“Illegal loggers profit from Brazil’s carbon credit projects”, 07 July 2025
…Companies around the world have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into conservation projects in Brazil designed to protect the Amazon rainforest in return for carbon credits offsetting their emissions. Reuters found that many of those projects are profiting people and businesses fined by Brazilian authorities for destroying the rainforest.
Reporters analyzed 36 conservation projects in the Brazilian Amazon offering voluntary carbon offsets on the global market’s biggest registries. At least 24 of those involved landowners, developers or forestry firms that have been punished by Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama for their roles in illegal deforestation, Reuters found. The offenses ranged from clear-cutting the rainforest without authorization to transporting felled trees without valid permits and entering false information in a government timber tracking system. Government officials and experts said these infractions reflected the range of roles in the illicit timber trade devouring the rainforest…
However, Reuters did not find evidence that any of the individual carbon credit projects are failing to deliver on their pledges to reduce deforestation from a projected baseline. Presented with the findings, a spokesperson for Verra said the credit registry “treats any allegations of illegal activities related to a project registered in one of our programs seriously” and would conduct a review of all the projects flagged in the Reuters analysis.
Cercarbono said it had opened a formal investigation of projects flagged by Reuters involving anyone with a track record of illegal deforestation to understand the potential implications.“There is no indication that the integrity of the projects you referred to has been compromised,” a Cercarbono spokesperson said.
Buyers of credits from the projects Reuters identified include multinationals such as U.S. planemaker Boeing, Spanish telecom Telefonica and Colombian oil producer Ecopetrol. Buyers typically rely on accrediting firms for quality control.Boeing said it had acquired carbon offsets that met widely recognized science-based standards. Telefonica said it is part of a corporate working group that aims to strengthen the integrity of the voluntary carbon credit market. Ecopetrol declined to comment.Brazil’s Environment Ministry, which oversees Ibama, said the agency’s enforcement database offers a reliable public record of environmental infractions, which “can and should” be used to verify the effectiveness of conservation projects selling carbon credits…