Auditors are failing in their role as third-party guarantors of the quality of carbon offsets, according to new academic research.
In a paper published Thursday in Science, an international peer-reviewed journal, Cary Coglianese, a law and political science professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Cynthia Giles, a former senior adviser at the US Environmental Protection Agency, conclude that auditors selected and paid by the companies they inspect can’t affirm the credibility of the projects they assess.
