Article 6 of the Paris Agreement sets out the principles for carbon markets. At COP29, governments must fix all the outstanding issues so as to ensure that Article 6 advances, rather than sets back, the climate agenda. This detailed guide explains what is at stake.
The latest round of UN climate negotiations in Bonn has laid the groundwork for the power players to finally agree at COP29 on transparency and wider quality issues of Article 6 carbon markets. Our CMW team reports.
The body responsible for supervising the new UN carbon market mechanism must abandon the inadequate rules for social and environmental safeguards and return to the drawing board.
To illustrate the differences between the Article 6.4 grievance process and the UN Green Climate Fund’s Independent Redress Mechanism, we compared these two avenues for remediation with the UN Human Rights Council’s seven effectiveness criteria for grievance mechanisms as outlined in its Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. From this overview, the contrast becomes clear: the Article 6.4 grievance process performs significantly less well on all seven effectiveness criteria. The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body must therefore urgently rethink its approach to this crucial component of the 6.4 mechanism.
This submission outlines Carbon Market Watch’s recommendations to the Supervisory Body. We recognise that a lot of work has gone into this new version of the draft. Nevertheless, a tool for environmental and social safeguards cannot be accepted when it is merely going in the right direction: it must be a tool that delivers truly robust safeguards.
Numerous changes are particularly needed in the Supervisory Body’s draft recommendations regarding removal activities, including with regard to the need for: long-term monitoring, a science-based process to determine reversal risk, clarifications on how reversals are remediated, and strengthened safeguards to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples. For more information, including Carbon Market Watch’s text proposals, please consult our full submission.
For the Article 6.4 grievance process, where it is of utmost importance that it is designed by and with those who will be engaging with it, more input is essential to ensure it works for rather than against its users. Carbon Market Watch urges the Supervisory Body to reopen its Call for Input, as well as to actively seek input from IPLCs and other rightsholders as part of a structured consultation.
Torn between countries demanding that Article 6 carbon markets be available with virtually no restrictions and countries insisting on upholding transparency, human rights, and climate ambition, negotiators at COP28 failed to break the deadlock. With all the unresolved problematic issues, the fact that they reached no deal was better than agreeing to a bad one that would torpedo the Paris Agreement.
Despite the wishful thinking of champions of carbon offsetting at COP28, the voluntary carbon market will only play a role in tackling the climate crisis with stricter standards and greater transparency.
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