In the Name of the Climate: Extractive Capitalism and the Forest Carbon Offsets Market in the AmazonAbstract
The aim of this article is to analyze Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies and projects in Brazil, particularly in the Amazon; the main players involved; and implications for the climate, the communities involved and our understanding of the issue. In addition to an analysis of documents from the Brazilian government, business organizations and REDD certification standards, the text is based on fieldwork carried out with communities affected by REDD and advisory organizations in the states of Acre and Pará. The work is based on the categories of socio-ecological modernization, financialization of nature and environmentalization. The research mapped out 111 REDD+ projects in Brazil and analyzed complaints on 16 of them. The results indicate that policies based on forest carbon offsets and the carbon market do not contribute to reducing deforestation, generate territorial conflicts and intensifies extractive capitalism in the Amazon.
Keywords:
REDD+; forest carbon offsets; Amazon; carbon market; climate
Resumo
O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar as políticas e projetos de Redução das Emissões por Desmatamento e Degradação Florestal (REDD+) no Brasil, em particular na Amazônia; os principais agentes envolvidos; e algumas implicações para o clima, as comunidades envolvidas e a nossa concepção sobre a problemática. Além da análise de documentos do governo brasileiro, de organizações empresariais, de certificadoras de projetos de REDD, o texto se baseia em trabalhos de campo realizados com comunidades afetadas por REDD e organizações de assessoria no Acre e no Pará. O trabalho é fundamentado nas categorias de modernização socioecológica, financeirização da natureza e ambientalização. Foram mapeados 111 projetos de REDD+ no Brasil e analisadas denúncias a respeito de 16 desses. Os resultados indicam que políticas baseadas na compensação florestal e no mercado de carbono não contribuem para reduzir o desmatamento, geram conflitos nos territórios e possibilitam uma intensificação do capitalismo extrativista na Amazônia.
Palavras-chave:
REDD+; compensação de carbono florestal; Amazônia; mercado de carbono; clima
Resumen
Este artículo analiza políticas y proyectos de Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación de los Bosques (REDD+) en Brasil, especialmente en la Amazonia; los principales agentes implicados; y algunas implicaciones para el clima, las comunidades implicadas y nuestra concepción del tema. Junto al análisis de documentos del gobierno brasileño, de organizaciones empresariales y de certificadoras de proyectos REDD, el texto se basa en estudios de campo realizados con comunidades afectadas por REDD y organizaciones asesoras en Acre y Pará. El trabajo se basa en las categorías de modernización socioecológica, financiarización de la naturaleza y ambientalización. Se mapearon 111 proyectos de REDD+ en Brasil y se analizaron denuncias sobre 16 de ellos. Los resultados indican que las políticas basadas en la compensación forestal y en el mercado de carbono no contribuyen a reducir la deforestación, generan conflictos en los territorios y permiten una intensificación del capitalismo extractivista en la Amazonia.
Palabras-clave:
REDD+; compensación del carbono forestal; Amazonia; mercado de carbono; clima
Introduction
“Brazil is an environmental powerhouse and today the focus of the international community is on the Amazon”
David Feffer, Suzano’s President, 2023
The recognition of the “climate emergency” has led to several sociotechnical and socio-political processes that transform environmental criticism into an opportunity for accumulation and legitimization. Although it has been proven that the main causes of climate change, i.e. the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, and other socio-environmental problems such as rural conflicts, are related to extractive capitalism, especially the hydro-agro-energy-mineral complex (GIRARDI, 2024; INFLUENCEMAP, 2024), proposals based on climate ideals such as the forest carbon offsets market, alongside the development discourse, are, in practice, linked to new dynamics of this complex. Here we are interested in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism in the Amazon and its relations with the carbon market.
Internationally, the carbon market, defined as a “flexibilization mechanism”, was approved in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, with the aim of reducing the cost of tackling the climate crisis for those involved. Instead of reducing emissions to meet the target, it is possible to buy carbon credits generated by other companies whose emissions are lower than the fixed target. This led to the emergence of the cap-and-trade system and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); the latter covering projects that reducing or removing CO2 from the atmosphere, such as hydroelectric and wind power plants.
