Saving the Carbon Market from the Extraction Trap

We are not in a position to absolutely reject the existence of the carbon market. The carbon market, both compliance and voluntary, can be a crucial catalyst for climate funding.

However, to prevent the carbon market from becoming an instrument of legalized extraction, the implementation design and its derivative rules must be based on three fundamental prerequisites:

  1. Affirmation of Sovereign Asset Status

The state must absolutely position carbon as a sovereign asset. Its primary purpose is to fulfill the NDC and national ecological resilience, not merely as an export commodity subject to global supply-demand laws.

  1. Institutionalization of Mandatory Benefit-Sharing

Benefit-sharing should not be left to B-to-B (business-to-business) agreement mechanisms that place indigenous peoples in an inferior position. The state must mandate a clear, transparent, and binding percentage to be allocated directly to community development at the site level.

  1. Ecological Justice Audit

Every international transfer of mitigation outcomes (ITMO) agreement must require the absence of human rights violations and indigenous peoples' tenurial rights at the project site.

Strong regulation is what can ensure that market mechanisms do not turn into a new form of resource extraction, this time in an invisible form called carbon. Moreover, it must ensure that regulations are truly present to protect the constitutional rights of citizens from the global market's invasion of their living space.