By Ginggay Hontiveros-Malvar, Chief Reputation and Sustainability Officer, and Aboitiz Group and President, Aboitiz Foundation
This article originally appeared on the author’s Tribune.net column ‘On the G(ood) Side’.
Carbon credits, offsets, and removals are often portrayed as competing tools, but in reality they are three parts of one essential system. Each addresses a different piece of the climate equation, and together they offer a pathway for long-term global resilience.
At the core of this system are carbon credits. They are the financial mechanism that translates climate ambition into viable, measurable action by assigning an economic value to every ton of carbon reduced or removed. This price signal de-risks and unlocks capital for critical projects that often fall outside traditional investment mandates.
Carbon credits also make it possible to balance emissions across borders, allowing reductions to happen where they are most efficient while directing capital toward communities and ecosystems that need it most. They are the pulse of the climate economy, converting intent into measurable impact.
Offsets provide a bridge between present realities and future ambition. Many industries face physical and technological limits that prevent them from eliminating all emissions immediately. Offsetting allows them to take responsibility now by supporting projects that avoid or reduce emissions elsewhere, such as investing in renewables or capturing methane from landfills. This is not a substitute for internal decarbonization, but a complement to it.
For hard-to-abate sectors like aviation, cement, or steel, offsets buy time without losing momentum, keeping global emissions moving in the right direction while breakthrough solutions scale.
Carbon removals complete the picture by addressing the stock of carbon already in the atmosphere. While credits and offsets fund emission reductions, removals—whether nature-based or engineered—are the only tools that permanently extract CO₂ from the air.
The scientific consensus is clear: deep cuts to new emissions must be paired with durable removals to achieve true climate balance. Reforestation, biochar, ocean-based sequestration, and direct air capture each serve as vital instruments in restoring what decades of industrial growth have released.
When used together, these three elements create synergy. They connect short-term mitigation with long-term adaptation, delivering both immediate emission cuts and lasting resilience benefits. Nature-based removals, for instance, do more than store carbon—they strengthen ecosystems and livelihoods. A mangrove forest not only sequesters CO₂ but also protects coastlines from storm surges and erosion.
Reforestation improves soil health, water retention, and biodiversity. Meanwhile, revenue generated through carbon markets can be reinvested into local adaptation—building climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure, and community-led innovation.
True leadership recognizes that these mechanisms are not transactions but instruments of transformation. When financial systems, mitigation tools, and restoration efforts move in harmony, they amplify one another’s impact. The future of carbon markets depends on that integration—where each ton of carbon reduced represents not only climate progress but human progress. By aligning markets with planetary boundaries and equity, we turn carbon from a cost of compliance into a catalyst for renewal.
That is the promise of an integrated carbon strategy: a future where growth and resilience reinforce each other, and where every investment in carbon becomes an investment in the planet’s stability and shared prosperity.