The inclusion of forests, or rather avoided deforestation known as REDD, in the Conferences of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began in 2005. Forests were presented as carbon stocks, making it possible to avoid measures to reduce emissions, mainly in the industrialized countries of the North, while at the same time announcing economic and political benefits for the Global South. It is a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) designed to remunerate those that keep their forests standing, to avoid emissions associated with deforestation and degradation. REDD+ also includes public and private investments in management, conservation, and increasing forest carbon stocks.
Impasses have arisen in the negotiations, such as whether or not to allow financing through the carbon market; the construction of so-called jurisdictional REDD under the power of national and/or sub-national governments involving results based payments, as a counterpoint to the problems identified in voluntary/private projects; whether or not to allow offsets, i.e. countries and/or corporations to use credits generated by REDD to offset their emissions and thus meet their targets; the methodology of accounting for the credits generated, traded and offset; and the need for safeguards to guarantee what have become known as co-benefits for communities.
A milestone in this process was the Paris Agreement of the 21st COP in 2021, which established that Parties must adopt measures to conserve greenhouse gas (GHG) sinks, including forests; encourages Parties to have results-based-payments measures, including REDD+; and the possibility of ensuring “a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks” in the second half of this century (UNITED NATIONS, p. 2015, p.4). This language led to the concept of “net zero emissions” or “carbon neutrality”; of the total emissions, one reduces where possible, balancing the rest with an “offset”. Article 6 establishes the Sustainable Development Mechanism (SDM), replacing the CDM; the Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) mechanism, the carbon market; as well as non-market cooperation mechanisms (FURTADO, 2021).
Nationally, even before the National Climate Change Plan of December 2008, which was updated in 2013, market and offsets mechanisms were developed as a way of tackling climate change. These initiatives range from national policies, such as the PES law and the construction of a National REDD+ Strategy, to studies on the creation of a national carbon market; sub-national policies, most notably the 2010 Acre Environmental Services Incentive System (SISA, in Portuguese); and private initiatives such as the Environmental Exchange of Rio de Janeiro (BVRio) created in 2012 (FURTADO, 2015).
The 2012 Forest Code also makes progress in consolidating a forestry market, conceptualizing carbon credits as “rights over intangible and incorporeal tradable assets” and providing for the possibility of PES for activities involving the maintenance of Permanent Preservation Areas, Legal Reserves and Restricted Use Areas (MPPA, 2023).
In January 2023, conservationist organizations such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resource Institute (WRI) launched the guide: “Tropical Forest Credit Integrity Guide for Companies”. The Guide presents actions to improve the legal security and governance of forest carbon credit programs and strategies to reduce the reputational risks attributed to the acquisition of carbon credits. These risks are related to flaws in project certification standards, such as the lack of recognition and participation of indigenous peoples and communities, and the guarantee of positive impacts and benefit sharing (COICA et al., 2022). Management theorists define “reputation” as an intangible business asset resulting from society’s perception of firms’ commitment to laws and regulations and the reliability of corporate practices. Behind reputation, companies see the possibility of securing long-term profits by avoiding losses in the face of events that compromise their image. Reputational capital in this case, refers to the ability of corporations and capitalism itself to present themselves as committed to protecting the environment (BOISTEL, 2014).
In August 2023, the Brazilian federal government approved the “Ecological Transition Plan” as part of the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC, in Portuguese), with the main objective of increasing national economic productivity, integrated with environmental sustainability actions and environmental services. With the aim of making Brazil the planet’s greatest environmental force, the first line of action is to strengthen sustainable finances, regulate the carbon market and create a national sustainable taxonomy (BRASIL, 2023).
On October 4, 2023, the Senate’s National Environment Commission approved the Bill that regulates the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the carbon market, in Brazil. The mechanism will play a key role in meeting Brazil’s emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement and includes the construction of a national REDD policy. This strengthens an architecture in which the so-called environmental services and the forest and biodiversity offsets market are the main vectors for mitigating climate change.
