Unfortunately, cheating is quite common among carbon projects. Complex protocols and murky documents enable people to make easy profits without taking effective climate action. Here, we present a list of the ways green forestry projects might be manipulated and some examples of where that has already happened. These manipulations risk the integrity of the whole carbon credits market on top of the ability to effectively combat climate change.
1. Reference regions: Reference regions are established to create a "what if" scenario that describes the future of the land without the project’s presence. Credits are issued based on the improvement achieved compared to that reference region. People use this tool to cheat by choosing analogs in places that are not representative of the project region. This is especially true for Avoided Deforestation (AD) projects. From choosing a reference region that is miles away from the project to choosing one that is very close but with a completely different biome or conservation status, there are multiple ways to cheat. Studies have shown that more than half of the reference regions used for forestry projects are unreliable and lead to the overestimation of issued carbon credits. 73% of Verra credits are unrealistic due to these manipulations, with some projects getting as much as three times the amount of credits they should be issued.
2. Gerrymandering: This word is commonly used to describe the practice of dividing electoral districts to favor one party over its rivals. In carbon projects, gerrymandering is done by choosing project boundaries that exclusively include areas that grant the issuance of a higher number of credits than average. For example, areas where trees are bigger or already protected, or areas that are very unlikely to be reached and deforested. These could be the banks of rivers, areas around streets and towns, or even small islands in the middle of the Amazon. This way of cheating mainly affects Improved Forest Management projects.
3. Planting trees for timber: At least half of projects on the market are sponsored by timber companies that would have planted those trees for profit anyways. That carbon would have been removed from the atmosphere even without the project, so there is no reason for selling credits for it. This happens because, for example, in the case of reforestation there are no explicit restrictions and checks for timber harvesting.
4. Manipulated deforestation maps: Deforestation is often tracked using maps produced by biased or unreliable organizations (i.e. by the Brazilian government or by the project’s owners themselves). Their maps will consistently be in disagreement with other maps made by academics, universities, NASA, or other independent groups, and consistently underestimate the extent of deforestation. This will make projects look like they are performing better than they are, and issue credits for more carbon than they are sequestering or storing.
5. Unrealistic IFM baselines: Baselines are a tool used to establish an alternate scenario. People create baselines for IFM that describe unrealistic practices such as clear-cutting in places where they are not the usual nor the most effective harvesting method. One example is Middlebury (ACR368), a project where they modeled a baseline describing the clear-cutting of trees around a recreational ski slope. Baselines are, again, manipulated to obtain a higher number of carbon credits.
6. Planting trees on land that used to be native rainforest: People sometimes clear-cut land that is a native rainforest to replant it and obtain carbon credits via reforestation projects. While this is theoretically not allowed, reality shows that it is an existing practice even in gold standard projects. These projects simply lie about the previous state of the land they are reforesting (saying, for example, it was degraded land). Without independent checks via satellite imagery, they not only get away with cutting down native trees but also get carbon credits (= money) for doing it.
7. Avoid re-verification: Projects need constant monitoring. If projects manage to delay or avoid verifications, they are not held accountable for their credits. Reverification happens every five years, but exemptions are granted in some cases (for example, Verra granted exemptions to Rio Preto REDD+ (VCS1503) due to COVID). This means that a project experiencing massive deforestation might continue to issue the same credits as before, leaving empty offsets on the market. Then, they might either wait for deforestation to stop before re-verifying, or find another way to avoid future verifications.
8. Enroll already protected land: Especially in the case of IFM projects, bodies such as the Nature Conservancy get credits by claiming that they are avoiding the clear-cutting of trees in already preserved areas. These projects fail to capture additional CO2. Nonetheless, they are sold on the market and used to offset “extra” and real pollution.
9. Trees that are not growing: Reforestation is hard and needs maintenance. There are instances of reforestation projects where trees simply did not take off after being planted. These failures are very often not declared. In the best-case scenario, this is done to use the money to try reforesting again, but it could simply have the goal of profit.
10. Project boundaries modified post-deforestation: Deforestation sometimes happens inside avoided deforestation projects. Admitting that some portion of the trees was lost would mean losing credits and credibility. Instead, project managers will cheat by redrawing the boundaries of the project so that they can exclude newly deforested areas and keep their project 100% successful. Another similar way to manipulate these AD projects is to verify only those areas that have been successfully protected.
These weak spots concern the market, not the forestry itself. Forestry is still the best and most scalable way to mitigate climate change today. Fortunately, there is a way to keep all these manipulations from happening: most of these shortcuts can be identified, denounced, and addressed with better monitoring and verification of projects. And there are a lot of good projects that deserve to be rewarded, like Manoa REDD+ VCS1571.
Monitoring transparently and going beyond the consultation of project summaries by using historical satellite imagery will already ensure that only good quality credits make their way onto the market so that firms and individuals that choose to make a difference don’t have to doubt the authenticity of what they are buying into.
These are only a few ways projects can cheat. For more, read our upcoming blog later this week, 11 More Ways Carbon Projects Cheat!
