Bank of evidence on false climate solutions

The document argues that nature-based solutions (NBS) and carbon offsets often serve as a distraction for 'Big Polluters' to continue emitting while facilitating land grabs and violating Indigenous rights. It provides detailed evidence of inflated carbon baselines, lack of additionality, and social harms across Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Key examples include REDD+ projects in Zimbabwe and Gabon that overestimated carbon savings, and soil carbon initiatives in the US and Kenya that threaten food sovereignty and traditional livelihoods. The report also critiques improved cookstove offsets for using flawed accounting to generate 'fake emission cuts'.

• Nature-based solutions (NBS) are characterized as a tool for polluting corporations to maintain profits and continue emitting while appropriating land and disregarding Indigenous and human rights.
• REDD+ projects in Africa have frequently inflated carbon savings baselines; for example, the Kariba project in Zimbabwe overestimated avoided deforestation by roughly 27 million tons of CO2, and Gabon's forest reference emission level used methodological anomalies to claim 90.6 million tons of net removals instead of net emissions.
• Carbon offset projects have been linked to violent land grabs and the displacement of local communities, such as in Uganda where the National Forest Authority facilitated the seizure of over 2,900 acres in the Luweero district for eucalyptus and pine plantations.
• In Australia, the 'human-induced regeneration' (HIR) method for carbon credits has been found to overwhelmingly overestimate benefits, sometimes claiming credits for vegetation that was never intended to be cut down.
• Soil carbon farming programs by agribusinesses like Bayer, Cargill, and Corteva are accused of using climate-smart farming as a 'power grab' to collect agronomic data and lock farmers into practices that favor chemical products like glyphosate.
• The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project (NKCP) is criticized for replacing traditional Indigenous grazing patterns with centrally-controlled 'planned rotational grazing' without empirical evidence that traditional methods were degrading the soil.
• Improved cookstove offset projects, particularly those linked to the firm Enking, are reported to generate credits based on inflated baselines and unrealistic usage rates, sometimes producing eight times more credits than they should.
• California's forest carbon offsets program has been found to be riddled with crediting errors, with over 29% of analyzed offsets over-credited, totaling approximately 30 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

APA

Masson, L., Rojas, I., Chandrasekaran, K., Race, M., Marien, N., Shaw, S., & Booth, T. (2023). Bank of evidence on false climate solutions. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bank-of-evidence-climate-false-solutions_EN_Nov-2023.pdf

Chicago

Masson, Lise, Isaac Rojas, Kirtana Chandrasekaran, Madeleine Race, Nele Marien, Sara Shaw, and Tyler Booth. Bank of evidence on false climate solutions. Friends of the Earth International, 2023. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bank-of-evidence-climate-false-solutions_EN_Nov-2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Masson |first1=Lise |last2=Rojas |first2=Isaac |last3=Chandrasekaran |first3=Kirtana |last4=Race |first4=Madeleine |last5=Marien |first5=Nele |last6=Shaw |first6=Sara |last7=Booth |first7=Tyler |title=Bank of evidence on false climate solutions |publisher=Friends of the Earth International |date=2023 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bank-of-evidence-climate-false-solutions_EN_Nov-2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{masson2023bank, author = {Masson, Lise and Rojas, Isaac and Chandrasekaran, Kirtana and Race, Madeleine and Marien, Nele and Shaw, Sara and Booth, Tyler}, title = {{Bank of evidence on false climate solutions}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2023}, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bank-of-evidence-climate-false-solutions_EN_Nov-2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }