The Bishop of St Albans received the following written answer on 19th May 2025:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans asked His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report published on 22 April by Friends of the Earth International, Climate and biodiversity in freefall, particularly the finding that 78 per cent of the top 50 carbon offsetting projects are likely ineffective or worthless.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab, DESNZ): The UK is a strong advocate for carbon pricing and a pioneer on carbon markets, through domestic action and our support for the uptake of pricing and market schemes globally.
Harnessed properly, carbon markets can help deliver global climate ambition, mobilise much-needed finance to tackle climate change, and deliver cost-effective abatement and wider development benefits. They can play a crucial role in protecting forests internationally and in the UK.
Stakeholders have called for greater clarity on what constitutes a high-quality carbon credit and how credits should be used. Therefore, in November last year the UK Government published a set of guiding principles for high-integrity voluntary carbon and nature markets and in April this year we launched a consultation into steps that can be taken to implement these.
Through our climate finance programmes the UK has helped address the challenges linked with ‘project-based’ forest credits , for example, the ‘leakage’ of carbon emissions. We have worked with countries to develop jurisdictional approaches to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), which cover entire countries or states, allowing greater transparency and the generation of higher-integrity carbon credits.
The Church of England in Parliament 
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