineered or technological removals. Again, this is not clear. Some say that carbon capture and storage is not included, and others say that it is included. There’s not a clear list.

We’ve been asking the Supervisory Body to come out with a list of what is a removal, although they’re negotiating it and talking about it and literally making plans and methodologies for it, they still have not told us what will constitute a removal, or what will be on that list. The lack of transparency is by design.

This is very worrying because of how the fossil fuel industry can use carbon capture and storage, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), direct air capture — which is just fiction really, to justify fossil fuel extraction.

These are ways that the fossil fuel industries continue to function. In the US carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an old technology used by the fossil fuel industries that’s called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). It’s been around for 40 years or longer, where they compress the CO₂, and use it to push into the ground in order to pull out more oil and gas. The purpose is to extract oil and gas.

The numbers do not add up. EOR is similar to how water is used for fracking. Also in the US, for example, there is a tax break called 45Q, that allows the oil and gas industry to profit off of using CCS.

And then you can imagine this gets rolled into big carbon trading markets. They get a double and triple payback, and they want that. And profit is the goal.

We are hearing rumblings that CCS will not be included. But it has already been included in some of the voluntary markets as carbon offsets. I do not believe they will restrict the use of CCS as an offset in Article 6.4.

Another issue is around safeguards. They have now created what’s called a “Sustainable Development Tool,” and the Tool is of serious concern for Indigenous Peoples. They say it will support Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and a plethora of other things, but the language is weak, it’s non-binding, and it has the same problems of any other safeguards we have gone up against.

There is one thing that we have pushed very hard for over the last few years, that could be a tool that we can use, and that is the grievance mechanism, or the grievance tool, which is a way for Indigenous Peoples and communities who have had their free, prior and informed consent violated, or their rights violated, or impacted by a carbon offset project in Article 6.4, to file a grievance.

If and when this gets rolling, we want to encourage any community that has been violated, given misinformation or disinformation to use the grievance tool.

Of course, the grievance tool is not enough, because carbon markets fundamentally do not work, period. But it is one thing that we can try to use, and that the CDM never had.

And finally, we’re still trying to create some dialogue around getting a sunset clause included, because the CDM never had a sunset clause. And we know back in the day, was it Ken Newcombe who said, “If the CDM is still running by 2020, we failed”? Well, it is still running, Ken.

If their argument that carbon markets function to reduce emissions were to be correct, then they should have some way of implementing an end date using their metrics. They have metrics for everything else. By this date, if it’s not working, then we get rid of the markets and we sunset this out. Or even if they really believe carbon offsets will work, then they should be able to argue that by this date it will magically function and we will not need it anymore.

But we know that is not the case. So we want to call their bluff and get some kind of an end date or an expiration date.

Finally, in the negotiations at COP29, the negotiators will revisit the problematic issue of linking the Article 6.2 registry database with the Article 6.4 mechanism database. This brings up some of the sticking points here again around how the offsets become emissions reductions or removals, and how they are used to apply to Article 6.2 NDCs. The two markets, 6.2 and 6.4, will be linked but they’re still working out how the linkages will function in terms of authorisation, timing, privacy, and sequencing.

Different countries view this in different ways.

This comes back to the geopolitical global inequalities present in these structures for the countries that do not have emissions trading systems get stuck on who can authorise what. And then how the voluntary sector, the private sector comes into play and how much power they have.

Sitting in those rooms, there are two things that are front and centre. One is how geopolitical power structures replicate and enforce themselves, and the other is witnessing how capitalism is created. It’s not a natural process. There are lawyers that are hired. These are not government representatives, or elected officials. They are lawyers that are hired to hold the line to build capitalism and to build capitalist markets.

In that way, there is hope because we can unbuild capitalist markets too, because it is not just some sort of natural process that exists in nature. In fact, it is the opposite of nature. This is something that they have to push and push and build and restructure, but also that we can push back on and ultimately dismantle before it gets started. That’s the goal. Once it gets built, it is harder to organise. Then we are working against another layer.

Article 6.8 is so-called non-market based approaches. In its inception, it was a lovely concept to counter the carbon markets.

But over the years, what we see is, private industry and conservation NGOs lining up to use the website built for Article 6.8 to offer private finance for so-called conservation projects.

Countries can go create their own logins and passwords to offer up conservation areas and then link to find capital and finance for these projects.

I do not think I need to state how dodgy colonial-conservation NGOs have a historically bad track record in terms of violating the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ignoring FPIC, implementing land grabs, and forcing people off of lands. Fortress conservation has a terrible reputation in terms of everything from payments for environmental services to different types of biodiversity offset programmes.

