Turning Africa into a Source of Carbon Credits Only Benefits Polluters
People's March at Africa Climate
summit, Nairobi, Kenya, September 4, 2023.
A common solution to climate change proposed by private business and wealthy countries is the so-called carbon market. This market may be based on a cap-and-trade system, where companies are allotted certain caps on emissions, which if they do not exceed, can be traded with other companies which have exceeded their allotment. It can also be based on activities like measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or planting trees that will absorb CO2, a common greenhouse gas, which are given a monetary value and then traded like stocks and used by companies to offset their emission of greenhouse gases. A rebuttal of the carbon market credits agenda was published in time for the Africa Climate Summit where it is being pushed by the oil and gas oligopolies who are primarily responsible for the environmental crisis. The report, published by Power Shift Africa, is entitled The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
The report says that while African countries are rightly demanding "climate funding from polluting countries and companies in the global north, who have caused the climate crisis that is devastating African people, economy and nature," carbon markets are not the answer. They in fact benefit the polluters, the fossil fuel companies and the market brokers, and will drive pollution beyond climate limits and put neo-colonial obstructions to the attainment of genuine African development pathways. "It is a wolf in sheep's clothing that will bite back creating numerous new and serious problems while not providing any real benefits."
Carbon markets give licence to the polluters creating the environmental crisis to continue to emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases and enable them to "offset" these emissions by purchasing carbon credits. It is smoke and mirrors and has nothing to do with realizing the objectives of the Paris Agreement of 2015.
The two biggest winners from carbon markets are the fossil fuel companies, as it allows companies across the world to continue to pollute with impunity, and the financial brokers who buy and sell the credits with huge mark ups. It is a kind of accounting fraud that would be illegal elsewhere. Creative methodologies such as carbon credits, or designating diesel or coal as "clean" do not overcome reality.
The same kind of creative accounting is used by the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative to claim carbon markets will benefit Africa's sustainable development and jobs. In fact, it arbitrarily "deems" that X number of jobs will be created by such and such project, whether or not the jobs actually materialize.
According to the report, "African countries will be sorely disappointed that the actual flows of funds are far below the stated market value." The report provides the following example: "The claimed global market valuation of $2 billion represents the price of transactions in the market, but the price paid to the clean energy or nature-based projects delivering the credits is far lower due to multiple actors taking their 'cut.' A market worth $100 could be due to a single $10 credit representing one tonne of carbon dioxide being traded 10 times, and the price paid to projects in Africa may be less than a third of the price paid for the credit by the Western company....
"The same credit can then be traded between brokers an 'infinite' number of times before it is sold to its final end-user. Conflicts of interests are inherent to carbon markets, due to the imaginary nature of the commodity -- 'avoided carbon.'"
The report concludes: "Fossil fuel companies are the ultimate winners. Fossil fuel companies are active in diverse roles throughout the carbon market, including as project developers and intermediaries, often through subsidiaries. Fossil fuel companies are also brokering credits, so winning twice as they sell their fossil fuels to companies who then buy their credits to offset the emissions. A win-win for fossil fuel companies only strengthens the main architects of the crisis.
"The endorsers of this report therefore call on the countries involved in the African Climate Summit to withdraw from and take no further interest in the Africa Carbon Market Initiate and all carbon market mechanisms."
The full text of the report is available here.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 27 - April 20 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS542713.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca