“So-called nature-based solutions are not suitable or available at a scale that we can use them to compensate for today’s emissions”

Interview by SWI swissinfo.ch with Carsten Warnecke of the NewClimate Institute.

Carsten Warnecke is the co-founder of the NewClimate Institute, a German non-profit organisation working on “Climate Policy and Global Sustainability”. In December 2023, he gave an interview to SWI swissinfo.ch, the Swiss news website. Warnecke has some advice for those considering investing in carbon projects to offset their emissions: “Don’t do it”.

The interview is well worth reading in full. Here are some highlights, focussing on Warnecke’s comments about voluntary carbon markets.

The first question is whether the emissions from a flight can be “balanced out” by planting trees? Here’s Warnecke’s reply:

It is not possible at all to offset emissions in this way. The production of jet fuel disrupts the long-term carbon cycle, which stored the carbon underground for millennia. Planting trees, on the other hand, means storing carbon in the short term.

No one can guarantee that the tree I plant today to compensate for my flight will still be there in 20 or 30 years. Climate change itself is a threat to forests, as shown by increasingly frequent wildfires, droughts and pests. It is already a big challenge to preserve existing forests. And the potential for biological carbon storage is limited: nature would at best allow us to compensate for historical emissions or emissions that we now consider unavoidable. So-called nature-based solutions are not suitable or available at a scale that we can use them to compensate for today’s emissions.

We do not need nice pictures of green trees and projects that give us the impression that we do not have to change our behaviour. We need drastic images, like those on cigarette packets, which show the real impact of our actions.

“It is impossible to select the most effective projects”

The interviewer, Luigo Jorio, asks how can consumers choose the project with the greatest impact, given the variety of offsetting projects on offer - from recycling plastic in Romania to energy-efficient stoves in Kenya. Warnecke’s response leaves little room for doubt - it’s impossible for consumers to choose “good” offsetting projects:

Even for those who are well informed, it is impossible to select the most effective projects. Some projects are presented well, but it is impossible to know whether the information given is correct, unless you go to the site and check. The ineffective projects are so numerous that it is difficult to find your way around.

In general, it is illusory to think that this market can develop projects or activities that can really compensate for your emissions without any negative climate impact as if the emissions had not originally occurred. To those who want to invest in these projects just to offset their emissions, I can only say one thing – don't do it.

Nevertheless, SWI pushes him to give an example of a “good” project. Warnecke points out that forestry projects make up the vast majority of offsetting projects “and are also the most problematic for compensation purposes”. He notes some interesting projects to reduce emissions from industry and households, but adds that “it all depends on by whom and how they are implemented”.

“You cannot stop deforestation without addressing its drivers”

Asked specifically about forest carbon projects, Warnecke suggests that the “voluntary carbon market” should be called the “unregulated market”. Many standards and methodologies are “extremely weak and defined by the market itself”.

The emissions that these projects promise to offset or avoid are very often overestimated. Sometimes there is bad project management or controls only take place after a decade. Too much time passes before problems are identified and many certificates have already been sold.

As for deforestation, it is well known that it cannot be avoided simply by protecting certain areas. Defining limits within which trees are protected in the name of climate only increases the pressure on the surrounding areas. You cannot stop deforestation without addressing its drivers, and you cannot claim to have a positive impact on the climate just because you protect a small area of land.

“The idea of offsetting is dead,” Warnecke said in an August 2023 interview with Die Zeit. “It’s an old idea from the UN Kyoto Protocol. The idea has really exhausted itself now.”

Warnecke points out to SWI that the voluntary carbon market actually raises only a small amount of money, compared to other financial flows.

This market allows individuals and companies to declare themselves climate-neutral when in fact they do nothing for the climate. The damage it does to the climate is immensely greater than the funding it generates.

At the end of the interview, SWI’s journalist Luigi Jorio asks where the voluntary carbon offset market is heading and whether it will “reinvent” itself, or whether it will just ignore the criticism and continue with business as usual. Here’s Warnecke reply:

It’s hard to say. If it goes on as it has until now, claiming that the problematic projects and actors are just isolated cases, without recognising that there is an underlying systemic problem, then I hope that the voluntary carbon offset market will soon come to an end.

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