In what the company says is a “landmark development for climate action and community empowerment”, Blue Carbon, a carbon credit company in Dubai, has made a deal with the Zimbabwe to buy about 20% of its land for a carbon offset project. The amount of land in the Zimbabwe deal equals the size of the UK.
The $1.5 Billion USD deal will develop carbon projects and sustainable initiatives in agriculture, forestry, and more on 7.5 million hectares, say partners in a public release statement hoping to get a lot of attention for the UAE as it hosts this year’s COP28, a UN event for climate change. The Zimbabwe-Blue Carbon deal falls under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement. Blue Carbon and the Government of Zimbabwe say that they will advance environmental conservation, the well-being of local communities, and the stimulation of economic growth in the African country.
Environmentalists no longer believe that carbon credits can spare the economy and the schemes simply give oil and gas polluters an easy pass, using cash, to get out of taking responsibility for polluting emissions. However, the UN says carbon credits and how they can be used will be ratified at COP28.
The UAE is hosting the UN climate change COP28 this year so they are looking to show meaningful projects to tout. Blue Carbon is one of them.
According to NBC News, the existing $414 billion voluntary carbon market has been plagued by accusations of fraud against businesses that claim to prevent deforestation and sell carbon credits by saving trees. And many carbon offsetting companies selling carbon credits overstate or completely miscalculate the amount of carbon offset, said Jonathan Crook, an expert at Carbon Market Watch, a nonprofit group that monitors carbon markets.
Other climate groups that are skeptical of the carbon market as a climate solution say that those attending COP28 should focus not on carbon credits but on cutting out fossil fuels. This is what students at American universities, like Colorado University have been doing, along with climate-progressive companies like Estee Lauder. The UN, with its many biases, may not be an honest broker in handling the climate crisis. In areas where western countries won’t go because of emissions ramifications, countries like the UAE are jumping in.
Controversial choice for COP28
Sultan Al Jaber is the Emirati minister and businessman who will preside over the UN-backed COP28 climate talks in Dubai starting on November 30. His appointment as COP28’s leader has been met with fierce criticism from western countries – activists and media. While he serves as the UAE’s climate envoy and head of its renewables company, he also runs the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Over100 members of the US Congress and the European Parliament in called for him to be replaced as COP28 president-designate.
The COP28 climate event will run Nov 30 to Dec 12. And the UAE has no track record that it can manage its own country sustainably, let alone that in a vulnerable African country. Zimbabwe is experiencing a breakdown in living standards, life expectancy while political oppression has increased. The Council on Foreign Relations writes that the country’s current leader, now making deals with the UAE was elected non-democratically: “Voter suppression and intimidation directed by the government marred Zimbabwe’s elections, which reaffirmed incumbent Emmerson Mnangagwa’s power and will likely prolong the country’s dysfunction and severe economic woes.”
The US has denied any debt relief to Zimbabwe until it holds a fair election. The State Department in the US says the win for Emmerson Mnangagwa was marred by suppression and intimidation.
The UAE has a problematic track record for years of human rights abuses of its migrant workers, and mismanaging waste issues – see Burj.
Human Rights Watch says:
- Migrant workers form 88 percent of the UAE population and often come from climate-vulnerable countries. UAE-based workers are exposed to escalating climate risks, especially extreme heat, which is linked to chronic health harms and even death.
- Widespread labor abuses like exorbitant recruitment fees and wage theft limit workers’ ability to send financial support back home, including during climate-linked extreme weather events.
- These abuses in the UAE, which is hosting the upcoming COP28 climate conference, contribute to climate injustice in multiple ways.
Beyond the immediate goal of carbon emissions reduction, the UAE carbon projects aims to have a grassroots impact. If this were Switzerland, I might believe the intent but the UAE has yet to prove it can be environmental stewards.
According to Blue Carbon, they will be doing what we would expect from the Africa country to do for its own people: and build Community Welfare Programs, where the capital received from carbon credits will be used, among other things, to finance various social projects tailored to uplift the living standards of the communities residing in the project areas.
This pioneering partnership aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement and underscores the dedication of both Blue Carbon and the Government of Zimbabwe towards driving transformative change for a greener, sustainable, and more equitable future, says parties in the press release.
The signing ceremony occurred in Zimbabwe with the presence of Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndhlovu, Minister of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry and Josiane Sadaka, CEO of Blue Carbon.
“We believe that effective climate action should go hand in hand with community empowerment,” said Ndhlovu. “Through this collaboration with the Government of Zimbabwe, we are confident that our carbon projects will not only make a positive impact on the environment, but also lead to meaningful improvements in the lives of the people who need it the most.”
Blue Carbon is a Dubai based company under the patronage of the Member of Dubai Ruling Family Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, which was formed to create environmental assets, nature-based solutions and register carbon projects under eligible methodologies.
CNN says that Blue Carbon is a “new outfit, not even a year old, but its chief was no fledgling entrepreneur: he was an Emirati royal whose family had ruled Dubai for 190 years, flush with oil money.”
According to CNN the deal with a floundering Zimbabwe is a smokescreen so the UAE can keep pumping fossil fuels: “The flurry of forest conservation deals with Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Liberia and Tanzania were announced in the months ahead of the annual United Nations’ COP28 climate summit, being hosted this year in December by the United Arab Emirates.”
“These conservation deals are the latest attempt by the petrostate to use green initiatives as a smokescreen for its plans to continue pumping fossil fuels.
“At the same time, the UAE has said it plans to extract its very last barrel of oil 50 years from now, when its reserves are projected to dry up — decades beyond when scientists say society needs to be done with fossil fuel.”
Our writer in Saudi Arabia wrote in 2012 about the troubling case of Coldplay and carbon offset controversy in the Middle East: “The main reason I think an offset model cannot work for Saudi Arabia is because it does not address the real issue of carbon emissions in the first place.
“Consumers and companies in Saudi Arabia need to discover their environmental stance before they rethink it. In a country where the utilities are dirt cheap and the fuel costs less than a can of soda, the real problem is to wake people from their stupor. To make them realize that the resources are not unlimited and that the time is running out.”
