PART ONE: Despite millions of carbon credits sold for a decade, this community in DRC has almost nothing to show for it
By Linda Ngari
This article was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Investigations Network in collaboration with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP).
About 80 Kilometers from the city of Kisangani in Tshopo Province lies the Isangi territory. This remote territory can be accessed by a boat ride through the deepest river in the world, River Congo, or by a four-hour motorbike ride through a dusty winding trail. Isangi is one of the seven territories of Tshopo Province – DRC’s largest province by geographical area.
Yafunga, a village in Isangi territory, is home to about 8,000 people who mostly rely on farming and fishing for a living. There’s no road leading to the village, one clinic catering to all residents’ medical needs, and two schools. Yet Yafunga is among over 30 villages whose chiefs signed off their land rights to American investors that promised inter alia, schools, roads and improved healthcare.
A village at the edge of a global market
Since 2004, land belonging to the people of Yafunga has been out of bounds to its inhabitants as its ownership swapped from one foreign investment to another – first, in form of a logging concession through the company, Société Africaine de Bois (Safbois), then later into a carbon offsetting project managed by a company called Jadora. Gradually, ownership for both Safbois and Jadora was transferred to an influential American family that seemingly owns extensive assets in DRC.
The carbon offsetting project is registered by the name ‘Isangi REDD+’ on the Verra database. Verra is a U.S-based non-profit organisation that certifies carbon offsetting projects and authorises the sale of the resulting carbon credits globally. One of the Isangi REDD+ project documents shows that Safbois has three shareholders: Daniel Blattner, David Blattner, and James Blattner. The three are American brothers. After nine months of analysing hundreds of documents, this investigation found at least 40 companies connected to the Blattner brothers, managing a myriad of activities in DRC. From mining to banking, logging, electricity distribution, construction, to owning an airline, and more recently, carbon offsetting projects.
The Blattner brothers were repeatedly contacted to comment on the findings in this article but did not respond.
This two-part investigation followed activities surrounding the Isangi REDD+ project and its financiers, uncovering how the Blattner family benefited from a corporate game of musical chairs with the residents of Yafunga and at least 30 other villages in DRC’s Isangi territory, profiting through more than five companies that deal in carbon offsetting, all of which are registered at the same address in Florida, U.S., while simultaneously managing conservation and logging projects spanning over 565,000 hectares, with little compensation to the indigenous communities.
Based on the project document submitted to Verra, Safbois and Jadora entered an agreement in September 2009, assenting to stop initial logging activities managed by Safbois in the project area so that the land can be preserved to sell carbon credits by Jadora through Isangi REDD+. Logging officially stopped in 2011 according to the document.
Verra certified Isangi REDD+ to sell carbon credits in September 2014, and the project went on to sell its first credits in May 2015. But, as the managing director for Jadora and Safbois, Daniel Blattner did not issue Isangi residents a contract informing them about the project until December 2019. This appears to have violated the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) laws, which require that indigenous communities be informed about concessions on their land before project activities start. FPIC is a requirement by both DRC national laws and Verra guidelines. Asked about the alleged non-compliance with its own regulations, Verra did not respond to this reporter’s inquiry at the time this article published.
From logging to carbon credits
Carbon credits were envisioned as a way to put a price on emissions. Selling these credits by financing projects to either prevent the destruction of ecologically significant areas or paying for activities like planting trees is supposed to compensate for past and future greenhouse gas emissions. Such projects are handled by businesses that facilitate the sale of credits on a marketplace, essentially turning avoided carbon dioxide emissions into a product.
The Isangi REDD+ project sold more than 1.3 million carbon credits from 2015 to 2024. Some notable companies that bought credits from Isangi REDD+ include Glenfiddich maker William Grant & Sons UK, America’s Fever-Tree (the world’s leading supplier of carbonated mixers for alcoholic spirits according to their website), the Sydney Airport, Finnish food delivery company Wolt Enterprises Oy and Swiss energy supplier Primeo Energie AG.
However, it appears that some notable clients like America’s Delta Airlines and Italian oil and gas company Eni, which previously featured in reports questioning the Isangi REDD+ project, by Mongabay and Le Monde respectively, were removed from the public list of clients. At the time this article published, 87% of clients that bought carbon credits from Isangi REDD+ were anonymous. Of the remaining named clients, Fever-Tree, DNV GL (Norwegian) and Wolt Enterprises Oy, are the top three.
Responding to a question on the majority of anonymous clients, a Verra spokesperson said; “We do not hold a complete, up-to-date credit-by-credit transaction record. That’s not our job. We certify projects, and issue credits. After which, the project proponent can sell those credits on the open marketplace. Sometimes the project proponent wishes to display the purchases on their Verra registry page, and sometimes they do not. Again, this is not our job to track individual credits as we do not engage in market transactions.”
