The human rights-based case for carbon offsets

Climate change has serious adverse human rights impacts. It negatively affects people's livelihoods, health and wellbeing. To prevent and mitigate these impacts, companies must accept in full their responsibility for their greenhouse gas emissions.

The article by Finnwatch titled “Human rights due diligence and the role of carbon offsetting” recently published on Carbon Pulse explores interlinkages between human rights-based corporate climate accountability and carbon offsetting.

As the global carbon budget for 1.5 degrees is quickly running out, it is not enough for companies just to reduce emissions, they need to bear responsibility for their unabated emissions, too. The way to do this is carbon offsetting.

"In addition to implementing a net-zero plan, the direct and indirect emissions that companies cannot immediately cut must be offset", Finnwatch climate policy specialist Lasse Leipola writes. 

The key message of the article is that without offsets, it is hard for companies to bear responsibility for the adverse human rights impacts of those emissions that cannot be immediately cut. For that reason the focus should be on measures to fix the existing problems with the quality of carbon credits and inadequate safeguards on the projects for humans and the environment.

The article calls on policymakers at all levels from the UN to national parliaments to take action to ensure three things: gradually rising minimum quality requirements for carbon credits, clear quality and transparency requirements for making offset-based climate claims, and clear definitions for the role that carbon markets play in their national climate policies.

"Companies buying and selling carbon credits are also key players. By setting higher standards, they can drive the carbon market forward towards higher quality and show the lawmakers and wider society that carbon markets can be an instrument for climate mitigation and finance", Leipola concludes the article.

Finnwatch is and has been active in national and international processes that seek to set clear and strict rules for carbon offsets so they can fill their role as a tool for companies to bear human rights-based responsibility for the emissions that they cannot immediately reduce.