{"id":19457,"date":"2019-05-23T18:17:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T23:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/?p=19457"},"modified":"2025-12-08T14:19:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:19:41","slug":"what-propublicas-forest-carbon-credits-story-gets-wrong-and-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2019\/05\/23\/what-propublicas-forest-carbon-credits-story-gets-wrong-and-right\/","title":{"rendered":"What ProPublica’s forest carbon credits story still gets wrong \u2013 and right (with update)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steve Schwartzman, Senior Director, Tropical Forest Policy, and Christina McCain, Director, Latin America<\/p>\n

***Please read on for our response to ProPublica’s follow-up article***<\/p>\n

ProPublica\u2019s recent piece An (Even More) Inconvenient Truth<\/a> is a deeply reported story on very real problems \u2013 and even bigger potential problems \u2013 with offset projects in existing and emerging carbon markets. But the evidence the article lays out does not support its conclusion about forest carbon crediting. And readers might come away without understanding that protecting forests, including through forest carbon credits, is one of the most important solutions to climate change out there, and the planet can\u2019t afford to dismiss this opportunity to solve the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Missing: The critical distinction between individual \u201cprojects\u201d and large-scale, state-level programs to reduce deforestation<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not news that bad carbon credits won\u2019t solve climate change. Lots of studies have shown that there are all kinds of bad offset projects<\/a>, and definitely not just forest projects. But today’s jurisdictional forest credits aren’t your parents’ forest project offsets: they’re real emissions reductions. Though you wouldn’t be able to tell that from the ProPublica story.<\/p>\n

The ProPublica piece fails to distinguish large-scale national or provincial programs to reduce emissions from deforestation \u2013 known as \u201cjurisdictional\u201d programs \u2013 from one-off, small \u201cprojects\u201d to reduce deforestation. ProPublica\u2019s implication that old projects had failings and therefore now so must contemporary jurisdictional programs, is like saying flip phones had all sorts of problems, so all cell phones must be unreliable and we should shun smartphones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many projects are not adequately monitored, or supported by a policy framework, political will, or the force of law for carbon crediting. As the story finds, there is evidence of many projects that claim they\u2019re protecting forest and sell carbon credits, but in the end don\u2019t actually protect the forest. Or of projects that protect a piece of forest here, while somebody slashes and burns over there \u2013 so those credits aren\u2019t really reducing emissions. Of course these scenarios are the opposite of stopping climate change: the polluter goes on polluting and the offset that was supposed to compensate for the pollution pollutes too.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with project-level efforts. Well-designed projects, especially those designed and implemented by forest communities themselves, can have incredibly positive impacts, co-benefits, and results.<\/p>\n

But as the story shows, to both back-up the efforts of those forest communities in fighting deforestation that can encroach on them, and to guarantee that the overall results are ensuring deforestation reduction across the landscape and not in one isolated spot, a wall-to-wall accounting (a \u201cjurisdictional\u201d approach) is necessary.<\/p>\n

Jurisdictional programs to reduce deforestation cover forests for an entire state, are managed by the state or federal government, and provide environmental standards and protections for forest communities.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s Tropical Forest Standard<\/strong><\/p>\n

ProPublica missed that California\u2019s Air Resources Board was very aware of all of these problems, and designed its Tropical Forest Standard<\/a> (TFS) accordingly. California has made clear that, if it acts to incorporate the potential for tropical forest credits in its market, it won\u2019t be taking credits from any of the ill-fated projects profiled in the article. In fact, it won\u2019t be taking credits from individual projects at all. Neither will any of the emerging carbon markets in the UN or anywhere else.<\/p>\n

The problem with the article is that it does a great job of critiquing of what\u2019s wrong with offset projects \u2013 but fails to note that no one \u2013 not California, not the UN, not the World Bank \u2013 is proposing to let forest projects into new carbon markets. All these new policy frameworks start from the awareness that projects are subject to problems like leakage and permanence that large-scale jurisdictional efforts largely or wholly avoid. It also fails to report the widely available data on how much jurisdictions like Acre and other Amazon states have actually reduced emissions.<\/p>\n

