In this interview with one of FIAN International’s lead investigators, Philip Seufert, we discuss their recent report on the dark side of ‘datafied’ green initiatives. Below are the edited excerpts from the interview.

Q1. FIAN has just released its latest report that looks at the conjuncture of carbon markets and data politics in Colombia. Can you tell us a little bit about the scope of this research?

Philip: What we tried to do with this research is to look at the intersection between carbon markets as a mainstream climate change solution, and how that interrelates with food systems, especially small-scale food producers, and the tech part of it. This triangulation that we tried to look at is something that has not received a lot of attention. We looked into a specific case in Colombia. There is a carbon trading project there that directly involves smallholder coffee farmers. Through this project, the ambition is to link farmers to carbon markets and international carbon trading, promising more sustainability because it’s linked to carbon [capture] and agroforestry as a sustainable farming practice. One of the main promises here is increased income through a new revenue stream that would give them more diverse earnings through payments for the carbon that they store on their farms. This project in Colombia is tied to a platform called ACORN, which is run by Rabobank. That’s a transnational bank that’s based in the Netherlands. They have a long history of being active in projects involving smallholder farmers and agriculture in general, and now they have this very dedicated digital trading platform to link smallholders to international carbon markets. It runs on the Microsoft Azure cloud and a Colombian NGO acts as a local partner. We looked into the Colombian case, based on interviews with farmers and some of the staff from the local partner organization, and did an analysis. The report also delves into the broader context of contemporary human-rights-based and environmental justice critiques of carbon markets. What it adds to these is that it also establishes the link to technology. In the conclusions and recommendations, we raise the alarm of key risks, and some concerning gaps in regulation. Our main intention with the report is to point to these [issues] and give some indications on what state actors actually should do to address these risks that arise for the smallholders who participate in these projects.

Q2. Can you explain some of the context behind the study? What prompted this research?

Philip: FIAN International is a human rights organization. We work on the right to food and have a long history of documenting work with organizations of smallholder producers and their communities. One of the things we also do is spot risks for violations. So, there were different prompts to look into these issues. Perhaps the most important one [was that] we worked with a Colombian partner: MAELA, a social movement for agroecology in Latin America. It was through their members that we heard about this project. We heard about some of the concerns that some of the participating farmers had. And this was at a time when we, at FIAN, were increasingly looking into issues related to technology and data. Indeed, for several years now, we have tried to better integrate our analysis of food systems and the right to food with larger dynamics related to climate change and digitalization. We actually published an article in the State of Big Tech, which was an initiative by IT for Change, where we looked into the corporate takeover of food systems in Latin America through Big Tech, focusing especially on peasant and smallholder agriculture. We looked at some of the mechanisms, and carbon trading was one of the trends we identified in that article, but we didn’t [have] a case study at that point. And so, when we heard about these concerns about these farmers, we did this research. The field research was done by a Colombian researcher—it was important for us to work with local actors to ensure things were done properly.

Our first recommendation would be actually to stop developing these carbon markets, or at least, to have a moratorium.

So, we have this carbon trading project that is not about forestry, but is directly targeting smallholder farmers and their agricultural practices. This kind of project is sometimes referred to as carbon farming. And while this has been scaling up in the past few years all around the world, it has received much less attention than big forest conservation projects. And so, this is fairly new and obviously, as an organization that is concerned about the rights of smallholder farmers, peasants, and indigenous peoples, it’s a relevant issue [for us] because we all know about the very mixed results of carbon markets in general, to say the very least. Now, if there are attempts to use these projects in agriculture and directly involve smallholder farmers, we think that’s quite concerning and at least requires a good analysis of the human rights risks. And so, these are the considerations that motivated our study.

Q3. Could you elaborate on some of the recommendations the report makes to respond to the human rights concerns raised? What are some structural limitations to fully addressing these concerns?

