The report highlights two problems that apply much more widely across the voluntary carbon market, and particularly those projects validated and verified by Verra. First, beyond the requirement that offset project operators should have the legal right to use the land the project is on, there are basically no requirements to ensure that all other laws are respected by the company concerned. Second, the requirements to avoid 'leakage' - deforestation simply moving elsewhere when an area of forest is supposedly protected by an offset project - are easily circumvented, and barely monitored or accounted for.
The reality is that, unless timber consumption and land conversion is reduced across entire countries and even more widely, it is likely that the protection of forest in one location will simply result in other forest being cut down, thus negating the supposed carbon benefits of the project. The 'leakage' of carbon emissions from some REDD+ projects is likely to be 100%.
Thanks for this Simon. In its response to Fernanda Wenzel's 2024 article for Mongabay, Verra confirms this problem (while simultaneously misunderstanding what Wenzel and CCCA had uncovered):
"Verra takes any allegations about impropriety in any of its certified projects very seriously. In relation to allegations of logging within the project area for the Fortaleza Ituxi REDD Project,we have conducted a check of multiple sources of satellite imagery and have not been able to find evidence of clear logging, and so would require more information, including coordinates, from the NGO looking into this matter to be able to do a more comprehensive search. We can certainly see extensive logging around the project area, which is why the REDD project exists in the first place."
The report highlights two problems that apply much more widely across the voluntary carbon market, and particularly those projects validated and verified by Verra. First, beyond the requirement that offset project operators should have the legal right to use the land the project is on, there are basically no requirements to ensure that all other laws are respected by the company concerned. Second, the requirements to avoid 'leakage' - deforestation simply moving elsewhere when an area of forest is supposedly protected by an offset project - are easily circumvented, and barely monitored or accounted for.
The reality is that, unless timber consumption and land conversion is reduced across entire countries and even more widely, it is likely that the protection of forest in one location will simply result in other forest being cut down, thus negating the supposed carbon benefits of the project. The 'leakage' of carbon emissions from some REDD+ projects is likely to be 100%.
Thanks for this Simon. In its response to Fernanda Wenzel's 2024 article for Mongabay, Verra confirms this problem (while simultaneously misunderstanding what Wenzel and CCCA had uncovered):
"Verra takes any allegations about impropriety in any of its certified projects very seriously. In relation to allegations of logging within the project area for the Fortaleza Ituxi REDD Project,we have conducted a check of multiple sources of satellite imagery and have not been able to find evidence of clear logging, and so would require more information, including coordinates, from the NGO looking into this matter to be able to do a more comprehensive search. We can certainly see extensive logging around the project area, which is why the REDD project exists in the first place."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24488354-resposta_verra_ok/