REDD-Monitor’s top ten posts in 2023

“We are now in uncharted territory.”

2023 was the hottest year on record. The world’s average temperature hit 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels.

Flash floods in Libya killed more than 11,300 people and displaced more than 44,000 people. Tropical cyclone Mocha killed 145 people in Myanmar and affected 800,000 people in the region.

Forest fires burned a record area of 18 million hectares in Canada. A forest fire in Greece was the largest ever in the EU. Extreme heat hit the US, southern Europe, Southeast Asia, South Aisa, and China.

Drought in the Amazon Basin resulted in record low water levels in Rio Negro, the Amazon’s main tributary. The three-year drought in Uruguay was the longest ever in the country. Fires in Chile affected more than 8,000 people. Ecuador had prolonged power cuts because droughts hit hydropower production.

Scientists summing up the state of the climate crisis in 2023 wrote that, “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.”

COP28 achieved absolutely nothing in terms of addressing the crisis.

I wrote 163 posts on REDD-Monitor in 2023. There was one Guest Post. Here’s the post with the most comments (32).

And below are the top ten posts for last year. Click on the headlines or the images to read the posts:

1. “I probably will go to jail,” says Steve Wentzel, the man behind the Kariba REDD+ project in Zimbabwe

2. Blue Carbon LLC: A United Arab Emirate company that aims to greenwash the country’s massive carbon footprint

3. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is calling for whistleblowers to report “violations connected to fraud or manipulation in the carbon markets”

4. Shell scraps its carbon offsets programme

5. “If no one had ever said, ‘Plant a trillion trees,’ I think we’d have been in a lot better space”

6. Verra has suspended the Pacajai / ADPML Portel-Pará REDD project. The project developer faces a legal case over land grabbing. Local communities say they have not received benefits from the project

7. “The sale by the Government of Guyana of forest-based carbon credits was fraudulent”

8. The good news from COP28: The failure to agree on Article 6 carbon markets

9. Ten reasons to abolish the carbon offsets industry

10. Indigenous Ogiek communities are being violently evicted for carbon credits in Kenya

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