Carbon offsetting and REDD
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) has become the dominant international forest policy. Variations of REDD+ include Nature-Based Solutions and corporate pledges to achieve Zero Net Deforestation. In reality, though, deforestation continues, polluting companies use REDD+ offsets to avoid reducing their fossil fuel emissions, and zero-net deforestation pledges allow forests to be cleared in one area as long as an “equivalent” area is restored elsewhere.
The UN Land-Grabbing Summit in Glasgow made it once again clear that these spaces will never advance the already existing solutions to the climate crisis.
It is imperative to understand the concept of ‘nature-based solutions,’ to name it for what it is: ‘nature-based dispossessions’, and to expose the real threat it poses to territories.
While the concept of ‘Nature Based Solutions’ has eagerly been seized upon by polluting industries, financial institutions and governments, its origins lie somewhere else.
The term ‘nature-based solutions,’ in the context of the exclusionary and predatory projects that gather behind it, reveals something fundamental.
Big polluters are making ‘net zero’ pledges to satisfy the financial players that fund them. So-called ‘nature-based solutions’ are at the core of these pledges –a new corporate brand for offsets.
These companies have destroyed large territories and the devastation that comes with their fossil fuel extraction continues. Now, they are putting forest protection and tree planting at the heart of their climate strategies
The mining sector seeks to gain legitimacy and expand its frontiers of accumulation and territorial control. It does so using a discourse of sustainability and by investing in so-called “nature-based solutions.