PRESS RELEASE

Carbon Markets Are Not The Magic Pill To Scale Up Carbon Dioxide Removals

*False solutions are not the answer to the climate crisis*

For immediate release

21 February 2025

On  the launch of the report “Scaling Up Carbon Dioxide Removals – Recommendations For Navigating Opportunities And Risks In The EU” by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC), civil society organisations and climate justice groups are reiterating that carbon markets and carbon dioxide removals are a dangerous distraction and a false solution, and will instead accelerate the climate crisis further.

There is mounting evidence that carbon markets do not deliver real emissions reductions and often lead to human rights abuses, land grabs, and violations of the rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

Geoengineering technofixes like Direct Air Capture (DAC), Carbon Capture Use and Storage (CCUS), and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), are a risky and speculative false solution which do not address the root causes of the climate crisis. Instead they offer a distraction from genuine solutions like just transition from fossil fuels, restoration and conservation of ecosystems, and support for community-led and governed initiatives that address the climate crisis at its roots. They give a free pass to the biggest polluting industries to continue polluting.

Late last year, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) made a decision to reinforce the precautionary approach to geoengineering and reaffirmed the existing de facto  global moratorium on geoengineering.

Linda Schneider, Senior International Climate Policy Officer at Heinrich Boell Foundation said:

The EU is looking to scale up Carbon Dioxide Removals, but these technological approaches to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at large volumes have huge uncertainties. They have not been proven to work, especially at scale. In fact, they have been shown to come with many known and unknown impacts and side effects for communities and the environment. What is referred to as “permanent removals” in the ESABCC report is not actually permanent: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is unsafe, unreliable and leads to more and continued emissions.

While a lot can and must be done in the land sector in Europe to protect and restore natural ecosystems so they can help draw down CO2, this must not be used to allow for continued emissions from fossil fuels and industry. The integration of carbon removals – whether they are engineered or nature-based – into the EU Emissions Trading System is therefore highly problematic as it may facilitate reliance on uncertain and risky carbon removals and shift attention away from what we know needs to happen: slashing emissions and phasing out fossil fuels at source. 

 

Coraina de la Plaza, Global Coordination, Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance said:

“The EU potentially scaling-up Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies is bad news for the climate crisis. While CDR technologies are often touted as a solution to the climate crisis, they are far from being a silver bullet. These technologies are mainly unproven at scale, expensive, and risky. They rely on untested assumptions about their long-term effectiveness and permanence. Rather than placing our hopes in speculative, unproven solutions like CDR technologies, we must prioritize immediate, real rights-based climate solutions actions to drive ambition and the real transformation we need to mitigate the climate crisis.”

—ENDS—

Additional Resources

1. Geoengineering technologies and approaches
2. Geoengineering Monitor Map
3. COP29 Gives Entry to Carbon Markets Making A Dangerous Step Backward for Climate Justice

About Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance

The Hands Off Mother Earth! (HOME) Alliance is a driving force in the fight against the growing threat of large-scale technological manipulation of the climate and biodiversity: geoengineering. We are an international civil society network of close to 200 organizations from over 45 different countries, from the Global South and the Global North. HOME was first launched as a global campaign in April 2010 at The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In October 2018 we released the HOME Manifesto denouncing geoengineering with a demand for an immediate stop to all open-air experiments. 

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