By Manuela Andreoni and Ricardo Brito
SAO PAULO -Brazilian prosecutors are seeking to annul a $180 million carbon offset scheme to support the conservation of the Amazon rainforest that the state of Para signed last year with a coalition of major corporations and wealthy governments, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday.
The lawsuit is a powerful blow to the government of Para, the host of the next global climate summit, known as COP30, as well as the carbon credit industry as a whole, which had been trying to reposition itself after years of facing accusations of abuse and fraud.
The state of Para holds one of the most vulnerable sections of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest.
In the filing, the prosecutors argued that the state government had failed to inform and consult the communities that would be impacted by the deal.
They also said Brazilian law doesn’t allow for the pre-sale of carbon credits, which in this case represent the carbon locked away in trees that the project says it will keep from being knocked down.
The state, the prosecutors wrote, aimed to approve its carbon credit plan “before COP 30, which has generated considerable pressure on Indigenous peoples and traditional communities in Para.”
Amazon.com Inc and at least five other companies had agreed to purchase the credits through the LEAF Coalition forest conservation initiative, which the e-commerce giant helped to found in 2021 with a group of other firms and governments, including the United States and United Kingdom.
The Para government and Emergent, a non-profit that coordinates the LEAF Coalition, didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
The project was one of the world’s first carbon credit schemes to be called jurisdictional, because they cover whole states or countries. The new design was meant to address concerns about private projects partly by making the accounting of credits easier.
It aimed to sell up to 12 million credits at $15 each related to the carbon locked away in trees that it would protect from deforestation.
(Reporting and writing by Manuela Andreoni; additional reporting by Ricardo Brito; Editing by Leslie Adler)
