I've been subscribing for a bit and content has been great up till now, but I'm going to be very blunt: it's disappointing and if I'm honest, infuriating to see you citing the same old reductionist Guardian article which has been debunked multiple times in multiple different ways - especially while the newsletter claims to provide valuable info on the carbon markets.
The biggest and worst issue is that the Guardian compared PRE-ISSUANCE FORECASTS to OUTCOMES and used that to state that REDD+ projects make fake claims. Sorry for the capslock, but I can't bold. I can't emphasize how big of a problem this is.
This is like predicting you'll have 100 subscribers in a month, actually getting 60 after the month is up, and then being told that you have 40 fake subscribers. Does that sound nonsensical? It should. But that's actually what the Guardian did.
Credits do not exist based on forecasts. No credits are ever issued based on forecasts. No credits are ever purchased based on forecasts. Credits are only ever issued and sold based on outcomes. The Guardian needed to compare reported outcomes to real outcomes (which is what Sylvera employs an entire team of forest and data scientists to do) - not preliminary estimations to reported outcomes.
There have certainly been problems with the carbon markets - some REDD projects, and especially the CDM / renewable energy like you mentioned. But that Guardian article is straight up misinformation.
- Sylvera: https://www.sylvera.com/blog/guardian-offsets-response - I hope you are aware that Sylvera's entire raison d'etre is to assess the quality of carbon projects, so they are a far more trustworthy and robust source than a non-technical journalist at the Guardian - especially since they've built entire forest datasets that do exactly this.
Now moving on to Verra's rebuttal which goes into depth on all the things wrong with the article.
Point 1: Some of the studies used incorrect inputs, assumptions, data sets, and input factors and therefore underestimated deforestation.
- One example (there are more): "West et al.’s use of 250-meter resolution does not meet the minimum mapping unit that Verra requires for REDD projects (100 meters by 100 meters, or finer), and this likely led to a significant underestimation of deforestation in their synthetic controls, as Figure S1 in West et al. 2020 clearly shows."
- "The forest loss detected by the Global Forest Watch dataset (black squares, lower panel) is much smaller than the amount of forest that was actually lost"
Point 2: The studies reached totally different conclusions and the Guardian did not state this.
- "Take the 12 REDD projects in Brazil considered by both West et al. 2020 and Guizar-Coutiño et al.: the former found that deforestation or degradation was lower in 4 of 12 projects (33% of projects), whereas the latter found that deforestation was lower in 11 of 12 projects (92%) and degradation was lower in 9 of 12 projects (75%). The Guardian also neglected to note that the results of the two approaches were consistent in fewer than half the cases."
- Instead, the Guardian wrote that “the data showed broad agreement on the lack of effectiveness of the projects compared with the Verra-approved predictions.”
Point 3: Misrepresenting findings
- "The Guardian grossly misrepresented the Guizar-Coutiño et al. data by claiming that the baselines of the 32 projects were inflated by approximately 400%."
- "Guizar-Coutiño et al. considered deforestation and degradation, not emission reductions, and made no statements at all about the baselines."
- "This is a false comparison... What the Guardian should have done, and failed to do, is to compare Guizar-Coutiño et al.’s findings not with the early-stage predictions of project developers, but with the actual emission reductions achieved by the projects."
Point 4: The Guardian cherry picked the projects they wished to use
- The Guardian looked at the results of only 29 of the 36 different REDD projects considered by West et al. 2020 and West et al. 2023, per Table 3. The Guardian offered no explanation for excluding the other projects, either publicly or to Verra, other than a passing reference that further analysis was not possible."
Also, on a slightly different topic, it's not helpful to imply that suing companies for so-called 'false claims' of being carbon neutral is a good thing. These claims of false claims are usually based on someone deciding the company's actions weren't good enough (or believed misinformation like the Guardian article.
As discussed in this post here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7084560200392679424/ "We are in a voluntary world. Which means that telling companies to become carbon neutral, and then suing them 5 years later because they voluntarily invested millions of dollars in carbon credits and then said something about it, but we've collectively changed our minds about what "good" voluntary climate action looks like, is an excellent way to STOP all voluntary action."
The only way we are going to have a hope of conserving a lot of remaining intact forests is through REDD+ and other similar mechanisms. Undermining them based on false info is a great way to destroy what's left of what we have.
As for today's newsletter, the damage is already done, but I hope you'll send out a retraction or clarification tomorrow. Otherwise, it undermines the whole value proposition of this newsletter - if we can't trust you to get this right just by doing basic research, how can we trust you on anything else?
I've been subscribing for a bit and content has been great up till now, but I'm going to be very blunt: it's disappointing and if I'm honest, infuriating to see you citing the same old reductionist Guardian article which has been debunked multiple times in multiple different ways - especially while the newsletter claims to provide valuable info on the carbon markets.
