Forest Offsets are Carbon Trading = Climate Disruption

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Carbon trading mechanisms allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, as well as devastate the health of communities living near extraction sites, infrastructure projects and refineries. Tropical forest offsets impact Indigenous people who have protected their living forests for thousands of years and have been shown to be ineffective & divide communities. The tropical forest offsets that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is promoting are false solutions in light of the recent Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which indicates that to prevent climate catastrophe the world must dramatically cut emissions at source in the next 12 years.

You are invited to join us at the CARB meeting on November 15th to say NO to the Tropical Forest Standard (TSF) for a rally at 8am. We will post where this issue is on the agenda when it is posted.

We demand that CARB reject consideration of tropical forest carbon credits into California’s cap and trade system.

1. Offsets achieve nothing to reduce the emissions that are poisoning California communities.
   • They do not result in a reduction of emissions, but rather allow big polluters such as refineries to release more greenhouse gasses legally.
   • This further harms our communities, who have historically suffered from carbon co-pollutants.
   • It distracts from the only strategy that can work: ending emissions at their source.
2. Tropical forest offset programs pose serious risks to human and indigenous rights.
   • The market linkages proposed by CARB subject Indigenous Peoples to grossly disproportionate economic power, intimidation, and coercion and typically fail to obtain meaningful Free, Prior, Informed Consent.
   • Programs such as REDD+ (project or jurisdictional) have resulted in land grabbing, and put indigenous peoples at risk of displacement and/or loss of control of their forests, their way of life, cultures, food security, and sovereignty.
   • They are rife with corruption and conflicts of interest, which CA cannot police.
3. Tropical forest offsetting has been discredited as an environmental strategy.
   • Offsets do not work: they allow certain, permanent harm (more GHGs) in exchange for the fallacy of hoped-for uncertain, temporary carbon sequestration.
   • Offset programs (REDD+ etc.) fail to address the drivers of deforestation.
   • Because of such flaws, no compliance market in the world accepts REDD+ credits.
4. CARB fails to consider the scientific evidence against tropical forest offsetting.
   • It is ignoring the extensive, peer-reviewed literature by independent researchers documenting the environmental and social failures of REDD+.
   • It has relied too much on organizations and consultants with careers and personal stakes in offsetting projects and policies.
   • The proposed TFS, fails to provide a plan consistent with California’s legal requirement that emissions reductions be “real, additional, quantifiable, permanent, verifiable and enforceable”.