The implications of these processes for territories and for the climate, however, are not widely publicized. Organizations that monitor the issue, such as the World Forest Movement (WRM, 2018, 2020, 2023) and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT, in Portuguese) (2024), warn of territorial conflicts and the harassment increasingly suffered by indigenous, campesino and traditional peoples and communities. They highlight the risks related to offsets, which allows companies to avoid modifying their practices while selling the image of agents concerned about the climate and forest peoples. The press has denounced conflicts around REDD projects ranging from those involving the Munduruku people in 2012, which led to the cancellation of the contract, to the use of public and quilombola lands in Pará to sell carbon credits to multinationals (CARNEIRO; SETA; VOCCIO, 2023). Other studies analyzing REDD projects in indigenous territories also point to implications regarding changes in the relationship between these communities and their environment, the impediment to freely carrying out their traditional practices, the lack of knowledge and consent on the part of the communities and of their participation in the formulation and implementation of the projects, the perpetuation of unequal power relations and the generation of intra-community conflicts (HACON, 2013, 2018; ALKMIN, 2023).
Most of these processes are in the Amazon, often justified by the narrative of the need to “save the region” and its supposed ability to “save the planet”. As Rio de Janeiro’s former green economy secretary, Suzana Kahn (apud FURTADO, 2015, p.163), argued, these states “depend on carbon credits to keep the forest standing”, as “they need to make money from the forests, or they’ll have to do something else since they won’t want to keep them for free”, while corporations from the global North and the Brazilian Southeast need a “package of kindness” because “it doesn’t make sense to squeeze them too much to the point where they will prefer to set up in another state or import. We don’t want to have too much of an impact on companies’ costs”.
In the context of the intensification of the forest carbon market under the current government, and with an eye on COP 30 in 2025 in Pará, this article aims to identify the main REDD+ policies and projects in Brazil and the players involved, as well as to analyze their implications for the climate, for the communities involved and for our understanding of the problem, its causes and the attribution of responsibilities. Our starting point is the understanding that social problems are constructed in such a way as to contain their solution within them. Thus, the construction of a narrative that lists the decarbonization of the economy as a priority for mitigating climate impacts and the definition of forests as “carbon stocks”, leads to the construction and legitimization of projects such as REDD+ as essential vectors for tackling the problem.
In addition to analyzing documents from the Brazilian government, business organizations and REDD certification standards, the text is based on fieldwork carried out with communities affected by REDD in Acre and Pará and advisory organizations over the last 10 years (FAUSTINO; FURTADO, 2015; FURTADO, 2017). We draw particular attention here to a broader mapping effort published in early 2024 named “In the name of the climate: A critical mapping of energy transition and the financialization of nature” and activities carried out in February 2024 in the state of Acre, including meetings with the state, organizations such as the CPT, professors from the Federal University of Acre (UFAC) and visits, collective meetings and individual interviews with communities involved in the Valparaíso and Russas REDD+ projects in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul (PAIM; FURTADO, 2024; CPT, 2024). It is also based on bibliographical references on socio-ecological modernization, financialization of nature, and environmentalization. The following section 2 analyzes REDD policies and initiatives in the Amazon region, highlighting project proponents, certification standards, conservationists NGOs and companies that purchase carbon credits. Next, section 3 looks at conflicts and other implications such as the ongoing construction of the concept of “nature”. We end with conclusions.
REDD+ in the Brazilian Amazon
National Policies
Since REDD appeared in the international debate, private/voluntary projects have been expanding across the Global South. Many have been denounced for failing to reduce deforestation and for generating conflicts with communities. In response to these accusations, the idea of jurisdictional REDD began to emerge, and several Brazilian states, even before a national regulation was in place, began to develop their own systems. An example is the state of Acre, which in 2010 created the Environmental Services Incentive System (SISA, in Portuguese). SISA received funding from the German government’s REDD Early Movers (REM) program, through the German Development Bank, KfW, and GIZ, and from the United Kingdom, aiming to reward REDD “pioneers”. After Acre, the program was expanded to Mato Grosso. All the states of the Legal Amazon now have jurisdictional REDD.
Works produced on the implications of the systems in Acre and Mato Grosso reveal an inability to reduce deforestation and contain predatory actions by agribusiness; support for actions unrelated to reducing deforestation; problematic relations with indigenous and traditional peoples; as well as double counting of avoided emissions. These relate to failures in planning and assumptions that do not hold up (FAUSTINO; FURTADO, 2015; FURTADO, 2018; KILL, 2018).
