Paper short abstract:

Carbon offsetting is morally controversial and its implications for climate change and development are disputed. Based on interviews with carbon offsetting practitioners, this paper situates development professionals' experiences and identities in the context of a cultural political economy.

Paper long abstract:

Advocates of carbon offsetting construe it as a form of development cooperation that produces low-carbon, sustainable progress in low and middle income countries. In contrast, critics highlight the tensions of a profit-oriented offset market that creates socio-ecological problems and reinforces unsustainable development.

Economic and technical constraints mean that it is difficult in practice to offset with meaningful benefits for the climate and for communities living near to projects. Professionals are constrained to follow least-cost options and encouraged to manipulate data in ways that undermine the environmental and developmental rationales for offsets. Rather, technical loopholes enable powerful actors to game the market, creating public socio-environmental harm for the sake of private economic gain.

Nevertheless, practitioners adeptly construct moral justifications and cultural narratives to present offsetting as an ethical activity, despite the evidence to the contrary, producing a form of cognitive dissonance. Stories of socio-environmental care serve multiple functions, including: the economic marketing of offset credits to private sector buyers; the political defence of offset markets to public sector policy-makers; and the soothing of psychological challenges facing practitioners who seek to reconcile their sense of an ethical identity with their employment status.

Thus, the creation of development myths and sustainability imaginaries serves political, economic and emotional purposes. This paper explores processes of moral justification and myth-making, locating them as components of the construction of a cultural hegemony that supports neoliberal visions of (un)sustainable development.