What California could do \u2013 and what any jurisdiction or carbon market should do \u2013 is trade with jurisdictions that can demonstrate implementation of a successful program like the Brazilian state of Acre\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Acre, Brazil<\/strong><\/p>\n

Acre reduced about 121 million tons of CO2 between 2005 and 2016, and did this while it was increasing both GDP and agriculture production. Reducing jurisdiction-wide emissions, while increasing the economic output that was driving emissions is the same feat that California and the European Union have achieved, and a measure of real progress.<\/p>\n

And Acre\u2019s reductions are \u201cpermanent\u201d emissions reductions. A permanent reduction does not mean that if a jurisdiction reduces dirty energy in its electricity sector, for example, that all coal stays underground forever. It means that the jurisdiction generated as much (or more) energy as before, only with fewer emissions. In Acre\u2019s case, they reduced deforestation and increased their agricultural production. This is also a permanent emissions reduction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why from the perspective of the atmosphere, it doesn\u2019t matter that ProPublica saw lots of deforestation along the roads (it was already there when I first went in 1986) or that somebody said you can\u2019t make a living from the trees. Acre\u2019s are real emissions reductions, and creating the right incentives \u2013 positive and negative \u2013 is what\u2019s needed to keep them going ultimately to zero.<\/p>\n

Brazil did the same thing in the Amazon from 2005\u20132017, reducing emissions from deforestation over 80% below the historical average while increasing cattle and soy production. This kept about 4.9 Gt CO\u2082 out of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s surprising is not that Brazil\u2019s deforestation has gone up somewhat. It\u2019s that the reductions have proved robust even though there are a lot of reasons for it to go up to its historical levels again \u2013 the powerful Ag lobby in Congress in the last three governments, no incentives for conservation, and no budget for enforcement. The transformational changes that Brazil started, such as large-scale recognition of indigenous territories and creation of protected areas, have made a difference.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
1 Boucher, D. and D. Chi, 2018. Amazon Deforestation in Brazil: What has not happened and how the global media covered it. Tropical Conservation Science, Vol. II: 1-4. DOI: 10.1177\/1940082918794325. Figure 1. National Space Research Institute (INPE), annual deforestation 1988 \u2013 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, yes, offset projects have a really checkered record and that\u2019s why California won\u2019t be accepting any international project credits. At the same time, the most important thing California could do for the indigenous and forest peoples on the front lines of Bolsonaro\u2019s war<\/a> against them and the forest is to endorse California\u2019s Tropical Forest Standard \u2013 regardless of whether Acre or any other jurisdiction is ready right now to meet its rigorous criteria.<\/p>\n

The TFS says that California knows that stopping deforestation is central to controlling climate change, and it\u2019s ready to do something about it. Just like emissions reductions in California or the European Union, these emissions reductions from large-scale programs to reduce emissions from deforestation are real and permanent, and that\u2019s as much as any policy can do \u2013 and what our atmosphere desperately needs right now.<\/p>\n

Update June 7, 2019:<\/strong> The following is our response to ProPublica\u2019s follow up article \u201cThese 4 Arguments Can\u2019t Overcome the Facts About Carbon Offsets for Forest Preservation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

ProPublica approaches its response to the mounds of criticism over its anti-forest credit article by insisting on conflating REDD+ projects with jurisdictional approaches and leaping to the conclusion that it\u2019s all too complicated, too uncertain, too risky to ever work. While we understand a desire to defend the work and valid conceptual questions raised about this complex problem, this doubling down approach requires some impressive mental gymnastics to sustain itself.<\/p>\n

REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) can work at jurisdictional scales. We know this because Brazil reduced deforestation by over 70% from 2004 \u2013 2017, keeping nearly 5 Gt CO\u2082 out of the atmosphere \u2013 while increasing its soy and cattle production. ProPublica omits this last critical point, arguing that \u201c…it\u2019s impossible to tell how much of an additional benefit [the program\u2019s] funders created. The drop coincided with a massive federal conservation program.\u201d This is like saying that Germany didn\u2019t really reduce emissions because it subsidized solar energy. No one asks the EU or California whether their emissions reductions are \u201cadditional\u201d because the atmosphere only cares whether the major emitters, like Brazil, are increasing or decreasing their emissions.<\/p>\n

