Slave labour used to clear forests in the Maísa REDD+ project, Brazil
Slave labour used to clear forests in the Maísa REDD+ project, Brazil
Further evidence that the Verra auditing system is not fit for purpose
In June 2023, the Brazilian authorities rescued 16 workers from slavery conditions in the Maísa REDD+ project area. They had been hired to clear 477 hectares of forest in an area of a farm belonging to the Maísa REDD+ project.
The Maísa REDD+ project in Pará State, Brazil, has generated more than 630,000 carbon credits since the project was verified under the Verra certification system in 2015. Companies buying the credits include Arcelor Mittal, Norsul, Banco Votorantim, Giorgio Armani, Peek & Cloppenburg, AstraZeneca, PwC, L'Oréal, Audi, Turkish Airlines, Tree-Nation, Uber, and many others.
The REDD project covered an area of 28,752 hectares. The project was run by Biofílica Ambipar, a Brazilian offsetting company. The REDD project was a partnership between Biofílica, Maísa-Moju Agroindustrial, a cattle ranching company, and Sipasa-Seringa Industrial do Pará, a eucalyptus plantation and forestry company.
Maísa-Moju and Sipasa-Seringa share the same directors: Andre Luiz Pinto Lisboa Pinheiro; and Marcio Roberto Pinto Lisboa Pinheiro.
The 16 slave labourers were rescued from the Sipasa Farm, owned by Sipasa-Seringa. The company was clearing the land in order to create a cattle ranch.
Journalists Isabel Harari and Poliana Dallabrida, who work for Repórter Brasil, spoke to José Weyne Nunes Marcelino, a labour auditor who coordinated the inspection operation of the Sipasa Farm. He told them that the workers were living in a wooden shed “in extremely precarious conditions, with a collapsing floor and parts of the roof missing.”
The inspection report states that the dormitory rooms were so hot that the workers slept outside in hammocks. One of the slave labourers who was rescued, a 70-year-old chainsaw operator, told Repórter Brasil that,
“At Sipasa’s lodging, we slept in hammocks, there were no beddings, only what I brought. A fan? That never existed where I worked.”
There was a bathroom, but with no running water.
Verra’s response
Repórter Brasil contacted the certifying organisation, Verra. Here’s Verra’s response:
At Verra, we are deeply disturbed by these allegations, and we are very grateful that you have brought them to our attention. Today we are immediately publicly inactivating the project.
No credits have been issued by this project since 2020. It has been functionally inactive as a source of climate or sustainability credits since 2022, when project proponent Biofilica terminated their participation. To ensure climate integrity despite that change, Verra subsequently put on hold 100% of the credits contributed by the project to the buffer pool, and has since been working with Biofilica to replenish more.
This project had been on a path to formal inactivation, but these revelations led us to take action immediately. We commit to doing everything we can, as required under Verra’s program rules, to investigate and act on these very serious allegations.
Verra, of course, argues that the credits in the buffer pool make up for the fact that the Maísa REDD+ project did not actually protect the forest within the project area. But the situation at this REDD project raises serious questions about Verra’s ability to monitor the projects that generate its carbon credits.
Biofílica told Repórter Brasil that it “suspended its sale of project credits in 2021” and that it “decided to dissolve its partnership” with Maísa-Moju Agroindustrial in 2022, due to “non-compliance on the part of the partner”.
Slave labourers were rescued from the area of the REDD project in 2010
Brazil publishes a “dirty list” that publicly lists companies that profit from slave labour. Companies stay on the list for two years. They have to prove that they are cleaning up their supply chains, they pay fines, and they pay labour taxes. While they are on the list, they cannot obtain credit from government or private banks.
But companies on the dirty list can generate Verra certified carbon credits.
Moju-Maísa Agroindustrial was placed on the dirty list in September 2015. In 2010, two years before the REDD project started, 11 slave labourers were rescued in Fazenda Maísa, which is inside the Maísa REDD+ project area.
Yet Verra’s auditors, in this case Rainforest Alliance, Imaflora, and S&A Carbon, took no action.
The most recent verification report is dated November 2020, carried out by S&A Carbon. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a desk audit. There is no mention of any labour irregularities in the audit report.
S&A Carbon did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s questions.
The most recent rescue of slave labourers from the Maísa REDD+ project area took place in June 2023. Once again, Verra’s auditors took no action. Verra only “inactivated” the project in February 2024 because Repórter Brasil had alerted Verra to the slave labourers clearing forest inside the REDD project.
Luciana Téllez Chávez of Human Rights Watch told Repórter Brasil that,
“If you certified a project and allowed it to generate revenue by issuing carbon credits, even if you were not aware of human rights abuses, you are implicated.”
She added that,
“It is very difficult to hold accountable actors in the voluntary carbon market who are involved in abuses by action or omission. This is one of the main impacts of the fact that the market is not regulated.”
More deforestation
In October 2023, Unearthed and Climate Home News published an investigation into Verra project with high forest loss that were still selling carbon credits. One of these projects was the Maísa REDD+ project.
Climate Home News used satellite images to show the deforestation that had taken place within the project area between 2021 and 2023.
Biofílica told Unearthed and Climate Home News that it had decided to “stop selling credits from the Maísa project” as soon as it became aware of the logging. The company added that “the project is currently in the process of being terminated and audited in line with Verra procedures”.
Biofílica said that “the credits that are still being sold by traders and brokers refer to credits verified in previous years when there was still no legal deforestation scenario in the area; that is, they were audited and verified credits”.
But carbon credits generated from forest that is subsequently destroyed are completely nonsensical. As Climate Home News pointed out,
“[W]hen trees are cut down, the carbon stored in them is released back into the atmosphere, no matter if they were originally protected, negating any potential climate benefit.”
Any potential climate benefit is already negated by the sale of carbon credits. Any (temporary) reduction of emissions from deforestation is cancelled out by continued emissions from burning fossil fuels by the buyers of the credits. If the trees are subsequently cut down, it’s a double whammy for the climate.
Biofílica’s spokesperson told Unearthed and Climate Home News that,
“Maísa shows the reality of the Amazon region and illustrates the difficulties that all actors interested in conservation face in making carbon projects financially viable.”
That’s a very charitable way of looking at things. The reality is that Moju-Maísa Agroindustrial and Sipasa-Seringa Industrial do Pará have profited twice over: from the sale of carbon credits; and then from clearing the rainforest for cattle ranching - using slave labour.
Verra, it would appear, has no mechanism to prevent this happening.
Thanks, great story! This is Business at it's best - offset income, logging income, ranching income, AND using slave labour! What, no govt subsidies on top of that?