It’s time to end the carbon offset era, COP30 scientists & communities say (commentary)

At COP30 in Belém, the first climate summit held in the Amazon, something rare has happened. For years, the risks and failures of carbon offsetting have been dismissed as activist exaggeration or technical teething problems. But this week, Brazil’s leading scientists publicly said what many Indigenous and frontline communities have long argued: forests cannot be used as offsets. This warning, issued by the COP30 Science Council, should land with force. These are not fringe voices. Carlos Nobre, Paulo Artaxo, Piers Forster, Thelma Krug, Johan Rockström and others are among the world’s foremost experts on tipping points and terrestrial systems. Their statement is unusually blunt: the world is “already facing danger”; fossil fuel emissions must start falling next year; and forests — especiall