On the first day of negotiations at the last Cop29, on 11 November, a first and fundamental agreement on the voluntary carbon credit market was brought home: the approval of Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, after almost 10 years of stalemate. A mechanism, overseen by the UN, to replace the failed and opaque Clean Development Mechanism and which, according to the International Emissions Trading Association, would reduce the cost of implementing national climate plans by $250 billion per year and absorb 5 billion tonnes of C0₂. ‘For years, the voluntary carbon credit market has faced credibility problems, with scandals undermining its reliability. Now it can finally be different’ said Jacopo Bencini, president of the Italian Climate Network. The new rulebook approved in Baku provides for stricter and more comprehensive standards that promise greater integrity for investors and countries.
On the other hand, civil society remains sceptical, both about the real benefits that the carbon market promises to bring, especially to the Global South, and about the way in which this result was arrived at: the small group of experts (Supervisory Body), appointed to structure the methodology and standards of the mechanism, adopted the package on its own without a negotiation phase.
Source: la Repubblica
