Will carbon credit auctions stop temperatures rising?

Africa may be earning huge amounts of money from selling carbon credits, but whether it will prevent global temperatures rising is debatable.

This analysis - from BBC environment correspondent Navin Khadka - comes after Saudi Arabia purchased more than two billion tonnes of carbon credits at an auction in Kenya earlier this week.

Carbon offsets help companies reach their target of net-zero without having to limit their own emissions.

Through the carbon credit system, they pay other countries or communities who have avoided carbon emissions (by using clean stoves, for example) or by capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere via protected and restored forests.

“If buyers keep on buying credits and keep on emitting, will that help the bigger cause of limiting our temperature rise to 1.5C is the question widely asked. The fear is it might worsen the situation if polluters use it as a licence to carry on with business as usual,” Khadka told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast.

At the start of Wednesday’s auction, Kenyan Trade Minister Moses Kuria pointed out how countries like Kenya had already paid a high price because of the rest of the world’s carbon emissions.

“Just last year, the country lost animals worth more than $600m [£468m] as a result of drought which is closely associated with climate change,” he tweeted.

According to our reporter, the global carbon credit market is forecast to grow to up to $50bn by 2023, much of which will go towards planting trees and green energy initiatives.

This article originally appeared on BBC News.

Photo: Reuters