If you’re still in doubt that carbon offsetting is a scam, just take a look at the latest hotshot carbon offset company, Blue Carbon, which is literally taking advice from a convicted fraudster who ran an Italian telecomms company into the ground.
Blue Carbon, a UAE-based carbon removal startup chaired by a senior member of Dubai’s ruling family, has recently acquired tens of millions of hectares of land in countries across the world, which it plans to conserve and use to sell carbon credits that other companies can buy to (supposedly) offset their CO2 emissions. The startup already has agreements with Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, Liberia, Pakistan, and Papua New Guinea.
So what’s the problem with carbon offsetting? To start, relying on offsets without addressing the source of the climate crisis (burning fossil fuels) is a harmful distraction that delays climate action.
“Investment in efforts to conserve forests is always welcome. However, the challenge is that conserving forests isn’t a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” Bangor University’s Julia Jones told Angela Dewan at CNN. “Globally, we need to both stop further loss of forests and drastically cut emissions. Using one to offset the other, without very substantial investment in reducing emissions, is problematic.” Given concerns that the UAE is trying to prolong the usage of fossil fuels, it doesn’t bode well that an Emirati royal is chairing a company investing so heavily in carbon offsetting projects that could help excuse continued oil and gas production.
Then there's the fact that some carbon offsetting projects have resulted in evictions of Indigenous people off their land. Justin Kenrick of Forest Peoples Programme told Dewan, “Those in control of Africa’s forests stand to earn a lot of money, and corporations appear to be pursuing a new ‘scramble for Africa.’ Meanwhile such ‘conservation’ in Kenya persists with a failed colonial approach of evicting the very communities who know best how to conserve their forests.”
In this way, carbon offsetting companies’ land buys are a form of neocolonialism, the practice of developed countries and transnational corporations indirectly exploiting and controlling developing countries. Green initiatives that siphon resources away from local Indigenous communities are at odds with the “just and environmentally responsible clean energy transition” that UAE spokespeople like Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber claim to support.
While it's possible that the UAE ends up advocating for transformative and just climate solutions for developing countries at COP28, recent reports that the petrostate has been using its influence as COP28 host to advocate for oil and gas deals certainly do not inspire confidence.
To make things worse, yet another serious problem with carbon offsets is that many companies lie about their carbon offsetting projects and sell credits that don’t actually reduce carbon in the atmosphere. “Some of the world’s biggest companies certifying carbon credits have been shown to use accounting methods that exaggerate their project’s true contribution to mitigating climate change,” Dewan explained.
It’s particularly difficult to believe that Blue Carbon will prove to be the exception here, given that one of the startup’s advisors, Samuele Landi, is a wanted criminal who seemingly fled to the UAE from Italy to avoid arrest (although he still claims to be innocent and attributes his international move to the vague motivation of “looking for more freedom”).
Matteo Civillini at Climate Home News revealed, “In Dubai, Landi is known as the owner of a cybersecurity firm devising fully encrypted phones. In his native country, Landi is a wanted man. He was convicted in two separate trials for a bankruptcy fraud that sank one of Italy’s largest telecommunications companies and left over 2,200 people without a job nearly 15 years ago.”
Given that Landi’s greatest experience seems to be in fraud, one can only imagine what type of despicable advice he is giving to Blue Carbon. We certainly hope that Blue Carbon has the best interests of the planet and Indigenous communities in mind, but we won’t be surprised if this venture turns out to be yet another disastrous carbon offsetting scam.
This COP, we must stay vigilant and push back against harmful and dishonest carbon credit schemes. As Rosebell Kagumire puts it in the New Internationalist, “At COP28, where carbon credit schemes are likely to be on the agenda, climate justice campaigners and affected communities face an uphill task to get their messages heard. The scramble to wrest ecological resources from the rightful Indigenous occupants of the land must be fought as those most affected push for greater commitments and actions towards a just energy transition.”