The Offset Myth

I have just signed a petition calling on the members of COP16, which is shortly to gather in Colombia, to ban the idea of Offsetting biodiversity depletion by supporting biodiversity elsewhere. As the promoter of the petition declares ecosystems are not interchangeable.

The very idea of offset is a fallacy aimed to secure commercial enterprises – which means the big global corporations – the right to do whatever they choose wherever they want by allowing them to point to somewhere else where they are supporting one thing or another.

Carbon offset was the first to gain traction but it is clear that planting 20 acres of new forest to offset the 20 acres of old forest being cleared for gross profit is not like for like. It will take trees at least 30 years before they actually begin to sequester carbon in any degree. That’s 30 years of increasing Carbon dioxide production unaccounted for.

The destruction of Lake Baikal cannot be offset anywhere since the ecosystems that have developed over the million years of seclusion that inland sea has known cannot be reproduced elsewhere and unique life forms and the service that lake makes to the planet is lost through reckless harvesting of the forests around it.

We see the same excuses being made in the movement of indigenous populations to new locations to allow for the tourist industry. The Inuit of Canada have faced starvation due to the policies of government agencies to move the people to a location which is both foreign to them and does not supply them with the natural resources their traditional homes bore. Farley Mowatt has written extensively on the abuses of the Inuit people by the Canadian government.

A similar condition exists in Alaska when several generations ago by decree of Washington, the local population was moved from its land base to an island. Their traditions told them never to inhabit the islands. The government forced them to do so by founding a school on the island and threatening the parents with incarceration if they failed to send their children to school. Now the island is sinking beneath the rising waters caused by the careless industrialisation of the ‘developed world’ destabilising the climate. 2023, it was reported this morning, was the warmest year on record.

We must reject the myth of offset and seriously restrict commercial enterprises – from poaching to open cast mining – from hiding the true costs of their exploitation of the world’s resources. They must be held accountable for their actions. Like air and water the world’s resources do not belong to any nation, individual or enterprise They are common to us all and we all stand to lose if these resources are squandered.

Author: Keith Armstrong

Dance teacher, writer, film-maker, educationalist, enthusiast.