I recently watched a TEDx talk by Jaye Connolly titled Are Carbon Credits Legit? In the presentation, Connolly recounts her journey across Africa, where she encountered troubling questions about carbon offset projects, particularly the benefits reaching communities whose forests and natural resources underpin these projects.
Her conclusion is provocative: carbon credits are “crap.”
It is the kind of statement that attracts attention, especially at a time when carbon markets face growing scrutiny over their environmental integrity, transparency and claims of sustainable development benefits.
But is it entirely accurate?
Connolly herself acknowledges during the presentation that she is not a climatologist. She approaches the subject from her experience as a technology executive working in Africa. This is an important qualification, not necessarily a weakness. Perspectives from outside the carbon market industry can help expose assumptions that practitioners have come to accept as normal. However, the claims made in such discussions must still withstand scientific scrutiny.
And several of Connolly’s claims require qualification.
For example, she refers to reports suggesting that 90% of forest carbon credits are worthless. This claim draws on investigations into avoided-deforestation projects, particularly those certified under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard.
There is credible scientific evidence supporting concerns about overcrediting. West et al. (2023), writing in Science, examined 26 avoided-deforestation project sites and found that most did not demonstrate statistically significant reductions in deforestation. Where reductions occurred, they were frequently considerably lower than the amounts claimed.
Similarly, Probst et al. (2024), in a systematic assessment published in Nature Communications, estimated that fewer than 16% of credits issued to the projects investigated represented real emissions reductions.
These findings are deeply concerning.
Yet it would be scientifically inappropriate to conclude from these studies that 90% of all forest carbon credits, or carbon credits generally, are worthless. The findings concern particular project types, samples and methodologies. Moreover, overcrediting does not necessarily mean that a project has delivered no environmental or social benefits.
The distinction matters.
Another problematic claim is the suggestion that carbon credits constitute a $2 trillion market. This conflates carbon-credit transactions with the much broader carbon-pricing and climate economy. According to Ecosystem Marketplace (2025), reported voluntary carbon-market transactions totalled approximately US$535 million in 2024.
We must be precise about these figures, particularly when discussing the economic opportunities that carbon markets supposedly offer African countries.
Nevertheless, I believe the most important contribution of Connolly’s presentation lies elsewhere.
It is in the question she raises about communities.
Who Really Benefits From Africa’s Carbon Markets?
Connolly recounts visiting communities in Zimbabwe associated with the Kariba REDD+ project. She describes conversations with local leaders who appeared unaware of the substantial carbon revenues reportedly generated through the protection of forests in their territories.
Her account raises serious questions about transparency and benefit-sharing.
The specific financial claims she makes, including the amounts reportedly generated and allocated to communities, require independent verification. Without examining contractual obligations, actual project receipts, expenditure records and community disbursements, it is difficult to establish precisely what was owed, delivered or withheld.
However, the broader concern is supported by academic research.
Chipato (2025), examining carbon projects in Zimbabwe, including Kariba, documents how carbon-financing arrangements can create opportunities for livelihood improvements while simultaneously reinforcing unequal power relations, exclusion and elite capture.
This tension is not unique to Zimbabwe.
Research across Africa increasingly demonstrates that the distribution of carbon-market benefits is shaped by institutional arrangements, contractual relationships, resource rights and the ability of different actors to influence decisions.
This leads to a question that I consider more fundamental than whether carbon credits are legitimate:
Who has the power to determine how carbon-market value is created, exchanged and distributed?
Beyond Carbon Integrity to Climate Justice
Much of the public debate about carbon markets focuses on environmental integrity.
Are emissions reductions real? Are they additional? Are they accurately measured? Would they have happened without carbon finance?
These questions are essential. A carbon credit that does not represent a credible mitigation outcome undermines the environmental purpose of the market.
But environmental integrity alone does not guarantee justice.
A carbon project may deliver genuine emissions reductions while distributing its economic benefits unfairly. Communities may receive certain benefits without understanding the financial value generated through their participation. Others may experience restrictions on resource use without having meaningful influence over the decisions affecting their livelihoods.
Equally, a project may improve local livelihoods while overstating its climate impact.
These possibilities demonstrate why carbon-market governance must be evaluated through both environmental integrity and social justice.
The work of scholars such as Asiyanbi (2016), McAfee (2016) and Sultana (2022) provides an important intellectual foundation for understanding these relationships. Their contributions show how environmental interventions can reproduce existing inequalities when market structures, knowledge systems and decision-making arrangements remain concentrated in the hands of powerful actors.
The central challenge is therefore not simply improving the accuracy of carbon accounting. It is also addressing the political and economic relationships through which carbon-market value is governed.
Decolonising Carbon Markets
I was participating in the 2030 Agenda Research Symposium at Lund University when Connolly’s TEDx presentation appeared on my YouTube feed. At the time, I had prepared a presentation titled Decolonising Carbon Markets Beyond 2030: Power, Justice and Africa’s Development Sovereignty.
It therefore seemed fitting to connect her presentation to my broader concerns about the systems, power structures, and institutions that prevent carbon markets from achieving their intended purpose. In this presentation, I argued expanding Africa’s participation in carbon markets is necessary, but participation alone does not guarantee equitable development.
African countries can host more projects, issue more credits and attract more international buyers while remaining disadvantaged in the arrangements that determine prices, contractual obligations, technical standards and revenue distribution.
