How additionality can make a carbon credit worse

Additionality is really important, but it can also make a carbon credit project worse, here’s how.


1. Strict additionality can disadvantage indigenous communities who have been good custodians of the land for generations. For example a mining company profited to remove a saltmarsh decades ago and now gets paid to restore it. Whereas the indigenous community next door who have been great custodians of their saltmarsh the whole time get nothing.

2. Additionality can incentivise delayed adoption of sustainable land use. For example with soil carbon, if I as a farmer switch to regenerative practices now, before soil carbon credits are available, it will be ineligible for credits in the future because my management was already regenerative. So I will delay these new sustainable practices until I can get soil carbon credits.

3. Additionality incentivises deforestation so carbon projects have a lower or easier baseline to start from. The use of the pre90 ETS date is an example of how additionality has has incentivised deforestation of natives in NZ.

4. Additionality incentivises developing countries to keep poor deforestation laws in place so their country has greater access to carbon markets and Article 6 transactions.

5. Strict additionality favours engineered carbon removal as opposed to nature based solutions where additionality is more subjective.

6. Additionality favours emissions avoidance projects where additionality is easier to define than nature based carbon removal projects where additionality is more subjective.

Additionality as a concept is really important. A project shouldn’t get carbon credits if the sequestration was going to happen anyway. However it is equally important the morality of additionality is applied and interpreted in a nuanced way. Additionality needs to be used so that it incentivises future carbon removal and real climate action in the most pragmatic way possible.

Note - In the context of engineered carbon removal, additionality must be enforced strictly.

Featured picture, dusk on Mt Danger which has only seen two ascents. Taken from our high camp on the Lady of the Snows, remote Northern Fiordland.