Entries Now Open For The 11th Savanna Comics’ Choice Comedy Awards:…A new law in Paraguay creates a more organized, transparent carbon credit system but might also complicate the way credits are bought and sold.
Earlier this month Paraguay approved new regulations meant to improve the country’s carbon credit market and attract more international interest. But the regulations have also raised concerns about land ownership and the credibility of carbon credit reporting.by recently elected President Santiago Peña, but some language in the law might complicate the way carbon credits are bought and sold, critics said.
Carbon credits allow large polluters like oil companies and airlines to purchase land that still has intact forest ecosystems as a way of offsetting their carbon emissions. But many carbon credit projects have been criticized for being ineffective.Before the law was passed, Paraguay had carbon credit projects, but there was no registry to keep them organized and fewer regulations to ensure they were being carried out in a way that actually reduced emissions.
In eastern Paraguay, deforestation largely came as the result of a dictatorship that rapidly expanded the agricultural sector throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Today, most of the area that was once forest is now farmland for soy and grains. But in the northwest, the second-largestin South America, known as the Gran Chaco, still has intact forest and a lot of potential for carbon credit programs, despite drivers of deforestation that concern conservationists.cattle ranching and agriculture industry.