Carbon Markets

Carbon trading, or the trading of permits to pollute, is a market-based approach for reducing carbon emissions which is deeply flawed, ineffective and unjust. Seeking to turn carbon in the atmosphere into a privatised commodity has created markets susceptible to corporate pressure, distracted from the systemic changes needed to convert our economies, and inflicted injustices on marginalised communities in North that become trapped in pollution hotspots and peasant communities in the South who have been dispossessed of land and livelihoods in the name of climate action.