By Pita Ligaiula in Honiara, Solomon Islands
Pacific climate and community groups are urging leaders at the 54th Pacific Islands Forum in Honiara to rethink the expansion of carbon markets into marine environments, warning that market-based approaches fail both as a source of finance and as a tool for emissions reduction.
The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) briefing paper, Blue Herrings: Carbon Market Learnings for Blue Carbon Frontiers, warns that wealthier countries are pushing market-based and debt-based solutions, crowding out political will for real emissions reductions.
“This raises credible reasons for why Pacific Island governments should halt the expansion of market-based approaches into marine environments,” the briefing paper states.
PANG highlights that efforts to bring blue carbon to market—such as clarifying property rights—risk intensifying tensions over land tenure and customary resource allocation.
“Fisherfolk groups have already raised their concerns on the implications that this will have for marine tenure and Indigenous subsistence practices,” the paper notes.
The briefing also identifies multiple failures of carbon markets:
*Reliance on demand, which can collapse, leaving credits unsold and funding streams unfulfilled.
*Saturated markets driving down benefits, favouring large-scale projects over community-led initiatives.
*Declining market needs as wealthy countries transition to low-emission economies.
*Unclear liability costs if carbon projects are destroyed by climate disasters.
*High costs of verifying carbon sequestration in marine ecosystems, making projects financially risky.
On emissions reduction, PANG cautions that carbon markets may overstate benefits.
“The modelling of the carbon sequestration across different forms of ecosystems… has tended to generalise, and therefore exaggerate, the carbon offsetting capacity of marine ecosystems,” the paper states.
Carbon markets can also be used to justify expanding fossil fuel projects, worsening the climate burden on frontline communities.
Scientific studies indicate that ecosystems may have reached carbon saturation and, in some cases, are releasing carbon back into the atmosphere during climate disasters.
The briefing highlighted the importance of respecting Indigenous ecosystem management.
“Treating the complexity of relationships that sustain ecosystems with an equation approach results in offsetting schemes that fail to factor in the broad range of pollution that fossil fuel and high-emitting activities produce.”
PANG stressed that Pacific sovereignty and climate justice, arguing that grant-based finance and keeping fossil fuels in the ground provide real solutions.
“Measures, such as carbon markets, run too high a risk of exacerbating the climate crisis which will ultimately increase the climate burden that Pacific countries already carry,” the paper states.
The briefing paper said that carbon markets fail to deliver both stable finance and genuine emissions reductions for Pacific communities.
It called on wealthier nations to provide meaningful grant-based financial support, technology transfers, and deep emissions reductions in their own countries.
