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The Controversial Climate Tool Funding Real Change | Sandeep Roy Choudhury | TED - Video học tiếng Anh
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The Controversial Climate Tool Funding Real Change | Sandeep Roy Choudhury | TED
The Controversial Climate Tool Funding Real Change | Sandeep Roy Choudhury | TED
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Subtitles (171)
0:08
We don't live in a perfect world.
0:09
I wish we did, especially when it comes to fighting climate change.
0:14
Sure, we have 30 percent of the world on clean energy,
0:17
but we still depend a lot on fossil fuels for the near future.
0:21
Take the Science Based Targets initiative.
0:23
It's a leading decarbonization initiative for businesses.
0:27
Businesses have taken a target,
0:29
on an average, of 6.4 percent emission reductions per year,
0:33
year on year, till they go net zero.
0:36
That's great news.
0:39
But what happens to the other 93.6 percent?
0:43
My fight is on that 93.6 percent.
0:47
Here's the red triangle, is what I call it.
0:50
What happens between now and then?
0:55
Who takes care of these emissions?
0:57
Who's taking responsibility for these emissions
1:00
that we are leaving out there in the atmosphere?
1:04
Here's where carbon credits come in.
1:07
One carbon credit equals one ton of carbon
1:10
that is either removed, reduced or avoided.
1:13
These don't come from thin air.
1:15
They're third-party audited, certified using international standards.
1:20
These credits can then be bought by companies
1:24
to offset their emissions.
1:27
Not the 6.4 percent they are to reduce --
1:30
it's for this 93.6,
1:32
and that's the important point.
1:33
We're not saying do not reduce.
1:35
You reduce, but go beyond,
1:38
because this red triangle is important.
1:41
This is also not a license to pollute.
1:45
This allows companies to take responsibility for these emissions, yes,
1:50
but it also allows these companies to work beyond their boundaries
1:55
and help things like the energy transition,
1:57
things like planting mangroves in some other country for the communities,
2:02
the frontline communities
2:04
who bear the brunt of climate change every day of their lives.
2:07
I actually call them the first responders, not the vulnerable.
2:12
It's an important distinction to make.
2:15
Solutions can and should reach every part of the planet,
2:21
from the tropics of Papua to the deserts of the Sahel,
2:25
to the settlements of the Amazon,
2:27
everywhere.
2:29
Think of carbon credits as a bridge.
2:34
An agile bridge.
2:35
It gets you funding right now.
2:37
We need finance now ...
2:40
and that's an important concept.
2:43
Think back to the red triangle, the 93.6.
2:48
So sometimes, we’re called the Wild Wild West, the carbon markets.
2:55
I have been working in carbon for almost two decades now,
2:59
and I have seen the difference it can make.
3:05
I'll take you to Indonesia.
3:06
There was this NGO that reached out to us in 2021 and said,
3:11
"We want to build a wall of mangroves." I said, "Why?"
3:14
So in 2004, when the tsunami hit all those islands
3:18
which had standing mangroves,
3:20
the waves, they were tackled faster,
3:23
and hence, there was less destruction in those islands.
3:27
Again, you have to remember that public climate finance
3:29
is slow to reach these last-mile communities,
3:32
because it's steeped in bureaucracy and geopolitics.
3:35
Geopolitics, people, the world we live today.
3:39
And they came to us, and we made it happen, through carbon credits.
3:43
There you go, a wall of mangroves, baby mangroves,
3:46
but they grow up really quickly.
3:48
Sometimes, these credits, and I hear this a lot,
3:52
"It's a scam."
3:55
And I get it, because there have been some high-profile failures
3:59
about carbon markets that you might have heard about.
4:02
And I get it, but not all projects are failures,
4:05
and not all failures are the end of the story.
4:10
Let me talk about one of my failures.
4:12
The same mangroves we planted in Indonesia,
4:15
out of those, in one area of Sumatra,
4:18
there was this massive flood in the fall of 2024.
4:21
Those walls of mangroves disappeared.
4:24
The floods came in and took all those trees.
4:27
Does that mean all those carbon credits
4:29
that we claimed for the projects were bogus?
4:32
No, because we account for these risks.
