COP29 opens with rush for ‘False solutions’: Civil society decry carbon markets decision as win for Big Polluters and rich countries

Not even a day into the UNFCCC Climate negotiations (COP29) and the Presidency has rushed to push through a decision on carbon markets. Whilst rich countries and Big Polluters may prop this up as a success, civil society groups including Friends of the Earth International and Demand Climate Justice, condemn a decision that enables the continued emitting of carbon by Big Polluters, putting corporate profits above people and the planet.

“The gavelling through of carbon markets on the first day of COP29 is unacceptable and undermines the credibility of the whole process. Further, it is opening the floodgates for a global carbon market that will have devastating impacts on communities in the Global South, on Indigenous Peoples, and on small peasant farmers first and foremost. Carbon markets are not climate finance, and we cannot accept these neocolonial schemes to be propped up as a success of COP29 in lieu of paying the climate debt owed to the Global South.”

Lise Masson
Friends of the Earth International

As of yet, carbon markets have already had serious implications for communities in the Global South.

Carbon markets are not a solution to the climate crisis. They are fraught with fundamental problems that can never guarantee environmental integrity, and violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples. No matter what standards are adopted, they will never be able to control speculation and fraud. Timber companies in Malaysia have now become carbon market champions, harming the communities many times over, exposing the dubious nature of the system.”

Hilary Kung
Sahabat Alam Malaysia / Friends of the Earth Malaysia

Increasingly so, the defense of corporate profits over peoples finds its way into UN spaces, threatening the credibility of these negotiations and undermining the real solutions being demanded and implemented by communities everywhere.

“We are seeing, as at the CBD COP16 in Calí (Colombia), UN spaces plagued with false solutions that only demonstrate the power of corporations to maintain, deepen and expand their business spheres. Carbon markets and the whole logic of offsets are distractions and postponements of the urgent and fundamental changes that the world needs. Regulating false solutions like this only legitimizes and strengthens power systems that do not allow for system change.”

Tatiana Rodríguez Maldonado
CENSAT / Friends of the Earth Colombia

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Media contacts

Ghislaine Fandel // ghislaine@foei.org // Whatsapp/Signal +33 7 66 67 95 50 // @FoEint // in Baku 9-16 November // Remote 17-22 November