Is the carbon credit market anything other than greenwashing?

As climate change clashes with development, discussions at COP30 take into account effective measures for energy transition

By Henrique Fernandes - Al Jazeera

09/11/2025

The United Arab Emirates starts today’s eminent session at COP30 by bringing to the table the topic of the carbon credit market. As it is well-known, the credit-based system functions as a mechanism to promote sustainable development in countries that use green energy sources, by financing through high-carbon emission countries. As green energy is still not as effective, nor as profitable, as fossil fuel, carbon credit serves as a legitimacy mechanism that stimulates countries that pollute more to invest in sustainable practices abroad, making up for their emissions.

However, this procedure ends up legitimizing countries that are polluting more and more in the name of progress. The Chinese fit as an example of such, as they are presently the highest carbon-emission country, as they strive for a great industrial escalation, they argue for coherence by also being the highest investors in green energy worldwide. As such, pollution continues to scale-up, and the expectation that technology will solve every structural problem within our energy-ostensive system.

In this topic, countries like Indonesia plead for the widening of the Loss and Damage Fund, as proposed at COP27. The fund operates as a means of social justice by financing contingency management regarding damages doomed to occur — especially to insular countries such the southeast Asian country — as the current state of climate change proceeds. Following this issue, the USA has agreed to work under the regulation of the WCO, although defending the speculative character of the credit-based system, in line with the United Kingdom’s position.

As we roam to a path of agreement, delegations at the COP30 seem to repeat the mistakes of past conferences of the parties on climate change. A lot is discussed about remediation regarding our current financial-industrial system, but no structural action is taken in preventing the accumulation of emissions in the medium-long run, as the global economy exists by matter of indefinite production and consumption. Perhaps, only a global action that tackles our present economic system would be sufficient to promote a real and effective solution to the imminent global climate crisis.