There is increasing momentum to expand markets to incorporate marine ecosystems as a financing response to the impacts of the climate crises. However, it is important to assess the efficacy of this approach against the urgent need to reduce emissions to below 1.5 degrees Celsius and upholding the responsibilities Pacific peoples’ have for ocean guardianship.

Our assessment of academic literature, reports, expert analysis and community experiences has found that carbon market approaches have a number of critical failures, both as an emissions reduction approach and financial source. This raises credible reasons for why Pacific Island governments should halt the expansion of market-based approaches into marine environments.

Carbon markets were only ever meant to be a short-term approach that was more about getting entities to start thinking about pollution than being considered a concrete means of reducing emissions. Instead they have come to occupy a central role in the carbon solutions space, taking up space and resources across international agreements, domestic emissions regulation and corporate programmes.

A mechanism that consistently does not do the emissions reduction it promised for as many years as carbon markets have been around should no longer be supported as a legitimate emissions reduction tool.

Solutions that meaningfully address emissions are directly relevant to Pacific aspirations, needs and self-determination. Our oceanic relationships, informed by thousands of years of experience, are evidence enough to legitimise climate solutions that are born from our practices and governance. Those climate solutions look like polluters and governments keeping fossil fuels in the ground instead of seeking out false solutions that reinforce old industries, causing very real harm both in their backyards and in our oceans.