A critical review

This critical review of carbon trading in Africa includes analyses of the context and trends in the carbon market in Africa; offset projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa; and carbon finance and regulation. It shows how carbon trading provides new and different ways of profiting at the expense of a deteriorating climate.

This essay reviews five recent books, four of them on climate change and one addressing what’s needed to spark the transition away from our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

Failing at the Third Attempt

Carbon emissions in the European Union are rising, despite the Emissions Trading System, the EU's flagship measure for tackling climate change. The third phase of the scheme, beginning in 2013, is supposed to rectify the “teething problems” that have rewarded major polluters with windfall profits and undermined efforts to reduce pollution and achieve a more equitable and sustainable economy. In practice, it will continue to subsidise polluters and help them avoid taking meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Volume One

Proposals to mitigate climate change by financing projects to conserve forests (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – REDD) are flawed beyond fixing, argue the authors of this book. The volume contends that REDD's contradictions cannot be mended by attempts to detach it from the carbon markets, to ensure that the money “goes to the right place”, or to include provisions for “free, prior and informed consent”.

New markets in environmental services are springing up all over the world – biodiversity markets, wetlands markets and species markets, in addition to the climate markets that got their start more than 15 years ago. Britain is no exception. Its Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is enthusing over the economic potential of a “market in conservation projects” populated by a “network of biodiversity offset providers”.