At the moment, we do not completely know what is going to be in the website because it is not a transparent system either. You need a login and create a password and you have to set that up. It is not at all transparent or accountable.

We have a lot of concerns about how this is actually going to play out when the same companies, the same conservation NGOs, the same fortress conservation programmes, banks and institutions are the ones who would be financing land grabbing projects.

And then of course, those projects could go on to then be turned into offsets because there is no oversight between Article 6.8, voluntary markets, or the linkages between Article 6.8 and Article 6.4. There are will so many problems with Article 6.

Of course, in the text of Article 6.8 there is some language that says it shouldn’t be allowed. But there’s no way to enforce that.

We have really big concerns about how this could finance projects that would undermine land struggles and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and continue to impact people’s lives in ways that are not conducive to survival. Period.

REDD-Monitor: Let’s move on to some of the specific problems with ITMOs, in addition to the fact that they are part of a carbon market, which is in itself inherently problematic. ITMOs are supposed to be real, verifiable, and additional. But the reality is that carbon offsets rarely deliver what they claim to deliver. And in June 2024, António Guterres the UN Secretary-General, said, “We need high-integrity carbon markets that are credible and with rules consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.” It’s difficult to read that and keep a straight face because we’ve had three decades of the exact opposite. REDD offsets are among the least reliable. Yet countries including Guyana, Suriname, Liberia, Gabon, Papua New Guinea, to name a few, are all attempting to generate and sell ITMOs.

What do you think the chances are of actually getting real, verifiable, and additional ITMOs or high integrity carbon markets under Article 6?

Tamra Gilbertson: I think the chances are zero, because we know that carbon trading is fundamentally flawed. The thing with ITMOs is that these are to be traded, so it is about creating units and value again.

When an ITMO is created, the ITMO then is a unit, it’s traded as a unit of greenhouse gas emissions and that ITMO has a value inside of a market. So when the value goes low, they are bought up cheap. And when the value increases, they are then sold for a profit. That is their ultimate goal. It is market-based capitalism. That is how it works.

Regarding a big discussion on carbon trading finance, the negotiators have built in what are called SOPs or application of share of proceeds. The SOPs will be applied both to Article 6.2 and 6.4. That means that a percentage of that money for the trades, or the profit that’s generated, will go to the adaptation fund or becomes finance for other projects that would fall under bilateral agreements. Because so much of the Paris Agreement negotiations have failed, including on finance, all parties are now eyeing the carbon market to deliver finance and expand the proceeds of carbon markets as the fundamental way to turn carbon profit into climate finance. This is where common but differentiated responsibilities become eradicated. History and responsibility is erased, and capitalism in the form of carbon markets is put in its place.

And ITMOs will also contribute to that to some degree. So we roll this into this whole other discussion about finance and climate finance. Some are saying that the theme of the next COP is climate finance because the new collective quantified goal is going to be negotiated at COP29.

But more and more countries are saying, “Well, we cannot agree on finance and we cannot agree on how much developed countries owe and they are not paying up, so let’s just start rolling finance out of the carbon markets because that’s the best place we’ve got to make money.”

In the long-term, the carbon markets will do what we predicted 20 years ago, they will replicate a system that gets overblown with units, and credits, and ITMOs, or offsets so that the price will tank and the value of the units will mean that there is no profit again. But states will do what they always do when markets bust, they will prop them up, because the hidden hand is actually the state.

Second, this sidesteps the fact that countries in the Global North or developed countries do not have to take any responsibility historically, or for the future, in terms of reducing emissions.

It is a get out of jail free card for them.

REDD-Monitor: Another fundamental problem with carbon offsetting is the permanence issue. When CO₂ enters the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, some of it stays in the atmosphere for a very long time — hundreds or thousands of years. What do the rules on permanence look like under Article 6?

Tamra Gilbertson: It is an old concept from years ago.

However, fossil fuel emissions are not the same carbon cycle as the biological carbon cycle. We know that these are different carbon cycles.

So when we talk about removals and permanence it does not add up. Regarding biological removals — the oceans are saturated and warming fast. Forests are being deforested at alarming rates with huge forest fires in the Amazon and many bioregions of the world.

None of that is accounted for in this fantasy world of permanence.

Even on the technological side of removals, when you look at CCS there is no guarantee that the CO₂ is going to remain underground. The pore space is not somehow magically capped, it can of course seep out.

And with BECCS, I mean, that’s a joke, right? Because we’re talking about deforestation to burn trees to create energy and more pollution.

Permanence in the idea of ITMOs, or removals, or offsets? There’s nothing there. I think that permanence was debunked years ago.

