Carbon Markets at COP25, Madrid: A Threat to People, Politics, and Planet

The document critiques carbon markets, specifically cap-and-trade and offsetting, asserting they fail to reduce global emissions and instead facilitate corporate power and human rights abuses. It highlights the failures of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and REDD, and warns that the negotiation of Article 6 at COP25 could lock in these flawed mechanisms, further delaying urgent emissions cuts at the source.

• Carbon markets are described as fundamentally ineffective because they allow polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases for a price, and global emissions have continued to rise under these schemes.
• The European Commission found in 2016 that only 2% of projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) were likely to be effective, while the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has been criticized for selling credits as cheaply as €4 each.
• Carbon offsetting schemes, particularly REDD, have led to severe human rights violations, including violent evictions, corporate land-grabs, and a form of 'carbon slavery' where people are bound to manage forests without pay.
• The document argues that carbon markets serve as a distraction that allows rich nations to avoid their fair share of climate effort and ecological debt by counting money sent to Southern countries through these markets as climate finance.
• Fossil fuel companies, such as Shell, use offsetting as a core strategy to allow indefinite expansion and have lobbied to secure carbon markets within the Paris rulebook to ensure continued profit.
• Negotiations at COP25 regarding Article 6 of the Paris Agreement are critical, as they define 'Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes' (ITMOs) and could potentially allow the use of old CDM credits to water down current national pledges.

APA

Cadena, L., Bhatnagar, D., Browne, J., Goldtooth, T., Onodera, Y., Race, M., Raman, M., Saldamando, A., & Shaw, S. (2019). Carbon Markets at COP25, Madrid: A Threat to People, Politics, and Planet. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/English-carbon-markets-briefing-OK-LOW.pdf

Chicago

Cadena, Lucy, Dipti Bhatnagar, Jaron Browne, Tom Goldtooth, Yuri Onodera, Madeleine Race, Meena Raman, Alberto Saldamando, and Sara Shaw. Carbon Markets at COP25, Madrid: A Threat to People, Politics, and Planet. Friends of the Earth International, 2019. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/English-carbon-markets-briefing-OK-LOW.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{cadena2019carbon, author = {Cadena, Lucy and Bhatnagar, Dipti and Browne, Jaron and Goldtooth, Tom and Onodera, Yuri and Race, Madeleine and Raman, Meena and Saldamando, Alberto and Shaw, Sara}, title = {{Carbon Markets at COP25, Madrid: A Threat to People, Politics, and Planet}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2019}, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/English-carbon-markets-briefing-OK-LOW.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }