Presentation short abstract

Preservation of The Market has superseded forest conservation as a global policy priority. At climate COP30, the carbon trading industry rejected UNFCCC experts' more scientifically stringent rules in favor of weak rules for 'nature-based' forest conservation that would preserve the industry itself.

Presentation long abstract

The ostensible goal of conserving tropical forests has long driven global environmental policy discourse. At the core of policy models for 'saving the Amazon' promoted in the UNFCCC by World Bank experts is the idea that forest conservation is possible insofar as it is made profitable enough to attract billions in private capital. This market-centric thinking has given rise to a carbon trading industry: agencies and companies that manage markets in carbon offsets and biodiversity credits and themselves depend upon such trading. Transnational trade in offsets is further justified by the theory that climate investments in the global South are a global conservation bargain. This approach has already failed: CDM and REDD+ projects financed by offset sales have achieved neither conservation or decarbonization gains nor substantial transfers of funds. The voluntary carbon market is in trouble, undermined by its own contradictions. Nevertheless, in the recent run-up to COP30, the carbon trading industry successfully pushed for weakened rules to support “nature based solutions” that would preserve the industry, rejecting more scientifically stringent rules proposed by the UNFCCC expert panel. Their arguments illustrate how preservation of “the market” has come to supersede preservation of forests as a policy priority. Those most vulnerable to losses from offsetting projects – local and indigenous communities, as well as governments in the global south – are portrayed as the main beneficiaries of transnational carbon trading, making the “opportunity to participate in the market” the prize for which low-income communities and debt-burdened states are urged to compete.