Game of Credits

A lot of us have been following COP27 in the news and on social networks, and having a blast reading the speeches of people such as Antonio Guterres and Ursula von der Leyen but while we were laughing, people were discussing serious stuff, like carbon credits.

Carbon credits appear to be all the rage at this COP. Several African countries have announced an initiative that would turn them into carbon sinks, in exchange for billions of dollars, to be spent by businesses and governments outside Africa on purchasing such credits. Good for them. Or is it?

Carbon credits, also called permits or offsets, are essentially chits saying the owner can emit a certain amount of CO2 if they build a solar farm, for instance, or pay Gabon to not cut down a certain number of trees. It sounds simple enough and it is simple. It could also turn out to be highly controversial and at the same time quite lucrative.