REDD+

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Description

Pete Howson, interviewed by Evgeny Morozov:

“REDD+ was an idea born shortly after the Kyoto framework. There was a lot of excitement in the late 90s, early 00s, among economists. They saw opportunities for markets to fix human-induced climate change. So, no need to make laws and stop industries from making lots of profits from spoiling the earths support systems. To them we just needed better pricing structures, so that the environmental and social costs of making stuff would be priced in. A big part of that idea involved offsets. Forests could be made seemingly more valuable standing than cut down using clever accounting. And there was this appetite for very flexible solutions. If airlines and coal-fired power plants can’t cut their emissions without effecting their bottom line? Doesn’t matter. We have these super cheap offsets that you can make your customers pay for, so these companies benefit from the green branding, while also potentially profiting from carbon markets. These projects were bad news for people who lived in and around REDD+ forests. Indigenous peoples were kicked off their land with what we call “green grabbing.” These people were then often forced into unsustainable livelihoods involving poaching, illegal logging, or just working on palm oil plantations. And cryptocurrencies and a blockchain can’t make the “green economy” dream more equitable. The best thing we can do most of the time is to give these forests back to the indigenous communities that have lived in and around them and have managed them sustainably for thousands of years. But there’s big bucks to be made from the “green economy”, so that ain't going to happen.’

(https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/pete-howson-on-cryptocarbon/ )


Discussion

Pete Howson:

“It’s worth remembering that when you “offset” your emissions flying to Benidorm or wherever, no-one actually goes out and plants trees on your behalf. You’re effectively just donating money to a conservation project that claims to have prevented trees from being cut down. And it's super difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever really know if those trees being protected were ever in any actual danger of being cut down. Or whether the trees still exist, or if they’re now just someone’s hardwood decking when you donate your money. Or whether your donation is just going to some cowboy in Indonesia who claims to own a forest, but actually it’s just a golf course and he lives in Benidorm. So this is an area rife with corruption. Multi-billion euro VAT frauds were committed using offsets. And there’s so many of these REDD+ style forests, because people were promised a booming carbon economy. But the market for these credits never materialized. That’s for many reasons, but mainly because people rightly didn’t trust them. So then this magical technology pops up around the same time as REDD+, known as “blockchain.” And this promises to be a “trustless” technology. You can’t trust these carbon cowboys, and corrupt governments in these banana republics, but you can trust these nice folks in Silicon Valley who upload entries on an immutable, secure, shared electronic database, can’t you? And this tech enables the local people who presumably live in the forests and plant the trees to get paid for doing it, rather than all the cash going to horrible middlemen. Sellers are able to connect these carbon offsets to cryptocurrencies, so you can dodge the tax man, make micro-purchases, and avoid the exchange fees. And this can all be automated with what they call “smart contracts.” So theoretically if a satellite spots that the forest you’re paying to protect is actually a golf course, the funds can be withheld. No untrustworthy poor people trying to pull a fast one. “

(https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/pete-howson-on-cryptocarbon/ )


Four typical faults of the blockchain-inspired crypto-fixes

Pete Howson:

“ There were these fundamental problems with REDD+ projects that blockchain people claim to be fixing, but actually they’re just creating new problems or even making the original problems worse. So these are: leakage, additionality, permanence, and measurement. Leakage refers to the fact that while deforestation might be avoided in one place, the root causes of deforestation aren’t tackled, so the problem is just moved to another area of forest or a different country. Additionality refers to the impossibility of predicting what might have happened in the absence of the REDD+ project. Permanence refers to the fact that carbon stored in trees is only temporarily stored. All trees eventually die and release the carbon back to the atmosphere. And measurement refers to the fact that accurately measuring the amount of carbon stored in forests and forest soils is extremely complex — and prone to significant errors. These problems have always beset climate offset projects. And these cryptocarbon initiatives have not only failed to overcome them, they actually make it worse. Because of the “garbage in—garbage out” dilemma, the data that’s understood as infallible on a blockchain is just as trustworthy/untrustworthy as data stored on any other database, and its usually all highly flawed, designed to max the profits of the seller. Communities are rewarded in a cryptocurrency, which is effectively worthless to them. They can’t normally spend it in shops or convert it to anything more useful. And when they can spend it, these tokens are programmed so they can only be spent on things the donor wants it to be spent on – what I call “surveillance philanthropy.” And a lot of these cryptocarbon projects rely on Proof of Work blockchains, like Ethereum. These blockchains have a combined carbon footprint equivalent to medium-sized countries, emitting around 150Mt CO2 every year. How is that a climate fix?”

(https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/pete-howson-on-cryptocarbon/ )