Children's Health Defense By
By Brett Wilkins
Most carbon offset schemes significantly overestimate their impact on reducing deforestation, with many of the carbon credits purchased by polluting corporations amounting to little more than “hot air,” according to a researcher behind a study released Thursday that could portend billions of dollars in losses for speculators.
“Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) projects are intended to decrease carbon emissions from forests to offset other carbon emissions and are often claimed as credits to be used in calculating carbon emission budgets,” explains the study, which was published in the journal Science.
However, according to the study:
“We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed. …
