avoided deforestation – New research suggests many avoided-deforestation projects help curb clearing, yet credits often overstate impact and remain controversial.
A claim that sounds simple—pay to keep forests standing to offset carbon pollution—has run into a messy reality: some projects work, but many sell more “savings” than they actually deliver.
The modern carbon-credit idea traces back decades.. In 1986. an energy executive who was briefed on climate change felt uneasy about a coal-fired power plant being built in Connecticut.. The company ultimately financed tree planting for timber in Guatemala. aiming to steer farmers away from intact forest—an early attempt to compensate for the emissions tied to coal.
That concept grew into markets where companies can offset emissions by buying “voluntary” carbon credits. often linked to efforts to avoid deforestation.. Supporters argue that land users should be paid for keeping forests intact.. Critics counter that some of the contracted forest protection may not have been at risk in the first place. meaning credits could be rewarding behavior that would have happened anyway.
The stakes are high.. Forests have historically absorbed roughly half of humanity’s fossil-fuel emissions. and tropical forests are especially important. slowing warming by holding carbon in vegetation.. But those forests are also being cleared rapidly—often in lower-income regions where agriculture is expanding. including for cattle ranching and palm oil plantations.
Research now paints a mixed picture.. A rigorous study published recently found that many early projects did succeed in reducing deforestation compared with what would have been expected without the intervention.. Yet the same work also concluded that credit sales frequently overstated how much forest protection they achieved. with some projects marketing credits for far more avoided clearing than the data suggested they actually delivered.
The study’s lead author. Tom Swinfield of the University of Cambridge. said the financing mechanisms are badly needed even if carbon credit schemes are imperfect.. “Forests are seriously under threat. and they do need financial mechanisms that can pay for them. ” he said. describing carbon finance as one of the better options among a set of flawed alternatives.
Even as tropical forest loss slowed in 2025, clearing remained substantial, with more than 40,000 square kilometres of trees cut or burned. Meanwhile, efforts to halt deforestation by 2030 face a large funding gap, with additional financing estimated at $216 billion per year.
Brazil has attempted to tackle the shortfall with a new investment approach.. Before COP30 last November. the country launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. designed to reward nations for each hectare of forest they keep standing.. However. only a portion of the facility’s target has been pledged so far. leaving the program short of its stated $125 billion goal.
Voluntary credits have also struggled to perform consistently.. A 2023 investigation found that rainforest credits issued by the largest certifier were largely without value for many buyers. and reported that voluntary market prices fell sharply the same year before largely failing to recover.. Those findings fed broader doubt about whether credits reliably correspond to real-world forest protection.
Against this backdrop. Swinfield and colleagues examined 44 projects launched after United Nations REDD+ guidelines were developed in the 2010s. focusing on schemes intended to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.. The researchers reported that most of these projects led to at least slightly less deforestation than would have been expected if the project had not been created. while only one produced a much larger-than-expected reduction.
Still, the crediting performance was uneven.. About one out of 11 credits, on average, was judged to be justified by the analysis.. That average was influenced by projects that did not reduce deforestation yet issued the largest credit volumes.. When the highest-selling projects were excluded, the share of credits considered legitimate rose, but remained far from universal.
Swinfield said over-crediting appears to have been driven by two recurring methodological problems, potentially unintentional.. The first centers on how developers estimate what would have happened without the project.. They often compare a project area to a separate “reference area” that is assumed to be similar but not protected.
In the study, reference areas tended to be chosen in ways that increased the apparent threat.. They were described as being more exposed to deforestation. such as being closer to roads or lying on gentler terrain that would make clearing easier.. At the same time. developers tended to model future deforestation using the most severe scenario rather than a more typical middle-ground outcome.
A concrete example illustrates how the comparison can skew results.. The research points to a project in the Peruvian Amazon intended to create alternative income for 18 communities while reducing slash-and-burn agriculture.. The reference area selected around the project was. on average. lower. less steep. less heavily forested. and about half as far from the nearest road—features that could make it more vulnerable to clearing than the project area itself.
For Swinfield, the lesson is straightforward: many projects may have provided real benefits, but the way credit amounts were calculated often failed to reflect the true level of risk and the likely amount of future deforestation.
Adjusting the methodology to match more accurate approaches could reduce over-crediting and improve credibility.. But it would also change the economics of carbon markets: fewer credits would be issued. development costs would rise. and prices would likely increase.. That trade-off leads to a practical question for buyers—how much they should pay to credibly claim contributions to net-zero goals.
Julia Jones of Bangor University argued that companies aiming for legitimate net-zero claims may need to pay more for credits when measurement is tightened.. She warned that the era of buying very cheap credits that promise to slow deforestation in poorer countries is effectively over. saying that equitable and effective forest conservation cannot be delivered at low prices.
The price gap between credit types underscores why.. An avoided deforestation credit—meant to represent one tonne of avoided carbon dioxide—can sometimes be purchased for only a few dollars. while high-quality projects can cost tens of dollars for the same claimed unit.. By contrast. credits tied to actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. whether through tree planting or emerging techniques such as direct air capture machines. generally require hundreds of dollars or more.
Jones and others argue that markets need a better supply of high-quality credits that genuinely deliver avoided deforestation, not just paperwork. Without that, forest conservation efforts risk being undermined by low credibility claims.
Critics also raise a different compatibility issue with climate targets.. Danny Cullenward of the University of Pennsylvania said avoided deforestation credits. even when they prevent some emissions. do not align with the Paris Agreement’s net-zero goal when they are used as offsets.. His concern is not that forests matter—they do—but that companies often buy offsets rather than reduce their own emissions.
In Cullenward’s view. if companies genuinely want to protect forests and the climate. they should purchase high-quality credits and retire them against their emissions budgets. or they should donate directly to forest conservation.. Either way. he said the key is to measure deforestation risk more accurately so that the climate value being claimed matches what happens on the ground.
For him, the core of the debate is measurement and claims.. The world needs to protect tropical forests. and if the impact can be quantified reliably. buyers can pay for conservation benefits with or without carbon credits—without using an offset framing that misrepresents what has actually been reduced.
carbon credits avoided deforestation tropical forests REDD+ guidelines net-zero emissions Amazon rainforest COP30