Who Are the Carbon Cowboys and What Is Their Influence in the Amazon?

Carbon bonds have various moral questions. An industry of them has been generated that has put multiple communities worldwide in unequal negotiations. We tell you about these businesses on Amazon.

After the implementation of the Kyoto protocols in 1997, carbon credits were created, as a way of preserving forests in exchange for allowing large industries to continue generating emissions. With the appearance of this new model of environmental protection, the Carbon Cowboys have appeared, private actors who mediate and negotiate carbon credits between the industries and communities of the Amazon.

To understand the whole panorama, it is necessary to define what carbon bonds are. This is one of the three international mechanisms proposed in the Kyoto Protocol, essentially seeking that countries and companies that emit greenhouse gases (GHG), compensate for environmental damage, investing in the preservation and protection of the world’s forests, which It has the ability to absorb CO2 and convert it into oxygen.

Although this mechanism has been established since 1997, currently various governments and communities continue to have problems adjusting the environmental legal framework of each country and regulating the purchase and sale of these bonds. Now, one of the main problems that this new market has to face is the appearance of the so-called Carbon Cowboys, private companies that function as intermediaries between the industries that emit GHG and the communities (peasant, Afro, and indigenous) that are in the jungle and they are the ones who are going to guarantee the protection of these ecosystems.