Just two years ago, the survival of these trees – a crucial elephant habitat – was the basis of a multibillion dollar carbon boom that touched almost every large-scale forest on Earth, underpinning the environmental claims of some of the biggest companies in the world. Netflix and Shell were among the companies that bought millions of credits from Kasigau. The market reached more than $2bn (£1.5bn), propelled by a wave of enthusiasm for offsets as a solution to global heating and biodiversity loss. Each credit represented a tonne of CO2 that was not released into the atmosphere from deforestation, theoretically cancelling out emissions from flying, fashion, food and fossil fuels. During the pandemic, leading investment banks formed trading desks for offsets as prices surged from a few dollars to more than $30 a credit for some schemes.