What’s On The Horizon?

Time: approximately a 5-10 minute read (excluding the activity)

This part of the module is divided into two main sections:

• First section: ‘What’s coming up?’. Participants see a box/tile/bubble with the name of an emerging topic. They click on it and access some text with a brief explanation of that emerging issue.
• Second section: Projections. Participants access three possible scenarios of how the future of NbS can play out. One scenario is what happens if we do nothing (worst case), one scenario is what happens if we mount active and successful resistance (best case), and one scenario is limited opposition (middle of the road). The scenarios will have basic facts laid out and participants will provide the analysis based on guiding questions.

What’s coming up: Debt-for-Nature Swaps

A debt-for-nature swap is a financial tool in which part of a Global South country’s foreign debt is restructured if they commit to invest in local conservation projects (many of which include NbS projects). Debt-for-nature swaps are not a brand new tool–big conservation NGOs such as Conservation International, and the World Wildlife Fund have used them in the late 1980s. They largely fell out of use but are now re-emerging as a tool for conservation NGOs, federal governments, and large financial institutions.

Essentially, debt-for-nature swaps encourage Global South countries to hand over their nature for the promise of financial relief. Here it is important to note that the reason most Global South economies are struggling to pay off foreign debt and even have foreign debt in the first place is a direct result of former colonial invasion and exploitation at the hands of the Global North.

Debt-for-nature swaps don’t offer new conservation technologies or practices–the only new thing about them is that they tie conservation projects (including NbS projects) to the financial sector and to foreign debt. Currently, there are only a handful of debt-for-nature swaps actively in place but interest in them is rapidly growing. Perhaps the best-known example of a current debt-for-nature swap is in Belize, where the federal government committed to the largest debt conversion for ocean conservation to date, with a US $364M debt conversion (representing about 12% of Belize’s GDP) in exchange for the conservation of 30% of their ocean via a ‘blue bond’. (The Nature Conservancy 2022; International Monetary Fund 2022)

What’s coming up: Voluntary Carbon Markets

Voluntary carbon markets (VCMSs)  are a new type of carbon market. As their name suggests, they are entirely voluntary–they are fueled by corporations or individuals who wish to offset their carbon emissions through purchasing carbon offsets and/or by those who would like to profit by selling them. This is in contrast to existing carbon markets which are, compliance carbon markets. This means that they are driven by binding emissions targets or other regulations.

The standards, guidelines, regulations, infrastructure and other key elements of voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) are currently being negotiated and developed under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, so sometimes you will see that VCMs are referred to using A6, which is an abbreviation of Article 6.

VCMs are much bigger in scope than just NbS but Nbs projects are certainly included in them, as they are a means through which carbon credits are generated. VCMs are important in the future of NbS because they offer an avenue through which huge amounts of NbS projects may be funded, promoted, developed, etc. The actors behind VCM are of course fossil fuel corporations and other major emitters who seek to expand the voluntary carbon market to keep polluting the planet. In the report Fossil Futures Built on House of Cards, FOEI  looks at how the VCM and demands for carbon offsets are set to expand in the coming years by “building an elaborate house of cards that is being used, along with the fairy tales of carbon-neutrality and ‘net zero’ fossil futures, to enable fossil-based capitalism to carry on unimpeded.” (FOEI)

Text in between ‘what’s coming up’ and the future scenarios:

As voluntary carbon markets and debt-for-nature swaps are still in their early stages, it is impossible to predict the exact ways in which they will unfold. However, there is one thing we do know–that by entrenching and expanding NbS, the harms that NbS projects cause will have a parallel entrenchment and expansion.

Now is a crucial time to take action. There are many things about voluntary carbon markets and debt-for-nature swaps that are still being shaped and which we have the power to influence. This includes their structure, implementation, PR, financing, and the regulations around them, among others. We have the opportunity to prevent harm instead of denouncing it once it happens. The wellbeing of many ecosystems and communities depends on this.

Below are a few scenarios of what our future might look like based on what types of action we take today in response to voluntary carbon markets and debt-for-nature swaps. Read through them and explore what they might look like using the questions below as a guide. Feel free to talk, write, draw, do a visualization, or use any other tools in thinking through your answers.

Possible Futures:

(graphic prototyping)

Scenario 1: Business as Usual

• Beginning at the next UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP), voluntary carbon markets are implemented at scale and provide a new and wide avenue through which more NbS projects can be developed.
• Similarly, debt-for-nature swaps are championed in large international climate governance bodies (like the UNFCCC) and are rolled out at increasingly larger scales. Through debt-for-nature swaps, more NbS projects are implemented.
• NbS projects gain traction, funding, legal backing, and popular support. There is a rapid expansion of NbS projects in the coming years.

Who would benefit from this? Who would be harmed? Why?

What impacts would this have for climate change and fossil fuel emissions?

What are the implications for human rights? For health? For economic inequality? For Global North/Global South dynamics?

How might this help or hinder the global environmental movement?

Does this shift the status quo? If yes, how?

Scenario 2: Active Resistance

• VCMS and debt-for-nature swaps are critiqued, including their links to NbS and carbon markets. This occurs at the level of international policy (at the UN, for example) as well as in other forums and spaces.
• Widespread and relatively unified opposition within the environmental field. Some of the discourse and rhetoric make it to the environmental lexicon of the general public.
• Opposition highlights the voices and needs of those who have been historically oppressed, including women, peasant communities, indigenous peoples, those from the Global South etc.

Who would benefit from this? Who would be harmed? Why?

What impacts would this have for climate change and fossil fuel emissions?

What are the implications for human rights? For health? For economic inequality? For Global North/Global South dynamics?

How might this help or hinder the global environmental movement?

Does this shift the status quo? If yes, how?

Scenario 3: Middle of the Road

• Instead of an active opposition or critique of debt-for-nature swaps and voluntary carbon markets, an approach closer to harm reduction is adopted. It is accepted that NbS projects will expand under these two emerging topics and focus is dedicated to creating guardrails and minimizing damage.
• Collaboration and co-creation of guidelines, best practices, standards, frameworks etc. from nonprofits, the private sector, government, and civil society groups.

Who would benefit from this? Who would be harmed? Why?

What impacts would this have for climate change and fossil fuel emissions?

What are the implications for human rights? For health? For economic inequality? For Global North/Global South dynamics?

How might this help or hinder the global environmental movement?

Does this shift the status quo? If yes, how?