Under the Kyoto Protocol Carbon Credits Actually Increased Emissions

At the end of November, governments will come together in Paris to hammer out agreements for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Under the KP, there are two greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions offsetting mechanisms: joint implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
JI allows countries with emissions-reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to generate Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from GHG reduction projects and transfer them to other countries. Almost 872 million ERUs had been issued under JI as of March 2015, about a third of all Kyoto offset credits. In a nutshell, JIs are carbon credits and include things like reforestation projects.
Perhaps government heads should read this recent report by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), which found that the use of JI actually may have enabled GHG emissions to be about 600 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) more than if countries had met their emissions targets domestically.

Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Germany have the highest ERU issuances. Those four countries have 439 projects registered and over 800 million ERUs issued, which account for 94 percent of ERU issuances. The report found “environmental integrity concerns” for over 80 percent of ERUs in Russia and Ukraine. By contrast, environmental integrity in Poland was rated at 70 percent and 97 percent in Germany.