- Land-based carbon offsetting poses serious risks, including inflated climate benefits and harmful livelihood impacts. A recent Land Matrix Initiative report argues that large-scale land acquisitions in the Global South under the auspices of carbon markets are adding substantial risks to global climate policies.
- Given these developments, the Land Matrix provides critical, evidence-based scrutiny by documenting the scale and diversity of carbon-related land deals and advancing harm-reduction measures such as transparency, land governance, and accountability.
- Among the recommendations, prioritizing community-based projects — while not risk-free — may offer a conditional alternative, provided there is genuine ownership, free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), and strong safeguards, with communities ultimately deciding whether and how to engage.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
The voluntary carbon market and the business of carbon offsetting have faced increasing criticism in recent years, not only for the systematic overestimation of emission reductions, but also because projects have frequently had adverse effects on local livelihoods, particularly in the Global South, where many land-intensive projects are located.
From the perspective of the Land Matrix Initiative (LMI), a recent commentary usefully highlights the growing scale and complexity of a certain type of land-based carbon offset projects and underscores the urgent need for critical scrutiny. We welcome this debate.
Our analytical report documents approximately 9 million hectares (more than 22 million acres) of land globally affected by carbon offset-related land deals, with a deliberate focus on large-scale transactions that entail direct changes in land control. This focus reflects the Land Matrix’s long-standing mandate to monitor land acquisitions that contribute to land concentration, shifts in control, and power asymmetries at scale. We argue that this massive scale of land acquisitions occurring under the auspices of voluntary carbon markets, and often within countries with weak land governance systems, has profound implications for land access for affected communities as well as for broader debates on climate justice.
Further, we highlight that community- or farmer-based carbon projects that do not entail land acquisitions can have serious risks, including long-term restrictions on land use, inequitable contracts, lack of informed consent, and uncertain benefits for participating communities.
The claim in the commentary that we do not see the risks of community-based projects is thus unwarranted. We document these risks in various paragraphs throughout the report, and clearly emphasize that “while community or farmer-based projects are not a cure-all, and many are also fraught with implementation challenges … or associated with elite capture (Schmid and Castro Osorio 2025), prioritising well-implemented projects with clear ownership by IPs & LCs or farmer groups could address the dearth of financial resources in many target regions” (Analytical Report, p. 43).
In addition, we caution that although “… the principle that IPs & LCs should have ownership over resources derived from their lands is commendable in theory, in practice, these projects are often highly contested” (Analytical Report, p. 43). Crucially, we stress that “fostering community ownership and self-determination therefore remains a key activity” (Analytical Report, p. 44). While our work has focused on specific phenomena within the carbon market (i.e., large-scale land acquisitions), we argue that projects centered on community ownership and self-determination are often the more appropriate model, should carbon markets persist, which is another debate. At the same time, we remain fully aware of the associated risks.
Claims in the commentary relating to one carbon project — the iTERAKA project in Madagascar — are also unfounded. Specifically, the commentary states that “One contract, signed between the company and the farmer groups, prohibits participating villagers from talking to journalists or researchers who have not signed an agreement with iTERAKA.” This claim is contradicted by field-based evidence. Researchers from the Land Matrix and the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD) interviewed farmers as part of an independent research effort conducted with full transparency and without any agreement signed with iTERAKA.
In total, 167 households were surveyed in the municipality of Mahazoarivo (the intervention area of the iTERAKA project), including 94 members of the program. These 94 households were randomly selected, without any influence from the iTERAKA project team. At no point did interviewed farmers — whether program members or nonmembers — report being prohibited from speaking with researchers or journalists.
Moreover, the allegation in the commentary that the contract does not allow farmers to exit the project is incorrect: in fact, the contract allows farmers to leave at any time without penalty. During fieldwork, researchers had access to a French version of the contract between farmers and iTERAKA and can confirm that farmers are explicitly allowed to withdraw from the project. It is unclear where the information to the contrary was obtained since no clear sources with pages are provided.
We agree, however, that the extent of derived benefits remains open to debate and depends critically on both the feasibility of planting and maintaining sufficient numbers of trees and future developments in carbon prices. This risk should certainly not be underestimated.
Overall, where we diverge from some critics is in our assessment of analytical scope and policy engagement. However, we do not advocate carbon offsetting as a climate solution, just as we do not promote large-scale land acquisitions. Instead, we aim to provide rigorous, empirical evidence to inform public debate, policy reform and accountability, while recommendations — including for greater transparency, stronger land governance and closer scrutiny of project design — are intended as harm-reduction measures in a context where such projects are already proliferating.
Documenting and differentiating project types as has been done in our analytical report is a necessary step toward that accountability, not an endorsement of offsetting itself. The difference between the reports of GRAIN (“From land grabbers to carbon cowboys: a new scramble for community lands takes off”) and the Land Matrix (“Large-scale land acquisitions for carbon offsetting: Green grabbing or just transition?”) therefore does not stem from a blind embrace of community- or farmer-based projects by the Land Matrix, but rather from the different inclusion criteria for our data and a disagreement over whether carbon offsetting should be simply condemned wholesale without providing recommendations on how to address the status quo, or whether viable pathways can be proposed to safeguard the rights and livelihoods of local communities from an ongoing, and probably accelerating, development in global climate policy.
That said, we identify deep-rooted problems in carbon markets, including weak standards, methodologies that substantially overestimate emission reductions, top-down project design, and a widespread lack of understanding of the land tenure systems in many countries. Several project types and methodologies are certainly to be dismissed and the need for more environmental and social integrity is apparent to many actors.
Ultimately, decisions about engagement with future high-integrity carbon markets should rest with the communities themselves; achieving this, however, requires far greater transparency, much stronger safeguards, and more stringent accountability measures, which are the core policy goals of initiatives such as the Land Matrix.
Christoph Kubitza is a research associate in agricultural and development economics at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Germany.
Banner image: Huoideua plantation. Image courtesy of The Land Matrix.
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