In addition to these sub-national systems, the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF) Coalition was created in 2021 by the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Norway, in partnership with private companies interested in carbon credits. The aim is to channel resources to governments in countries with tropical forests through the purchase of jurisdictional REDD+ credits. Participants include multinationals such as Amazon, Bayer, Walmart, Unilever and Nestlé, and conservationists NGOs such as WWF, TNC and Forest Trends (LEAF, 2023). Eight Brazilian governments in the Legal Amazon have submitted proposals to provide forest carbon credits to the Coalition: Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Roraima and Tocantins. Amapá, Amazonas, Pará and Mato Grosso have already signed a letter of intent with Emergent, the organization that coordinates LEAF, for the transaction of credits, and Acre has signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
In June of this year, the Government of Tocantins (2023) signed an agreement with Mercuria Energy Trading S/A to undertake the project to qualify and certify the state’s Jurisdictional REDD+ Program. In September, Tocantins received the first part of the funding, R$7 million out of a total of R$20 million committed by Mercuria (QCINTEL, 2023). If this goes ahead, Tocantins will be the first Brazilian state to trade carbon credits on the voluntary market.
At the federal level, in 2015 Brazil launched its National REDD+ Strategy which, differently from the approach of private projects, operates on results-based-payments. The National REDD+ Commission (CONAREDD+), a governance system composed of the federal government, states, the private sector and civil society organizations, was paralyzed in 2019 during the Bolsonaro administration, but resumed in October 2023 by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The resumption of CONAREDD+ certainly represents an important political and economic framework for strengthening REDD projects in the Brazilian Amazon. It also aims to consolidate the government’s position on updating strategies at the national level, especially on the issues of national accounting and safeguards; influencing the states for better alignment; expansion to all Brazilian biomes; and the role of conservationists NGOs in drawing up consensus in society, and the private sector, with the construction of its own taxonomies based on certification standards.
Regulation of the Brazilian carbon market has been one of the main issues. Bill 2229/2023 creates the Brazilian Emissions Trading System (SBCE, in Portuguese), setting the emission limit at 25,000 tons of carbon equivalent/year. The Bill stipulates that companies receive emission quotas: those that emit less have quotas of avoided emissions that they can sell to those that emit more, which they can offset by buying credits from the regulated or voluntary carbon market (BRASIL, 2023). The Bill was unanimously approved by the Senate Environment Committee in October 2023 and by the Chamber of Deputies in December 2023. The Senate will discuss the regulation again in 2024.
The Bill opens the possibility for the voluntary supply of carbon credits through environmental programs and contemplates the commercialization of carbon reduction or removal certificates from indigenous and traditional territories. Conservation units, settlement projects and undesignated public forests will also have this possibility. The National REDD+ Jurisdictional System is also part of the Bill, but the interaction between sub-national programs, the national program and private projects has not yet been specified. The carbon market is expected to earn Brazil a total of R$577.2 billion by 2030 (CNN BRASIL, 2023).
It is important to note that, despite the participation of meatpackers, “agribusiness” was left out of this proposal (G1, 2023). It should be remembered, however, that the sector is active in various other processes of financialization of nature, such as green bonds issued by companies to, in theory, finance activities that bring climate and environmental benefits (GRAIN, 2021). The process that has been called the financialization of nature can be defined in short as the transformation of natural processes into assets and their insertion into the financial market, or, in a broader way, as the use of financial language to define aspects of nature. Here we are concerned with the process of growing influence of financial actors, institutions and ideas on society’s perception and approach to nature, as well as the incorporation of so-called environmental justifications by financial capital into its procedures; a process also analyzed as the environmentalization of financial capital (FURTADO, 2015; KILL, 2014; LOHMANN, 2012). This characterization seeks to place the environmental issue within a historical context of the development of capitalism, shifting the focus of the problem of “nature” to the state, corporations and financial agents. We are interested in understanding how, why and the effects of this environmentalization of capital.
