Knowledge & Useful links

Climate crediting mechanisms, like other carbon market mechanisms, enable entities, for which the cost of reducing emissions is high, to pay low­ cost emitters for carbon credits that they can use towards meeting their emission­ reduction obligations, or for voluntary or trading purposes. These mechanisms­, e.g. the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) https://unfccc.int/ ­put a price on carbon, helping to internalize the environmental and social costs of carbon pollution, and permit trading, which lowers the economic cost of reducing emissions.

The CDM, established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UNFCCC, is the largest global offset (or crediting) mechanism for greenhouse gases (GHGs). It provides the framework for developing country projects that reduce, avoid or sequester carbon emissions to earn Certified Emission Reductions (CERs)—tradable offsets (also called carbon credits) which can be sold to enhance a project’s financial viability https://cdm.unfccc.int/faq/index.html. Another Kyoto mechanism, Joint Implementation (JI) https://ji.unfccc.int/index.html, similarly provides for Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) to be sold by economies in transition

On 23 September 2019, the Secretary-General of the United Nations will host the Climate Action Summit in New York with the objective of boosting ambition and rapidly accelerate action to implement the Paris Agreement https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/