Can the carbon-offset market be saved?

livemint.com:

“As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs," ran an early advertising jingle attributed to Johann Tetzel, a 16th-century indulgence salesman. Funding the church offered believers an alternative to paying for sins in the afterlife. The carbon-credit market promises something similar.

Instead of reducing your carbon footprint, why not simply pay someone else to do it for you? It is a nice idea. Yet the voluntary carbon market—as opposed to compliance markets, such as the EU’s emissions-trading scheme—is in turmoil. Latter-day Martin Luthers, whose objections to Tetzel led to the Reformation, have pointed out that offsets struggle to prove they make a difference to emissions: renewable projects are often viable on their own, thus providing funding does not lower emissions.

Scandals have also sapped investor appetite. A report by the Guardian, a British newspaper, alleged that many leading “nature-based" offsets, which usually attempt to restore forests, are junk. Activists argue that middle men hog the proceeds and indigenous people fail to benefit.

Prices for nature-based offsets plunged from $15 a tonne after the COP climate summit in Glasgow two years ago to a disastrous $0.10 a tonne after the recent meeting in Dubai, according to Xpansiv, an exchange. Reformers were at the summit in force, with proposals for how to fix the market. These include plans to verify, tally and register offsets.