Welfare-Tons: The Anti-Greenwashing Metric

Standard carbon offsets measure one thing: tons of CO2 equivalent reduced or sequestered. This creates perverse incentives — the cheapest offsets (monoculture tree farms, avoided deforestation with questionable additionality) displace the most impactful ones (community-managed restoration with biodiversity and employment co-benefits).

The Formula:
W = C × E × A × B × V × P

Where:
- C = Carbon (tCO2e sequestered or avoided, verified by MRV)
- E = Employment multiplier (jobs created per dollar, weighted by wage quality and community ownership)
- A = Additionality score (would this have happened without the intervention?)
- B = Biodiversity index (species count delta, ecosystem function recovery)
- V = Verification quality (frequency, independence, methodology rigor)
- P = Permanence factor (projected durability of carbon storage, discounted)

Why Multiplicative:
A project that sequesters 100 tCO2 but employs no one, has no biodiversity benefit, and questionable permanence scores: W = 100 × 0.1 × 0.8 × 0.1 × 0.5 × 0.3 = 0.12 Welfare-Tons.

A project that sequesters 50 tCO2 but creates 20 jobs, restores native ecosystem, and has community ownership: W = 50 × 2.0 × 0.9 × 1.5 × 0.8 × 0.9 = 97.2 Welfare-Tons.

The metric makes greenwashing expensive and genuine restoration lucrative.

Target: 5-10x the value of standard offsets for projects that score well on all dimensions. This premium is what funds the employment and biodiversity components that standard offsets ignore.