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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Fiona Harvey Environment editor

Carbon offsets are flawed but we are now in a climate emergency

A burning area of Amazon rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in Pará state, Brazil.
A burning area of Amazon rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in Pará state, Brazil. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/AFP

At the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, governments around the world made a striking new pledge on saving the world’s forests. The $12bn (£9.8bn) commitment to protect and restore forests was hailed as a historic step – the “largest ever public climate finance pledge of its kind”, said the UK’s Lord Goldsmith.

Protecting forests, which store about 400 gigatonnes of carbon, is essential to staving off the worst ravages of the climate crisis, and keeping global temperatures to within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels.

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