The United Nations announced on Friday new guidelines allowing anybody damaged by projects under its proposed global carbon credit market to make a formal appeal.
Under the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations was tasked with developing a credible framework for trading credits gained from projects that cut or prevent carbon dioxide emissions.
These projects could produce renewable energy, maintain carbon-absorbing habitats such as forests or peatlands, or replace coal-fired cookstoves with cleaner alternatives.
However, many of these activities take place in undeveloped countries, and as these schemes have grown in popularity, complaints have surfaced of local residents being exploited or driven off their land.
The UN described the installation of new safeguards as a “milestone” that would defend human rights and maintain the integrity of the global carbon market it is establishing.
“This is a defining moment,” said Maria AlJishi, chair of the UN supervisory council that approved the procedures on Friday.
These would open up “new avenues to empower vulnerable communities and individuals,” including the ability to review decisions or submit a grievance, she said.
Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch, a think tank, said this brought long-overdue recognition that carbon markets have “real-world consequences.”
“It is a first step toward providing protections for indigenous peoples, but improvements will be required,” he told AFP, adding that appealing judgments would be prohibitively expensive and inaccessible to everybody.
Carbon credit projects have come under intense examination following disclosures that some do nothing for the environment and provide no benefit to the local communities hosting the activity.
Efforts to clean up the scandal-hit sector have accelerated, with credits exchanged on voluntary carbon markets that are not regulated by governments or a standard set of regulations.
Every tonne of carbon avoided or reduced by a project generates a credit, which can be acquired on highly uncontrolled markets by businesses looking to offset their own pollution.
Companies have faced criticism for utilizing credits to claim carbon neutrality or to assure customers that their purchases have no environmental impact.
Supporters argue that a well-regulated and transparent market trading in verifiable credits might benefit the globe and push massive quantities of capital into Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where these projects are located.
Carbon markets have “inadequate human rights and environmental safeguards, leaving it open to abuse” while allowing firms to continue polluting, Amnesty International’s Chris Chapman stated last week.