In response to the COP29 presidency ramming through rules on carbon markets on the first day of the COP29 U.N. climate talks, Rachel Rose Jackson, Director of Climate Research and Policy at Corporate Accountability released the following statement:
“We were told this was the so-called ‘finance’ COP. From day one, it is clearly the ‘false solutions’ COP. To begin COP29 by gavelling through risky and loophole-ridden rules on carbon markets before the formal negotiations even begin is not only a clear departure from protocol and precedent, it sends a clear signal to the world that people and the planet are not the priority. 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record. And COP29 is preparing to roast us.”
Earlier this year during the Bonn climate talks, Corporate Accountability not only updated a prior investigation with the Guardian finding that almost every one of the top 50 carbon offsets projects in the voluntary carbon market are “likely” or “potentially junk,” but also analyzed which major corporations are buying these “likely junk” offsets and in what volume. This analysis comes amid revelations that the value of the voluntary carbon market has dropped by as much as 61 percent, in part as a result of the spattering of global exposure and criticisms.
“Legitimizing a faulty mechanism that has been found time and time again to be unproven, risky, to cause harm, and simply not work is not the benchmark for a successful COP29. A successful COP must reject the carbon markets that are increasingly shown to serve only as a get-out-of-jail-free card for Big Polluters, and get serious about providing the long overdue funds to mediate the climate debt of Global North countries. Let’s be clear that this decision will have disastrous implications, beginning with the lives of those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis.”
