By Obiabin Onukwugha
Carbon offsetting is a carbon trading mechanism that allows entities surch as governments or businesses to compensate for (i.e. “offset”) their greenhouse gas emissions. It works by supporting projects that reduce, avoid, or remove emissions elsewhere.
It also serves as a license permitting a nation, entity, or individual to generate a defined quantity of carbon emissions. These credits are transferable and can be traded if the allocated emission limit isn’t fully utilized.
The idea of carbon offsets/credits came to bear when global leaders gathered in Paris during the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) to endorse the Paris Agreement; an International Energy Treaty grounded in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Since then Nigeria, like some other African countries, has taken steps in ratifying the Paris Agreement, including its creation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), committing to a 20% emissions reduction below Business as Usual (BUA) levels by 2030.
Carbon trading featured prominently in the last Conference of Parties (COP 28) which held between November 30 to December 12 at Dubai, UAE, with some states in Nigeria securing agreements.in billions of dollars to sell off significant hectares of lands for such deal.
Though it is recognized as a market-driven tool, carbon credits/offsets may be posing more threat to communities. This goes from land grabbing, food shortages, environmental pollution to biodiversity loss.
Incidentally, most states and communities who have indicated interest in giving up their lands for these carbon offsets are not aware of the negative threat of carbon trading. There is also no strong legislation on ground yet to checkmate the activities of carbon trading companies when they eventually commence operations.
Nigeria is already grappling with climate change impacts such as degraded lands, erosion, flooding, food shortages.
It has been established that African countries are least polluters, yet suffer significant impacts of environmental pollution and global warming.
The NCCC has stated that Nigeria’s engagement with carbon markets must be strongly linked to its development priorities contained in its NDCs. But this may not be the case, considering the lack of political will by successive administration in Nigeria to tackle environmental issues.
For instance, companies have continued to flare gas unabated. This is despite the provisions of Section 104 the Petroleum Industry Act that “criminalizes the act of gas flaring by any licensee, lessee or marginal field operator, except in three instances which include cases of emergency, exemption from the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission and when it is considered acceptable as a safety practice….”
Worse still, the Nigerian government is not able to collect billions of Nigeria fines as penalties from the IOCs for flaring gas in violation of the law.
In all this, oil companies host communities have continued to suffer while the oil companies rip them of their natural livelihood and walk away in the name.of.divestment.
It is with this development that environmentalists have continued to reach raise concerns on carbon trading/offsets.
In a post titled; “The False Arithmetic Of Carbon Offset’, renowned environmental activist, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey posited that polluters cannot continue to release carbons into the atmosphere with carbon offsets.
According to Bassey, carbon offsetting simply means a polluter continues to release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere but buys a permit that says that an equivalent amount of pollutants are being absorbed or captured by means and at another location.
He noted that these projects can include tree planting, renewable energy initiatives, energy efficiency projects or carbon capture and storage facilities, but described carbon offset/credit as false climate solutions.
Bassey, who is the Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, the conversion of lands meant for food production to carbon offser poses a threat to livelihood of local.communities who depend on land for survival.
“”It is a false balancing out of carbon pollution by supposing that nature and forest dependent communities would bear the burden of the polluters’ ecological misbehavior.
“It is a patently false climate solution. Nature does not operate on the supposition of carbon arithmetic.
“A climate non-solution that clears the conscience of polluting corporations and nations and empowers them on pathways that harm the climate. Carbon offsetting allows carbon colonialism and even carbon slavery,” he said.
On the disturbing displacement of forests dependent local communities, Bassey said: “The encouragement of land conversion from food production to carbon farming. These projects require huge swathes of lands leading to displacement, and disrupting the livelihood of those dependent on it.”
He added that: “For a truly sustainable future, we must go beyond band-aid solutions like carbon offsetting any where in the world.”
It has been established that African countries are least polluters, yet suffer significant impacts of environmental pollution and global warming.
Nigeria must therefore look beyond the immediate gains of carbon trading in order to save the negative impact of such tradition on future generations, especially in the local communities.
The NCCC must keep greed aside and carry out adequate sensitisation on states engaging in carbon trading. In all, Nigeria must look before it leaps. As they say, “Not all that glitter is gold.”