‘Nowhere else to go’: forest communities of Alto Mayo, Peru, at centre of offsetting row

The Guardian visits the Peruvian Amazon as part of an continuing investigation into forest-based carbon offsetting

• Revealed: ‘over 90% of rainforest offsets by biggest provider worthless’
• Greenwashing or a net zero necessity? Scientists on carbon offsetting
• Carbon offsets flawed but we are in a climate emergency

Sometime towards the end of the 2021 wet season, Abel Carrasco’s home in the Alto Mayo protected area was razed to the ground with chainsaws, axes and ropes, he tells the Guardian. The 39-year-old coffee farmer, his pregnant wife and eight children were instructed not to return by park authorities.

“My children begged them but [the police] said they had to follow their orders. They told us to get our things ready and leave. They said it’s a protected forest, nobody can be here. That’s why you’ve got to go,” Carrasco said in September last year. He was tearful as he watched the video his teenage daughter recorded of the incident, the silence of the forest broken by the sound of his children crying over chainsaws.