Civil society organisations and climate justice groups have reiterated that carbon markets and carbon dioxide removals are a dangerous distraction and a false solution and will instead accelerate the climate crisis further.
They made the submission on Friday, February 21, 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).
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, they stated.
“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! (HOME) 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 prioritise immediate, real rights-based climate solutions actions to drive ambition and the real transformation we need to mitigate the climate crisis.”