By Alexis Leroy, Allcot’s Founder & CEO

Anyone who has seen the movie Don’t Look Up understands the feeling of despair and hopelessness of those of us who acknowledge the fact that we are on the verge of a major climate catastrophe, that it is clear what needs to be done, but not enough people listen and far too little action is being implemented to prevent it from happening.

Global carbon emissions must be reduced by an average of 7.6% per year to prevent the average temperature from rising by 1.5C at the most. This is what the 196 countries that signed the Paris Agreement committed to, yet the IPCC found that “GHG emissions have risen steadily over the last decade, reaching 59 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2019, about 12% more than in 2010 and 54% more than in 1990”.

The agreements have been formalised, the goals that each country has to achieve are in place, and there are mechanisms to achieve these goals. Everyone talks about climate change, but this is not translating to sufficient action. Integrity is central to effective climate action, but recent discussions undermining carbon markets have effectively caused market-wide uncertainty that is impacting all projects, most of them producing excellent results.

One of the clearest examples are carbon credits and carbon reduction projects. There are a few media outlets that have taken the route of sensationalising and systematically criticising emission reduction projects financed through carbon credits.

This criticism also flows over to the companies that have been leaders in taking positive climate action and paving the way for private sector voluntary initiatives by reducing and offsetting their emissions responsibly with high-quality projects.

Some media have shown a narrow perspective, focusing investigations on carbon projects that have problems, and have not shown much interest in a balanced view and broadly recognised studies that show that a large number of carbon reduction projects are quantifying and generating emissions credits in a fair, methodical, and transparent way and, in many cases, are making significant positive impacts in the communities where they are developed.

It is unclear why some media outlets have decided to damage the carbon credit mechanism, the projects, and the developers of these projects. Perhaps they do not realise that carbon projects are one of the truly scalable advances the world has had for more than 25 years in its fight against climate change and that, although these projects cannot be the only solution to address the climate crisis, they are essential in being able to achieve the goals of reducing emissions by 2030 and achieving net zero by 2050 at the latest.

It is true that carbon projects are not perfect; not all methodologies have been recently updated, and we all agree that they should be improved, but not by tearing down the whole mechanism because of deficiencies in only a few activities. A more collaborative and constructive approach is needed to raise highly impactful projects to the forefront and raising ambition of business to engage in climate action. 2030 is just around the corner and governments and companies will need millions of carbon credits from projects to meet the targets to which they have committed.

Where will those credits come from if there are not enough high-quality carbon projects?

It is urgent to change the market dynamics for pricing carbon credits and to generate sources for financing the development of carbon projects.

Although technically we are still in a buyer’s market where prices are speculatively fixed, six years from 2030 and with the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions), with so many ambitious commitments from the G20 countries and large private sector companies, we are structurally in a seller’s market: there is not enough supply to meet these commitments and we are running out of time.

To generate a real impact, carbon credits should have a pricing mechanism based on real impact costs. Not only for the CO2 reduction of the buyer country, but also to leave a real impact for the emitting country.

It is also necessary for banks to develop financing tools for these projects, which in many cases are long term. Until now, in the voluntary carbon markets, much of the resources have come out from the private sector, but with awfully expensive financial conditions, limiting the possibilities for the market to grow.

We cannot continue to belittle all the efforts that are being made to achieve Net Zero.

We are running out of time to just discuss what works and what needs improvement, we need to regain momentum in implementation with a focus on integrity. Environmental project development in many cases takes years to put into action and deliver results. Time is running out.

We must recognise the risk that is upon us and act collectively to improve how to fight against climate change in practice as well as in theory.

It is time to look up, it is time to promote and support emission reduction projects to meet the goals we set for ourselves as humanity by 2030.

It is time to look up, it is time to act!

Any opinions published in this commentary reflect the views of the author and not of Carbon Pulse.