Fighting against climate change and fighting for sustainable development are two sides of the same coin – one will not prosper without the other. It must be made clear to world leaders shaping the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that without an ambitious climate goal, the post-2015 sustainable development agenda cannot reap success.
On Tuesday 24 February, Members of the European Parliament will cast a crucial vote on the future of Europe’s flagship climate instrument, the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Failure to reform Europe’s carbon market could sink the emerging network of global carbon trading systems and have profound consequences for the success of the international climate summit in Paris at the end of this year.
In less than one year, the world’s countries are expected to flesh out an agreement to address climate change and advert dangerous global warming. UN negotiators will meet for the first time in 2015 in Geneva with the goal to deliver a final negotiating text to form the basis for such a deal. This first session will also be significant because it will take place in the premises of the UN’s human rights council where UN delegates will have to find a solution to protect the world’s most vulnerable citizens from climate change while insuring their human rights.
In Lima, Carbon Market Watch together with local Indian launched the ‘CDM Benefit Tracker India’, an interactive map that compares the sustainable development objectives outlined in CDM project application documents with eye witness accounts from local communities. Project owners have now been invited to comment on the results that find severe discrepancies between claims and local realities.
In December 2014 implementing rules to achieve the CO2 reduction target of oil suppliers in Europe were adopted. The newly adopted fuel standard opens doors for oil companies to use questionable offsets, including from heavily contested activities related to tar sand exploitation in Alberta. It is now up to EU Member States to take the red pen when transposing the rules into national law and avoid the CO2 reduction target to be severely undermined.
This month, South Korea became the second Asian country after Kazakhstan to officially start a national carbon market. The first carbon allowances that were traded on the Korea Exchange were sold at a similar price to that in Europe’s emissions trading system (EU ETS). South Korea’s ETS could therefore be a good candidate for linking with EU’s carbon market now that the EU is looking at linking as replacement for the barred use of international offsets. While linking can have significant consequences for the integrity of the EU ETS, the European Parliament is currently not in a position to scrutinize the linking negotiation process.
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Lima, 12 December 2014. As climate talks in Lima are approaching the final hours, countries cannot agree on how to deal with the backlog of hot air under the Kyoto Protocol, equalling 13 billion tonnes of CO2. An unholy alliance between the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are blocking progress on the second commitment period of …
Read more “Press Statement. Russia and Ukraine block progress on climate action in Lima”
Brussels/Lima 8 December 2014, today the ‘CDM Benefit Tracker India’ will be launched in Lima, Peru. The Tracker compares eye witness accounts of local communities with sustainability objectives of CDM projects and finds severe discrepancies between claims and local realities. Local groups are now calling on countries in Lima to establish monitoring and verification provisions …
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