4:36
In any carbon standards and methodologies,
4:38
we have things like dispersed planting,
4:40
risk management and buffers.
4:42
Buffers is an important concept.
4:44
Every project keeps aside about 15 to 20 percent of carbon credits
4:47
for exactly this reason.
4:50
So the credit and the claim stands.
4:53
This is important, because most of climate action
4:57
will happen in places where the risk is high.
5:00
That's the way it should be done.
5:03
But yes, we recognize these risks,
5:05
and we account for these risks every time we develop these projects.
5:08
And this is not just for us.
5:10
Most carbon projects would have to do that.
5:12
A good project, if done properly, can make a massive difference.
5:17
I often hear about ...
5:21
"Polluters pay."
5:22
I go to conferences and I see people holding up signs,
5:25
"Polluters pay."
5:26
And I almost question, saying, "Polluters pay, but pay who?"
5:31
Right?
5:33
So carbon markets actually allow for these polluters to pay directly
5:36
to the people who are taking climate action.
5:39
This is important: directly to people who are taking climate action.
5:44
And the planet, frankly, could not care where your decarbonization comes from.
5:49
Audience: Woo!
5:51
Sandeep Roy Choudhury: Right?
5:52
So case in point,
5:53
it costs 75 dollars to reduce one ton of carbon,
5:56
on average, in the European Union.
5:59
In Southeast Asia, that average is 15 dollars a ton.
6:03
You're getting five times more impact, value for your buck,
6:08
and you're getting I don't know how many more times of the social impact.
6:14
I have seen it firsthand.
6:16
Let me take you to Kashmir,
6:18
[to] a distant village in India,
6:20
where the grid will never reach.
6:22
Solar home lighting systems here.
6:24
Same project in Indonesia.
6:25
Women microenterprises making batik products using mangrove pigments.
6:29
Livelihoods.
6:31
Meet Injara. He’s an ex-poacher in Madagascar,
6:35
now plants mangroves with us.
6:37
Social change.
6:39
A football team in Kigoma, Tanzania.
6:41
These are women who plant agroforestry systems with us in Kigoma,
6:45
but play football.
6:47
We have village-level football competitions.
6:49
Now community building cannot be decoupled from nature restoration.
6:53
This is a very important point.
6:55
And this is a scale up [program].
6:57
This clean cooking concrete kitchen [program] in rural Bangladesh
7:00
was languishing at about 500,000 households in 2012.
7:03
We took it up to 6.5 million households in the next few years.
7:07
Scale is of essence on climate action,
7:11
and that's where markets can help.
7:13
This is all possible because,
7:15
when climate action is rooted in people and possibilities,
7:19
markets allow us to explore those possibilities.
7:23
Sometimes, I hear about the accounting.
7:27
"Ah, but the accounting is not solid."
7:29
I get it, but which part of climate science is solid accounting?
7:33
The science improves, so does the accounting.
7:35
We also worry about things like Indigenous rights,
7:39
consent on local populations, benefit-sharing mechanisms.
7:43
Please understand that we worry about it;
7:45
so do the carbon standards.
7:47
A carbon finance is not a grant, it's a transaction.
7:50
It talks to the equality of the transactor and the transacted.
7:54
A farmer transitioning to a cleaner practice is being paid for a service.
7:58
It's not a dole-out.
8:00
These people, these programs have nowhere else to go for money.
8:05
So companies will reduce what they can,
8:08
and they will invest in carbon credits for what they can't.
8:11
It's the right thing to do.
8:13
But today, all of the market detractors make it impossible,
8:16
or make it so much harder for companies who are actually trying.
8:20
This will not solve this problem.
8:22
We have to keep trying, for mistakes will happen, and that's OK.
8:28
What is not right is to let go of the only tools that work
8:31
for the Global South.
8:32
Today, we are making inaction feel safer than action.
8:38
That's not how this gets solved.
8:40
So let's fix what needs fixing.
8:43
Let's take responsibility for all those emissions
8:47
and leave no emissions behind.
8:48
Price every ton.
8:50
That's the only responsible thing to do.
8:53
Thank you.
8:54
(Cheers and applause)
