So I was recently in Brazil and I spent a few days with my wife's cousin who makes his living off of the rainforest in a sustainable way. He harvests wood from trees that have fallen, without him chopping them down. He maintains beehives of indigenous bees that are only productive in the rainforest. He does some poaching of birds and orchids but he insists that it's sustainable. I suppose he could be lying but he lives in the rainforest and raises his kids in that lifestyle so he has every motive to not harm the ecosystem. Unlike most of the people where I live, he didn't seem like the type to only care about making as much money as possible.

I do think that it's absolutely possible to have the land be productive in an ecologically sustainable way while producing carbon offsets. I do think that a big part of it will require creating a market for these sustainable products and having a verification process to ensure that they are produced sustainably.