Buying rainforest offsets isn’t cutting it – how about UK firms funding their local farms to fight emissions and grow food sustainably
Accountability: ‘the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it, or the degree to which this happens.’
It’s safe to say that we are becoming ever more accountable for our actions. The modern world of internet, social media and smartphones is facilitating (and often forcing) transparency and public scrutiny.
If you, Joe Public, choose to blur the moral lines of right and wrong, chances are exceptionally high these days that you’ll eventually be caught out and face public shame. Get caught stealing a loaf of bread in medieval times and you’d probably end up in the stocks, getting rotten fruit thrown in your face. Park your Discovery across two parking spaces today and you’ll be plastered over your local ‘Spotted in…’ Facebook group before you can say ALDI – and most likely labelled a Nazi too.
But while individual behaviour is increasingly policed by the crowd, is the same level of scrutiny being applied to businesses and institutions? Companies are under growing pressure to prove that their claims – whether about sustainability, fairness or ethics – can withstand inspection.
I’m just not too sure how truly accountable it is for businesses to be buying carbon credits.
It’s great that big businesses are splashing the cash to save the rainforest … but is anyone actually holding these companies accountable?
Rather than simply throwing money at the problem, are corporate entities being properly scrutinised to see if they could change their own practices to better help the environment?
It smacks of a distant dad giving his child £100 each birthday and Christmas to make up for the countless times he wasn’t around all year. Yes, the cash is great, but it would be better to do the right thing and give time, love and attention to the child. And even if you throw cash to solve the situation – do you know that your money is truly being spent in the right place to protect the future of our planet?
The answer: we don’t.
The best bit
A recent report by Corporate Accountability found eight in ten of the world’s 100 largest carbon offsetting projects to be ‘problematic’ – their emissions benefits were either lower than stated or were significantly harming local communities around the projects. Worst of all, nine in ten of these ‘problematic’ projects are located south of the equator. Surely, if you want to throw cash to solve your problem, the least you can do is throw it at your own country?
I’m not a politician, and I know that greenhouse gas emissions are a global problem, but why don’t we solve our problems at home?
Stick with me here, figures incoming … latest figures suggest that in 2022, agriculture was responsible for 12 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions – a total of 47.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The government knows this is an issue, so it pays farmers for growing food sustainably and for working on nature recovery through the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) – with a current budget of £2.7 billion a year over the next two years.
The current price of a carbon credit (or one tonne of carbon capture) is £64.90.
So what if the Government created a trading scheme where UK businesses could buy carbon credits straight from British Agriculture?
It would support sustainable food production without the need for endless taxpayer’s money as subsidies (and stop the sudden abandonment of schemes when the pot runs out).
If the UK government put in £2.7 billion, and UK businesses bought 47.7 million tonnes of carbon credits, at £64.90 per credit (totalling just under
£3.1 billion), that would make available a yearly SFI fund of £5.8 billion – more than double the current annual fund.
This larger pot would give greater funding to farmers to reduce their carbon emissions by investing in new technologies, tree planting and better soil management … all while encouraging them to keep doing what they do best: producing food!
But that’s not even the best part of my idea: the carbon credits purchased from businesses could be primarily assigned to local farms near that business, thereby creating a stronger, more transparent connection between the agriculture and business sectors.
This would allow businesses to see where their money is really being spent and the actual, transparent difference it is making – not just sending money south of the equator and hoping you’ve done the right thing.
by Andrew Livingston
