Civil Society Joint Letter on Carbon Trading
Jakarta, 18 September 2023

Through this open letter, we, Indonesian citizens who gathered in various mass organizations, emphasize that we reject carbon trading as a path taken by the Indonesian government to overcome the climate crisis. Carbon trading is just a way to secure the extractive industrial regime and the financialization of nature, which in fact has been the main cause of the climate crisis and human rights violations. The main spirit of carbon trading is “balancing” or “offset”. Where, a corporation or Annex I countries can still release emissions from extraction and industrialization activities, even exceeding the emissions cap as long as they carry out carbon offsets by purchasing carbon in the carbon market.

The solution should focus on reducing emissions to ensure global temperatures are below 1.5 degrees Celsius, so that there is no other way to overcome the climate crisis other than immediately and massively reducing fossil fuel emissions, not replacing them with technocratic solutions of just planting trees. Protecting forests and restoring natural ecosystems is critical for biodiversity and the climate, but we must do so by reducing emissions directly, not as a substitution.

However, since carbon trading and offset are seen as fast and affordable solution by companies and the Government, many carbon offset projects are running with dubious, even false claims, replacing them with narratives of mere technical problem of balancing carbon (net zero or carbon neutral) in the atmosphere is a lie that is dangerous for the future of planet Earth.

To put it in simple terms, carbon trading is merely a permission to keep releasing emissions, and permission to keep violating human rights. Several bases of our position are as follow:

Download Here, Civil Society Joint Letter on Carbon Trading.