REDD-Monitor’s top ten posts in 2025

And REDD-Monitor’s plans for 2026.

In 2025, I wrote 188 posts on REDD-Monitor. That’s 27 more than I wrote in 2024. This year’s posts included 25 about COP30 and 15 about Article 6. And 2025 saw a new series of posts under the headline “Crooked Carbon Business”, based on a series of briefings written by Simon Counsell and Jutta Kill.

I’ve just had two weeks’ holiday and will be starting writing again next week. In the meantime, here’s a review of how things are going and what might happen with REDD-Monitor over the next twelve months.

For the past five years REDD-Monitor has been supported by the Swift Foundation. Unfortunately, in December 2022 the board voted to close down the Foundation.

As a result, 2025 was the last year that REDD-Monitor will receive support from the Swift Foundation. (If anyone happens to know of a Foundation that might fund REDD-Monitor’s work in the future, please let me know! Obviously not the Bezos Earth Fund, or similar operations.)

Substack

REDD-Monitor’s audience has grown significantly since moving to Substack almost three years ago. REDD-Monitor now has 3,700 subscribers and more than 7,000 followers. Of these, 38 wonderful people have pledged a paid subscription. I am extremely grateful to all of these supporters.

I am still in the process of moving the archive of posts on redd-monitor.org over to Substack. I’m very happy that I no longer have to deal with the frequent technical back-end problems I had with the redd-monitor.org website.

Over the next year, I’m hoping to do more book reviews and more interviews. I’ll also look at the problems created by AI (and Big Tech’s use of carbon credits to greenwash its ever increasing emissions) as well as keeping an eye on Article 6 carbon credits.

Any suggestions for future directions and topics I could write about are very welcome.

I know that Substack has its problems. And I’m certainly not a fan of Marc Andreessen, one of Substack’s major funders — especially his views on AI. However, I don’t think Substack is anything like as bad as Twitter became after Elon Musk’s take over. And the thought of the amount of time I’d need to spend sorting out a move to another platform is a big reason for me Substack. (I’m not ruling out a move in the future, though.)

Paid subscriptions but no paywalls

I will turn on paid subscriptions soon — hopefully this weekend. There will be no paywalls. All posts will remain free for everybody. Paid subscribers won’t receive T-shirts, coffee cups, or tote bags. You will be paying for something that will always be available for free.

However, anyone who can afford a paid subscription will help to keep REDD-Monitor going — digging away at the false solution of carbon trading.

On that note, here are REDD-Monitor’s ten most popular posts in 2025. Click on the headlines or images to read the posts:

1. In 2024, for the second year running, forests stopped acting as a carbon sink

2. “NO to REDD and Carbon Markets”

3. AI climate hopium is going to burn the planet

4. New study finds that it would be better to leave fossil fuels in the ground rather than attempting to offset ever-increasing emissions

5. The unravelling of Aspiration and the arrest of Ibrahim AlHusseini. “Clean rich is the new filthy rich”

6. The Tropical Forests Forever Facility: “The worst conservation fund ever?”

7. Microsoft’s disastrous US$200 million carbon offset deal in Brazil

8. Apple buys carbon credits from eucalyptus monocultures in Paraguay. Nearby communities and a school are exposed to dangerous agrochemicals

9. Aspiration Partners, a company that signed a deal to sell 6.75 million carbon credits to Meta, has filed for bankruptcy

10. Climeworks: The carbon capture company that emits more than it captures