El Retiro has announced that it is abandoning its plan to refinance the tree-planting project through so-called ‘carbon credits’.

We decided to terminate the Verra project, not to sell or retire the credits and close this for good.

We will however continue to plant trees and manage the farm El Retiro in a holistic sustainable way incl. re-forestation.

This is due to the fact that we can no longer justify to burden the farm with the liability that comes with selling carbon credits in the voluntary market.

A project developer has to have a great deal of trust in the following

• Reasonable handling by the institution Verra (not existing)

• Rule-based decisions (not a given, retroactive changes)

• Trust in decisions once made (not possible, as Verra not only changes rules retroactively, but also credits based on „old“ rules loose their value right away)

• New rules are senseless (e.g. in our case, baseline discussions means that our grouped project - where neighbors shall also plant trees - is made impossible, as this would destroy the baseline)

• Nonsense rules are introduced (soil carbon measurements are required but impossible to realize)

• The framework shifts from nature focused to „social“, overburdening the project with costs and compliance requirements

• The framework is counter-productive: the more you integrate for example a „vulnerable“ minority as we do with people from the indigenous tribe of Ayoreos, the more nonsense requirements are put on the project)

• Cocumentation and verification costs are insanely high

Also big players such as USA or China are now against these projects. Big buyers such as Corsia are totally unreliable. Even the leading German research institution Max-Planck-Institute regrettably published an aggressively misleading press release discrediting the real value of carbon credits in the voluntary carbon market.

The eventual result is that a project developer is treated as a potential criminal and burdened with controls and bureaucracy that far exceed a reasonable amount of verification of the project progress.

Eventually the burden of all of this (including a 60 year commitment) just not justifies the project costs and risk.

We thank all people involved in the project so far. The 250.000 trees planted so far are happy and will continue to provide a beautiful environment for cattle, soils and human beings.