Carbon and Biodiversity Markets

Questions about the role of carbon and biodiversity markets (sometimes referred to by the umbrella term ‘nature markets’) in addressing the climate and nature crises are subject to significant debate both inside and outside intergovernmental climate and biodiversity negotiations. Main points of contention in these debates include: the fairness (or otherwise) of allowing Global North countries and large companies to buy their way out of taking substantive action on climate and biodiversity within their own boarders and value chains (so-called offsetting); to what extent, if at all, such markets can and will result in the reduction of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and the loss of global biodiversity in practice; and how to ensure these markets do not lead to violations of the rights of peoples and communities whose customary lands are being targeted for projects to generate carbon and biodiversity credits.

Why is it relevant to indigenous peoples and forest peoples?

Without strong protections for indigenous peoples’ and forest peoples’ rights, carbon and biodiversity markets pose significant risks of driving up land expropriation and land and forest enclosures in the name of climate and conservation projects and offsets. Many indigenous peoples and forest peoples have already reported a lack of effective consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) processes, in some cases leading to dispossession and eviction from their ancestral lands, in the development of carbon credit projects and programmes. Indigenous peoples and forest peoples, their communities and representative organisations are taking a range of approaches in response to this reality. Some completely reject the existence of nature markets as incompatible with their cosmologies. Others engage in standard setting processes under article 6 of the Paris Agreement and in voluntary carbon market initiatives seeking to push robust human rights protection into language and implementation of the fragmented systems of rules. Some are proactively developing their own models for territorial and forest protection and seeking financial support from public and private sector actors through the market space.