• The COP30 Science Council and Indigenous delegates, activists and local communities in Belém this week argued that forests are not offsets and that the world cannot simply trade its way out of the climate crisis.
• Carbon offsetting programs have been under intense scrutiny for years, and a broad coalition of COP30 attendees and advisors say that this is the moment to move forward on climate finance with greater effectiveness and equity.
• “This is the Amazon COP. If it ends with a decision that ignores Indigenous rights and props up offset markets that science says cannot work, it will squander the moral clarity of this moment,” a new op-ed argues.
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

See All Key Ideas

At COP30 in Belém, the first climate summit held in the Amazon, something rare has happened. For years, the risks and failures of carbon offsetting have been dismissed as activist exaggeration or technical teething problems. But this week, Brazil’s leading scientists publicly said what many Indigenous and frontline communities have long argued: forests cannot be used as offsets.

This warning, issued by the COP30 Science Council, should land with force. These are not fringe voices. Carlos Nobre, Paulo Artaxo, Piers Forster, Thelma Krug, Johan Rockström and others are among the world’s foremost experts on tipping points and terrestrial systems. Their statement is unusually blunt: the world is “already facing danger”; fossil fuel emissions must start falling next year; and forests — especially the Amazon — can no longer be treated as a stable carbon sink capable of compensating for continued burning of coal, oil and gas.

This matters because the Amazon, once one of Earth’s greatest climate stabilizers, is approaching profound fragility. Drought, heat waves, fires and land conversion are eroding the forest’s ability to store carbon. Parts of the region are already flipping from sink to source. The science is clear: you cannot offset permanent fossil fuel emissions with nonpermanent, vulnerable biological carbon. The accounting doesn’t hold — and the ecological reality no longer allows the fiction to stand.

A forest fire in the the Brazilian Amazon, which is already flipping from carbon sink to carbon source, research finds. Image courtesy of Victor Moriyama/Clean Air Fund.

Yet in Belém, negotiators are still trying to operationalize Articles 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, the U.N.’s carbon trading and offset mechanisms, as if none of this has changed. New draft texts released this week contain no Indigenous rights protections, no FPIC requirements, no land-tenure safeguards and no guardrails for high-risk, land-based offsets. After years of negotiation, Articles 6.2 and 6.4 remain structurally incapable of guaranteeing environmental integrity or preventing harm.

This is not an accident. It is the result of political and economic design. Carbon markets were built on a premise that forests could serve as a low-cost climate solution — a convenient way to delay hard decisions on fossil fuel phaseout. The problem is not only that this premise is crumbling under scientific scrutiny. It is that the model has always carried severe social risks: land grabs, rights violations, and the growing financialization of Indigenous territories.

Indigenous territorial authorities have shown remarkable leadership at COP30. Many organizations from across Amazonia and other forest regions reject the use of their territories for offset schemes, warning that carbon markets have repeatedly undermined rights and opened the door to dispossession. But it is equally important to acknowledge that some Indigenous communities have chosen, strategically or out of necessity, to engage with carbon revenues. They do so as an exercise of sovereignty in deeply unequal conditions.

The issue is not Indigenous decision-making. It is the global rule set — designed without Indigenous leadership, oversight or benefit — that now seeks to scale up a marketplace incapable of delivering integrity. A rights-safe, scientifically credible offset market has never existed, and the new Article 6 carbon market text shows it almost certainly never will.

This should force a moment of honesty. The carbon trading and offset crisis is not a temporary obstacle. It is a structural failure: no functioning infrastructure, inconsistent reporting, unverifiable crediting methodologies, and persistent refusal by governments to embed rights protections. The machinery is not delayed; it is unworkable.

Harapan rainforest canopy in Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia, by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

And yet, instead of reckoning with this failure, a new financial frontier is emerging: biodiversity credits. These are being pitched as “the next big environmental market.” But biodiversity is even less measurable and less substitutable than carbon. Species interactions, ecological functions and cultural relationships cannot be reduced to tradable units. Loss in one place cannot be balanced by “gain” in another. A biodiversity offset market would replicate — and deepen — every flaw of the carbon offset model: false equivalence, land conflict, financial speculation, and the dangerous illusion that destruction can be compensated elsewhere.

Belém should be the moment we stop reinventing broken ideas. If forests are losing their carbon-sink role, if Indigenous rights still lack protection in global rules, and if scientists warn that offsetting is incompatible with physical reality, then the conclusion is simple: the offset era must end.

Instead of doubling down on carbon trading or launching a parallel biodiversity credit market, we should look to the one Paris mechanism designed to avoid these traps: Article 6.8 — the little-discussed framework for nonmarket approaches. It offers a path for genuine cooperation based on real emissions cuts, just transitions, protection of rights, and public finance for forests, rather than commodifying ecosystems.

This is the Amazon COP. If it ends with a decision that ignores Indigenous rights and props up offset markets that science says cannot work, it will squander the moral clarity of this moment. Belém has revealed a truth long denied: forests are not offsets, nature is not a balancing ledger, and we cannot trade our way out of the climate crisis. It is time to face reality — and leave the offset illusion behind.

Tom Picken is director of Rainforest Action Network’s forests and finance campaign.

Banner image: Delegates listen to Brazilian President Lula deliver the opening speech of the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit in Belém, Thursday, Nov. 6. Image by AP Photo/Eraldo Peres.

Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: Top climate author and entrepreneur Paul Hawken argues it’s time to move past counting carbon and emphasize people and planet, listen here:

Related reading:

The carbon market paradox: Steve Zwick on why financing forests is more complicated than it looks

How a ‘green gold rush’ in the Amazon led to dubious carbon deals on Indigenous lands

Citation:

Gatti, L. V., Basso, L. S., Miller, J. B., Gloor, M., Gatti Domingues, L., Cassol, H. L. G., … Neves, R. A. L. (2021). Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change. Nature, 595(7867), 388-393. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6