Imagine making money from something nobody can see, touch or easily check. In a phrase, this is the carbon credit business. And when world leaders arrive in Antalya for COP31 on 9 November, it will be pitched as an answer to the developing world’s biggest barrier to tackling climate change: money.
The summit’s president, Turkey’s Murat Kurum, has made the case boldly. In August he told Bloomberg that carbon markets would be one of COP31’s objectives, and that with the right policies, the voluntary carbon market could deliver more than $50 billion a year. That is extra, debt-free finance for developing economies by 2030. Seems like a tempting offer for countries in debt.
The idea is simple. A country cuts emissions by protecting a forest or swapping smoky fires for cleaner stoves, and each tonne of carbon avoided becomes a credit. A richer country or company buys it and counts it against its own emissions. The seller gets cash; the buyer gets a cheaper way to hit its targets. Everyone wins, in theory.
Ghana
Ghana shows what the theory looks like in practice. In July 2025 it became the first African country to sell carbon credits to another country under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement (the rules that let governments trade emission cuts and count them towards their national climate targets). It transferred 11,733 tonnes of reductions to Switzerland.
The credits came from a project that sells improved cookstoves to rural households below cost, with carbon money covering the gap. The benefits are tangible: one mother in Ghana’s Upper West Region says her new stove has halved her charcoal spending. And Ghana wants more, having earmarked 24 million tonnes of credits for future sale.
Cleaner air at home, lower bills, and foreign money that never has to be repaid. So far, so good. The problem is the part nobody can see.
The part nobody can see
In 2023, a nine-month investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial examined rainforest credits certified by Verra, the world’s largest carbon standard. It concluded that around 94% of the credits it analysed should never have been approved, largely because projects overestimated how much forest would otherwise have been cut down. Disney, Shell and Gucci were among the buyers. Verra strongly disputed the findings, but its chief executive resigned a few months later.
Cookstoves, the very credits behind Ghana’s breakthrough, have their own problem. A 2024 University of California, Berkeley study in Nature Sustainability found that cookstove credits overstated their climate benefits by roughly ten times on average. Projects often assumed families used their new stoves more and their old fires less than they really did. The organisations that certify cookstove credits disputed the findings too.
None of this means Ghana’s project is inflated. And defenders of carbon markets have a fair point: Verra’s then chief executive argued that the world cannot wait for perfect systems. Supporters add that even imperfect credits send money to places that would otherwise get none. But a credit that claims more than it delivers is not just imperfect; it is a cost that someone else ends up paying.
A double cost
An inflated credit does double damage. For the climate, it lets a buyer keep polluting while nothing is actually cut. For development, it makes the whole market fragile. Carbon credits run on trust. Once buyers stop buying them, the money that would have gone to countries like Ghana and Nepal dries up.
There is a quieter catch too. Switzerland counts Ghana’s reductions towards its own Paris target. The cut happened in Ghana, not Zurich. Done well, that sends money to where cuts are cheapest. Done badly, it lets rich countries put off the harder work at home.
Making the air real
None of this means carbon markets should be scrapped. It means the details matter. The same Berkeley study found that the one method which directly measures how much fuel households burn was only about 1.5 times over-credited, far closer to reality.
Host countries are writing their own rules too. India screens which projects can take part, and Kenya charges a fee on credits sold abroad. Nepal wants buyer countries to commit to purchasing credits from the poorest nations, so demand is predictable rather than a gamble.
What Antalya can decide
COP31 will not rewrite the rulebook, and carbon markets are not even on the main negotiating agenda. But the side talks matter. An Article 6.2 “Ambition Dialogue” opens on day one, and safeguards, the rules meant to protect communities and stop inflated claims, remain the most contested issue.
That is where Kurum’s $50 billion will be won or lost. If Antalya pushes for credits that are measured properly, checked independently and shared fairly with the people who earn them, carbon markets could become real development finance. If it settles for volume over quality, it risks funding the next scandal instead.
So, can carbon credits pay for development? Yes, but only if the air being sold is real.
Inayatt Gogia is a writer at the Consilium. She is a second-year Economics and Politics student who writes mostly on sustainability and policy.
