All quotes come from this article:
Because forests play a significant role in the Earth’s carbon balance, governments are willing to employ policies that affect forest carbon fluxes as a strategy to combat climate change. This was the case for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). To prevent the costs of compliance from rising inexorably, countries opted for a variety of instruments they could use to meet their self-imposed targets, including forestry activities. With this in mind, this review’s focus is on forest economics and policy as they relate to the role of the forest sector in mitigating climate change.
Feel like there should be a huge red flag on "prevent costs of compliance from rising inexorably," seeing as they only wanted to deal with financial costs and leave the rest of the costs for everyone else (including financial).
Emissions trading occurs when there is an official cap on GHG emissions, and emitters that exceed their individual targets can purchase emission reduction permits in the compliance (mandatory) market from those who are below their emissions target. A carbon offset then refers to an emission reduction or equivalent removal of CO2 from the atmosphere that is realized outside of the compliance market but can be used to counterbalance GHG emissions from the capped entity.
This bit here should highlight the futility of "carbon offsets." Companies can continue emitting at higher rates, as long as someone else sells them their reduction permits so that they can be "on target." The language used here to kind of obscure that there is nothing 'external' to the compliance system is a bit ludicrous. It's technically external, but they are actions that are done in order to mitigate the emissions being done.
There's also the fact that most people and companies are going to look toward the cheapest projects in order to be "carbon neutral." They aren't doing much to cut their emissions or take responsibility for their harmful practices, but they will provide money to people planting trees in order to "offset" their emissions. This is functionally meaningless.
It's also a bit farcical, because due to relationships between governments and NGOs, they can also certify other offset measures and credits. These measures can then be purchased by the very people and companies who are over-emitting. I suspect this is what the feel-good companies and NGOs help with in order to stay open. Carbon offsets still profit on environmental destruction, even if they provide resources for "prevention" and "development."