Carbon removal as the key to achieving global climate goals and sustainable development
This post originally appeared on the Inspiratus Technologies LinkedIn blog.
Author: Wietse Vroom, Chief Technology Officer at Inspiratus Technologies
The world is running out of time to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Even with the most ambitious emission reduction efforts, the planet is likely to overshoot the 1.5°C target unless large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) becomes an integral part of global climate strategy. The latest findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make this clear: every credible net-zero pathway requires not only deep emissions cuts but also the active removal of billions of tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere by mid-century.
While much of the global discussion around CDR focuses on technological innovation and deployment in industrialized nations, it is increasingly evident that the Global South holds an outsized potential to deliver sustainable, cost-effective, and durable carbon removal. Investment in CDR across developing economies also represents a powerful opportunity for equitable global development — creating jobs, stimulating rural economies, improving soil health, and building new sources of export revenue. To realize this tremendous potential, we need a supporting policy landscape with compliance markets for carbon removal. These will unlock the large scale demand for carbon removal credits needed to bring carbon removal in the Global South to true scale.
Why Carbon Removal Matters for Global Climate Goals
The Paris Agreement’s objective of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, cannot be achieved through emission reductions alone. Even under aggressive decarbonization scenarios, hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, agriculture, cement, and steel will continue to emit residual greenhouse gases. To balance these unavoidable emissions, and to clean up excessive historic CO2 emissions, the world must remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it durably in ecosystems or geological formations.
The challenge to scale carbon removal to climate-relevant scale is huge. Current levels of CDR are around 2 GtCO2 per year, mainly from conventional CDR methods such as afforestation/reforestation. Novel CDR methods such as Biochar, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) and Direct Air Capture (DAC) currently contribute around 1.3 megatonnes of CO2 per year. Scenarios combining projected emission reductions and carbon removal indicate that a carbon removal capacity of 7-9 GtCO2 per year will be requiered by 2025. This means we have an enormous task ahead of us, to bring both nature-based as well as engineerd CDR solutions to the scale that is needed in the coming decades.
We need to acknowledge that the capacity for large-scale carbon removal is not evenly distributed around the world. High land availability, favorable climatic conditions, and lower opportunity costs of land make many regions in the Global South particularly well-suited for both nature-based and technological carbon removal. Afforestation, biochar production, soil carbon enhancement and enhanced rock weathering are all areas where developing countries could become global leaders — provided that sufficient investment, technology transfer, and governance frameworks are in place.
Global South companies already bringing carbon removal to scale
With large players such as Exomad Green, Varaha, Aperam, Carboneers, Planboo, NetZero, Biochar Life, Mash Makes, Husk Ventures and many other newer players such as B10 and Inspiratus Technologies appearing on the horizon, the Global South is already the undisputed leader in biochar based carbon removal. For Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW), companies such as InPlanet, Terradot and Mati (Grand Prize winner of the XPrize on Carbon Removal) demonstrate the potential in countries like Brasil and India. For Direct Air Capture, companies like Octavia Carbon, Sirona Technologies with projects in Kenya and the Middle East show how it’s done. And the list goes on and on…
The Global South’s Comparative Advantage in Carbon Removal
The Global South encompasses vast landscapes and diverse ecosystems capable of removing and storing carbon at scale. Africa alone possesses nearly 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land. Latin America hosts some of the world’s richest biodiversity and fertile soils. Southeast Asia combines tropical biomass potential with a growing renewable energy base that could support low-carbon carbon removal technologies. Unsurprisingly, data from CDR.FYI over the past 3 years (2022-24) show that 45% of all carbon removal delivered was from projects located in the Global South. This is a strong indication of the potential of the Global South to be a major contributer to the required carbon removal capacity.
Harnessing this potential is also an opportunity for sustainable economic development. Most CDR technologies have significant co-benefits such as improved agricultural productivity, creation of local jobs, reducing environmental pollution and building local industries. co-benefits contribute to achieving the UN Global Development Goals, something that is especially relevant in the Global South. The CDR sector can become a cornerstone of green industrialization across developing economies. As a 2024 BCG report put it: carbon removal can become a global 470-940 billion euro industry by 2050.
Financing Carbon Removal: A Path to Climate and Economic Justice
While each country bears the responsibility to reduce its own emissions as much as possible, the capacity for carbon removal varies widely. Some nations — particularly small, densely populated or heavily industrialized ones — have limited land or ecological capacity for significant removals. Others, often in the Global South, have the potential to remove far more carbon than their domestic or historic emissions require.
This mismatch underscores the need for international carbon removal trading mechanisms. Rather than each country trying to balance its emissions solely within its borders, global carbon markets allow nations with excess carbon removal capacity to sell high-quality, verifiable carbon removal credits to others. Luckily, such mechanisms are already being developed and increasingly implemented under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes the legal framework that allows countries to cooperate in achieving their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) through internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) and other cooperative approaches.
While early Article 6 activities have focused largely on emission reduction projects, there is a growing recognition that carbon dioxide removal activities — both nature-based and technological — can also qualify as eligible mitigation outcomes. And yes, certain guardrails need to be in place to ensure the quality, integrity and durability of the carbon credits exchanged under Article 6. Projects should meet the criteria of additionality, permanence, and robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV). However, if done right, carbon removal projects around the globe can build the climate-relevant scale that is needed while avoiding some of the pitfalls that have plagued carbon credit markets in the past.
Recent developments in the negotiations around European 2040 climate targets highlight how Article 6 credits could become part of a compliance market. On July 2nd this year, the European Comission launched a proposal to adopt a target of 90% emission reductions by 2040, including a mechanism that would allow up to 3% of the target to be achieved through international carbon credits. The use of international carbon credits to achieve European climate targets is presented as a ‘flexibility’; a way of making it easier for certain European countries to achieve the 2040 target. Predictably, the proposal is criticized for lowering climate ambition. Nevertheless, opening up European climate policy to the use of Article 6 credits, and carbon removal credits in particular could send an important message to the industry about the future role of carbon removal in compliance markets. This is just the kind of demand signal that is needed for investment to flow into the carbon removal sector and give buyers of high-quality durable carbon credits the confidence that they are making a secure investment.
In conclusion: From Climate Obligation to Development Opportunity
Investing in carbon removal in the Global South is a pragmatic and morally sound strategy for achieving global climate stability. The climate crisis demands collective action that transcends borders and rethinks fairness. Carbon removal is indispensable for meeting the Paris Agreement goals, but its potential can only be fully realized through global cooperation that recognizes the asymmetry between countries’ capacities and needs.
By investing in carbon removal in the Global South, the world can simultaneously accelerate climate action and unlock pathways to sustainable development. This is not just an efficient solution — it is the right thing to do.
