According to a new study published on August 24, 2023 in Science, carbon offset programs that purport to stop deforestation vastly overestimate their effectiveness. Offsets have emerged as a prominent example of corporate climate action. They are marketed as a solution to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by enabling polluters or consumers to buy offsets or credits that permit them to keep emitting in exchange for funding initiatives that decrease emissions elsewhere.
The vast majority of initiatives did not actually slow deforestation, and those that did were much less successful than they claimed to be, according to a thorough study of 26 carbon offset projects that claim to do so in six countries across three continents. The study's lead author, Thales West, an integrative ecologist and assistant professor at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit as well as a fellow at Cambridge's Centre for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources, stated that its main message is that depending just on [carbon offset] certification is insufficient. "If you rely solely on offsets, it's likely that you won't make any progress in reducing climate change."