This briefing, published by the Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance – CLARA –, has been endorsed by Carbon Market Watch. Executive Summary Climate action must be urgently scaled up to limit global warming. Action in the land sector is critical and necessary for achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°…
As part of work to produce a climate and energy package for 2030, the European Commission is currently reviewing the sustainability of all uses and sources of bioenergy for the period after 2020.1 The European Commission will also propose a new policy on how to include the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector in the EU’s…
The European Commission is expected to publish legislation on how to include the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector into the EU’s 2030 climate framework in the summer of 2016. Three options presented by the Commission on how to do this suggest various levels of integration with other sectors, from keeping LULUCF in a separate pillar, combining the sector with methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N20) agriculture emissions, or adding the sector into the Effort Sharing Decision (ESD).
From 30 November to 12 December 2015, Parties to the UNFCCC met in Paris to negotiate a new global climate treaty.
The Paris Agreement was a remarkable outcome, especially after the failures of Copenhagen. Almost all involved, including Carbon Market Watch, seemed surprised at how positive the outcome was. However, expectations had been carefully managed in the preceding years, so that aspirations of environmentalists to have a treaty that reflected the scientific reality by dividing up the remaining global carbon budget, had been downplayed into unreality.
Agriculture supports the livelihoods of around a half of the world’s population, but is at the same time a notable source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) driving climate change. As of one the options to tackle emissions in the sector, governments have been discussing to include additional agricultural activities into the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) since 2011. Whether agricultural activities should be eligible for carbon offsetting programmes is not only topical within discussions in the UNFCCC but also within certain regional cap-and-trade schemes and discussions to establish a market based mechanism for international aviation emissions, expected to be adopted in October 2016 under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Whether biological carbon credit should be traded in carbon markets is topical, with discussions ongoing in the UNFCCC, ICAO and the California Cap-and-Trade system. To date, compliance markets have rejected the eligibility of biological carbon offsets. They are right to do so. Fossil and biological carbon operate on different parts of the carbon cycle, and on very different timescales. Fossil carbon is permanent; biological carbon is potentially and frequently subject to rapid fluxes, whether natural or manmade. For these reasons, offset credits from REDD+, afforestation and reforestation or other biological systems should not be treated as fungible with fossil carbon, but should instead be addressed through other, appropriate, policy measures.
Only very few countries have outlined in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that they will use international trading as a means to help achieve their climate goals. However, despite the limited role of markets expressed by most industrialised countries in their INDCs, such as the EU and the US, the political reality regarding domestic carbon pricing schemes looks different: jurisdictions responsible for 40% of the global economy have already implemented carbon pricing mechanisms.
Carbon Market Watch welcomes the opportunity to provide input on discussions on specific possible additional land use, land-use change and forestry activities and specific alternative approaches to addressing the risk of non-permanence under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
During the night of 23 October 2014, EU leaders brokered a deal on the 2030 climate and energy headline targets. EU’s Heads of States settled on an EU-binding renewable energy target of at least 27%, an indicative energy efficiency target of at least 27% and an at least 40% binding domestic greenhouse gas reduction target…
Farmlands, wetlands and forests, which cover more than 90% of the EU’s land surface, will be harshly affected by climate change. This sector – known as Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) – is both a sink and a source of emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has set…
Carbon pricing 
International transport 
Climate governance 
Fair climate action