Twenty Years after its Founding Declaration, the Durban Group Reaffirms its Opposition to Carbon Markets
Continuing Global Swindle Denounced

In October 2004, activists representing diverse organizations and networks from around the globe came together in Durban, South Africa to strategize about the risks of the then-emerging carbon markets.

Now, after 20 years of violence, fraud, human rights abuses, ever-increasing fossil fuel burning, climate disasters, land grabs, ecological destruction and violation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and communities located near polluters, the Durban Group for Climate Justice has been proved correct in its early warnings.

An increasing number of early supporters of carbon offsets in particular are now recanting. In effect, they are, at long last, recognizing the validity of the critique put forward by the Durban Group two decades ago. Those who have changed their minds include the ex-head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Robert Watson; numerous campaigners including Bill Hare, Bryony Worthington and Jennifer Morgan; scientists from universities and think tanks such as Wolfgang Knorr and James Dyke; and many well-known environmental organizations and networks.

Today the Group is reaffirming its commitment to stopping carbon markets, including carbon offsets. Unfortunately, under the auspices of the United Nations and dozens of world governments, carbon trading is continuing to make climate change worse by perpetuating the extraction and burning of the world's remaining fossil fuels.

For recent Corner House work on this topic, see, for example: https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/offset-frontiers-fossil-capit... and, for a longer record of critique, https://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resources/results/taxonomy%3A14.