The biggest and worst issue is that the Guardian compared PRE-ISSUANCE FORECASTS to OUTCOMES and used that to state that REDD+ projects make fake claims. Sorry for the capslock, but I can't bold. I can't emphasize how big of a problem this is.
This is like predicting you'll have 100 subscribers in a month, actually getting 60 after the month is up, and then being told that you have 40 fake subscribers. Does that sound nonsensical? It should. But that's actually what the Guardian did.
Credits do not exist based on forecasts. No credits are ever issued based on forecasts. No credits are ever purchased based on forecasts. Credits are only ever issued and sold based on outcomes. The Guardian needed to compare reported outcomes to real outcomes (which is what Sylvera employs an entire team of forest and data scientists to do) - not preliminary estimations to reported outcomes.
There have certainly been problems with the carbon markets - some REDD projects, and especially the CDM / renewable energy like you mentioned. But that Guardian article is straight up misinformation.
Here are some of the many rebuttals:
- Verra: https://verra.org/technical-review-of-west-et-al-2020-and-2023-guizar-coutino-2022-and-coverage-in-britains-guardian/ - did you even read this before sending out the newsletter?
- Sylvera: https://www.sylvera.com/blog/guardian-offsets-response - I hope you are aware that Sylvera's entire raison d'etre is to assess the quality of carbon projects, so they are a far more trustworthy and robust source than a non-technical journalist at the Guardian - especially since they've built entire forest datasets that do exactly this.
- A technical rebuttal of West's 2020 paper: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20475769/in-defense-of-redd-projects-in-brazil_v3-general-audience.pdf
- A semi-casual assessment of project outputs that finds that actually, issuances are around 98% accurate: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7093566102957404160/
Now moving on to Verra's rebuttal which goes into depth on all the things wrong with the article.
Point 1: Some of the studies used incorrect inputs, assumptions, data sets, and input factors and therefore underestimated deforestation.
- One example (there are more): "West et al.’s use of 250-meter resolution does not meet the minimum mapping unit that Verra requires for REDD projects (100 meters by 100 meters, or finer), and this likely led to a significant underestimation of deforestation in their synthetic controls, as Figure S1 in West et al. 2020 clearly shows."
- "The forest loss detected by the Global Forest Watch dataset (black squares, lower panel) is much smaller than the amount of forest that was actually lost"
Point 2: The studies reached totally different conclusions and the Guardian did not state this.
- "Take the 12 REDD projects in Brazil considered by both West et al. 2020 and Guizar-Coutiño et al.: the former found that deforestation or degradation was lower in 4 of 12 projects (33% of projects), whereas the latter found that deforestation was lower in 11 of 12 projects (92%) and degradation was lower in 9 of 12 projects (75%). The Guardian also neglected to note that the results of the two approaches were consistent in fewer than half the cases."
- Instead, the Guardian wrote that “the data showed broad agreement on the lack of effectiveness of the projects compared with the Verra-approved predictions.”
Point 3: Misrepresenting findings
- "The Guardian grossly misrepresented the Guizar-Coutiño et al. data by claiming that the baselines of the 32 projects were inflated by approximately 400%."
- "Guizar-Coutiño et al. considered deforestation and degradation, not emission reductions, and made no statements at all about the baselines."
- "This is a false comparison... What the Guardian should have done, and failed to do, is to compare Guizar-Coutiño et al.’s findings not with the early-stage predictions of project developers, but with the actual emission reductions achieved by the projects."
Point 4: The Guardian cherry picked the projects they wished to use
- The Guardian looked at the results of only 29 of the 36 different REDD projects considered by West et al. 2020 and West et al. 2023, per Table 3. The Guardian offered no explanation for excluding the other projects, either publicly or to Verra, other than a passing reference that further analysis was not possible."
Also, on a slightly different topic, it's not helpful to imply that suing companies for so-called 'false claims' of being carbon neutral is a good thing. These claims of false claims are usually based on someone deciding the company's actions weren't good enough (or believed misinformation like the Guardian article.
As discussed in this post here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7084560200392679424/ "We are in a voluntary world. Which means that telling companies to become carbon neutral, and then suing them 5 years later because they voluntarily invested millions of dollars in carbon credits and then said something about it, but we've collectively changed our minds about what "good" voluntary climate action looks like, is an excellent way to STOP all voluntary action."
The only way we are going to have a hope of conserving a lot of remaining intact forests is through REDD+ and other similar mechanisms. Undermining them based on false info is a great way to destroy what's left of what we have.
As for today's newsletter, the damage is already done, but I hope you'll send out a retraction or clarification tomorrow. Otherwise, it undermines the whole value proposition of this newsletter - if we can't trust you to get this right just by doing basic research, how can we trust you on anything else?