Voluntary REDD+ Market in the Amazon
Alongside the regulated REDD+ and carbon market initiatives, voluntary market projects are advancing. While the regulated carbon market is linked to countries’ GHG emission reduction targets and official mechanisms such as the Paris Agreement or regional systems, the voluntary market was created with the intention of being more accessible to companies, NGOs, individuals and governments wishing to voluntarily reduce or offset their emissions. For carbon credits to be sold on this market, it was necessary to create international certification standards, governed by so-called “independent mechanisms”. The role of these mechanisms is fundamental as they attest that a given project has effectively reduced emissions or removed carbon from the atmosphere and can therefore generate carbon credits. They are responsible for assessing, validating, certifying and monitoring the projects, as well as issuing carbon credits.
Existing REDD+ projects in Brazil are certified by three mechanisms: Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards (CCB) and Cercarbono. Both the VCS and the CCB are administered by Verra, created in 2007 and based in Washington, USA. It is classified as a non-profit organization, but receives US$0.20 per carbon credit issued (VERRA, 2023). In 2021 it earned revenues of US$40.5 million, almost double the previous year (US$20.8 million) (PROPUBLICA, 2023).
VCS is the most widely used program in the voluntary market in the world, with more than 2,000 projects in 95 countries. Besides the VCS, Verra is also responsible for the CCB, an additional standard that certifies that projects have benefits not only for the climate, but also for communities and biodiversity. Projects with the CCB standard charge an additional fee; there are more than 45 projects with CCB certification in more than 48 countries.
At the end of 2022, Verra was responsible for 64% of all carbon offsets in the world (WRM, 2023). This is relevant when we consider that in 2023 two investigations revealed problems with credits issued by Verra: the first, published by The Guardian, pointed out that 94% of the credits marketed by Verra did not bring any benefits for the climate, constituting “ghost credits”, and that the threat of deforestation was overestimated by an average of 400% in the projects registered with the standard (GREENFIELD, 2023). In May, Verra’s CEO, David Antonioli, resigned. Another study carried out by the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project indicates that the credits generated by Verra represent only a small fraction of the climate benefits claimed (HAYA et al., 2023).
Cercarbono is a Colombian standard created in 2016, issuing its first certifications in 2019. There are currently 164 projects registered with Cercarbono in 14 countries, 23 of which are in Brazil (21 REDD+ projects, one Afforestation, Reforestation & Revegetation (ARR) project and one waste handling and disposal project). In Brazil, the majority involve indigenous lands.
We mapped 111 private REDD+ projects in Brazil, distributed as shown in figure 1. They cover approximately 18 million hectares. Pará and Amazonas lead the number of projects in the country, totaling 31 and 28 projects, with the highest percentage of hectares, representing around 44% and 21% of the total, respectively.
Of the 111 REDD+ projects in Brazil, 94 either already have or are in the process of obtaining the VCS standard, 41 of which are also inscribed on the CCB standard, totaling almost 12 million hectares, located in 13 states and the Legal Amazon. Of the 94 projects listed in Verra, 16 are registered and 6 are in the process of renewing their registration; four are in Pará and five in Amazonas. Another 31 are under validation; eleven have requested registration and verification validation; nine have requested registration and four have been put on hold. 17 projects are still under development, the first stage of the registration process. One of Verra’s projects, located in Pará and previously registered, is currently inactive. Another four projects, which were in the validation phase, have been withdrawn by the proponents. Of these, three were proposed by Future Carbon Holding. According to a document sent to Verra, the projects were withdrawn due to the identification of environmental charges and liabilities that conflict with the company’s guidelines and inconsistencies in the real estate records of the property where the project would be located.
Up until March 2024, Verra’s projects had already issued 67.1 million carbon credits, considering projects currently registered, in the process of renewing their registration, on hold and inactive, of which 37.8 million were sold to companies and individuals looking to offset their emissions. Among the buyers of the credits are companies such as Bradesco, Santander, Banco BTG, Uber, AirFrance, Delta Airlines, Latam, TotalEnergies, TIM, Lojas Renner, Lojas Americanas, iFood, Bayer, among others. The other 17 projects are listed in Cercarbono and total around 5.9 million hectares in 5 states. Of these, 7 projects are already registered and, as of March 2024, had issued 24.9 million credits, of which around 17,000 had been sold. Four projects that were previously listed on the platform have been discontinued, with no information as to why.