Concessions Cancelled
In January 2024, DRC’s Ministry for Environment and Sustainable Development reviewed 82 of the forest concessions in the country. This led to the termination of eight conservation concessions. Isangi REDD+ was among the terminated concessions. The ministry’s report states that Safbois failed to follow set procedures when converting the initial logging concession into a conservation concession and consequently ordered the company to return the project land back to the state. The ministry flagged Isangi REDD+ in its February 2023 preliminary report that preceded the January 2024 termination, leading Daniel Blattner to write to Verra in June 2023, requesting that the project be withdrawn. However, the last carbon credit sale on record for Isangi REDD+ did not occur until February 2024.
“Just because a project has been withdrawn does not necessarily mean that credits cannot be sold at a later date. It might mean that [for example] the project generated 100,000 credits in its first year of existence, then it withdrew from a registry. Those credits are still real credits. They represent genuine emission reductions or avoidances. And the project owner may not sell those credits immediately, but later on, even after the withdrawal,” a Verra spokesperson responded.
As part of the Paris Agreement, national laws compel companies to contribute to climate solutions. One way is through carbon offsetting – where companies emitting CO₂ can make amends by paying entities like Safbois for their efforts to reduce emissions, essentially achieving a ‘net zero’ effect. In theory, carbon dioxide that would have been released into the atmosphere through deforestation in places like Yafunga is prevented from ever being released. This comprises the concept of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). It is often executed through avoided deforestation and can include varied activities like clean cooking programs, which make up the plus in REDD+.
More recently, proponents of logging projects have been quietly converting their operations into carbon concessions in a bid to diversify their portfolio- a report by Mongabay shows. “REDD+ seems to be more profitable than logging”, author Marie-Bernard Dhedya Lonu says in his 2023 book analysing the impact of the Safbois deal in Yafunga.
DRC’s Ministry of Environment January 2024 report records a total of 26 REDD+ projects in the country. Of the eight canceled REDD+ projects, five were owned by controversial Belgian company, Tradelink, whose project area was bigger than permitted by national laws. Two of the canceled concessions are Daniel Blattner’s Isangi REDD+ projects. The eighth canceled concession, of 248,318 hectares, is owned by the Renewable Solution (RESO) company and is also located in Isangi. According to the Florida Department of State corporate registry, Daniel and David Blattner own RESO. Although project documents submitted to Verra show that Brandon Blattner, Daniel Blattner’s son, is the company director at RESO.
The RESO project was terminated because the ministry did not receive required documents for its authorisation. Along with the two Safbois concessions allocated to Isangi REDD+ spanning 316,686 hectares, the Blattner family managed a total of 565,004 hectares in conservation concessions in Isangi territory alone. This is more than twice the size of Luxembourg.
The Problem with Africa’s Voluntary Carbon Markets
The Isangi REDD+ project is made possible through the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), a decentralised model comprising independent buyers and sellers of carbon credits, certified by organisations like the Verified Carbon Standard (also known as Verra), the American Carbon Registry (ACR), Gold Standard, The California Air Resources Board (ARB) and Climate Action Reserve (CAR). Through the VCM model, a platform like Carbon Checkout allows individuals to simply add carbon credits from anywhere in the world to an online shopping cart and pay.
However, the VCM model has been wracked with irregularities over the years. For instance, Follow The Money found that Rabobank in the Netherlands was selling carbon credits by literally counting trees from space. The company reportedly used satellite imagery to determine the amount of CO₂ it would offset, and charged clients like Microsoft, who aim to be carbon neutral by 2030, as well as U.K’s Standard Chartered bank for this service. Rabobank claimed to fund reforestation in Côte d’Ivoire, but Follow The Money found their carbon credit programme had no clear effect. In response to the report, Rabobank said it did “due diligence regarding activities in the Ivory Coast” although there were no “clear rules” from the government regarding carbon markets at the time the project launched. Acknowledging the “rapidly changing” carbon markets, Rabobank also remarked on the “continuous” challenges in balancing interests among all stakeholders.
At the same time, a 2023 exposé by The Guardian found that more than 90% of projects approved by Verra may not represent real emission reductions. Verra, which disputes the finding, is the biggest certifier in terms of number of projects submitted. Another report by Belgium-based organisation, Carbon Market Watch revealed that six out of 14 projects registered by Gold Standard were missing crucial documents, despite the public disclosure of such documents being a mandatory requirement as per Gold Standard’s own rules.
