Henry Kronk’s Post

The voluntary carbon credit market has experienced a significant downturn, with sales falling from $2.1 billion in 2021 to $723 million in 2023. The market collapse is threatening climate change mitigation projects in developing countries, particularly those focused on forest preservation. The market's decline is largely due to studies and reports revealing that some projects overstated their impact on emissions reduction and faced accusations of human rights violations. Businesses buying carbon credits have faced criticism and lawsuits for potentially using ineffective projects to improve their environmental image. Even projects considered effective, such as one in Brazil's Rondônia state, are struggling to sell credits due to buyer skepticism. If sales don't rebound soon, many projects may not survive, leading to a loss of expertise and on-the-ground experience in climate change mitigation efforts. The value of carbon credits has plummeted, with prices dropping from around $16 per metric ton in early 2022 to around $3.60 per ton of CO2e. This represents a significant drop from previous years, reflecting the ongoing challenges in this market https://lnkd.in/dQdVB_iV #voluntarycarboncredits #marketcollapse #climatechangemitigation #forestpreservation #developingcountries #emissionsreduction #humanrightsviolations #carboncreditbuyers #environmentalimage #buyerskepticism #brazil #rondonia #climateprojects #carboncreditvalue #carbonprices #climatechangemarket

Brazil has a gigantic environmental challenge, as big and important as halting illegal deforestation: restoring degraded areas. The scalability of a carbon project and the credits it generates are key factors in speeding up and making the restoration viable. ARR projects generate carbon credits from the reforestation and restoration of areas that have been without forest for at least 10 years. This mechanism helps rural producers in the process of environmentally regularizing their property, as well as promoting new sources of income. Access our website (https://lnkd.in/dHAssEKn) and get to know our ARR projects. #carbon #ClimateChange #redd #arr #CarbonProject #amazon #CarbonCredits #nbs #removal

What is the pragmatic way of tackling permanently #deforestation without #carbon markets and cohesive sustainable #climate #finance? 🌫 "The smokescreen generated by recent carbon-offset setbacks should not blind us to the simple truth that we must protect our intact forests and bring back those we have lost 🌲 But there is no pathway to a liveable climate without saving our intact forests, regrowing some, and finding a more straightforward way to pay for them than carbon offset projects. 💲 To pay for it, our best bet is a mix of traditional public funding and large-scale carbon finance agreements such as the Amazon Fund, launched by Brazil and Norway in 2008. 🚀 Additional deals are now in the works for entire countries and states to reduce deforestation, the so-called #jurisdictional approach, which achieves scale and could solve many of the accounting and equity problems of the voluntary carbon projects." https://lnkd.in/dcwX_D7w

If you take a trip by plane there is often the choice to ‘offset’ the carbon emitted by your flight. To do this you buy carbon credits. Essentially someone, somewhere, has committed to taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere equivalent to what you produced by flying – by planting trees for example. But this is a flawed system, one mired in scandal, particularly when it comes to nature restoration. And there is a growing concern about an increasing reliance on these carbon markets. The focus on using a market mechanism means that corners will often be cut to reach a lower price. That could mean that land rights aren’t respected, appropriate tree species aren’t considered or that wider benefits are stripped back to a bare minimum. It’s a complex system and often more than 50% of the price of the credit goes to middlemen rather than to where the money matters most. And there’s a worrying power imbalance between the middlemen and the planters. Our relationship with trees and nature is not a transactional one and that turning nature into a tradeable commodity doesn’t bode well. So what’s the alternative?  https://lnkd.in/dkwufSwf

An important question: are Carbon Credits doing any good? My own view is that the real winners from voluntary credits and offsets are the project developers, but maybe I'm too cynical. I can see some benefit trickling down to local communities, and I'm sure that some schemes are beneficial to biodiversity and conservation, but, in the long term, decarbonisation in wealthier countries (in particular the USA and China) is the key to mitigating climate change. Here are some thoughts from my colleagues at the International Tree Foundation on the issue. #CarbonMarkets #ClimateChange #TreePlanting

Every nature-based carbon credit starts with hectares of forest or coastal lands that can originate carbon removal projects. Read our latest insight on how nature-based carbon credit projects benefit landholders and their communities! #naturebasedsolutions #community #carboncredits #mangroves #forest #insights #climatechange #climateaction https://lnkd.in/gbjQVKJE

One of the biggest causes of deforestation is the use of wood 🪵 for building materials in construction and domestic energy. By providing alternative solutions for construction and clean domestic energy to households; there could be drastic decrease in deforestation…

