SINGAPORE-BASED carbon marketplace Climate Impact X (CIX) has stepped out to defend the validity of voluntary carbon credits generated from the world’s most intact forests, as the first of such credits were issued from Guyana, a country in South America, on Dec 1.

These forests spanning close to a billion hectares (ha) were thought of as protected anyway, with or without funding, making it problematic to justify credits issued from related projects as being “additional” – a quality required of carbon credits.

But in a guidance paper co-published with four other organisations, CIX argued that without carbon credits as a prospective source of finance, the high forest, low deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions would encounter a “financing cliff” in which they become victims of their own success.