DCJ PRESS RELEASE:
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN, 20 NOV 24 – Stop selling us out! Governments have a last chance in the second week of COP29 to stop carbon markets – which will bulldoze forests, grab lands and contribute to climate breakdown. Carbon markets give new life to fossil fuels and expand emissions from big polluters. Countries in the Global South, and in particular vulnerable and racialized communities, will pay the price and bear the consequences of increasing devastating climate impacts.
The approval of carbon markets is a desperate and destructive move because there is no real public and adequate finance on the table for the Global South. Carbon markets are not climate finance. They line the pockets of corporations and cause conflict and dispossession in local communities. The carbon credit industry is riddled with conflict of interests and fraud.
The approval of carbon markets would be a sign of the moral and financial bankruptcy of the climate talks at the moment. We need real public, grant based finance for real and just solutions like community management of forests, food sovereignty and upholding the rights of peoples who practice them.
“Indonesia is suffering the impact of the climate crisis and affecting our forests. Carbon markets and other false solutions are only adding to false solutions in my country. Implementation of the market’s mechanisms have not solved the risks faced by environmental defenders. The government of Indonesia should demand compensation for the colonial occupation of our land, but they are doing the complete opposite by offering our minerals and other natural resources to multinational companies. Deforestation is moving towards the west of Indonesia, bringing injustice along with it.”
Agus Dwi Hastutik Walhi, Global Forest Coalition
“After 20 years of carbon markets schemes, have they contributed to the growth of communities? As stated by the UN Secretary General: companies should invest in reducing their own emissions instead of relying on global carbon markets schemes. The role of the organizations is to monitor the reduction of emissions in these negotiations: in Brazil and Colombia there have been no reductions, nor have funds been disbursed to the communities.”
Linda Gonzalez, CENSAT AGUA VIVA – Friends of the Earth Colombia
“The unprecedented bypass of procedure at this COP has passed 20 years of failed carbon markets which cause violation of rights of Indigenous peoples violation and land grabbing. Govts must end the era of carbon markets and offsetts and pricing. Mother earth cannot be sold to compensate for no action by big polluters.”
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
“These technologies are risky and give polluters a free pass to keep emitting and endangering our future. Its corporation vs humanity. We must denounce these dangerous interventions and this system of oppression. We say: decarbonise, decolonise!”
Yusuf Baluch, Alliance of Non-Governmental Radical Youth
“This is going to be the ‘False Solutions’ COP and if it is, it will be the failed COP. We still have time to stop this reckless and irresponsible approval of carbon markets. Governments have the power to do this. Communities everywhere and in fact the planet itself is on the line.”
Kirtana Chandrasekaran, Friends of the Earth International