Emission compensation is an important ally against climate change

The voluntary carbon credit market is a fundamental tool for businesses, individuals and institutions that want to make a concrete commitment to combating climate change. It is a complex sector, which makes it possible to protect forests and carry out environmental protection interventions through private financing, generating a virtuous system for offsetting emissions and achieving the indispensable decarbonisation objectives. When the reduction of one’s own emissions becomes physically impossible or financially unfeasible, we speak precisely of?compensations?(Carbon Offset): i.e. measurable, quantifiable and traceable units of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Recently, however, some articles have appeared in the international and national media which have placed them at the center of their investigation some carbon credits from Verra (the international body that defines the standards that sustainable projects must adhere to so that they can generate certified carbon credits). More precisely, the journalistic investigations examined the methodology for calculating the base deforestation scenario applied only to native forest protection projects known as INCOME+ of the type “Avoid Unplanned Deforestation”.

These are all those projects for which a forest is not at risk because there is a license to cut, but which over the years has been subjected to illegal deforestation. This type of project is essential for directing private investments towards the protection of forests, where government laws are not sufficient. “94% of Verra’s carbon credits have no climate benefit“. This sentence that has appeared in various media leads the reader to believe that the carbon credits issued by Verra are fake.

This is an incorrect statement. First of all, it should be noted that not all credits issued by Verra are generated through the methodology in question, therefore the 94% value would refer only to REDD+ projects. Also, it’s good to clarify how credits are created from REDD+ projects. They are generated by the difference between the baseline scenario (what would have happened without the project) – calculated with reference to the empirical deforestation rate and other site-specific factors – and, conversely, the scenario with the project. Therefore, to implement a REDD+ project, we start from the calculation of the base scenario, identify the drivers of deforestation and implement the activities to stop it. The standard and the project validator, at least every five years, in addition to verifying the base scenario calculations, check that the activities have been implemented and that the expected deforestation has not occurred. Only after this check do they release the carbon credits.

The investigations that appeared in the press made the mistake of recalculating the basic scenario of some of the projects present on Verra, however using too generalist and not very specific variables to take into account the real deforestation of the area. They limited themselves to using only satellite data without sampling the biomass in the field – as instead requested by Verra -, without considering the socio-economic factors of the project area and examining only some of the geographical data such as, for example, the distance from roads, from a village or a city, but ignoring other significant variables such as the presence of rivers, altitude, slope, forest cover, land use, distance from pastures and agricultural areas . In other words, a statistical model was used which only examined quantitative and non-qualitative variables.

We obviously agree that calculating the baseline deforestation scenario is complicated: it is a statistical model and as such needs to be periodically reviewed and improved, but the reduction in rates of deforestation and forest degradation – as specified by the IPCC Climate report Change & Land – represents one of the most effective and robust options for climate change mitigation, with great mitigation benefits globally. Forests affect local, regional and global climates in multiple ways beyond simple carbon storage. Deforestation can contribute to warming or cooling by changing the albedo, or the amount of sunlight reflected, by reducing the evapotranspiration that cools the area; by influencing the release of aerosols and biogenic volatile organic compounds, which can affect cloud formation, but also modify the roughness of the earth’s surface, which in turn can affect wind speed, contributing to the improvement of the micro-climate and life of the area .

What is important to reiterate is that mitigation and compensation are two important tools in the fight against climate change. Carbon credits cannot in any way be used to cut the carbon footprint of companies, as they are not reductions/absorptions directly attributable to the company. There is no doubt that reduction has priority over compensation, and if a company were to declare that it is reducing through carbon credits it would fall into the so-called greenwashing. Making distinctions between companies that reduce and companies that compensate is wrong, because to face the climate crisis all companies should implement a reduction plan and at the same time compensate for their unavoidable emissions which, thanks to the reduction plan, will always be less. No one in the carbon management industry questions the “Mitigation Hierarchy” that puts the need to reduce emissions first. But we like to think that this process can have a broader vision that makes compensation a fundamental ally to contribute to the global mitigation of temperatures and the preservation of biodiversity.

*(the author is CEO & Co-founder Carbon Credits Consulting)