Again, negotiators are working off of very old concepts that have not been updated. They will not change them because then the whole system would fall apart. It’s a house of cards.

When soils begin to be used as a biological removal, for agriculture, it has to be so-called “additional”. In the US, the Big Ag industries claim there are the only ones that are shifting their practices and would be additional. Small-scale, agroecology, and organic farming practices, they argue, would not be additional and therefore not eligible to sell offsets.

Small agricultural producers using agroecology systems, Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, or organic farms have done the very important work of locking in carbon and enhancing soils, but they are not going to benefit because Big Ag says, “They already have the CO₂ locked in.”

Big Ag will claim they are shifting to no-till structures or other methods.

They may not roll over the soil, but they spray terrible chemicals on the soils, and they use genetically modified seeds that can survive these chemicals that eradicate everything else around them.

This process of carbon offsets continues business as usual for the most destructive industries, companies, and sectors on the planet.

REDD-Monitor: In October 2024, the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body in a meeting in Baku went outside of its mandate and set up standards for the Article 6.4 carbon trading mechanism. The Financial Times reported that Article 6.4 is now “basically operational”, subject to governments agreeing it in Baku.

I have two questions. What’s your reaction to the Supervisory Body setting up standards outside of the UNFCCC process, outside of the COP discussions? And what is your feeling about what’s likely to happen in Baku following on from this.

Tamra Gilbertson: The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body has taken unprecedented steps to convert its recommendation into standards, bypassing the approval process of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (the CMA). The CMA is the approval body.

So technically, the Supervisory Body was supposed to come up with these documents that then goes to be negotiated at COP 29 under the CMA. It gets approved or disapproved by the CMA.

The Supervisory Body has stated that they have approved these standards, but they cannot do that. That goes outside of their mandate and UN procedures. They have attempted to evade UN governance. It is a dangerous move that sets a dangerous precedent.

If the CMA at the next COP allows for this, that’s extremely worrying because there will be no further negotiating.

The texts should go back through the CMA negotiating process like they did last year. The CMA decided against the texts last year and sent them back to the Supervisory Body.

There is a lot of confusion right now around procedure and setting dangerous precedence. Carbon traders and fossil fuel corporations have gotten away with worse, so let’s see how this plays out.

REDD-Monitor: The Clean Development Mechanism was a disaster for the climate and many of its projects had severe social and environmental impacts for local communities. Yet the governance structure for Article 6 is almost identical to the governance structure for the CDM. Several people involved in Article 6 governance previously worked on the governance of the CDM. Some of them are simultaneously doing both things.

How can it possibly be that the UNFCCC has completely failed to learn the lessons from the CDM?

Tamra Gilbertson: Maybe we can turn that on its head and say they certainly did learn the lessons. Because they made bank.

And that is what this is about. It is about profit.

It is the same people setting it up, mostly in Europe and they are self-proclaimed experts. Although they failed the planet, they have positioned themselves into positions of power and decision-making. They very arrogantly sit in those rooms claiming that they are the proud experts that have the experience and know-how to set up this new global carbon market.

To be honest, they are the ones who know how to play the system and make the profit. There is a lot of money at stake for them.

And again, I do not think this is about climate change. There is almost no conversation about climate change in this room. Rather, they focus on how to get the trust of the private sector, do the best they can for the private sector, build the most trustworthy carbon markets for the private sector and on and on.

It is ultimately a negotiation process that focusses on how to bring in business, the private sector, and make more money. There are conversations about keeping this rolling as long as possible. There are conversations about building new markets and expanding the markets. That is the conversation.

I do not see that there is really any intention for them to truly think that this is going to do anything for the climate. So in that way, they did learn the lesson, and they are replicating it, only much bigger and more far reaching this time.

We think back to the late nineties and it was Shell and it was BP at the table that built the carbon markets with the same people who are tightly connected to the fossil fuel industries. The same lobbies are there today.

If the goal is now about generating finance from carbon markets, then that is what they are setting out to do. However, this carbon fundamentalism will fail again, as predicted 20 years ago, because there will be too many ITMOs, there’ll be a flood in the market, there’s no permanence, there’s no additionality, and so on.

These markets are constructed to justify the continuation of fossil fuel extraction, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and land grabbing.

And in that way, if Article 6 gets passed, it will ultimately perpetuate global inequalities because the funding will flow to the North.

In these carbon market systems, profit and power shifts back up to the core

With the history of failure of carbon markets, states do what they always do when markets fail, the state will intervene. With the EU ETS the state intervened to create a “backloading programme”. Like every other ETS programme, the state comes in and intervenes and says, “Oh well, we’ll just forget all of those credits, or we’ll forget all of those emissions. We’ll pretend those permits never existed and we’ll boost up the market again.”

