Las dos caras del verde

A policy brief by Carbon Market Watch analyzing how the Matavén and Kaliawiri REDD+ projects in Colombia used artificially high baselines to generate millions of excess carbon credits. These credits were used by companies, primarily Primax Colombia SAS, to avoid paying the national carbon tax, leading to an estimated $33 million loss in state revenue from these two projects alone. The report highlights systemic failures involving project promoters, verification bodies, and the Colombian Ministry of Environment.

• The Matavén and Kaliawiri projects generated approximately 21 million more carbon credits than they would have if they had used official government baseline values, with 12.4 million of these potentially violating national regulations.
• Primax Colombia SAS, a fossil fuel distributor, used 4.9 million 'hot air' credits to avoid paying the national carbon tax, resulting in a $25 million loss for the Colombian state.
• The Matavén project's baseline is considered artificially high because its reference area includes a much larger deforestation frontier and better road access than the actual project area, and it ignores the lower deforestation risks associated with indigenous territorial control.
• Quantitatively, the Matavén project's implicit annual deforestation rate of 0.86% is nearly five times higher than the 0.18% rate established in the government's Forest Reference Emission Level (NREF) for the Amazon biome (2013-2017).
• The Kaliawiri project used a baseline deforestation rate of 0.6%, which is significantly higher than the NREF rate of 0.18% and the historical rates for the Vichada (0.16%) and Guainia (0.04%) departments.
• The Colombian government suffered a loss of international funding for its 'Visión Amazonía' program in 2015 because it had to discount 3,548,786 credits that had been over-issued by the Matavén project.
• A systemic failure is evident as verification bodies (OVVs) like ICONTEC, EPIC Sustainability, and AENOR failed to challenge unrealistic baselines, partly due to a conflict of interest where project promoters select and pay their own auditors.
• International standards Verra (VCS) and ProClima are criticized for insufficient rigor and lack of transparency, specifically for accepting justifications that nesting requirements were inapplicable due to the absence of an operational national registry.
• The Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development has failed to strictly apply Resolution 1447 and lacks transparency, having failed to provide requested information on registered projects and credit issuance for over four months.

APA

Carbon Market Watch (2021). Las dos caras del verde. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Two-shades-of-green_ES_WEB.pdf

Chicago

Carbon Market Watch. Las dos caras del verde. 2021. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Two-shades-of-green_ES_WEB.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Carbon Market Watch |title=Las dos caras del verde |date=June 2021 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Two-shades-of-green_ES_WEB.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{carbonmarketwatch2021las, author = {{Carbon Market Watch}}, title = {{Las dos caras del verde}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2021}, month = jun, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Two-shades-of-green_ES_WEB.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }