PORTO VELHO: Companies around the world have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into conservation projects in Brazil designed to protect the Amazon rainforest in return for carbon credits offsetting their emissions. Reuters found that many of those projects are profiting people and businesses fined by Brazilian authorities for destroying the rainforest.

Reporters analyzed 36 conservation projects in the Brazilian Amazon offering voluntary carbon offsets on the global market’s biggest registries. At least 24 of those involved landowners, developers or forestry firms that have been punished by Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama for their roles in illegal deforestation, Reuters found. The offenses ranged from clear-cutting the rainforest without authorization to transporting felled trees without valid permits and entering false information in a government timber tracking system. Government officials and experts said these infractions reflected the range of roles in the illicit timber trade devouring the rainforest.

In 20 of the conservation projects, Reuters found, Ibama had fined key players for deforestation before they were listed with a carbon credit registry. In seven of those cases, the fines for illegal deforestation by the projects’ backers continued after registration. “It’s a failure of the whole idea,” said Raoni Rajao, who ran the Brazilian Environment Ministry’s program combating deforestation until December. By paying people with a track record of violating environmental law, he said, the carbon market may be funding groups engaged in illegal deforestation.

“They might be reducing deforestation in one place, but increasing emissions somewhere else with those same resources,” said Rajao, now an environmental policy professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Brazil levies fines to enforce laws putting strict limits on deforestation since 2008 in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, which has lost about a fifth of its original tree cover over the past half century. Scientists warn further deforestation could release catastrophic quantities of planet-warming carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change. — Reuters

That has made the Amazon an important part of the voluntary carbon market, which was worth $7.6 billion globally over the last five years, according to market watcher AlliedOffsets. In this market, projects that show they are reducing greenhouse emissions – for example, by avoiding deforestation in parts of the rainforest – can generate carbon credits, each one equivalent to a metric ton of carbon dioxide saved. Polluters can then voluntarily buy the carbon credits to compensate for their own emissions.

The referees setting the standards in that global market are accrediting firms such as non-profit Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit registry, and its Colombian rival Cercarbono. They run systems certifying whether a project is reducing emissions as promised. Reuters examined thousands of pages of documents related to the 36 conservation projects in the Brazilian Amazon that had been certified by Verra or Cercarbono at the start of this year. Both provide public records of projects’ designs, boundaries and credits issued. Reporters identified key players and cross-checked them against Ibama’s database of fines. -- Reuters