Fair trade carbon credits: will certification benefit people and planet?

In the debate about how best to reduce global carbon emissions, there is one topic that never fails to attract controversy: carbon trading. The logic is simple. Things that absorb carbon (like trees) or prevent it from being released into the atmosphere (like energy-efficient cooking stoves) can be assigned a carbon value. By putting a price on carbon, it can be traded on a market. And because nature doesn’t care where or how carbon is reduced, the market can work its magic and deliver carbon cuts in the cheapest and most effective way.

Plus, because carbon reductions are typically cheapest in developing countries, carbon trading offers a method of transferring wealth, and of encouraging sustainable development. On the surface, it sounds like a promising method of tackling climate change whilst transferring wealth to developing countries. And in Uganda – a country that has done nothing to cause climate change, but is already feeling its effects – one might expect that any additional funding for sustainable development would be welcomed with open arms.

But carbon trading is...

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