From Kenya to Thailand, AJWS partners are boldly defending their land and water from multiple threats: mounting effects of the climate crisis, environmental devastation from extractive industries and, frustratingly, government inaction on climate.
These governments and others around the world might challenge that last charge by pointing to their efforts to attract investments in carbon credit markets that are being widely billed as a driver of “green growth”. However, carbon credits are a dangerous and false solution to the climate crisis, according to environmental activists and climate justice movements around the globe.
Here’s how they work. Carbon markets create an opportunity for major polluters—whether they be industrialized countries like the US that have been the largest historical emitters of carbon—or companies in the fossil fuel, Big Tech, industrial agriculture and transportation industries, to purchase ‘carbon credits’ from international brokers instead of cutting their own carbon emissions. These credits fund projects, mostly across the Global South, including efforts such as planting trees or mangroves, which store carbon as they grow. However, by claiming to have offset the environmental impact of their own pollution through the purchase of carbon credits, these companies absolve themselves from any obligation to reduce their own carbon emissions.
“The expansion of carbon credit markets has been incentivizing polluters to buy up credits to farmland and forests in the Global South. This is posing greater threats to the rights of Indigenous and rural communities who have lived in and sustainably managed those territories for generations, and who are often not well-versed in the possible drawbacks of carbon offset projects,” explains Payal Patel, AJWS’s Director of Land, Water, and Climate Justice.
Further, the new trees that are planted are often not native species, which in turn can harm the local ecosystems. In some instances, buyers of carbon credits have also been able to exploit loopholes or a lack of clear standards to earn credits by clearing existing natural forests and replacing them with tree plantations. Environmental and climate justice activists, including AJWS grantees, say the scientific validity of these carbon projects is dubious at best. This system has been dubbed ‘greenwashing’ by activists and environmentalists — a way to overlook the environmental devastation wrought by industrial development and pollution. And it’s even more insidious than it seems.
“When communities agree to participate in carbon credit projects,” Payal continues, “they usually enter contracts that last for many decades and can’t be cancelled early even if communities’ expected benefits don’t materialize. The contracts usually restrict villagers’ current access to their lands and forests, and communities’ earnings can fluctuate greatly over time.”
AJWS partners around the world are fighting back against these corporate and government-led carbon projects and those advocating them. They are also challenging and rejecting greenwashing by developing effective solutions for the climate crisis which center local communities and ecosystems.
Below, learn how AJWS grantees in Thailand and Kenya fight greenwashing, and return power to local communities.
