Pacific climate justice campaigner India Logan-Riley has warned that carbon markets and blue carbon schemes are creating new forms of exploitation across the region, allowing wealthy nations to “buy their way out” of climate responsibility while threatening indigenous ocean and land rights.
Speaking at the 2025 State of the Ocean: Unpacking the Year in Ocean Threats and Successes webinar, the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) campaigner said the world had now entered “deeply unstable territory” after scientists confirmed that global warming had surpassed 1.5°C, the critical threshold set under the Paris Agreement.
“We are in deeply unstable territory now when it comes to weather stability, and with that, livelihoods, well-being, and the very existence of some of our communities and cultures in the Pacific,” Logan-Riley said.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the climate crisis, she cautioned that many so-called climate “solutions”, including carbon markets, debt-for-nature swaps, and blue carbon trading, risk deepening inequalities rather than addressing root causes.
“Those who have caused the harm should have to address it and deal with it,” she said. “But what we’re seeing in conversations around nature-based solutions and nature commodities is a way of padding out or avoiding those obligations on the part of the global north.”
Drawing links to discussions at the World Bank Land Conference earlier this year, she said the logic behind some carbon market approaches mirrors “net positive mining”, where environmental destruction is justified by protecting another area.
“If you protect two square kilometres of forest but you dig one square kilometre for a mine, suddenly that makes your mining net positive,” she said. “But that doesn’t actually make the mine disappear. The same happens for carbon markets, it argues for a net positive fossil fuel extraction.”
A PANG report released in April found the science behind many carbon schemes “entirely dodgy,” warning that communities involved in such projects face unstable incomes as market prices fluctuate.
“If we’re meant to eventually reduce our emissions to near zero, then that income source also disappears,” she explained. “It’s a market-based approach and markets change.”
Logan-Riley also warned about the private market expansion of carbon trading into marine ecosystems, saying such policies could “displace fisherfolk” and “alter the relationship we have with the ocean,” which is deeply tied to Pacific cultures and governance systems.
Logan-Riley pointed out that countries like Germany and Australia were already advising Pacific governments on carbon trading policies, despite being major fossil fuel producers.
“We have these wealthier countries who really have to just stop digging up fossil fuels and stop burning them disproportionately, but are seeking to make their fossil fuel burning somehow net positive, even though it doesn’t work.”
She described carbon markets as an invention of right-wing think tanks in the United States during the development of the Kyoto Protocol, designed to promote “business volunteerism” rather than genuine emissions cuts.
“Carbon markets have not delivered emissions reduction. In fact, they won’t. The science just doesn’t back it up.”
Instead, she argued, climate action should mirror the balance and reciprocity of nature as understood through indigenous knowledge.
“Our ecosystems are not equations where the negative impacts of humans can be magicked away by some other good things elsewhere. You just stop doing the negative impact. It’s as simple as that.”
Logan-Riley urged Pacific nations to uphold their “moral leadership” following the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on climate responsibility, which found that governments have legal and human rights obligations to cut emissions at the source.
“We need to consider whether creating carbon commodities that help polluters buy their way out of obligations aligns with our Pacific morality and indigenous commitment to justice.”
She warned that carbon markets could further dispossess Indigenous communities, particularly in places like West Papua, where Indonesia’s blue carbon ambitions overlap with human rights concerns.
“There are major human rights implications when it comes to carbon trading. The systems set up under the Paris Agreement are nowhere near up to scratch when it comes to preventing those kinds of breaches.”
As countries continue to shape their carbon market policies, Logan-Riley urged Pacific communities, academics, and NGOs to stay vigilant.
“Keep an eye on what your government’s doing. When you turn something into a commodity, someone else loses access to it, and that creates an exploitative relationship. We need to uphold our principles of sharing and equity.”
She called for non-debt-based climate finance and justice-based reparations, saying that only by addressing the root causes of pollution and exploitation can the Pacific truly protect its ocean and its people.
