Singapore will accept forest carbon offsets only from countries with deforestation safeguards

SINGAPORE is prepared to accept forest conservation carbon credits, but they will have to come from projects that consider deforestation across an entire jurisdiction, not just deforestation on a project level, a government spokesperson has told The Business Times (BT).

The spokesperson said that the stance is aimed at addressing the risk of “carbon leakage”, which occurs when deforestation is simply “moved” from within a project to an area that is unmonitored. Leakage is of particular concern in countries with historically significant levels of deforestation, and in the class of conservation credits known as Redd+. Redd+ stands for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”.

Singapore is preparing to release by year’s end a list of eligible host countries, programmes and methodologies under its International Carbon Credit (ICC) framework, which will allow companies to offset up to 5 per cent of their taxable emissions beginning in 2024. This comes after the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment and the National Environment Agency (NEA) published the eligibility criteria underpinning the coming list.