The Western Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing. The process is irreversible, according to two research teams from NASA and the University of Washington, and will eventually result in sea level rises of up to four metres over several hundred years.

The collapse is only the latest in a series of scientific findings indicating, yet again, that climate change is occurring more quickly than previously thought.

As more climate “tipping points” are reached and violent extreme weather events intensify, big corporations and governments will face mounting pressure to be seen to do something. “Carbon trading” has become a favourite corporate response to the climate crisis. The idea that it might be possible to save the environment while not disturbing business as usual, and even make some money on the side, has proven irresistible to corporations and governments.

Many of the world’s largest corporations claim they have implemented or are contributing to various carbon trading programs. For example, British Petroleum (BP), one of the kings of fossil fuel, has its own program called the BP Target Neutral Scheme.

The carbon market

There are two main types of carbon trading: “cap and trade” and “carbon offsets”. In cap and trade, companies are allocated or buy the right to emit a certain amount of carbon. They may be allocated a quota of carbon emission for a given activity – say smelting aluminium – and buy or sell carbon permits if they go over or under the quota. In offsetting, companies pay for schemes that are supposed to capture or reduce carbon emissions separately from their own operations. These schemes are supposed to “offset” that company’s own pollution. Large polluters like BP, airlines or electric companies sell “offsets” to consumers. Through its “Target Neutral” program, BP promises to “minimise the footprint” of its operations.

However, the independent research group Carbon Trade Watch has argued since 2007 that these schemes are more about public relations than the environment. “Carbon offsets are the modern day indulgences, sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sins”, the group claims.

“Scratch the surface, however, and a disturbing picture emerges, where creative accountancy and elaborate shell games cover up the impossibility of verifying genuine climate change benefits, and where communities in the South often have little choice as offset projects are inflicted on them.”

Exporting the problem

A carbon offset can be implemented anywhere in the world; most of the time it is in Third World countries due to cheap land and labour. Even if carbon offset programs worked as claimed, they would be mostly about moving carbon from one place to another (“offsetting” it), not preventing carbon from entering the atmosphere. It becomes another way that rich corporations can remove the environment problem from their backyard.

The newest offsetting trend is the so-called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). Founded at the 2008 United Nations climate summit in Bali, REDD is being rolled out across Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. It involves paying Third World governments to prevent deforestation and degradation of the environments they control.

Rich countries including Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Japan, Spain and Germany as well as the European Union are the main financial supporters of REDD. Other partners include the World Bank and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). Some funding comes from carbon trading and offset schemes.

The scheme claims to reduce emissions from projected future destruction and damage to forests and other environments by financing schemes to preserve them. The program targets forest, soil and agriculture and even waterways to trap carbon.

In 2007, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith launched a $100 million REDD program in Indonesia called the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership. The aim was to plant 100 million trees and rehabilitate 200,000 hectares of peat land on the island. Five years later, Professor Stephen Howes of the Australian National University found that just 50,000 seedlings – 0.05 percent of the target – had been planted.

According to the UN, REDD is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The UN perspective is based on reports which claim that reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries will amount to a 20 percent reduction in total carbon emissions. However, the Kalimantan example show us how ineffective REDD can be.

Attacks on the poor

REDD involves turning forests into national parks. This means people living in the forest lose their right to the land. Indigenous and forest-dependent people are not able to produce food there. Many communities have been forced to leave their land in this way.

In Kenya the Sengwer community are being forced from land they have been living on for centuries. More than 1,000 houses have been burned. The Kenyan government is sending the military, and the Kenyan forest service guards armed with AK-47 assault rifles, to force the Sengwer out. The government is expecting to receive the funding provided to the country through REDD.

In 2011, in Kicucula, Uganda, more than 20,000 people were evicted from their homes by police, according to the New York Times. Their houses were then set on fire in front of them. One of the villagers told the newspaper that the security officers would shoot if they refused to leave.

“REDD is no longer just a false solution but a new form of colonialism”, argues Nnimmo Bassey, Alternative Nobel Prize laureate and former executive director of ERA/Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

The Indigenous People’s Biocultural Climate Change Assessment, an international indigenous research initiative, says that REDD “is a neoliberal, market-driven approach that leads to the commodification of life and undermines holistic community values and governance. It is … driven by economic processes such as trade liberalisation and privatisation and by actors like the World Bank who have been responsible for the destruction of forests and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples all over the world. The concept of ‘Green Economy’ is a vehicle for promoting trends of commodification of nature.”

These are examples of what is happening in a world where everything is produced for profit. Climate change is becoming one of the biggest issues facing humanity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in April said that there must be a reduction of emissions by 40 to 70 percent by mid-century and to near zero emissions by the end of this century to prevent a temperature increase of 2 degrees.

We are living in an age where we have the knowledge and the facilities to develop a more sustainable way of living, but because a small part of society is benefiting from polluting the environment, no meaningful changes are being made.