Climate colonialism through unbridled emissions trading

Although the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force in 2005, seems to be working and the EU has been able to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions by 31 percent compared to 1990, it has been criticized.

1.36°C global warming is mainly due to the industrialization of the so-called developed countries - and this in the past 150 years.

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Kyoto in 1997, 37 industrialized nations and the European Union took on binding responsibility for this under international law. This was accompanied by a commitment to simultaneously reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

What is European emissions trading?

The "cap & trade" principle serves as the basis:

Cap stands for upper limit and defines how many greenhouse gas emissions may be emitted by the approximately 9,000 plants in the energy sector and energy-intensive industry in Europe.

The member states set a corresponding quantity of emission allowances for the installations. If a company now produces fewer emissions, it can freely trade its emission allowances on the market.

The system is clearly working, as the greenhouse gas emissions of European electricity companies and industrial groups fell by 40 percent between 2005 and 2020.

There is also a free market for emission credits generated by climate protection projects worldwide. These credits can be used by both state and non-state actors. They can then be used to fulfill obligations under international agreements such as the Paris Agreement or self-imposed targets (e.g. climate neutrality).

The criticism

The criticism of trading in carbon credits comes about because it is of course much cheaper for the respective players to use carbon offsetting through credits than to invest in reducing their emissions. This approach is clearly incompatible with the 1.5 degree target set out in the Paris Agreement.

The criticism also relates to the lack of supervision, as the voluntary carbon market is currently virtually unregulated. This affects the quality of the certificates as well as the quality of the underlying climate protection projects. This mainly concerns reforestation projects and those for the protection of forests (so-called REDD projects).

The methodology for quantifying CO2 savings and the lack of uniform certification standards are also criticized. According to a recent study by the University of Cambridge, only six percent of the forest conservation projects certified by the private certification standard Verra have led to additional savings in CO2 emissions.

More harm than good

In more than 90 percent of the projects, the winners were primarily the wallets of the profiteers involved.

NGOs such as Amnesty International have repeatedly reported human rights violations. The implementation of forest protection projects has often led to brutal evictions of the indigenous population. Specifically, this happened in the Embobut Forest in Kenya.

As there are huge forest reserves in Africa, African governments see carbon credits as a welcome and indeed urgently needed source of money.

Unfortunately, however, the main beneficiaries are always international companies, so critics have coined a new term: climate colonialism.