Protecting biodiversity: rejecting carbon offsetting

Throughout 2024, record wildfires have raged across the Amazon rainforest – burning an area equivalent to the size of Germany during the worst drought on record: a stark illustration of climate collapse.1 We are now living through the sixth mass extinction event, with species disappearing at a rate unprecedented in human history.2 As we approach the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference, COP16, in Colombia (21 October-1 November), the stakes for humanity and biodiversity are immense. At the heart of the climate and biodiversity crises is capitalism’s relentless pursuit of profit.   

Planting trees and other false ‘solutions’

Rich countries and corporations, particularly in the Global North, are pushing financially profitable ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis and biodiversity loss – carbon offsetting and biodiversity credits – which are a licence to keep on polluting and keep on profiting; business as usual.

Carbon offsetting initiatives supposedly compensate or ‘offset’ emissions or environmental damage in one location by, for instance, planting trees in another. However, these ‘offsets’ are largely ineffective – more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets do not represent actual carbon reductions. They are essentially worthless.3 Often a single non-native or invasive tree species is planted across vast industrial-scale plantations, which degrades biodiversity and therefore ecosystems, while displacing people from the forests or mountains where they have lived for millennia. Ultimately these ‘offsetting’ schemes are greenwashing – allowing more carbon to be released into the atmosphere, rather than kept in the ground. 

Worse still, are ‘biodiversity credits’, which allow corporations to devastate ecosystems in one area while purchasing ‘credits’ to supposedly protect or restore biodiversity elsewhere – creating a dangerous illusion that biodiversity loss can be ‘offset’. This is not the case, yet the UK and France are aggressively promoting biodiversity credit schemes.4

Often misleadingly labelled as ‘nature-based solutions’, carbon offsets and biodiversity credits are false solutions to the climate crisis: enabling corporations to avoid accountability and to carry on damaging the planet.5 Profit is prioritised over our planet and the people who depend on nature for their livelihoods – ecosystems are stripped of their intrinsic value, and nature is turned into a commodity to be traded on global markets, driven by corporate greed and facilitated by governments.6

So-called ‘nature-based solutions’ are not the answer to the climate crisis or biodiversity loss.   

The roots of biodiversity loss 

When ecosystems collapse, it’s the poorest, predominantly across the Global South, who are hardest hit by food shortages and climate disasters. Biodiversity isn’t just about saving species – it’s about social and ecological justice.

High-income countries in the Global North – which make up just 16% of the global population – are responsible for a staggering 74% of the world’s overconsumption of natural resources.7 Between 1990 and 2015 alone, $242 trillion worth of resources – of wealth – was drained from the Global South to fuel the Global North.8 Alongside this, the Global North has shifted – or outsourced – the mines and factories needed to meet its overconsumption ‘needs’ to Global South countries, which then shoulder the resulting pollution and ecological destruction these industries cause. 

This systemic exploitation of the Global South has enriched the Global North while devastating the ecosystems of the Global South, driving poverty and biodiversity loss. 

Until we address this imbalance between the Global North and South, solutions to climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, and social injustice will remain out of reach.9

Case in point: the global food system

The global food system is dominated by a handful of rich Global North corporations practicing industrial-scale farming – which has turned swathes of the most fertile land across the Global South into greenhouses growing export crops to feed Global North overconsumption.10

Industrial farming focuses on growing single crops (monocultures), which degrade soil fertility and biodiversity. Chemical pesticides are used, which toxify ecosystems – leading to further biodiversity loss and fuelling ecosystem collapse. 

The industrial farming of cattle and soy, driven by demand from rich Global North countries, has seen vast areas of the Amazon rainforest deforested. Habitats and ecosystems are directly destroyed, making the rainforest more susceptible to wildfires – which are often deliberately set by agricultural corporations. Wildfires in turn further ravage ecosystems and encroach upon Indigenous territories, threatening both biodiversity and the communities that protect it. 

Perhaps most insidiously, agricultural corporations are repackaging damaging industrial monoculture tree plantations as ‘climate solutions’ through carbon offsetting schemes.  

How do we truly address biodiversity loss? 

False solutions such as carbon offsets and biodiversity credits must be rejected in favour of real solutions that address the structural causes of biodiversity loss. Biodiversity is not a commodity to be traded or exploited, but a living system that includes all forms of life. 

We urgently need solutions that focus on ending harmful extractive industries, restoring ecosystems and repairing the damage caused by centuries of exploitation.11 This is impossible without Indigenous and peasant leadership and knowledge to ensure that conservation efforts are community-led, and support biodiversity and climate resilience.

To truly address biodiversity loss, significant public investment in conservation is essential, especially investment in the Global South.12 This would go some way towards dismantling a new form of colonialism – whereby the rich Global North exploits nature – while reselling it as offsets – at the expense of poorer Global South countries. 

Protecting biodiversity must mean ending the exploitation of the Global South’s people and resources, creating public, non-debt-creating finance to support the restoration of ecosystems, recognising the value and rights of nature, creating policies that protect the rights of Indigenous peoples and peasants, transforming food systems, and building economies based on care and equality.13 These are all elements of War on Want’s vision for a Global Green New Deal. 

To realise this vision, high-income Global North countries – responsible for the majority of global consumption – must repay their ecological debt to the Global South. Resources must be redistributed fairly, and Global South debt cancelled. A just transition to renewable energy, sustainable food systems and ecosystem restoration is needed which prioritises both people and planet. Ultimately this is about establishing a new relationship with the Earth. 

The UK government's pledge of £3 billion for nature and £1.5 billion for forests by 2026 remains uncertain amidst its own fiscal constraints. Without fulfilling these commitments, initiatives risk becoming empty promises.