The trade-off for indigenous communities, and a major selling point for companies like Safbois, is that carbon offsetting projects alleviate poverty. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) states that developing countries can receive ‘results-based payments’ for emission reductions when they reduce deforestation, adding that this serves as a major incentive for such efforts.
On the contrary, the Carbon Market Watch analysis on the geographical disparity of VCM actors concludes that money made from selling carbon credits is most likely diverted into profit for actors located in the global north. The report found that a vast majority of projects in Africa are run by people and companies from developed countries. “Less than 28% of companies involved in projects in Africa are actually based in an African country”, the report shows. Meanwhile, all REDD+ projects in DRC are either fully or partly funded by foreign entities, according to CIFOR-ICRAF’s study on REDD+ benefit-sharing mechanisms in DRC.
“You need money to invest and locally, people don’t have money. On our own, we won’t be able to start REDD+ projects. The investment needed, the international verifiers that have to come, it’s millions of dollars that has to be paid. You need partners that have money,” says Professor Joseph Malassi, the Climate Change advisor at DRC’s Ministry for Environment and Sustainable Development. The report by CIFOR-ICRAF also found that most REDD+ projects in DRC cost well over five million dollars.
A Disparity in Carbon Pricing
Further illustrating irregularities in carbon markets is the stark mismatch in pricing, where, again developing countries are at a disadvantage. Speaking on behalf of the ministry, Professor Malassi noted that the country sold a tonne of avoided Carbon dioxide at two dollars in February 2024, and at five dollars in December of the same year. The same tonne sold at USD17 in November 2023 in DRC. It was at five dollars in 2018 according to CIFOR-ICRAF– making five dollars the modal carbon price in DRC. “Prices are determined by external factors, and are prone to extreme fluctuation”, Professor Malassi said in an interview for this report.
He also attributed the rapid decline in prices to The Guardian’s 2023 report which found that Verra’s carbon emission calculations were largely inflated. The professor disagrees with the report. “We need to create discourse that puts people in confidence instead of frightening them and discrediting the only solution we have for climate change,” he says, adding, “Even if we have technologies that can sequester carbon, we will never have technology to produce oxygen. Only trees can do that.”
In comparison, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report shows that the carbon price in California was USD34 per tonne in 2023, and USD76 per tonne in Europe. The same tonne sold for USD17 in DRC in the same period. Bloomberg warns that carbon prices in the global south could linger at just USD13 per tonne by 2030 if lack of market integrity and erratic regulations prevail.
This disparity speaks to the inequality at play in the carbon market. “Carbon credits from developing countries are often undervalued. This unfairness is hard to understand and could slow down efforts to fight climate change. The companies that come here are intermediaries and the communities are not in direct contact with the buyers. For the market to be transparent, the service providers should have direct contact with the buyers,” said Professor Justin Kyale Koi, a Political Science Lecturer at the University of Kisangani.
Business interests and climate solutions are strange bedfellows. DRC is home to 60% of the Congo Basin rainforest, which holds the largest carbon reserve in the world. This is not reflected in the number of REDD+ projects. On Verra’s registry, only ten projects in DRC are currently certified. In comparison, Kenya, not part of the Congo Basin rainforest, and has 8.83% of forest cover compared to DRC’s 67%, has 30 certified REDD+ projects on Verra alone. It is possible that decisions driving REDD+ investments are often based on the ease of doing business.
In order to benefit from these projects, indigenous communities like the people of Yafunga give up farming as their source of income in hopes that international investors like Safbois would improve their lives. Decades after these projects were initiated, however, residents say they have little to show for it, and the power and influence that the players in this space have implies that there is nothing they can do about it.
Promises Broken
Yafunga featured in a report by The Guardian in 2007, highlighting the failure of Safbois to effect tangible benefits for residents. According to The Guardian, Safbois initially entered a commercial logging contract with Yafunga residents in September 2004, when residents were promised schools, hospitals, roads and jobs.
Brothers David and Daniel Blattner told The Guardian in 2007 that they were in the process of building the schools and delivering other promises. Today, all that remains of the single school that was built by Safbois is a rundown building with a rusty, windblown roof and a collapsed wall. For context, one Afrormosia tree that Safbois would export from places like Yafunga to Europe was worth up to USD2,000, according to The Guardian report. Inside the classrooms are ruined blackboards and unfinished floors. There are no desks for students to sit on.
Part two of this story juxtaposes how the Blattners’ vast commercial interests in DRC have brought them riches, even as the people of Yafunga, on whose land at least some of these interests have played out, have had to contend with deprivation and desolation.
Additional reporting by Malenga Byobe.
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