In recent years, a growing number of experts have challenged the integrity of forest-carbon projects, the woodland-conservation initiatives that generate greenhouse-gas reduction credits based on avoided deforestation. These critics assert that in some cases, the credits, which are typically sold on “voluntary,” or unregulated, markets to companies that want to demonstrate they are offsetting their carbon emissions, are not based on legitimate forest-protection gains. In others, they argue, the projects bigfoot local communities, providing residents little benefit at best and trampling their rights at worst. Controversies involving two South American forest-carbon initiatives—one in Colombia, the other in Brazil—appear to be providing disturbing cases in point. In Colombia, the country’s Constitutional Court annulled a major forest-carbon project on June 25 after concluding that the companies involved had failed to conduct proper consultations with Indigenous communities. In Brazil, Federal Police on June 5 arrested... [Log in to read more]