Korean and international civil society organisations have formally called on SK Telecom to end its investment in a cookstove project in Myanmar that has been carried out in collaboration with an abusive military junta, and to put in place a responsible system for managing climate-related risk.
On 11 August, 28 civil society organisations from around the world — including the Myanmar Policy Institute, No Business With Genocide, Plan 1.5 and the Global Forest Coalition — issued a joint letter to Jung Jae-hun, CEO of SK Telecom. Citing the risk of human rights abuses associated with the project and the inflation of its claimed emission reductions, the letter sets out three demands: (1) end the company’s investment in the project; (2) refrain from trading the carbon credits already generated by the project; and (3) establish an internal system to fairly and accurately assess and verify international mitigation projects.
SK Telecom and 11 other SK Group affiliates have invested in the project since March 2018. In February this year, the project became the first in the world to have credit issuance approved under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). According to the Korean NGO Climate Change Center (CCC), which runs the project, SK Group has obtained 648,783 credits. Other Korean investors, including Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), ended their involvement after the military coup in Myanmar. SK Group’s 12 affiliates are now the only companies still invested in the project.
The signatories to the open letter point out that since the 2021 attempted coup, the project continued to be implemented by the Dry Zone Greening Department (DZGD) — an agency under the command and control of the military junta. Justice For Myanmar, a Myanmar civil society group, has criticised this arrangement, stating that “working with them on projects linked to international carbon market mechanisms lends administrative legitimacy to the junta and effectively grants impunity for their crimes under international law”.
The signatories also note that Sagaing, Mandalay and Magway, three of the regions where the project operated and emissions reductions were claimed during the crediting period (January 2021 to May 2022), are among the areas worst affected by military attacks on civilians. They argue that presenting communities as “beneficiaries” of improved cookstoves when the agency running the project is so clearly linked to the very forces attacking those communities is a contradiction.
Zaw Tuseng, Director of the Myanmar Policy Institute, said: “Communities in Sagaing and Magway are living through airstrikes, displacement, the destruction of villages and severe restrictions on movement. Under these conditions, credible monitoring, meaningful consultation and informed community consent cannot simply be assumed. SK Telecom should not use carbon credits generated under such circumstances to claim climate progress. It must disclose its involvement, suspend the use of these credits and support an independent, conflict-sensitive review that listens directly to affected communities.”
Due to the conditions on the ground, no on-site inspection of the project was carried out over the course of the verification process in any of the project’s locations. The project’s verification reports were prepared on the basis of online interviews rather than field verification, citing the difficult security situation caused by the conflict. Although the project presents women as its principal beneficiaries, only a very small number of women were interviewed as part of the monitoring or verification processes.
The signatories also raise the issue of inflated emission reductions. According to analysis by the European think tank Carbon Market Watch (CMW), the project was approved for the issuance of roughly 7.2 times more PACM credits than its actual emission reductions likely warrant. Most of the credits obtained by SK Group, the organisations say, are “junk credits” that deliver no real emission reductions.
SK Telecom itself has acknowledged that the emission reductions claimed by the Myanmar cookstove project cannot be verified. In its 2024 SK Telecom Taxonomy Report, the company classified the project as ‘not Aligned’ under the Korean Green Taxonomy(K-Taxonomy), citing “practical difficulties in verifying the greenhouse gas emission data of cookstoves used in Myanmar.” The project has thus been excluded from the green economic activities SK Telecom reports to investors. Despite this, it has still been allowed to generate hundreds of thousands of PACM credits for SK Group.
Sooyoun Han, Policy Campaigner at Plan 1.5, said: “If SK Telecom uses credits with no assured emission reductions to meet its obligations under the Korea Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS), the environmental integrity of the scheme will inevitably be undermined. And if these junk credits are placed on the market to be used towards a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will only move further out of reach.” She added: “If SK Telecom ends this investment before it is too late and builds an internal system to assess and verify international mitigation projects, it can prevent this from happening again and demonstrate that SK Group’s ‘Double Bottom Line’ — the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social value — is more than a slogan.”
Oli Munnion, with the Global Forest Coalition, said: “If the very first project to be cleared for crediting under the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market scheme is so clearly mired in controversy due to human rights abuses and over-crediting, what hope is there for the thousands of other projects in the crediting pipeline? If claims of “high-integrity” are to have any meaning whatsoever, then the main organisations behind this project—SK Group as financial backers and the PACM Supervisory Body with ultimate responsibility for oversight—must ensure that these junk credits are never used to offset very real and harmful emissions.”
The organisations have asked SK Telecom’s CEO to respond to the open letter by 24 August.
Signatories:
60+ Climate Action
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Griffith University
BigWave – Youth Climate Action Group
Biofuelwatch
Blue Dalian
Campaign for a New Myanmar
Carbon Market Watch
Climate Communications Coalition
Colectivo VientoSur
Earth Ethics, Inc.
Extinction Rebellion Korea
Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN)
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Green Korea United
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Green Transformation(IGT)
International Campaign for the Rohingya
Korean Civil Society in Support of Democracy in Myanmar
Korean Federation for Environmental Movement(KFEM)
Korean Women’s Environmental Network(KWEN)
Link-AR Borneo
Myanmar Policy Institute
No Business With Genocide
Plan 1.5
Practicing Buddhist Monk’s Association
Rainforest Action Network
Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente(RedAfros)
