Opposing Voices
Roshan Krishnan, Climate Finance Campaigner at Amazon Watch, said: “SBTI has positioned themselves as a safeguard against corporate greenwash, but their proposed FLAG targets are rife with industry-friendly false solutions that undermine real action for protecting forests and our climate while threatening indigenous rights.
“These obvious handouts to the agribusiness industry will allow some of the worst companies in the world like JBS and Cargill to keep violating indigenous rights, spewing carbon, and destroying important biomes such as the Amazon rainforest, driving it past the tipping point of ecological collapse.”
Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, comments: “The proposed FLAG targets are more fake offsets allowing polluters and the private industry to continue colonising and privatising lands, ignoring our inherent rights.”
There are more voices. Patti Naylor, Iowa organic farmer and Family Farm Defenders member, said: “The prospect of climate change is frightening, but just as frightening are politically safe false solutions like carbon markets.
“We can’t ignore the free-market policies and subsequent low prices for farmers while corporate consumers reap massive profits. The goal should be to eliminate pollution, not to commodify it.”
And Jeff Conant, Senior International Forests Program Director at Friends of the Earth, said: “Allowing forest carbon removals to count towards emissions reduction targets is a mistake that will allow polluters to keep polluting while threatening the sovereignty of local forest guardians.
“The science tells us that, yes, forests need to be protected and restored, but not at the expense of real emissions drawdown.”
Finally, Dr. Steve Suppan of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said: “The proposed standard has shortcomings that must be remedied in the final version of the standard to guide the companies to rapidly reduce their emissions. SBTI must keep these companies focused on direct emissions reductions, and not recommend that companies divert their finances to emissions offset trading in the financial markets.”
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Balance of Right and Wrong?
In sustainability practice, it’s very common to find hard-line environmentalists coming into conflict with more mainstream business. Whilst this feature’s example appears to be no exception, there is certainly truth in the argument that carbon offsetting is considered contentious among the wider sustainability community.
This very useful article lays out some of the debate around offsetting, noting that a 2016 analysis found 85 per cent of the mandatory carbon offsets that Kyoto had put in place were not decreasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
And Vogue Business compares carbon offsetting with a new theory; carbon insetting. It says carbon offsets are out and insetting is in for Ganni, which is changing tact in how it tackles the biggest, most challenging sources of emissions in a bid to decarbonise its supply chain.
The Copenhagen brand says it will work directly with its suppliers to evaluate emissions hotspots and start investing in ways to mitigate those at the source, rather than through offset projects elsewhere. “We stopped compensating for our carbon footprint. We put aside that money and saved it up for investments in bringing down the carbon footprint of our supply chain, making actual reductions along our supply chain,” says founder Nicolaj Reffstrup.
The firm has some comprehensive environmental reporting pages online, as do more and more companies that realise they must illustrate transparency on reporting and offsetting and show true leadership.
For now, it is too early to make a comprehensive call on the forthcoming SBTI targets. They remain in draft form and there is seemingly a good while before any complete adoption or proposal of the final guidance comes.
At the moment, this debate serves to illustrate just how complex and contentious corporate carbon science is. Billions must be spent and directed in the correct way in mitigating climate damage and transitioning business to new models.
It’s essential that the top-level pillars guiding this are resolutely solid.
SEE ALSO: Easing the Strain on Global Oil Markets