Tuesday, 22 October 2024.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries must communicate their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) describing actions to reduce GHG emissions and build climate resilience in order to achieve agreed objectives, being limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 °C the main one.
NDCs are submitted every five years to the UNFCCC secretariat, with the next round of NDCs being submitted by early 2025.
In implementing the NDC, besides taking domestic mitigation measures, countries may also decide to engage in voluntary international cooperation.
Under the Paris Agreement, this type of international cooperation is known as Article 6. As such, it helps establishing a framework for a global carbon market under the Paris Agreement.
Article 6 has several paragraphs and some are summarized below. You will also see reference to CMA, the body that oversees the implementation of the Paris Agreement and takes decisions to promote its effective implementation.
6.1 - Recognizing that some Parties choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their NDCs.
6.2 - Engagement in cooperative approaches that involves the use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs), consistent with CMA guidance.
6.4 - Establishes and lays out the objectives of the mechanism, supervised by a designated Supervisory Body
6.5 - Avoiding double use of 6.4 emission reductions towards NDCs
6.7 - Mandate for CMA to adopt rules, modalities, and procedures
6.8 - Recognizes the importance of non-market approaches to assist NDC in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication
Carbon Credit Markets attended COP-28 in Dubai and was impressed with the process of reaching consensus: paragraph after paragraph are revised by adjusting words in a way that, at the end, the document can be accepted by all close to 200 countries. It is a time consuming joint effort and not an easy one. It is also interesting to see how “natural leadership” appears. Every now and then the attendees leave their sets and go gather around someone, from a given country, where new proposals for the plenary may develop. Cultures are different but everybody appears to be willing to negotiate and compromise.
Besides culture, one has also to have in mind that not all countries in the World are alike in terms of area, population and natural resources. As a reference, the global average size of a country would be equivalent to Turkey, and the average country population size would be around 40 million people.
According to UNFCCC secretariat, 77% of Parties stated that they plan to or will possibly use at least one type of voluntary cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
To know which countries are already active and engaging on Article 6, click here to go to IETA’s tool “Visualising Article 6 Implementation”.
For much more references, click at the image below - indicating the “hot” topics for next COP-29 in Baku - to go to the Article 6 Implementation Partnership portal, part related to a 3 days-long capacity building expert training realized last September in Hayama, Japan.