Philip: Our first recommendation would be actually to stop developing these carbon markets, or at least, to have a moratorium. And this is something that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has recently called for because by now, we have a long track record of the questionable environmental benefits of carbon markets. There are legitimate questions about whether they actually work and there are several instances of fraud. There is also a huge track record of violations of indigenous people’s rights and local communities’ rights in different ways through carbon markets. In a way, it’s quite incredible that carbon markets are still being touted as this great solution or response to climate change. They should have lost all credibility in the face of this body of evidence, but instead they’re now being pushed into agriculture as well. What we call for, therefore, is a way to think about approaches alternative to carbon markets.

We agree that a lot of smallholders, especially those working in agroecology, already have practices and farming systems that are respectful of ecosystems and that have much less of an impact on climate change, and generate few emissions. We also support the idea of supporting farmers and communities to build on these approaches. However, we are against interventions that result in instrumentalizing them for this kind of carbon market agenda, which in the end is pushing not only a commoditization of nature and agricultural ecosystems, but also their financialization. Carbon markets are basically a new financial market, and we would argue, quite a speculative one at that. So, in a way, the first recommendation is [asking] what other approaches we can take that recognize the contributions of smallholder producers without involving them in these capitalistic chains that just perpetuate extraction, exploitation, and domination? So, the first call to action, is basically, to halt and develop other models based on what is already being built by communities on the ground. Apart from that, as long as states still decide to push for these carbon markets, there should be much more stringent regulation. And specifically, in the case of carbon projects that are targeted at smallholder producers who supply directly to agricultural systems, there should be specific legislation, which there isn’t at all currently. When we speak about protecting the rights of peasants, indigenous people, and smallholder producers, we also have to speak about what’s on the other end, the corporations, and how do we ensure corporate accountability and balance out power asymmetries that persist? Because that’s a major concern. In the case of Colombia, we have Rabobank, a transnational bank, collaborating with Microsoft, and then you have small coffee growers, somewhere in the countryside in Colombia. The power differentials here are enormous.

When we speak about protecting the rights of peasants, indigenous people, and smallholder producers, we also have to speak about what’s on the other end, the corporations, and how do we ensure corporate accountability and balance out power asymmetries that persist?

Moving on, the next one that I would pick out of the recommendations to discuss is the need to connect the issues, and to look at the whole pie that is linked to technology and data in this context, and to include that into the discussions around the protection and realization of peasants’ rights—including peasant organizations which are still in the process of really integrating this whole aspect of data and technology into their struggles. One of the things that we recommend is to build on a Constitutional amendment that Colombia has recently adopted, which gives special protective status to peasants. A lot of discussions are going on [about] its implementation, about protecting the right to land, seeds, etc. But data and technologies are still not very much part of that discussion. What about the data that peasants generate? And what about the data-based technologies that are increasingly used in agriculture and their risks to the rights of peasants? These aspects are not yet [part of] the policy debates when it comes to the measures to protect peasants’ rights.

Regarding the structural limitations, I already mentioned that Carbon markets are touted as an easy solution to this big problem of climate change. For obvious reasons, corporations would like the possibility to buy their way out of their responsibility and offset whatever they cause in destruction in one place with compensation in the other. Now there is this push to do the same thing for biodiversity. Biodiversity offset and biodiversity markets: these are discussions that are ongoing in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity as well as financing mechanisms, and so this approach is still very much alive. So that’s still a challenge. Lots of people have done great work to challenge this, but more pressure is needed. And here again, Colombia is a good example, because Colombia has this ambition, what their current president called the need to ‘decarbonize’ capitalism. Such rhetoric, along with allied moves towards a ‘bio-economy’ are all [means] that try to disguise capitalism’s own complicity in the climate crisis, and carbon markets have a prominent role in that strategy.

Lastly, over the past years, we have seen a broadening of understanding around the implications of tech and the use of data. This has occurred in many domains of human rights, including the rights of peasants, smallholder producers, indigenous peoples, and so on. At the same time, organizations and representatives of these groups have taken up the task of understanding the implications and developing positions on issues related to data and technology. However, when it comes to practical proposals and implementation, these topics are not often connected. One of the things we’ve tried to do here is to suggest looking at implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, [and this] also requires us to look into the issue of data and technology and safeguard those rights.

