Written by Virginia Furness, Kate Abnett, Simon Jessop
BAKU (Reuters) – Countries agreed to a deal on global market rules for buying and selling carbon credits at the COP29 climate change conference on Saturday. Proponents argue that carbon credits will mobilize billions of dollars for new projects to combat global warming.
The agreement comes nearly a decade after international talks on market formation began, and concerns how to ensure the credibility of the system to ensure that it leads to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It’s on.
Carbon credits are created through projects such as planting trees or building wind farms in poor countries, with one credit awarded for every tonne of emissions that is reduced or sucked out of the atmosphere. Countries and businesses can purchase these credits to help meet climate change goals.
After reaching an agreement early in the two-week conference to launch a unified U.N. trading system as early as next year, negotiators spent much of their remaining time in Azerbaijan, developing separate plans for each country. Efforts were made to work out the details of the bilateral system. To trade directly.
Details to consider include how registries to track credits should be structured, how much information countries should share about transactions, and what to do if a project doesn’t work out. was.
Among the strongest voices were the European Union, which called for stronger UN oversight and greater transparency over trade between countries, and the United States, which called for greater autonomy over the agreements struck.
Ahead of the deal, the COP29 Presidency published a draft agreement proposing that some countries would be able to issue carbon credits through a separate registration system without obtaining UN approval.
The final document states that the EU will set aside registry services for countries that cannot afford to set up their own ledgers for credit issuance and tracking, while the US will provide registration services for transactions that are only recorded in such registries. This was a compromise after the government assured him that he was not qualified for the position. Credit recognition by the United Nations.
Pedro Barata, who tracked the talks for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said that by agreeing that the registry would not judge credit quality or approve issuers, the EU would be doing “a favor to the U.S.” I did my best,” he said.
“This is still a viable international trading system, even if some people say it’s toothless.”
Strengthening the global market for carbon credits was a key focus of the talks in Baku, but bilateral deals began in January when Switzerland bought credits from Thailand, and dozens of other countries have already signed agreements to transfer credits. are tied.
However, these trades remain limited and the right balance, based on clear rules to ensure completeness and transparency without restricting countries’ ability to participate, will help speed up trade flows. This should encourage
IETA, a business group that supports the expansion of carbon credit trading, says the UN-backed market could be worth $250 billion a year by 2030 and help offset 5 billion tonnes of additional carbon emissions a year. said.
