The apparent progress made on Article 6 carbon markets during week 1 of the COP29 climate conference conceal many problematic fundamental and technical issues that remain unresolved.
In light of the Article 6.4 negotiations at COP29 in Baku, and the possibility for the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) to give further guidance on the development of the Article 6.4 carbon crediting mechanism, Carbon Market Watch has prepared recommendations on CMA’s further guidance to the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body.
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 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.
This submission outlines Carbon Market Watch’s recommendations to the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body, as well as a comparison of the Independent Redress Mechanism of the Green Climate Fund with the current draft appeal and grievance processes.
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.
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