carbon markets
Credit: Mirko Fabian/Unsplash
Companies use carbon markets to boost pesticide sales
Farmers enrolling in climate-smart programs find themselves reliant on pesticides marketed by the same companies running these carbon markets.
In short:
- Companies like Bayer are integrating pesticide sales with carbon market platforms, potentially increasing chemical use.
- Agricultural carbon markets, originally designed to offset greenhouse gases, now often incentivize practices requiring pesticides.
- Environmental groups worry these markets prioritize sales over genuinely reducing farm chemical dependence.
Key quote:
“Get a farmer in the program, get the information, and get to sell them seeds or pest control.”
— Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Why this matters:
Pesticides, essential for controlling pests and ensuring crop yields, have a dark side. Their overuse can lead to a host of environmental issues, including soil degradation, water contamination, and loss of biodiversity. In addition, the production and application of these chemicals contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, potentially offsetting the reductions achieved through carbon markets.
Correction: 11 July 2024
An earlier edition of this story included Land O'Lakes among the companies integrating pesticide sales with carbon market platforms. Land O'Lakes prohibits the use of farmer data for sales and marketing targeting.
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UN
Indigenous leaders call for a halt to carbon markets at a UN forum
Indigenous activists at the UN Permanent Forum urge a stop to carbon markets, citing detrimental effects on native communities.
In short:
- The Indigenous Environmental Network advocate for ending carbon markets, describing them as harmful and ineffective tools to stop climate change.
- The group presented their stance at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, aiming to influence broader UN climate policies.
- Advocates are asking to modify article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which regulates carbon markets. They ask for embedding Indigenous rights and consent in carbon market frameworks.
Key quote:
"Article 6 is all about carbon markets, which is a smokescreen, which is a loophole [that keeps] fossil fuel polluters from agreeing to phase out carbon."
— Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.
Why this matters:
While carbon market projects are intended to be beneficial to the environment and communities, they've frecuently have lead to negative impacts, disrupting indigenous communities and violating their right to self-determination.
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Newsletter
Image by Tristan Williams from Pixabay
Will California and Washington marry their carbon markets?
Evergreen State officials face a new choice — whether to link their system with a carbon market run jointly by Quebec, the Canadian province, and California, the first U.S. state to establish a broad cap-and-trade system. The stakes are significant.
Photo by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash
As the UN designs a new carbon market, experts call for a different approach
"The time for offsetting is over."
APNEP/Flickr
NC peat holds carbon market promise, but process complex
North Carolina's 250,000 acres of privately owned peatland could be the ticket to tapping into the $2 billion voluntary carbon trading market, but the steps ahead are rigorous and expensive.
Newsletter
Climate change: Africa has a major new carbon market initiative - what you need to know
Climate finance for the African continent got a boost at the 2022 United Nations Climate Conference, with the launch of the African Carbon Markets Initiative.
Newsletter
Governor Dunleavy/Flickr
Alaska wants to profit by leaving timber uncut and pumping carbon underground
Investment is flooding into projects, driven by the increasing urgency to slow global warming by cutting human-caused carbon emissions.
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