Guyana’s carbon credits are based on “emissions reductions that never occurred” says Kevin Conrad of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations

According to Kevin Conrad, the inspiration for REDD came from a 2003 conversation on a beach in Wewak that he had with Michael Somare, Papua New Guinea’s then-prime minister. They talked about a US$17 million loan that the World Bank had offered if PNG would shut down its logging industry.

Conrad thought the idea was good, but that it wasn’t enough money. Two years later, Conrad convinced Somare to start the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. And in November 2005, Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica presented an 11-page proposal to the UN climate meeting in Montreal.

Since then, Conrad has been Executive Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. In 2017, the CfRN put in an application to register “REDD+” as a trademark in the USA. Conrad explained to REDD-Monitor that,

“The objective simply is to register a REDD+ logo to distinguish REDD+ actions that are compliant with UNFCCC decisions vs. those that the Voluntary Carbon Standards falsely call REDD+ based on project standards long rejected by the UNFCCC and the international community for poor environmental and atmospheric integrity.”

Today, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations’ website REDD.plus advertises “REDD+ Result Units™” that can be bought from Papua New Guinea, Belize, Honduras, Gabon, and Ghana.

“Forestry projects under Verra, avoid”

Recently, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations sponsored a webinar hosted by Environmental Finance. During the questions following the presentations, Conrad gave his views on voluntary carbon market standards and forest carbon credits. First up was Verra:

“Verra allows you largely to create your own methodology, then it's reviewed, and it's all, primarily it's, well, almost exclusively based on the principle of avoidance. Which is not permissible under the Paris Agreement.

“Now they tell us they’re updating it. And I’ve looked at their early updates and again it’s more smoke and mirrors. So it’s still avoidance, but they’re going to cap the number of credits to the actual reductions that are in a country. So it’s a mess, again.

“So, I would just say, forestry projects under Verra, avoid.”

ART-TREES allowed Guyana to “invent a baseline”

Next, Conrad gives his views on Winrock International’s Architecture for REDD+ Transactions - The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (ART-TREES):

“ART-TREES is complex. It’s not necessarily Paris compliant. It does allow sub-national till 2030. If you look at the climate science, we just don’t have time to waste another eight years on sub-national, or what they call jurisdictional. They will accept nationally rated, sort of national scale, but then they start doing other tricks.

“If you look at what they did with Guyana, they were allowed to invent a baseline. So it wasn’t based on their actual emissions reductions, it wasn’t based on their removals, they were allowed to use an average, global average invented baseline and get credits, emissions reductions from emissions reductions that never occurred.

“So there are a lot of flaws and problems with the ART-TREES that are rejected under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement does not allow these kind of invented baselines. It’s all about real reductions or real removals.”

In response to a question about how ART-TREES and Verra’s Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) standard could be improved Conrad replied as follows:

“Well, let me ask a question. If the UNFCCC already has a nationally, national accounting and national reference level and the sovereign is already putting this in their NDC why do they need JNR, why do they need ART Trees? So do we really need those standards that were created when none of this was happening to fit?

“The fact of the matter is that the Paris Agreement is already operating, REDD-plus mechanism already operating, and I ask an honest question, can you actually put avoidance into the Paris Agreement, which is JNR? No. Can you actually use these other standards to be Paris compliant? Largely no.

“The Paris Agreement is done. Article 5 is done and it’s working. So the question is do we really, why would a government need these other standards? What value do they provide? These are questions that I think all of the proponents have to honestly ask.”

Conrad the salesperson

In the webinar, Conrad doesn’t, of course, announce his conflict of interest. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations stands to profit from the sale of his “REDD+ Result Units™”. To a large extent, he’s speaking as a salesperson and he’s certainly not an independent observer.

Conrad also doesn’t mention fossil fuels at all in either his presentations or his responses to questions. He doesn’t mention that in order to address the climate crisis we have to stop burning fossil fuels. He says “we don’t have time to waste” but apparently sees no problem whatsoever with governments generating vast numbers of meaningless forest carbon credits under Article 6 of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement - allowing governments to meet their targets under the Paris Agreement.

That system will allow polluters to continue polluting while paying rainforest countries for meaningless carbon credits.

Nevertheless, Conrad’s criticism of ART-TREES in Guyana is valid.

Janette Bulkan’s questions for Guyana’s Office of Climate Change

Janette Bulkan of the University of British Colombia wrote to Guyana’s Stabroek News paraphrasing Conrad’s criticisms, and asking Guyana’s Office of Climate Change to clarify the following three points about the US$750 million of carbon offsets generated through the ART-TREES standard:

• The status of Guyana’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) commitment to the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, and the national policies and actions to reduce deforestation from the historical average level, recognising that deforestation rates in Guyana are linked closely to the London bullion price (legal market price of gold).

• Exactly how the semi-annual estimates made by the Guyana Forestry Commission of deforested areas in hectares are converted into jurisdictional carbon credits in tonnes of carbon dioxide.

• The relationship between the calculations and sale of Winrock-ART-TREES carbon credits and the Paris Agreement.

REDD-Monitor looks forward to posting the response from Guyana’s Office of Climate Change.

---