That starting point is the \u201cbaseline,\u201d the estimate of how much deforestation<\/a> would have happened without the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n The researchers found that the way some jurisdictional REDD+ programs<\/a> calculate baselines can create incentives that favor places already on a downward deforestation trend while discouraging places where forest loss is rising and funding is most urgently needed.<\/p>\n The experts emphasize that they found no evidence that participating governments have deliberately exploited these incentives. <\/p>\n Still, the design features leave the door open and the stakes are large as major companies and coalitions commit billions of dollars to these credits.<\/p>\n Why land-use emissions matter so much<\/p>\n Deforestation and other land-use changes remain a major slice of global climate pollution. The study notes that emissions from land-use change<\/a> come mostly from deforestation and represent about 10\u201312% of total human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n Because protecting forests can avoid emissions quickly, forest-based carbon credits have become attractive to governments and corporations trying to meet climate pledges.\u00a0<\/p>\n But credibility has been a persistent issue, especially when credits don\u2019t represent real, additional emissions reductions.<\/p>\n Weaknesses in carbon credit projects <\/p>\n The paper focuses on jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+), a government-level model that grew out of criticisms of project-based REDD+.\u00a0<\/p>\n Traditional REDD+ credits are often created at the project scale: a landowner enrolls a plot, reduces deforestation there, and earns credits.<\/p>\n Project-based approaches have long been criticized for two big vulnerabilities. One is \u201cnon-additionality,\u201d where a project is credited for forest protection<\/a> that wasn\u2019t actually under threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n The other is \u201cleakage,\u201d where reducing deforestation in one area shifts pressure elsewhere so the net forest loss doesn\u2019t change much.<\/p>\n Jurisdictional REDD+ was built as a response. Instead of crediting a single land parcel, it credits an entire state, province, or country for reducing deforestation across its borders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brazil pioneered an early version of this approach in 2008, and the voluntary market has increasingly treated jurisdictional crediting as a more credible alternative.<\/p>\n But the Yale team argues that jurisdictional programs can still have structural weaknesses, especially in how baselines are determined.<\/p>\n Loopholes in the system<\/p>\n The study highlights several ways the baseline system can tilt incentives.<\/p>\n One issue is that a jurisdiction already experiencing declining deforestation can potentially generate credits without implementing new forest policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another is that jurisdictions where deforestation is rising \u2013 often the very places that need financing to change course \u2013 may be discouraged from joining because they would need to slash forest loss dramatically before they qualify for any credits.<\/p>\n The researchers also spotted a more alarming pattern in participation timing: in about half the jurisdictions that enrolled, deforestation rose temporarily just before the program\u2019s crediting period began, and then dropped afterward.<\/p>\n Study co-author Luke Sanford is an assistant professor of environmental policy and governance at the Yale School of the Environment.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have talked a lot about what the benefits are of getting carbon credits from jurisdictional REDD. This study points out that there are definitely some things we should worry about, even if we think that those actors haven\u2019t taken advantage of them \u2013 yet\u201d said Sanford.<\/p>\n Billions of dollars are already in motion<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a niche accounting debate. One of the major JREDD registries, ART TREES<\/a>, now has more than $3 billion in committed credit purchases.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of the largest buyers include U.S. companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and Salesforce, purchasing credits through the LEAF Coalition<\/a>, which aims to help halt tropical deforestation by 2030.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s billions of dollars of commitments, but there hasn\u2019t been that much evaluation of what those credits are going to look like, their potential, and the strengths and weaknesses of the program,\u201d Sanford said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why the incentive structure matters. If crediting rules consistently reward places that would have improved anyway, the program risks sending funding to the wrong places and delivering less climate benefit<\/a> than buyers think.<\/p>\n The potential for adverse selection <\/p>\n The study\u2019s most concerning finding is what the researchers describe as the potential for adverse selection.\u00a0<\/p>\n In simple terms, the program could attract jurisdictions that know they\u2019re already positioned to earn credits because their deforestation rate is likely to fall regardless of the program.<\/p>\n The mechanism comes down to how baselines are calculated. Many JREDD protocols set baselines using a simple historical average over a previous reference period.\u00a0<\/p>\n If deforestation was unusually high during that reference window and then naturally declines afterward, the jurisdiction can appear to be \u201cbeating\u201d its baseline without necessarily doing more conservation work.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the reverse problem is also built in: jurisdictions where deforestation is rising can end up with baselines that make it harder to earn early credits.\u00a0<\/p>\n These governments may need to spend heavily to cut forest loss just to reach the threshold where crediting starts.<\/p>\n This is precisely the kind of financial barrier that can keep high-need places out of the program.<\/p>\n A pre-enrollment deforestation spike<\/p>\n Even though the researchers found no evidence of deliberate gaming, they did identify a troubling pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\n In many places, deforestation spiked right before the crediting period began and then fell afterward.\u00a0<\/p>\n If a jurisdiction expects enrollment, a short-term increase in deforestation can inflate the historical baseline, making later reductions look larger than they truly are.<\/p>\n Sanford and co-author Alberto Garcia describe this as an \u201canticipatory moral hazard,\u201d a situation where actors might have incentives to behave worse right before measurement begins, because it could increase future rewards.<\/p>\n The researchers note that governments aren\u2019t always in a position to strategically time enrollment or manipulate deforestation rates, given political realities and administrative constraints.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the baseline rules still create the opportunity \u2013 and if the market grows, incentives tend to attract actors who are best positioned to benefit from them.<\/p>\n Dynamic baselines are needed<\/p>\n To reduce the chance of baseline manipulation, the authors suggest moving away from fixed baselines set in advance.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, they propose dynamic baselines calculated after the crediting period ends, based on deforestation trends in comparable jurisdictions.<\/p>\n The idea is to keep participants from knowing their own baseline in advance, which would reduce the ability to \u201coptimize\u201d behavior around it.\u00a0<\/p>\n The tradeoff is that governments would have less certainty about future revenue when they sign up, which could make participation harder.<\/p>\n The integrity of forest carbon credits<\/p>\n \u201cWe took seriously how the different incentives faced by both jurisdictional governments and landowners themselves can shape the integrity of forest carbon credits in jurisdictional programs,\u201d Garcia said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m optimistic that better understanding those incentives can help inform the design of more credible carbon markets, especially as jurisdictional REDD+ continues to grow and evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n Jurisdictional REDD+ was built to fix real problems in earlier forest crediting schemes. But this study argues that even the \u201cimproved\u201d model can still reward reductions that aren\u2019t truly additional.<\/p>\n The model can inadvertently lock out the jurisdictions where deforestation is worsening and intervention is most needed.<\/p>\n The warning isn\u2019t that these programs are inherently useless. It\u2019s that the details of baseline setting can decide whether billions of dollars buy real forest protection or a cleaner-looking spreadsheet.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A United Nations-backed approach for protecting tropical forests may be vulnerable to a familiar carbon market problem: getting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-386280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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