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The Controversial Climate Tool Funding Real Change | Sandeep Roy Choudhury | TED

TED08:55Added Aug 30, 2026

If a company plants trees to offset its pollution, is that climate progress — or is it greenwashing? Critics of carbon markets say it’s the latter. But Sandeep Roy Choudhury, who’s spent two decades financing climate projects from rural cookstoves to coastal forests, says the real failure is discouraging companies from even trying. Hear his case for why we shouldn’t let perfection block meaningful action on climate change. (Recorded at TED Countd

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. 00:08We don't live in a perfect world.
  2. 00:09I wish we did, especially when it comes to fighting climate change.
  3. 00:14Sure, we have 30 percent of the world on clean energy,
  4. 00:17but we still depend a lot on fossil fuels for the near future.
  5. 00:21Take the Science Based Targets initiative.
  6. 00:23It's a leading decarbonization initiative for businesses.
  7. 00:27Businesses have taken a target,
  8. 00:29on an average, of 6.4 percent emission reductions per year,
  9. 00:33year on year, till they go net zero.
  10. 00:36That's great news.
  11. 00:39But what happens to the other 93.6 percent?
  12. 00:43My fight is on that 93.6 percent.
  13. 00:47Here's the red triangle, is what I call it.
  14. 00:50What happens between now and then?
  15. 00:55Who takes care of these emissions?
  16. 00:57Who's taking responsibility for these emissions
  17. 01:00that we are leaving out there in the atmosphere?
  18. 01:04Here's where carbon credits come in.
  19. 01:07One carbon credit equals one ton of carbon
  20. 01:10that is either removed, reduced or avoided.
  21. 01:13These don't come from thin air.
  22. 01:15They're third-party audited, certified using international standards.
  23. 01:20These credits can then be bought by companies
  24. 01:24to offset their emissions.
  25. 01:27Not the 6.4 percent they are to reduce --
  26. 01:30it's for this 93.6,
  27. 01:32and that's the important point.
  28. 01:33We're not saying do not reduce.
  29. 01:35You reduce, but go beyond,
  30. 01:38because this red triangle is important.
  31. 01:41This is also not a license to pollute.
  32. 01:45This allows companies to take responsibility for these emissions, yes,
  33. 01:50but it also allows these companies to work beyond their boundaries
  34. 01:55and help things like the energy transition,
  35. 01:57things like planting mangroves in some other country for the communities,
  36. 02:02the frontline communities
  37. 02:04who bear the brunt of climate change every day of their lives.
  38. 02:07I actually call them the first responders, not the vulnerable.
  39. 02:12It's an important distinction to make.
  40. 02:15Solutions can and should reach every part of the planet,
  41. 02:21from the tropics of Papua to the deserts of the Sahel,
  42. 02:25to the settlements of the Amazon,
  43. 02:27everywhere.
  44. 02:29Think of carbon credits as a bridge.
  45. 02:34An agile bridge.
  46. 02:35It gets you funding right now.
  47. 02:37We need finance now ...
  48. 02:40and that's an important concept.
  49. 02:43Think back to the red triangle, the 93.6.
  50. 02:48So sometimes, we’re called the Wild Wild West, the carbon markets.
  51. 02:55I have been working in carbon for almost two decades now,
  52. 02:59and I have seen the difference it can make.
  53. 03:05I'll take you to Indonesia.
  54. 03:06There was this NGO that reached out to us in 2021 and said,
  55. 03:11"We want to build a wall of mangroves." I said, "Why?"
  56. 03:14So in 2004, when the tsunami hit all those islands
  57. 03:18which had standing mangroves,
  58. 03:20the waves, they were tackled faster,
  59. 03:23and hence, there was less destruction in those islands.
  60. 03:27Again, you have to remember that public climate finance
  61. 03:29is slow to reach these last-mile communities,
  62. 03:32because it's steeped in bureaucracy and geopolitics.
  63. 03:35Geopolitics, people, the world we live today.
  64. 03:39And they came to us, and we made it happen, through carbon credits.
  65. 03:43There you go, a wall of mangroves, baby mangroves,
  66. 03:46but they grow up really quickly.
  67. 03:48Sometimes, these credits, and I hear this a lot,
  68. 03:52"It's a scam."
  69. 03:55And I get it, because there have been some high-profile failures
  70. 03:59about carbon markets that you might have heard about.
  71. 04:02And I get it, but not all projects are failures,
  72. 04:05and not all failures are the end of the story.
  73. 04:10Let me talk about one of my failures.
  74. 04:12The same mangroves we planted in Indonesia,
  75. 04:15out of those, in one area of Sumatra,
  76. 04:18there was this massive flood in the fall of 2024.
  77. 04:21Those walls of mangroves disappeared.
  78. 04:24The floods came in and took all those trees.
  79. 04:27Does that mean all those carbon credits
  80. 04:29that we claimed for the projects were bogus?
