Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3535
Editor’s Summary:
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. West et al . compared the actual effects of these projects with measurable baseline values and found that most of them have not reduced deforestation significantly, and those that did had benefits substantially lower than claimed. Thus, most REDD projects are less beneficial than is often claimed.
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From the above article by West et al.
“If we replace the ex-ante baselines adopted by the projects with the deforestation observed in the SCs, our estimates suggest that only 5.4 million (6.1%) of the 89 million expected offsets from the REDD+ projects would be associated with additional carbon emission reductions.”
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