Your report (Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows, 18 January) makes uncomfortable reading for enthusiasts of nature-based solutions to climate change. While forest protection should provide a win-win situation, benefiting both biodiversity and climate, it can too easily become lose-lose, because carbon offsets allow emissions to continue, worsening global heating and threatening not just forests but all natural ecosystems. The problem is that reliable quantification of the “additionality” of nature-based climate mitigation is near-impossible.
The answer is that ecosystem protection (and restoration, wherever possible) must become the default, not the add-on. Until that happens, any carbon trading based on natural processes should be limited to the offset of biologically based emissions, excluding those from fossil fuels.
Dr Phil Williamson
University of East Anglia
