The Guanaré carbon project: How a eucalyptus monoculture in Uruguay is greenwashing Big Polluters
British American Tobacco, easyJet, Ernst & Young, Lavazza, and Nivea have all bought carbon credits from the Guanaré project.
The Guanaré carbon project consists of more than 21,000 hectares of monoculture eucalyptus plantations in Uruguay. A new report by Fin Johnston for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that the project was set up by Harvard University’s endowment fund:
A carbon offsetting project set up by Harvard University’s endowment fund has sold millions of junk credits to major international companies, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.
Among the biggest buyers of carbon credits from the project are eastJet, British American Tobacco, and Ernst & Young. The project has sold more than 7 million carbon credits.
In 2022, Lavazza, the Italian coffee company, launched a “carbon neutral” coffee capsule. The carbon credits came from the Guanaré project.
Nivea also claims to sell “100% climate-neutralized skincare products”. The Guanaré project is one of the projects that Nivea buys its carbon credits from.
Harvard set up the Guanaré project in 2006, when it bought the land in Uruguay. Harvard ended its involvement when it sold the land in two deals in 2017 and 2019. The land sales raised a total of US$450 million.
While Harvard was involved, all the money from the sales of carbon credits went to the Harvard fund, TBIJ reports.
A 2018 report by Grain found that Harvard’s Endowment fund had bought control of 850,000 hectares globally, spending about US$1 billion to make Harvard one of the world’s largest farmland investors. Grain writes that,
Harvard's farmland acquisitions were undertaken without proper due diligence and have contributed to the displacement and harassment of traditional communities, environmental destruction and conflicts over water.
A spokesperson for the Harvard fund told TBIJ that it does not comment on individual investments.
The project is still active. On its website, carbon consulting firm South Pole makes the ludicrous claim that the Guanaré project is “Converting degraded cattle land into biodiverse forest.” Obviously, an industrial tree plantation is not a forest. Neither is a monoculture biodiverse.
South Pole also claims that the project is “developing a sustainable timber industry (FSC standard)”. In fact, Guanaré’s FSC certificates have been terminated.
REDD-Monitor wrote about the Guanaré forest plantations on degraded grasslands under extensive grazing project in July 2022, following a documentary produced by the German television channel ZDF:
Certified by Verra. Zero rating from Renoster
The Washington DC-based carbon certification company, Verra, certified the project in 2012. In response to the ZDF documentary, rather than investigating what are clearly junk credits, Verra described Guanaré’s monocultures as “sustainable forest management” and accused its critics of “magical thinking of the worst kind”.
Yet carbon credit ratings agency Renoster reviewed the Guanaré project and gave the project a rating of zero. On its website, Renoster explains that, “This project’s rating is 0, which means that for every credit issued, it reduces 0 tons of carbon.”
Renoster criticises the project for not being additional. The eucalyptus plantations would have been established anyway — without carbon finance. “We believe that these trees were going to be planted regardless of the project,” Renoster states.
The project documents state that no emissions would have been removed from the atmosphere in the absence of the carbon project. Renoster argues that this baseline was “not a reasonable assumption for the region” because large areas of land close to Guanaré project are planted with eucalyptus.
And Renoster states that the project is unlikely to run for 60 years, if, for example, the company running the project decides to sell the land.
Elias Ayrey, Renoster’s chief science officer, told TBIJ that,
“We do not believe that Guanaré’s carbon credits represent true emissions reductions. We would not consider carbon neutrality claims based on these particular credits to be legitimate.”
BeZero Carbon, another carbon credit ratings agency, raised similar criticisms about the project’s additionality and baseline assumptions. BeZero rates the Guanaré project as having a “low” likelihood of achieving the claimed emissions reductions.
Thirsty monocultures in drought ridden Uruguay
World Rainforest Movement told TBIJ that,
“Industrial tree plantations in Uruguay have led to land concentration by a small group of corporations and investment funds. They replace an extremely important ecosystem – grasslands – to plant tree monocultures, destroying biodiversity and watersheds.”
Eucalyptus plantations require large amounts of water and Uruguay has faced serious droughts in recent years. Almost 1.3 million hectares of Uruguay’s land is covered with industrial tree plantations.
Maria Selva Ortiz and Marcel Achkar of Friends of the Earth Uruguay write that,
One of the harshest impacts for rural producers who have found themselves completely surrounded by plantations has been the negative impact on waterways. Unable to cope with this impact, and unable to produce on their land, many of these rural producers have been forced to abandon their lands.
The companies’ responses
Lavazza told TBIJ that it had removed the “carbon neutral” claims from its products.
An easyJet spokesperson said that it had stopped buying offsets in 2022, but until then “had robust due diligence processes in place”.
That is simply not true.
EasyJet bought more than 1.1 million carbon credits from the Madre de Dios Amazon REDD+ Project in Peru — probably the worst REDD project on the planet.
Ernst & Young told TBIJ that it buys carbon credits from projects that have been certified against “internationally recognised standards” and the company continues to work on its due diligence procedures.
British American Tobacco: Not carbon neutral
Fin Johnston, the journalist who wrote the article about Guanaré for TBIJ writes about the tobacco industry. In another article for TBIJ he looks into British American Tobacco’s vape brand, Vuse, which claims to be “the first global carbon neutral vape brand”.
A BAT spokesperson told Johnston that its carbon neutrality claim was independently validated in 2021. The spokesperson also said that all Vuse communications about carbon neutrality were stopped in December 2023.
That is also simply not true.
A quick look at the company’s website reveals that Vuse still claims to be carbon neutral:
BAT even describes the Guanaré project’s eucalyptus monocultures as “reforestation”.
As Elias Ayrey of Renoster told Johnston,
“These trees are not native or biodiverse and they offer little in terms of ecosystem services. The plantations themselves are highly industrial and make use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers.”
In 2021, BAT bought 130,000 carbon credits from the Guanaré project. In 2022, the company bought another 47,000 credits from the project.
Johnston writes that,
To promote Vuse’s carbon-neutral status in July 2021, BAT sailed a yacht up the Thames in a stunt that incurred another 10 tonnes of emissions – offset by credits from the same project.
Since December 2020, BAT has bought more than 500,000 carbon credits from various projects. Johnston reports that BeZero rates more than 390,000 of these to have a “moderately low”, “low”, or “very low” likelihood of actually reducing emissions.
In 2021, BAT was responsible for 7 million tonnes of greenhouse has emissions.
In 2022, the World Health Organisation released a report titled “Tobacco: Poisoning our planet”. The report found that,
“Every year the tobacco industry costs the world more than 8 million human lives, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water and 84 million tonnes of CO₂.”
In the UK, two disposable vapes are thrown away every second. That’s 63 million a year. Vapes contain lithium, which is used in electric car batteries and which requires large amounts of energy and water to produce.
Khaled Diab of Carbon Market Watch told TBIJ that,
“In the case of tobacco products, carbon neutrality claims are particularly problematic given the enormous climate and ecological impact of tobacco production, consumption and waste.
“No product should ever claim to be ‘carbon neutral’. This is inaccurate, misleading and deceptive.”
Great report, thank you! This is more of the worst of "greenwashing"! As well, I don't think you could find an area that would burn off in a more furious fire than an eucalyptus plantation. As well, the usual carbon credit scam pretends the carbon to be "sequestered" in the trees for a hundred years. But duh, these plantations are MEANT TO BE harvested for pulp. This is almost as bad as the fools who are selling carbon credits from Direct-Air Capture facilities!