Corporations Are Using Carbon Credits to Exploit Refugees
The UN is putting refugees to work in poorly paid green jobs to generate carbon credits for billion-dollar firms. It’s one of the most cynical instances of a corporate greenwashing agenda that has done little to address climate change.
The vast majority of the value generated from reforestation work won’t go to the refugees but to the companies buying the credits enabling them to continue polluting the atmosphere. (Matteo Fraschini Koffi / AFP via Getty Images)
At the start of 2026, the White House declared that it was withdrawing from a raft of international organizations, covering areas of supposed global cooperation from education to aid to climate change. As with much that comes from the current administration, this announcement was deceptive: not only had the United States already disengaged and withdrawn funding from many of these bodies, but it has also long been actively undermining their operation.
Perhaps the starkest example concerned the United States’ international aid budget. In 2025, massive cuts led to the UN World Food Program cutting upward of 30 percent of its staff, while the international body responsible for refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), declared it would downsize, cutting positions and reducing expenditure. In this new world, Donald Trump warned that the UN and its agencies must “adapt, shrink or die.”
The Deepening Climate Crisis of the UNHCR
This is not a new crisis for the UN and its refugee agency. It is, however, a dramatic escalation.
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