** Sign in solidarity: NO to REDD! Declaration of the Amazon meeting on carbon projects ** From World Rainforest Movement: "Members from Indigenous, peasant, traditional and Afro-descendent peoples from countries of the Amazon region and Central America, who met from 9-11 of July in the indigenous territory Alto-Turiaçu in the Maranhão state, in Brazil, call organizations and social movements all over the world to endorse this declaration rejecting carbon projects and programs in their territories, also often referred to as REDD." Via REDD-Monitor https://lnkd.in/eQN2vtgP

"God has cared for these 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐬, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬." – John Muir, the father of US National Parks observed in the XIX century. Fast forward to 2023 Christmas: The Biden administration launched " a first-of-its kind proposal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to amend all 128 forest land management plans across the country to conserve and restore old-growth forestsacross the National Forest System. This will provide consistent direction across the Forest Service on how to conserve and restore old-growth forest conditions across the nation, and marks the first time that the Forest Service has adopted a nationwide forest plan amendment to guide new management direction on all national forests at once."* Great, but why is it 100 years late? At the same time Microsoft "has struck a deal with offsets startup Chestnut Carbon to acquire credits linked to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere" .... "The revenue generated by Chestnut Carbon will allow some of Kimmeridge's $200 million initial capital commitment to the company to be 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 for Chestnut, said Benjamin Dell , who is also Kimmeridge's managing partner." ** Yes, you understand well: someone is paid to BUY land - no matter how degraded or previously farmed land - to plant trees. I am afraid that neither the Biden administration nor #Microsoft will 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐬 & 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 (ourselves). We are not only in 'a too little, too late' situation but are trying to apply a cure - profit seeking from nature - that has led to the degradation of nature / forests at the firts place. With limited time and resources there are far more impactful - both on nature and carbon - interventions, both for governments and private sector. I hope that all those busy working on #biodiversitycredits now take a step back and ask what would be the 'fit for purpose' methods to address the #policrisis what we have caused. Am I too harsh on these US developments today? Think of the fairly painful situation on the federal level due to toxic US politics. The US federal level still assigns no cost - trough an an emission trading system or a carbon tax - to CO2 emissions, but has a billions dollar subsidy system trough tax credits (Q45) for capturing CO2 from the air (supporting #CCUS & #DACS, technological means to capture already emitted CO2 ) . These are examples for future history books on how NOT to design climate governance and policy…. The tragically belated (1) old growth forest protection and (2) land purchasing for forestation activities will also enter these future history books (for the few left to read them!). #climateaction #climatecrisis #sustainability #REDD #forests #nature #climatepolicy #offsets #VCM #carbonpricing #carboncredits #voluntarycarbonmarket

DO LANDFILLS LEAK? This is an oldie, but not a lot has changed. We call it "garbage" or "trash" but it is "municipal solid waste" to your city government and the waste industry. Municipal solid waste is a combination of non-hazardous wastes from households, commercial properties, and industries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency(USEPA) reports that the United States produced about 230 million tons of solid waste in 1999, about 57 percent of which is disposed of in landfills (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1999. Disposal of municipal solid waste in landfills was largely unregulated prior to the 1970s. Most solid waste was deposited in unlined pits. Precipitation and ground water seeping through this waste produces leachate, which is water contaminated from the various organic and inorganic substances with which it comes in contact as it migrates through the waste. Leachate seeping from a landfill contaminates the ground water beneath the landfill, and this contaminated ground water is known as a plume. The normal movement of ground water causes the leachate plume to extend away from a landfill, in some cases for many hundreds of meters. Many studies have shown leachate plumes emanating from old unlined landfills. Estimates for the number of closed landfills in the United States are as high as 100,000 (Suflita and others,1992). Federal and state regulations were passed in the 1980s and 1990s to manage disposal of solid waste. Those regulations require that most landfills use liners and leachate collection systems to minimize the seepage of leachate to ground water. Although liners and leachate collection systems minimize leakage, liners can fail and leachate collection systems may not collect all the leachate that escapes from a landfill. Leachate collection systems require maintenance of pipes, and pipes can fail because they crack, collapse, or fill with sediment. The USEPA has concluded that all landfills eventually will leak into the environment (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1988). Thus, the fate and transport of leachate in the environment, from both old and modern landfills, is a potentially serious environmental problem. How to we #CURRENTLY address these #Problems? #Carbotura..... CZF offers a comprehensive service to help reduce and manage #hazardous #industrial #waste. Our #incinerator #ash, industrial wastes, DAF, landfill #leachate, and landfill remediation services are designed to safely and effectively remove #pollutants from the #environment. We strive to provide a #safe, cost-effective solution for the long-term management of hazardous industrial waste. $3.744 trillion of raw materials in end-of-use products are thrown away annually, in the USA alone. This is about $42,000 per ton that is thrown out into landfills. We are able to fully monetize that output. Please message me if you are interested in learning more about Carbotura. Thank you. Brian Hall