Likewise, communities can participate in carbon projects without exercising meaningful influence over decisions or having enforceable claims to benefits.
I propose examining the decolonisation of carbon markets through three interconnected dimensions.
First, inclusion.
African countries, institutions, enterprises and communities must have greater opportunities to participate in carbon markets. This requires investment in technical expertise, regulatory capacity, domestic project development and access to finance.
However, inclusion may simply bring more African actors into market structures whose rules are already determined elsewhere.
Second, redistribution.
This requires changing how benefits, risks, information and decision-making authority are allocated.
Communities should have enforceable rights to agreed benefits, meaningful participation in decisions and access to grievance mechanisms. African governments and domestic enterprises should also have the capacity to negotiate more favourable terms and retain greater economic value.
Redistribution therefore concerns more than financial payments. It involves changing who holds power.
Third, transformation.
The ultimate question is whether carbon markets contribute to Africa’s long-term development priorities.
Are these markets supporting domestic industrial development, technological capabilities, energy access, sustainable agriculture and economic resilience? Or are African countries becoming suppliers of relatively inexpensive mitigation outcomes while higher-value financial and technical activities remain concentrated elsewhere?
A transformed carbon market would serve nationally and locally defined development priorities, rather than treating the generation and export of credits as an end in itself.
Ghana Offers an Important Test Case
Ghana’s experience with Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement provides a useful opportunity to examine these questions.
Through its bilateral cooperation with Switzerland, Ghana has moved beyond carbon-market policy development into actual international transfers.
In July 2025, the first 11,733 internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) associated with an improved cookstove activity were issued to the KliK Foundation’s account in the Swiss emissions registry.
This represents an important milestone in Ghana’s participation in international carbon markets.
The activity offers potential benefits through cleaner cooking technologies, household subsidies and local manufacturing.
But it also raises important governance questions.
What proportion of the economic value generated through these transactions remains in Ghana? How is that value distributed among financiers, project developers, manufacturers, intermediaries and participating households? What opportunities do households have to influence project decisions beyond adopting the technologies provided?
The publicly reported transaction does not, by itself, answer these questions.
Importantly, the absence of publicly available evidence about the complete distribution of carbon revenues should not be interpreted as proof of exploitation. It should instead motivate stronger disclosure, independent research and accountability.
There is also a critical distinction between Article 6.2 transactions and conventional voluntary carbon credits. Bilateral authorisation and corresponding adjustments introduce additional international accounting obligations, but they do not automatically resolve questions of additionality, local participation or equitable benefit-sharing.
Ghana’s experience provides an opportunity to establish stronger governance arrangements as the market develops.
Three reforms deserve particular attention: public disclosure of transaction values and benefit distribution; enforceable participation and benefit agreements appropriate to different project types; and independent public-interest assessments of proposed international transfers.
These measures would help ensure that carbon-market participation advances Ghana’s development interests while protecting the rights and interests of affected communities.
The Bigger Question
I agree with Connolly that carbon markets need greater transparency, stronger accountability and more meaningful benefits for participating communities.
I also appreciate her willingness to draw public attention to the experiences of African communities that are often marginalised in international climate-finance debates.
However, describing carbon credits generally as worthless risks obscuring important differences between projects, methodologies and regulatory arrangements. It can also divert attention from the institutional reforms necessary to address the underlying problems.
Carbon markets are neither inherently just nor inevitably exploitative. Their outcomes depend on how they are designed, governed and implemented.
More importantly, the challenge facing Africa is not simply to secure a larger share of the existing carbon market.
It is to exercise greater authority over the terms on which its mitigation potential, ecosystems and development opportunities are valued and exchanged.
Carbon finance must also complement, rather than substitute for, the obligation of major emitters to reduce their own emissions and provide climate finance.
If carbon markets are to contribute meaningfully to Africa’s development beyond 2030, their success must be measured by more than the number of credits issued, the volume of transactions or the revenue generated.
We must also ask whether they strengthen local institutions, protect community rights, distribute benefits equitably and expand African countries’ capacity to determine their own development pathways.
Perhaps the real question is not whether carbon credits are legitimate, but whether the systems governing them are equitable, accountable and capable of advancing Africa’s development sovereignty.
That, to me, is where the conversation on decolonising carbon markets must begin.
References
- Asiyanbi, A. P. (2016). A political ecology of REDD+: Property rights, militarised protectionism, and carbonised exclusion in Cross River. Geoforum, 77, 146–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.10.016
- Chipato, F. (2025). Resource grabbing in the name of climate change? The political economy of carbon markets in rural Zimbabwe. Journal of Asian and African Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/00219096251376657
- Ecosystem Marketplace. (2025). State of the voluntary carbon market 2025. https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/publications/2025-state-of-the-voluntary-carbon-market-sovcm/
- McAfee, K. (2016). Green economy and carbon markets for conservation and development: A critical view. International Environmental Agreements, 16, 333–353. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-015-9295-4
- Probst, B. S., et al. (2024). Systematic assessment of the achieved emission reductions of carbon crediting projects. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53645-z
- Sultana, F. (2022). The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality. Political Geography, 99, 102638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638
- West, T. A. P., et al. (2023). Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation. Science, 381, 873–877. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3535
Video discussed: Jaye Connolly, Are Carbon Credits Legit?, TEDxSanDiegoWomen.
Leave a Reply