Just like every failure of every capitalist system ever, the state comes in, does what it has to do, or the institution comes in, does what they have to do to prop up another market.

The global economy is based on fossil fuels, so this is also about the privileged being able to maintain power. To do that they need access, land, water, new areas to conquer. Article 6 is not about saving the planet. The COPs are not about climate change. This is about profit. This is about the most polluting industries that are responsible for the climate crisis being able to continue their destructive processes.

REDD-Monitor: As you mentioned, the CDM still exists. And about 2,000 CDM projects have applied to join the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism. That’s about 1 billion junk carbon credits flooding into this brand new carbon market mechanism. What are the implications of that? It’s almost as if it’s designed to fail before it started!

Tamra Gilbertson: Yes, it would flood the market.

The CDM will run parallel for a few more years, and they may not pull all those credits in at once.

Also in the negotiating rooms, they say that the CDM projects will have to meet the new criteria under Article 6.4.

REDD-Monitor: Except that as we know, the actual capacity for the UN to monitor CDM projects is minimal.

Tamra Gilbertson: And this is where we bring in AI? That’s the future, right? They haven’t explicitly said it, but I’ve seen it implied a few places. So we’ll see how that works as well.

REDD-Monitor: Everything seems to be heading in the direction of AI. And there are serious problems with this, not least because AI is programmed by human beings. That raises fundamental issues, such as the definition of what is a forest. Indigenous Peoples define forests in a completely different way to how the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation defines a forest. And Indigenous Peoples are not going to be the ones programming the AI. It will be the “experts” from the FAO and consulting firms.

Tamra Gilbertson: It’s so true, because who has power to define what something is with AI? It’s going to be the big institutions that replicate these systems of power. And then you have a machine replicating a system of power and imbalance and profit for the ones who are powerful. And it’s an inevitably class-based, racist, sexist system. Because AI will likely replicate the powerful brokers in the social world that we live in.

REDD-Monitor: You mentioned the Sustainable Development Tool and the safeguards that are included in that. Could you talk a bit more about these safeguards?

Tamra Gilbertson: The tool was finalised earlier this year. It does include at the moment a mention of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does include language on free, prior, and informed consent.

But that’s about as far as it goes. You know, we worked really hard to get that language in there. But just like any safeguard mechanism, this does not stop Big Polluters from extraction, it does not stop the carbon markets, and it will not get to the fundamental heart of the issues on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, land grabbing, evictions, colonialism, patriarchy or phasing out fossil fuels.

Also, the grievance mechanism does not mean that communities will know that it exists. It has a lot of barriers.

So there may be some words on paper, and those were hard fought words, and they say it is finalised, but that does not mean that it is not going to go through a negotiation process at COP29. We do not know yet. It should have to go through the CMA process. And if it does, we do not know what is going to be pulled out or accepted.

But I think ultimately what I want to say here is that safeguards are not safe. That there may be some language that may suggest that FPIC needs to be upheld, but countries have different laws. Further, history has shown us that even if a country has signed onto the UNDRIP and/or has FPIC as a legal instrument, safeguards have not stopped the violation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in REDD projects, for example.

We don’t see those safeguards being upheld. So why would that be any different under Article 6.4?

REDD-Monitor: The rules on Article 6.2 have not yet been finalised. Nevertheless, countries have made 87 bilateral deals under Article 6.2, with Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland being the main countries. Those three countries have set up 57 carbon deals under Article 6.2, under a carbon trading mechanism that has not yet been agreed.

So can you say a little bit about the implications of this and for the negotiations in Baku, where presumably there will be a big push to finalise Article 6.2?

Tamra Gilbertson: It’s an outrage. It’s an absolute outrage that countries are allowed to start trading when the process and methodologies themselves have not even been finished or decided.

It reflects the geopolitical power dynamics. Who has power? We know that Switzerland is very active in setting up this process. Japan as well. And these bilateral agreements are set up to benefit them.

REDD-Monitor: Theoretically it doesn’t make any sense because the UNFCCC could decide on a framework of Article 6.2 rules that would mean that all of these deals signed to date do not comply.

Clearly though, this isn’t how the UNFCCC actually works. And to me, it just illustrates that this is a power deal. Japan, Singapore and Switzerland are doing these deals because they know that they can push through what they want at the UN level.

Tamra Gilbertson: Then they act like, the negotiators are there pretending they’re doing everyone a favour because they’re piloting these projects in order to make it easier for everyone else. When really they’re gaming a system before the system is even set up.