It is worth noting that in 2015, a survey showed that there were only 26 REDD+ projects in the Amazon (FAUSTINO; FURTADO, 2015). Now, with 111 projects listed in certification standards, it is possible to see an expansion of these projects in the region, in a context of a lack of information and absence of prior, free and informed consultations with communities and negligence on the part of the state.
Implications of REDD+ in the Amazon
In contradiction to the dominant argument, REDD projects have not reduced deforestation or generated co-benefits for communities. Of the 111 projects mapped, it was possible to find reports of denunciations for 16, as shown in figure 2. All are listed in the VCS and 13 also in the CCB.
Most of the conflicts reported indicate the communities’ lack of understanding of the project; an increase in land conflicts and internal disputes; changes to and criminalization of ways of life due to bans on traditional activities to keep the “forest standing”; as well as threats to the communities.
On a recent visit to the communities affected by the Valparaíso and Russas projects in Acre, we highlight the resulting land conflict. Proponents of the projects are claiming ownership of areas where approximately 180 families have lived for over 100 years. Ilderlei Souza Rodrigues Cordeiro, in the case of Russas, and Manoel Batista Lopez, in the case of Valparaíso, have not shown any documents proving private ownership. INCRA’s initial survey revealed that the Lopes family had an area of only 3,850 hectares and not 28,096 as stated in the Project. However, some families have already abandoned their land, and others are being pressured to sign a loan agreement, which makes it impossible to claim usucaption. The communities also denounced unfulfilled promises and implications for production and, therefore, food security. The hiring of people from the communities themselves by the proponents to act as “inspectors”, reporting any activity seen as irregular, has caused internal conflicts. Meetings are held with the presence of the police and the use of weapons; families that have built houses have been forced to demolish them; and others have had their work and hunting tools seized. The communities live in a state of insecurity, threat and uncertainty, without receiving any benefits (CPT, 2024).
Also in Acre, the Envira REDD+ Project imposes restrictions on land use by settler families. In March 2018, the families revealed that they were unaware that the project had been registered and was selling credits, and claimed that the promised benefits had not been fulfilled (WRM, 2018). By March 2024, the project had issued almost 12 million credits, of which 6.3 million were sold to companies such as Delta AirLines, Banco Bradesco, TotalEnergies Brasil and American Express. In September 2023, Petrobras announced the launch of Brazil’s first “carbon neutral gasoline”, Gasolina Podium, offsetting carbon by purchasing 175,000 credits from Envira on the voluntary market (EPBR, 2023). In the second week of October, in its first carbon credit operation on the international market, Banco do Brasil bought 5,000 carbon credits from the Project, operated on the secondary market by the French bank BNP Paribas (PODER360, 2023).
Pará, the state with the highest level of deforestation in the Amazon, is also where most of the conflicts reported are located. All are listed with the VCS and five with the CCB. Four of the projects have already been registered by Verra and another two are under development. The Jari/Pará project, proposed by Biofílica Investimentos Ambientais in partnership with the company Jari Celulose, which was registered by Verra in 2020, has been put on hold following denunciations. Biofílica is a company founded in 2008 that specializes in developing forest carbon projects and has, in addition to the Jari/Pará Project, nine other REDD+ projects in Brazil, including one developed with Jari Celulose in Amapá. The Jari/Pará project was investigated and denounced by the state prosecutor, Ibraim Rocha, for including public lands (CABETTE, 2023; ANTUNES, 2023). As a result of the denunciation, Verra suspended the issuing of new carbon credits by the project. Until then, it had issued around 2.1 million credits, of which almost 1.3 million had been sold. In the project documents, families of small farmers and extractivists are identified as “agents of deforestation”, held responsible for deforestation in the region.
Another case involving the sale of credits on public lands is the Ecomapuá Project, located on Marajó Island, proposed by Sustainable Carbon and Ecomapuá Conservação. According to Agência Pública, the carbon credits sold by the project fell within the Mapuá and Terra Grande-Pracuúba Extractive Reserves (RESEX), and the project’s legitimacy was contested by the communities. The residents of the RESEXs filed a lawsuit against the proponents and the companies that bought its credits, multinationals such as Santander, Barilla, AirFrance and Deloitte (ANJOS, 2022).
