Certifying
Dr West says that while some developers act in good faith, the system itself is set up to fail: “Not every project developer is inflating baselines.
“Some genuinely want to do the right thing, but they’re forced to follow Verra’s approved methodologies. Even with the best intentions, if you follow the “wrong recipe”, you will probably not get the right result.
“These frameworks just aren’t fit for measuring project performance or impact. The tools exist to do it properly, but they add uncertainty and risk, and that’s bad for business. The uncomfortable truth is that accuracy may not be profitable.”
From airlines to tech giants to luxury brands, offsets have become a moral license to keep polluting, with a green halo attached.
The people certifying and selling the credits often have a financial stake in keeping the system alive. Everyone benefits from big numbers, except the planet.
Incentives
The paper exposes how this system, which was meant to channel money into conservation, is filled with conflicts of interest.
Certification bodies, paid by the very projects they audit, have every incentive to keep the credits flowing. Rating agencies compete for business by offering favourable evaluations.
Developers often withhold crucial data hiding behind commercial secrecy. Even some auditors, the research reveals, have “relied on self-reporting by project staff” instead of independent verification.
Dr West argues that without structural independence, integrity is impossible: “Some people believe government oversight could help but look at the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol – there are many well-known cases where corruption was rampant.
“Bringing in more organisations won’t fix it if the incentives stay the same. A simple step would be for developers to pay the certifying body, which then randomly assigns an auditor. There should also be firm standards for auditor competence and team size.
Consulting
“Right now, one person might inspect a project in two days while another team spends a week. That kind of inconsistency can compromise the quality of certification.”
The researchers revisit the Suruí project in Brazil, once celebrated as a model of Indigenous-led conservation. It was built on solid science, used local knowledge, and even gained international recognition.
Despite its promise, the project collapsed under pressure from illegal miners and cattle farmers. The lesson, reveals the paper, is clear: even the best-designed offset can’t stop deforestation if the wider system – politics, law enforcement, and land rights – is broken.
This month, Brazil’s federal public prosecutor’s office (MPF) filed a lawsuit asking to immediately stop a carbon credit project in protected areas of Amazonas where Indigenous and traditional communities live.
The MPF says the project, launched by the Amazonas State Department of the Environment (Sema), is moving forward without consulting the local communities, breaking the rules of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169.
Negotiate
These are not isolated stories. From Cambodia to Kenya, projects have been undermined by corruption, land disputes, or government decisions to build dams and roads through “protected” zones. Others have restricted local people’s access to forests, cutting off livelihoods.
Too often, communities see little of the money that flows through these schemes. For instance, in Zimbabwe, the government decreed that half of all carbon revenue must go to the state, with only a fraction reaching local villages. The “benefits” are usually captured by community “elites”.
Dr West says the system rewards profit-driven consultancies rather than grassroots groups with genuine ties to the land.
“Some NGOs have worked with local communities for decades, long before carbon credits existed, but many developers are international consulting firms chasing profit. If they can strike a deal to keep 90% of the revenue and hand 10% to the community, they probably will.”
“Governments should step in with clear rules to guarantee fair shares. Without that, communities are left to negotiate from a position of weakness, without the knowledge or representation to protect their interests.”
Safeguards
The researchers also highlight what they call “leakage”. Protecting one forest simply pushes deforestation somewhere else. A logging ban in one area, for example, can just shift logging to the next valley.
Most projects assume leakage is small, often just one per cent, but studies suggest it could be ten times higher.
Then there’s the problem of “non-permanence”, when forests burn, rot, or are cut after a project ends. Fires in California and the Amazon have already wiped-out vast stretches of land whose carbon credits are still circulating in global markets.
Under current rules, many buyers are essentially “renting” temporary reductions that could vanish tomorrow. Once a project ends, there’s often no legal responsibility for anyone to replace those lost credits.
Dr West says the market’s safeguards are far too weak: “If companies buy credits from forest projects, the forest must be there.
Slick
“If it disappears, the credits disappear too. The problem is that even certified and audited calculations may still lack credibility – certification alone doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything.
“Verra’s insurance buffer was meant to cover losses, but research shows it’s far too small and based on shaky risk models.
“Most projects last only a few decades; once they expire, their credits could eventually expire too. Yet no one wants to talk about that because it’s inconvenient. The voluntary market has simply chosen to not take the issue of permanence seriously.”
The UN’s earlier carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol rejected forest protection credits precisely because they were too hard to measure and too easy to manipulate.
Two decades later, the voluntary market revived them, but this time with better branding and slick marketing.
Forest
Now, as governments consider including such projects under the Paris Agreement, the researchers warn against repeating the same mistakes.
Companies want easy answers, consumers like the comfort of “carbon neutral” products, and carbon credits make the story possible, even if it isn’t true.
The scientists behind the research aren’t against protecting forests, they just want honesty about what these projects can and can’t do. Real conservation is vital for biodiversity, climate stability, and the livelihoods of millions.
But pretending that selling carbon credits for these efforts can “cancel out” fossil fuel emissions is dangerous and delusional. Real climate action means cutting emissions at the source, not outsourcing guilt to a forest thousands of miles away.
Burning
Some projects could make a genuine difference, such as forest management, reduced-impact logging, or restoring native ecosystems rather than planting monoculture tree farms. But these are slower and less profitable, which means the market mostly ignores them.
The authors call for true transparency, public data, and independent audits that aren’t paid by the very people being audited. They warn that without major reform, REDD+ risks repeating the injustices it claims to solve.
Until then, every dollar spent on bad credits is money not spent on real solutions.
As climate pledges tighten and pressure mounts, companies are rushing to buy offsets, but some courts are now ruling that calling a product “carbon neutral” based on such credits is misleading.
For years, carbon credits offered an easy story, that we could keep burning, flying, and spending like no tomorrow, while forests quietly cleaned up our mess, but that story is ending.
Prioritising
As COP30 prepares to put carbon markets centre stage, the debate over their future is intensifying.
Dr West says it’s time for an honest reckoning, either fix the system or face the truth about its limits: “Some of my co-authors think the market is beyond repair; others believe it can potentially be fixed if we finally confront its flaws.
“We’ve never really tried to make it work properly. Only by admitting what’s wrong and applying rigorous science can we find out if it’s salvageable.
“But the current system runs on conflicts of interest. The people defending it either don’t understand it or profit from keeping it broken. Unless there is a change in attitude among companies, governments, and organisations such as the UN, the market is likely to continue prioritising convenience over integrity.”
This Author
Monica Piccinini is a regular contributor to The Ecologist and a freelance writer focused on environmental, health and human rights issues.