The slow growth of the carbon offsets market

Despite the integral role played by forests in efforts to combat global warming, the market for forest-based carbon offsets has been slow to develop. Katie Holliday talks to experts about how this landscape is now changing

Through their absorption of carbon dioxide, forests are the most natural antidote to rising greenhouse gas emissions. However, despite their pivotal role in tackling climate change, incentives to promote projects that prevent deforestation or encourage the planting of new forests have largely been excluded from compliance-based climate change legislation worldwide after the original devisers of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) being sceptical over the scientific validity of