  81. 04:32No, because we account for these risks.
  82. 04:36In any carbon standards and methodologies,
  83. 04:38we have things like dispersed planting,
  84. 04:40risk management and buffers.
  85. 04:42Buffers is an important concept.
  86. 04:44Every project keeps aside about 15 to 20 percent of carbon credits
  87. 04:47for exactly this reason.
  88. 04:50So the credit and the claim stands.
  89. 04:53This is important, because most of climate action
  90. 04:57will happen in places where the risk is high.
  91. 05:00That's the way it should be done.
  92. 05:03But yes, we recognize these risks,
  93. 05:05and we account for these risks every time we develop these projects.
  94. 05:08And this is not just for us.
  95. 05:10Most carbon projects would have to do that.
  96. 05:12A good project, if done properly, can make a massive difference.
  97. 05:17I often hear about ...
  98. 05:21"Polluters pay."
  99. 05:22I go to conferences and I see people holding up signs,
  100. 05:25"Polluters pay."
  101. 05:26And I almost question, saying, "Polluters pay, but pay who?"
  102. 05:31Right?
  103. 05:33So carbon markets actually allow for these polluters to pay directly
  104. 05:36to the people who are taking climate action.
  105. 05:39This is important: directly to people who are taking climate action.
  106. 05:44And the planet, frankly, could not care where your decarbonization comes from.
  107. 05:49Audience: Woo!
  108. 05:51Sandeep Roy Choudhury: Right?
  109. 05:52So case in point,
  110. 05:53it costs 75 dollars to reduce one ton of carbon,
  111. 05:56on average, in the European Union.
  112. 05:59In Southeast Asia, that average is 15 dollars a ton.
  113. 06:03You're getting five times more impact, value for your buck,
  114. 06:08and you're getting I don't know how many more times of the social impact.
  115. 06:14I have seen it firsthand.
  116. 06:16Let me take you to Kashmir,
  117. 06:18[to] a distant village in India,
  118. 06:20where the grid will never reach.
  119. 06:22Solar home lighting systems here.
  120. 06:24Same project in Indonesia.
  121. 06:25Women microenterprises making batik products using mangrove pigments.
  122. 06:29Livelihoods.
  123. 06:31Meet Injara. He’s an ex-poacher in Madagascar,
  124. 06:35now plants mangroves with us.
  125. 06:37Social change.
  126. 06:39A football team in Kigoma, Tanzania.
  127. 06:41These are women who plant agroforestry systems with us in Kigoma,
  128. 06:45but play football.
  129. 06:47We have village-level football competitions.
  130. 06:49Now community building cannot be decoupled from nature restoration.
  131. 06:53This is a very important point.
  132. 06:55And this is a scale up [program].
  133. 06:57This clean cooking concrete kitchen [program] in rural Bangladesh
  134. 07:00was languishing at about 500,000 households in 2012.
  135. 07:03We took it up to 6.5 million households in the next few years.
  136. 07:07Scale is of essence on climate action,
  137. 07:11and that's where markets can help.
  138. 07:13This is all possible because,
  139. 07:15when climate action is rooted in people and possibilities,
  140. 07:19markets allow us to explore those possibilities.
  141. 07:23Sometimes, I hear about the accounting.
  142. 07:27"Ah, but the accounting is not solid."
  143. 07:29I get it, but which part of climate science is solid accounting?
  144. 07:33The science improves, so does the accounting.
  145. 07:35We also worry about things like Indigenous rights,
  146. 07:39consent on local populations, benefit-sharing mechanisms.
  147. 07:43Please understand that we worry about it;
  148. 07:45so do the carbon standards.
  149. 07:47A carbon finance is not a grant, it's a transaction.
  150. 07:50It talks to the equality of the transactor and the transacted.
  151. 07:54A farmer transitioning to a cleaner practice is being paid for a service.
  152. 07:58It's not a dole-out.
  153. 08:00These people, these programs have nowhere else to go for money.
  154. 08:05So companies will reduce what they can,
  155. 08:08and they will invest in carbon credits for what they can't.
  156. 08:11It's the right thing to do.
  157. 08:13But today, all of the market detractors make it impossible,
  158. 08:16or make it so much harder for companies who are actually trying.
  159. 08:20This will not solve this problem.
  160. 08:22We have to keep trying, for mistakes will happen, and that's OK.
  161. 08:28What is not right is to let go of the only tools that work
  162. 08:31for the Global South.
  163. 08:32Today, we are making inaction feel safer than action.
  164. 08:38That's not how this gets solved.
  165. 08:40So let's fix what needs fixing.
  166. 08:43Let's take responsibility for all those emissions
  167. 08:47and leave no emissions behind.
  168. 08:48Price every ton.
  169. 08:50That's the only responsible thing to do.
  170. 08:53Thank you.
  171. 08:54(Cheers and applause)
The Controversial Climate Tool Funding Real Change | Sandeep Roy Choudhury | TED — Transcriptly