TY - JOUR
T1 - Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation
AU - West, Thales A.P.
AU - Wunder, Sven
AU - Sills, Erin O.
AU - Börner, Jan
AU - Rifai, Sami W.
AU - Neidermeier, Alexandra N.
AU - Frey, Gabriel P.
AU - Kontoleon, Andreas
PY - 2023/8/25
Y1 - 2023/8/25
N2 - Carbon offsets from voluntary avoided-deforestation projects are generated on the basis of performance in relation to ex ante deforestation baselines. We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed. This reflects differences between the project ex ante baselines and ex post counterfactuals according to observed deforestation in control areas. Methodologies used to construct deforestation baselines for carbon offset interventions need urgent revisions to correctly attribute reduced deforestation to the projects, thus maintaining both incentives for forest conservation and the integrity of global carbon accounting.
AB - Carbon offsets from voluntary avoided-deforestation projects are generated on the basis of performance in relation to ex ante deforestation baselines. We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed. This reflects differences between the project ex ante baselines and ex post counterfactuals according to observed deforestation in control areas. Methodologies used to construct deforestation baselines for carbon offset interventions need urgent revisions to correctly attribute reduced deforestation to the projects, thus maintaining both incentives for forest conservation and the integrity of global carbon accounting.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85168725180&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85168725180&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/8cbcf426-84cc-3d57-a3d1-e03784e31d9f/
UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/2301.03354
U2 - 10.1126/science.ade3535
DO - 10.1126/science.ade3535
M3 - Article
C2 - 37616370
SN - 1095-9203
VL - 381
SP - 873
EP - 877
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 6660
ER -