Researchers flag weak governance, land conflicts, and monoculture replanting as systemic failures—even as they affirm the role of high-integrity projects in global climate goals.
Southeast Asia’s forest carbon projects—long touted as a cornerstone of nature-based climate solutions—are falling short on social justice safeguards and biodiversity outcomes, according to a new review published in WIREs Climate Change. The study, led by Yingshan Lau of the National University of Singapore, synthesizes 170 social-science assessments of REDD+ and other offset schemes across the region and concludes that weak governance, insecure land rights, corruption, funding shortfalls and fragmented policy frameworks are driving persistent harms on the ground.
“Forest carbon credits transcend scale and geographies,” Lau said. “Decisions by more privileged groups of people in one part of the world could affect more vulnerable groups in other parts of the world.”
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The findings echo grievances from Indigenous communities in Cambodia’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, where a REDD+ project launched in 2010 overlapped customary lands. Several years into implementation, villagers reported legal harassment, crop destruction and confiscation of property amid land disputes with project operators. The authors stress that while carbon programs can finance conservation, they require continuous scrutiny to prevent unintended social and ecological damage.
The review finds that many schemes privilege carbon accounting above all else. Reforestation projects frequently favor monoculture plantings—maximizing measurable carbon while delivering limited benefits for biodiversity. In places where land tenure is unclear, projects routinely encounter community opposition, protests and rejection of benefits. Conversely, initiatives that clarify tenure early in the project cycle are more likely to deliver equitable outcomes and share benefits fairly.
“Forest carbon schemes have been unable to compete with large-scale drivers of deforestation,” the study notes, adding that they often elevate “scientific and expert knowledge” for carbon and geospatial metrics while sidelining community rights and local ecological knowledge.
Democratic backsliding compounds risk
The paper’s release comes as democratic backsliding and deregulation threaten safeguards globally. Maria Brockhaus, professor of international forest policy at the University of Helsinki, who was not involved in the study, warned that rollbacks in environmental and social protections—along with legal changes aimed at fast-tracking access to land—undermine accountability across the carbon market. She argues that restoring decision-making power to Indigenous peoples and local communities is essential: they should hold the right to accept or refuse carbon trading on their lands, and those rights must be protected.
The authors outline practical steps to realign forest carbon with climate, nature and justice:
- Secure land rights up front. Early tenure clarification improves later-stage equity and benefit sharing.
- Institutionalize community consent. Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and robust protections against land grabbing, forced eviction and state overreach should be standard.
- Respect traditional management. Collective and customary forest systems embed local knowledge, support biodiversity and, by extension, carbon storage.
- Invest in literacy and trust. Carbon-credit literacy can help communities understand how resources are commodified, the risks involved and their procedural rights.
- Broaden project design. Complement REDD+ with ecosystem restoration and agroforestry to balance carbon goals with livelihoods and ecological integrity.
“At the project level, the support and involvement of local stakeholders is important,” Lau said, emphasizing the need for technical capacity-building, high-level political support and credible carbon prices to sustain engagement.
Market confidence depends on social integrity
Experts caution that carbon markets risk enabling polluters to claim progress while continuing to emit. The study’s authors and independent observers alike argue that buyer confidence ultimately rests on demonstrable social and environmental integrity. Projects that work closely with communities from the outset—aligning design with cultural ties to nature and wildlife—are more likely to secure durable support, deliver biodiversity gains and sustain a reliable flow of funding to forest conservation.
Well-managed forest carbon initiatives still have a role in global decarbonization, the researchers conclude, but only if they center the rights of the people who have stewarded these forests for generations—and measure success by more than carbon alone.
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