A study carried out by WRM (2022) on the Pacajaí REDD+, Rio Anapu-Pacajá REDD, RMDLT Portel-Pará REDD and Ribeirinho REDD+ projects, in the municipality of Portel, Pará, points out that of the 714,000 hectares included in the projects by the proponents, which occupy 28% of the municipality, at least 200,000 are overlapping with state extractive settlement lands. The three registered projects issued 23.4 million carbon credits, of which 12.5 million were sold.
In the case of Ribeirinho REDD+, in which the 1251 affected families appear as proponents and which is the only one of the four projects not yet registered, WRM (2022) indicates that these families apparently did not give legal authorization to participate in the project. The families are said to have signed “a piece of paper” allowing a Rural Environmental Registry (CAR, in Portuguese) to be created in their names and which promised that they would receive a stove, a basic food basket and/or training, but with no mention of the REDD project or the generation of carbon credits. The CAR was then used to apply for registration with Verra for the four projects in Portel. At the end of January this year, Pará’s Environment and Sustainability Secretariat canceled 219 and suspended 735 CARs linked to carbon contracts (ANTUNES, 2023).
In September 2023, the three registered Portel projects were put on hold by Verra for a review process following “stakeholder comments”. Although they cannot issue new credits until the process is completed, credits issued before the suspension can still be traded.
In addition to the absence of land regularization, agrarian reform and policies aimed at guaranteeing the autonomy of campesino, indigenous and traditional peoples and communities in Brazil, these conflicts are directly related to the premises on which REDD+ is based. Communities, socially constructed groups that share relationships and ways of experiencing the territory, culture and knowledge, are transformed into service providers. To participate in the project, they are represented as individual actors, homogeneous entities that are naturally born. At the same time, the services provided need to be identified and defined in a measurable way.
The definition of participation and representation structures and methodologies chosen by project proponents is based on a lack of information, as indicated by the community members interviewed. The choice of individuals closest to the project to convince others ends up strengthening community power structures or exacerbating pre-existing conflicts. The idea that a project is implemented based on the voluntarism of a community is problematic because it homogenizes different opinions and hides processes of coercion (MILNE; ADAMS, 2012). Threats range from claims that everyone in the community already agrees with the project, that the community will be left without the territory or convincing the community that it is committing an environmental crime. This last issue is related to the definition of the community as agents of deforestation and, after joining the project, as conservationists. This is necessary to establish the criteria for a defined environmental service: deforestation avoided by the agents of deforestation. In doing so, they hold communities responsible for environmental problems.
This is a solution to a problem that has been formatted in advance, without the involvement of communities. The simplistic nature of a particular Western knowledge predominates, and therefore a definition of what the forest is, what the threats to biodiversity are and how the underlying social relations occur, so that this service is perceived in contrast to the perspectives of indigenous and traditional peoples. The process of quantification and financialization eliminates the complexity, not only of the concepts of biodiversity and forest, but also of the livelihoods and ways of life of the social groups defined as providers/co-beneficiaries (MILNE; ADAMS, 2012; KILL, 2014). This is an issue that safeguards fail to address; on the contrary, they end up legitimizing a process based on mistaken premises.
It is not surprising that the REDD policies and projects implemented in Brazil so far have not reduced deforestation in the Amazon. Data from IMAZON (2023), for example, reveals that deforestation in the Amazon forest tripled in March 2023, with the first quarter of the year representing the second largest area deforested in at least 16 years, second only to 2021. This reveals that, although many of the project documents point to communities as “agents of deforestation”, they are not the ones most responsible. The projects do not prevent deforestation and other environmental crimes carried out by landowners, agribusiness and other extractive capitalist corporations. This is also evident when we analyze the chain of agents involved in the projects: the project proponents, the certification standards and the credit buyers.
The role of the big conservationists NGOs is fundamental, as they not only work on drafting public policies, but also implement or coordinate projects. Acselrad (2010) characterizes these actions as “ecologism of results”, pragmatic and technicist; and MacDonald and Corson (2012) identify processes of containment of environmentalist criticism and the construction of a new model of accumulation based on the production and commercialization of environmental assets.
