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.
Articles
19 March 2025
In the framework of International Women's Day, WRM is relaunching the podcast “Women’s struggles for land”, with stories from women’s collectives from the coastal area of Chiapas in Mexico, the Malen Chiefdom in Sierra Leone and the Kapuas river area of Central Kalimantan in Indonesia. While their stories appear quite different from each other at first glance, we find many commonalities and a strong connection between them.
Bulletin articles
15 December 2024
In the province of East Kalimantan, the World Bank is supporting the Indonesian government’s first jurisdictional REDD programme. International conservationist NGOs, TNC and WWF, have been playing a key role in the preparation and execution of the programme. While they proclaim it to be a “success story” (1), this programme is full of contradictions. Available in Indonesian.
Bulletin articles
24 October 2024
This article tells the story of a Podcast that is being jointly launched with Solidaritas Perumpuan, a feminist organisation from Indonesia. This espisode is the third in the series “Women’s struggles for land”, produced by WRM together with organisations from different countries. This one tells the story of women's resistance to oil palm plantations, REDD and a large-scale project for food production (Food Estate) in three villages in Central Kalimantan.
Action alerts
30 July 2024
Indigenous, peasant, traditional and Afro-descendent peoples from the Amazon region and Central America call organizations and social movements all over the world to endorse this declaration rejecting carbon projects in their territories.
Bulletin articles
27 June 2024
Behind every tree plantation developed for carbon offsets, there are external agents seeking to profit from increased control over the land. And while they all have the same colonial approach, these plantations can vary widely: they can be large-scale monocultures or schemes with smallholder farmers; they can include exotic species or native species; and some of them may even exist on paper only.
Other information
27 June 2024
The podcast “Faroeste carbono” tells the story of how Carbonext, one of the largest carbon offset companies in Brazil, convinced quilombola communities in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon to sign a contract that restricts their autonomy and food production.
Other information
27 June 2024
An investigation exposed how carbon credits from three of the largest carbon offset projects in the Brazilian Amazon are linked to a criminal operation.
Bulletin articles
26 February 2024
The Ka'apor live in Alto Turiaçu, in the northwestern part of Maranhão state in Brazil. It is the largest indigenous territory of the Eastern Amazon and the largest portion of preserved rainforest in the region. Foreign companies have arrived there to propose REDD projects; this has caused conflict, and part of the community is rejecting these projects and organizing to resist.
Bulletin articles
19 December 2023
President Jokowi calls the Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia (KIPI) “the largest green industrial area in the world”. But in reality, there is nothing green about the KIPI. It will lead to massive fossil fuel use, land and water grabbing, while threatening thousands of people in coastal communities with forced eviction. (Available in Indonesian).
Bulletin articles
19 December 2023
Carbon offsetting projects jeopardise small-scale farming, the felling of trees for subsistence, and other centuries-old practices of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities in the Amazon region. Contracts promoted by companies undermine local care strategies and workers’ creativity, undervaluing or even denying them completely.
Bulletin articles
25 October 2023
WRM’s reply to Biofílica Ambipar’s “Clarification Note” about the article "REDD and the Green Economy exacerbate oppression and deforestation in Pará, Brazil", written by WRM and published in its Bulletin of July 2023.