Three carbon credit projects were suspended in the Brazilian Amazon after the Federal Police’s Greenwashing Operation targeted the leaders of supposedly “green” initiatives with suspected links to a land-grabbing and illegal logging scam. Verra, one of the world’s largest voluntary carbon market registries and the project’s certifier, announced the decision June 10. “An account suspension is an extraordinary action that means no transactions can happen on the account at all, including on credits held in the account, until any identified issues or uncertainties have been resolved,” Verra stated. According to the organization, the action is a preventative measure and does not indicate any judgment of those involved (read the complete statement here). “I believe that Verra is doing the certification incorrectly,” federal deputy Thiago Marrese Scarpellini, chief Greenwashing Operation investigator, told Mongabay after the raid. “But I don’t know if it’s their fault because it’s based in the United States, and I don’t know if there’s land-grabbing in the United States. But we have it here. And if we are a promising market [for carbon credits] they will have to adjust to certain circumstances here.” The Greenwashing Operation was triggered June 5, two weeks after Mongabay published an investigation connecting the projects’ owners to a suspected timber laundering scam. According to the investigators, the carbon credit areas were also used to launder timber taken from illegally deforested areas. Image © Bruno Kelly/Greenpeace. Projects Unitor, Fortaleza Ituxi and Evergreen were developed by the Brazilian company Carbonext and occupy an area more…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Verra suspends carbon credit projects following police raid in Brazil first appeared on EnviroLink Network.