Q4. Can you tell us more about the link established between the politics of data extraction and carbon markets? How does this conjuncture raise new questions for human rights?

Philip: We have been trying to bring these issues together for the past few years. Now with this research, it’s interesting to see that there has been very little critical analysis or even understanding of the technology infrastructure that is needed to make carbon markets work, or at least appear to make them work. In fact, in discussions with organizations and people on the ground, even those who understand these issues are surprised at the range of technologies that are needed, the amount of data that is collected, and so on.

What about the data that peasants generate? And what about the data-based technologies that are increasingly used in agriculture and their risks to the rights of peasants? These aspects are not yet [part of] the policy debates.

One of the main concerns here is around the peasants and farmers who participate in this project in Colombia. The only thing they sign is a consent form to give away their data: personal and farm data. But there’s very little awareness about the issues around this and what it could entail in terms of risks. So, this was striking for us, and we have tried to emphasize it in this report. Very few people know what happens with that data. Then you have this tech layer with satellites, databases, blockchains, and AI models to calculate the biomass growth. You also have the trading platforms where the carbon credits are sold.

Between the farm and the carbon market, this mediation of technologies adds a layer of opacity, and everybody pretends these technologies are super precise and super neutral. But we all know that’s not true. It’s not clear what data is used, what data is collected, how it is used, what it ends up like, and what are the models based on. I think we rarely discuss these [issues vis-a-vis] the question of the rights of the people, the peasants, the smallholders, and the indigenous peoples. There’s also still a lot of work to be done within organizations themselves. But there are some obvious human rights issues here, linked to the very basic human right of self-determination, and the right, including over your data, to decide what data to share, with whom, and under what conditions, as well as the right to withhold the use of certain uses of your data. These are still issues that are not integrated into our discussions, around the protection of our farmers’ rights.

Q5. The report observes that carbon markets depoliticize the allocation of pollution rights. Could you elaborate on the role of data-driven technologies in this process and the implications for the Global South?

Philip: There is a basic assumption with carbon markets that whatever you emit, in whatever way, in one place on the planet, can be compensated somewhere else. Now there are reasons to doubt whether that is actually true. But what is more important is the way in which, carbon markets and these offsetting schemes intrinsically tie emission reduction in one place to ongoing emissions or destruction somewhere else. You perpetuate this idea that ‘you can continue polluting as much and as long as you just compensate somewhere else.’ This becomes a market mechanism by which, whoever can afford to, can buy off their responsibility. So, you don’t look into [the] historical responsibility of greenhouse gas emissions, both country-wise and by individual companies, as well as the economic models. So, basically, if you can afford it, you can just continue the extractive practices that have caused the ecological crises in the first place. What is not so implicit behind this is actually that you have neocolonial dynamics, where it is not really hidden, but, it’s natural, in the eyes of the states and other promoters of these mechanisms, that a lot of the compensation will obviously have to happen in the Global South. You have these North-South dynamics that are just replicating and reinforcing these colonial structures. And now, you see people just saying, ‘yeah, this is a great business opportunity, actually, for countries of the Global South, because they can export carbon equivalents or whatever’ right? And then it’s celebrated as [being] helpful to build up their economies, but the model behind it, in a way, is as extractive as the ones that came before. The technology side is important to convey the message that this is all very precise, and we can measure this, and we can kind of calculate this, and so on. [But] this idea should have lost its credibility, with all the scandals related to Carbon markets that we have seen over the past years. But I think even the scandals are presented in the mainstream media as individual failures or irresponsible ways of operating by some of these certifiers and so on, but the very idea of carbon markets isn’t challenged. The link to data-driven technologies, basically, has a function of supporting this idea that carbon markets can work. I would even argue, the complexity and opacity of the tech that is implied serves that purpose. But it’s obvious that a lot of these technologies and the underlying platforms are controlled in the Global North so we have the polluters who want to offset their emissions from the Global North. And then we have the companies that are run by tech, that are also from the North, so we have this spiral of neocolonial exploitation.

