Voluntary Carbon Market: The Human Rights Violations behind the Multinational Companies’ Green Claims

Although Indigenous peoples have made the least contribution to climate change, they are the ones who suffer the most of its adverse impacts. Indigenous peoples also face the consequences of Western environmental policies imposed on them, such as carbon offsetting.

Carbon offsetting, which is inherently neo-colonial, involves multinational companies offseting their greenhouse gas emissions by investing in projects that reduce or remove carbon emissions. The vast majority of these projects are implemented in the Global South as a result from agreements between States and multinational corporations, without the consent of Indigenous peoples living in the area. The carbon offset industry is a clear example of how the current world-system organisation maintains relationships of domination that have impacts on the most vulnerable populations.

This article aims to emphasize the consequences of carbon offsetting on Indigenous peoples’ rights, especially land grabbing and the right to free, prior and informed consent.

While companies use these carbon offset projects as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) to brag about their alleged commitment to reducing their environmental impacts, Indigenous peoples are deprived of their ancestral lands and natural resources. Largely deregulated, this voluntary carbon offset market has not been the subject of consensus in international negotiations. The last COP failed to produce a special text to regulate REDD+ projects, which are at the heart of numerous controversies concerning human rights violations.

The Western-centric vision of environmental protection has excluded Indigenous peoples from decision-making processes, compromising the emergence of a new system capable of restoring the empowerment of local populations. The only way to address environmental challenges is to integrate Indigenous traditional knowledges and governance structures.