Verra
Founded as Verified Carbon Standard in 2005 by a consortium led by the World Economic Forum. Has since become the largest vendor in the voluntary carbon market.
Greenwashing
Many factors would suggest that Verra credits have little credibility as legitimate carbon offset, and are more likely a vehicle for greenwashing.
Industrial Collusion
Verra is a member of the International Emissions Trading Association, whose membership includes top petroleum corporations such as British Petroeum, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Enbridge, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, and Shell Oil. These companies are currently engaged in extensive greenwashing campaigns which include the use of Verra's offsets.[1]
Most if not all of them have known about global warming and other signs of climate collapse for decades, all the while casting doubt on or outright denying the reality. See also: Fossil Fuel Industry Disinformation.
IETA members further include:[2]
- top fossil fuel financiers (e.g. Bank of America & Goldman Sachs)
- industrial agriculture firms (e.g. Bayer-Monsanto & Cargill) that manufacture the munitions required to "secure" an ecological monoculture in the War on Insects + War on Weeds.
Monoculture Plantations
The project title on the Verra protect database is “‘Guanaré’ forest plantations on degraded grasslands under extensive grazing”. The project consists of more than 21,000 hectares of eucalyptus monocultures. The project was set up by Guanaré AS, a Uruguayan forestry investment firm founded by Peter Lyford Pyke. The industrial forestry operations on the ground are carried out by Agroempresa Forestal, a Uruguayan company. The timber is harvested and shipped to India and China.[3]
Rainforest Protection
Systemic Analysis
Up to 94% of Verra's 'prevented deforestation' credits are worthless [4]
study #1: [5]
study #2: [6]
study #3: [7]
Mai Ndombe
One source for the $NCT of Toucan Protocol and Regen Network.
Tokenization
In Fall of 2021, the demand for Verra's carbon credits driven by tokenization for the launch of Toucan Protocol and Klima DAO accounted for 25% of all of Verra's sales.
Following a 4/7/22 token vetting performed by Carbon Plan[8] and publicized by Bloomberg News[9], Verra announced it would prohibit the tokenization of retired credits by Toucan Protocol or other parties. (see also: <https://redd-monitor.org/2022/04/11/toucans-crypto-layer-on-top-of-carbon-offsets-is-expanding-the-market-for-toxic-hot-air/>)
The following month, Verra announced that it was prohibiting the tokenization of "retired" credits but would create a new category of "immobilized" credits which could be tokenized instead to avoid "mind frying" confusion in the voluntary carbon market.[10] According to Toucan Protocol's blog, this announcement stemmed from a "lengthy dialogue" between the two corporations.[11] Both companies belong to the IETA along with the world's largest fossil fuel corporations and Wall Street banks.
Sources
- ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2022/07/13/how-to-burn-the-planet-shell-invests-us38-million-in-carbonext-brazils-biggest-redd-offset-firm/
- ↑ https://www.ieta.org/Our-Members
- ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2022/07/18/german-supermarket-aldi-buys-carbon-offsets-from-monoculture-eucalyptus-plantations-in-uruguay-in-order-to-claim-that-its-milk-is-carbon-neutral/
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
- ↑ https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004334117
- ↑ https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13970
- ↑ https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.03354
- ↑ https://carbonplan.org/research/toucan-crypto-offsets
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-07/the-biggest-crypto-effort-to-end-useless-carbon-offsets-is-backfiring?leadSource=uverify%20wall
- ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2022/05/29/verra-prohibits-tokenisation-of-retired-offsets-toucan-welcomes-the-news/
- ↑ https://blog.toucan.earth/response-to-verras-announcement/