Complementary policies to attack a complex problem are meant to do just that \u2013 bolster your chances of success with a suite of tools \u2013 but the measure of success is decreasing emissions, not parsing out which policy gets more credit in a highly interconnected system.<\/p>\n

ProPublica makes a big deal of the claim that Norway and Germany\u2019s US$1.2 billion payment for reducing deforestation \u201chasn\u2019t been shown to have a causal connection\u201d with reducing deforestation. But how much of a causal connection can $1.2 billion over a decade have in a $3+ trillion (PPP) annual GDP economy? What matters is that Brazil committed to reduce deforestation at scale, and did it. As ProPublica notes, deforestation has gone up some since 2012 \u2013 but the reductions have been remarkably robust.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s retrograde agriculture caucus of the Congress has been enormously powerful not only in the current environmentally disastrous government but also in the previous two. Yet this caucus has not gotten what it wants because of an effective civil society and indigenous mobilization, as well as public opinion and media that are against deforestation and supportive of indigenous land rights. Furthermore, laws and policies since at least 2003 have called for forest protection enforcement and incentives \u2013 but the incentives have never materialized. In the last several years, Brazil\u2019s currency, the real, has been historically weak, favoring commodity exporters like soy growers. But deforestation \u2013 in spite of all this \u2013 remains far below pre-2005 levels. This is critically important, but we should not presume it\u2019s sustainable in the long-term without some future incentives.<\/p>\n

ProPublica also makes a big deal of \u201cinternational leakage\u201d of emissions, where emissions causing activities can shift from one country to another. But \u201cleakage\u201d is a problem where reducing production of a good in one place (because of emissions controls) causes demand for it, and production, to increase somewhere else. If you\u2019re reducing emissions and increasing production, like Brazil has done, there\u2019s no reason to expect international leakage.<\/p>\n

Similarly, there are answers to the issue of tracking forest degradation. We can now measure carbon stocks in forests directly, and measure change in carbon stocks \u2013 from whatever cause \u2013 directly too. If we do that, the results will account for whatever has happened from one point in time to another.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s true that governments change. But if you\u2019re the governor of Acre, Brazil and you want to build your state\u2019s economy and the only way you can see to do it is industrial soy, that\u2019s what you\u2019re going to do. By dismissing all forest protection credit programs as failures, ProPublica is essentially telling Acre\u2019s governor to go ahead and burn, and telling California to look the other way. On the other hand, if California were to endorse the Tropical Forest Standard \u2013 regardless of whether it thinks any particular jurisdiction could meet the criteria today \u2013 the governor of Acre might think again about burning those forests, and their potential conservation value in compliance markets. Research shows that Brazil can meet the demand for agricultural commodities without cutting down a single new tree, by using already cleared and degraded land. But this will cost money. Where is it going to come from?<\/p>\n

Supporters of the idea of jurisdictional REDD+ programs and proven examples like the one in Acre aren\u2019t romantics dreaming of magical forests and ignoring emissions accounting. We have seen it can work, and we\u2019d like to be on the side of history that thought big, and did the hard work to develop and test innovative approaches that make a difference. The alternative is stand by on a false moral high ground while it burns.<\/p>\n

ProPublica\u2019s piece is ultimately going after something that isn\u2019t there. After all those thousands of pages of documents, and thousands of miles of travel and dozens of interviews, ProPublica never asks: if REDD+ won\u2019t stop deforestation, what will? Is deforestation ineluctable, destined to continue until the forests are all gone? What would that mean for the global atmosphere? Sure, the article wasn\u2019t about that. But for someone who was thinking at all about the future of the forests \u2013 or the planet, for that matter \u2013 you\u2019d think some version of these questions would come up. It would make sense that they wouldn\u2019t, though, if ProPublica set out to show that REDD+ hadn\u2019t and couldn\u2019t work in the first place, and found what it was looking for \u2013 gotcha!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protecting forests, including through forest carbon credits, is one of the most important solutions to climate change. 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