United Arab Emirates promises to buy US$450 million carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative
The Africa Climate Summit is a “bazaar for carbon credit speculators”.
The Africa Climate Summit is taking place this week in Nairobi. Carbon markets are the main item on the agenda.
On the first day of the Summit, the United Arab Emirates said it would buy US$450 million of carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI).
The ACMI aims to generate 300 million voluntary carbon credits per year by 2030 credits per year by 2050.
When ACMI was launched, Kwami Kpondzo of Friends of the Earth Togo said,
“It would seem African leaders are determined not to learn from their mistakes of the past. For a fictional initiative that keeps Africa locked in the fossil fuels trap to be conceived of at a time that Africa is in the grip of climate crisis is totally inconceivable and unacceptable.”
UAE Carbon Alliance: Greenwashing business as usual
The non-binding letter of intent to buy US$450 million of carbon credits was signed by the UAE Carbon Alliance and ACMI. A press release announcing the launching of the Alliance in June 2023, states that, “The UAE Carbon Alliance is comprised of leading organisation recognizing the importance of carbon credits to achieve net zero goals.”
In other words, the UAE Carbon Alliance exists to greenwash business as usual.
One of the Alliance’s founding member is AirCarbon Exchange - now known as ACX. ACX runs carbon exchanges in Aby Dhabi and Singapore.
United Arab Emirates is becoming a major driver of carbon trading in Africa. A company called Blue Carbon, set up by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, has signed a series of agreements to generate carbon offsets from forests.
In July 2023, Blue Carbon signed an agreement with ACX “to develop carbon markets in the Middle East and North Africa region”.
Blue Carbon has (so far) signed agreements with the governments of Tanzania, Zambia, Liberia, and Zimbabwe, covering a total area of 24.5 million hectares. It’s a colossal land grab.
Al-Jaber: Carbon markets face a “crisis of confidence”
COP28 will take place in Dubai in November 2023. The COP President Sultan Al-Jaber is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Clearly, leaving fossil fuels in the ground is unlikely to be on the agenda in Dubai.
But Al-Jaber is very keen on carbon markets. Reuters writes that Al-Jaber said that carbon markets are an “important tool to mobilise the trillions of dollars needed to confront climate change”. He acknowledges that carbon markets face a “crisis of confidence”.
But Al-Jaber, predictably enough since he runs a massive oil corporation thinks that all that is needed is a “commonly-agreed standard”. In a speech at the Africa Climate Summit he said, “A lack of a commonly-agreed standard is undermining their integrity and diminishing their value.”
US Climate Envoy, John Kerry echoes Al-Jaber in a speech he gave at the Africa Climate Summit:
“We think Africa can benefit and the Global South can benefit only if the carbon market grows. It’s gotta grow….
“This market has to become a market in the billions in order to work effectively. And for that, we need to ensure the environmental integrity of this market.
“This is critical, not only to protect the climate, but also to create a thriving market. Because people won't take the risk either of getting involved in a market that doesn't have the right standards and guidelines.”
This is not a good argument - although it’s one that carbon market proponents frequently make. The Clean Development Mechanism had a “commonly-agreed standard”. And the Clean Development Mechanism turned out to be a complete disaster for the climate.
A 2021 study found that the CDM actually led to an increase in emissions, by as much as 6 billion tons of CO₂.
In a recent white paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, Joe Romm writes that,
[T]he U.N. has failed in the last two decades to prove it can create or run a credible official regulated offset market—the Clean Development Mechanism. The flaws in the CDM have been detailed again and again in the literature and media, yet the UN has failed to fix them.
“A bazaar for carbon credit speculators”
In addition to the United Arab Emirates’ announcement, Climate Asset Management announced that it would invest US$200 million in projects that will generate carbon offsets to be traded on the ACMI. Climate Asset Management is a joint venture of HSBC Asset Management and Pollination Group, a climate investment firm.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Rawbank together with Vitol, the world’s largest independent energy trader, announced a US$20 million investment in renewable energy, clean cook stoves, and forest conservation.
Greenpeace Africa’s climate and energy campaigner, Thandile Chinyavanhu, told Climate Home News that,
“It is regrettable that the Africa Climate Summit is becoming a bazaar for carbon credit speculators and propagandists that serve to greenwash rather than reduce harmful emissions.
“They are risky diversions from real climate and biodiversity action that requires ending fossil fuel expansion and industrial destruction of our ecosystems.”
That's a great quote from Kwami Kpondzo, suitable for framing.
It's sad that Kenya took down a forest to build a highway to take delegates to this conference. But at least they got the soot-belching busses and lorries off the streets and out-of-view.
All this carbon marketing and complicated offsets business reveals the intended fog of complexity which is typical of neo-con’s attempts to monetize Nature, resulting in “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” What fools these mortals be!
As for the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), of course the UN can’t fix it, since it already runs exactly as intended, as a monetary fog to hide its shortcomings and obscure the actually necessary work of ending emissions. All a market “in the billions” is going to do is divert money from needed mitigation and adaptation work into the hands of the 1%. How could any possible flow of money, regardless of its size, encourage the world’s forests to absorb all the ever-increasing emissions? As has been demonstrated over and over, pouring money out on the land only causes a mortgage on that land, never an improvement in Nature. BTW, “clean development” is an oxymoron, similar to “military intelligence.”