Q6. What were some of the most salient trends in the perspectives you encountered on the ground? How are farmers and peasant communities thinking about the digital nexus and climate change?

Philip: I do think it’s important to say in this case, in Colombia, with the farmers we spoke to, none of them was particularly enthusiastic about this project. But there was a strong feeling that it’s right for them to get recognized for their, let’s say, sustainable farming practices. This is a way in which these carbon market projects are being interpreted, as a way of acknowledging and capitalizing on the relative sustainability of these parts of the world. Especially in the Colombian context, where violence against rural people has been historically a big problem, this is seen as an important recognition.

You perpetuate this idea that ‘you can continue polluting as much and as long as you just compensate somewhere else.’ This becomes a market mechanism by which, whoever can afford to, can buy off their responsibility.

So, in that sense, a lot of farmers participate in these kinds of initiatives because they think, ‘Okay, if I can get a bit of recognition and, compensation, including financial, for what I’m doing, then that’s fair.’ In that specific project, they appreciate that there is little interference in their day-to-day farming work. ‘If I receive money, it will not be money for which I had to do additional work. I receive it for my usual farming work. So, it’s an additional income. It’s like a bonus. So why shouldn’t I do it?’ However, the issue of data, in a way, I think, is a concern at some level for most of them, although not very articulate, fuzzy, or blurry, it’s definitely there. Rabobank and their local partner organization claim to explain everything to them. But in speaking to farmers, they don’t know how the technical process of what they do on their farms is actually translated and calculated into carbon credits. That is very far from their reality, so it’s normal that they don’t know. But for actors like Rabobank who promote this, it’s very straightforward. Still, they jump straight to this middle stage and just focus on what farmers do on their lands. They tell them ‘if you do this, you will store carbon,’ and then they focus on the very end where ‘there are carbon credits and we sell them and then a part of that value goes back to you. But the whole thing that is in between, is a kind of a black box, which is not spoken about a lot. And I think now, with our report and some of the restitution that we will do with it, especially with the affected farmers, will go in that direction, to make people think about these links and risks. These are discussions that are very much ongoing in a lot of organizations right now. It’s an important discussion, and we hope that our report can support this and add a perspective from this specific context of carbon markets with smallholders.

Q7. What do you think are some of the more general points of complementarity and tension when we think about articulating digital and environmental justice?

Philip: First of all, digital tech itself has a whole dimension of harmful environmental impacts that are not receiving sufficient attention in the dominant discourse. It’s a fact that many of these technologies are very resource-intensive. But beyond that, we think it should be discussed more how technology and digital technologies are functional to the financialization and the commoditization of nature. We have seen this ‘transformation’ of natural and biological processes into ecosystem services and then transform that into an asset that can be traded. And now we have the whole idea of offsetting that’s not actually something very new, but which is now a central part of the mainstream responses to the ecological crises. I think tech plays an increasing role in not only pushing this narrative but applying these kinds of approaches and schemes—be it carbon trading or biodiversity offsets—to this broader financial agenda where you create new financial assets that can be traded on new financial markets. This is fundamentally a very extractive model that destroys ecosystems around the world. And although it portrays itself as being a tool to solve the ecological crises, it’s driving deforestation, pollution, and the expulsion of communities from their lands. This link, when we talk about digital justice and environmental justice, is still a field where civil society should discuss more among itself and also with policymakers on how we speak about digital justice and digitalization. It’s not about demonizing technology. Issues like access to these technologies and so on, they’re still important. But it’s always important to keep in mind the dynamics of what these technologies entail on the broader end. From our report, our analysis is that this tech apparatus is very much functional to financializing natural processes, in this case, the capacity of carbon storage, and also the instrumentalization of the people that are doing the work on the ground. The issues of digital, environmental, agrarian, and social justice, and their intricacies and interlinkages are very important and I would hope that we can discuss them more.