It is the logic of ecological modernization, a political-administrative response based on the assumption that the climate crisis can be overcome through technological and procedural innovation, market instruments and consensus building. It is also a socio-ecological modernization of capitalism, based on environmental ideals that highlight the importance of forests, traditional communities and their knowledge for climate protection, as long as they serve the interests of capital, but promoting an image of a corporate sector committed to tackling climate change and combating poverty (ACSELRAD, 2022).
There is also the notion of a decarbonization consensus; the idea that we are experiencing a new capitalist agreement, moving from the Washington Consensus, via the Commodities Consensus, to the Decarbonization Consensus. It represents ruptures in terms of a geopolitical repositioning and capitalist accumulation, but continuities in the extractive logic, of concentration, inequalities and conflicts. A process which, as a consequence of ecological imperialism, affects not only territories, but our perception of extractive capitalism and the possibilities for change; the relationship between society and nature; the role of communities, traditional peoples and the responsibility of the “Amazon” in the climate crisis (BRINGEL; SVAMPA, 2023). As such, capitalism creates a nature for the sake of capitalist accumulation and legitimization; a climatized nature (CASTREE, 2008; ULLOA, 2004, 2014).
Conclusions
In this article, we analyze the progress of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies and projects in Brazil, particularly in the Amazon, based on the role of the main players such as governments, companies, certification standards, and organizations, and their implications. In addition to a general mapping of the projects enrolled in the main carbon credits standards, particularly those managed by Verra, we carried out an analysis of reports presented in the field in Acre and Pará, the result of investigations by journalists, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and civil society organizations.
Based on the cases presented, we can argue that, with frustrated promises to contain deforestation and overcome the climate crisis, mechanisms such as REDD+ and the carbon market establish a set of measures that seek to feed back into extractive capitalism, expanding market instruments and their legitimization. They offer a pre-established guide based on broad terms for governments and communities on the criteria to be followed for the conservation and effective protection of forests and their respective territories. At the same time, they generate new territorial configurations to allow for the appropriation and corporate use of territories. It also places indigenous and traditional peoples, their territories and “resources” as central to the debate, recognizing their contribution to biodiversity, but by inserting them into the mercantile logic, denying their representations in conceptual elaborations and public policies.
Thus, the resolution of the problems generated by extractive capitalism is shifted elsewhere. The structural responsibilities of the dominant agents are concealed, recognizing some of the effects of their actions, but affirming the possibility of offsetting them by buying rights to destroy through the carbon market. Offsets often result in the expansion of private land appropriation, if not land grabbing, representing a new global race for land and territory.
It is therefore the incentives to protect the forests of the Global South that receive particular treatment in the global climate regime, especially from the so-called climate risk managers, hosts of financial markets and members who sit at the tables of international climate agreements. The path destined for these countries is the same as in the recent past: to serve as spaces for the extraction of value; of economic, financial, political, and ecological subordination and dependence. The role assigned to the states of the Global South in the decarbonized economy, along the lines proposed by the global climate regime, does not present any innovative strategies. Contrary to what is advocated, states and governments have been assigned the responsibility of building a regulatory framework to correct supposed market failures. In the process, a new “climatized” nature is created, one that transforms subjectivities, identities and social practices, reoriented towards the reproduction and legitimation of capitalist development.
Once again, the “Amazon” and its peoples, seen as homogeneous, are not given the right to speak for themselves. From pristine nature, a land without people, an inexhaustible source of natural resources, to the savior of the planet. Dercy Telles, a rubber tapper from the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre, affirms: “They put this issue of climate change into our heads like a psychological terror. As if only rubber tappers preserving the forest were enough to solve the world’s climate problem.”
With this research, therefore, we seek to understand and problematize the policies and mechanisms being built and legitimized in the name of climate. Policies and mechanisms that don’t reduce deforestation; don’t benefit communities; and generate conflicts in various rural territories: “we’re back to being enslaved labor so that capitalism can continue working as usual,” said a quilombola affected by a PES project. Now in the name of the climate.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Rosa Luxemburgo Foundation and the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support in the State of Rio de Janeiro (Faperj) for supporting our field research, and the communities and advisory organizations that welcomed us.
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
29 Nov 2024 -
Date of issue
2024
History
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Received
17 Oct 2023 -
Accepted
13 May 2024
Font: Prepared by the authors based on Verra (2024) and Cercarbono (2024)