As climate change worsens, governments from around the world are meeting in Madrid as part of the 25th Conference of the Parties (“COP25”) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A FOCUS ON CARBON MARKETS

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is a major focus at COP25. Article 6 provides for three different mechanisms for international cooperation in mitigating climate change. Two are based on market approaches, and a third is an explicit call for “non-market approaches”. If enabled, Article 6 would be the framework for an international carbon market that would help create market incentives to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Article 6 only provides the basic outline of these mechanisms; governments were expected to figure out the details at successive Conferences of the Parties following the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Government ministers and climate negotiators will be focusing much of their time at COP25 in attempting to finalise the operational rules of carbon trading and carbon markets. “Double counting” of emissions reductions is a significant issue: a country cannot be permitted to “sell” its wind emissions to another country, and then also count the wind farm for purposes of its own emissions.

Critics of Article 6 highlight the fact that obscure accounting techniques and gamesmanship of carbon markets could actually fatally undermine the goals of the Paris Agreement. Countries could virtue signal the numbers, when in fact the numbers would simply hide how little is being done to reduce emissions. Critics also point out that even if carbon markets work as intended, they could still be doing little to actually help mitigate climate change. Rewarding a country for planting a forest today does nothing to guarantee that the forest will not have been harvested 10 years from now.

If governments cannot agree on Article 6 implementation, it will have to be taken up at the next Conference of the Parties in Glasgow.

THUNBERG SAYS “WE HAVE ACHIEVED NOTHING”

Many of the youth strikers who have helped catalyse climate strikes throughout 2019 expressed despair.

The young environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, says to activists: “We have been striking for over a year, and basically nothing has happened.”

Thunberg appeared at an official event where she turned the microphone over to youth activists from indigenous communities and impoverished nations to speak instead. The emphasis was on how the self-determination of these nations is being increasingly infringed by powerful countries and affiliated corporate entities.

THE PHILIPPINES ANNOUNCES LIABILITY AGAINST CARBON MAJORS

Roberto Eugenio T. Cadiz, the head of a Philippines Commission on Human Rights, announced at COP25 that fossil fuel corporations may be held legally responsible for the impacts of their carbon emissions. Cadiz suggested that the findings could be used as precedent by other groups attempting to hold fossil fuel corporations liable for knowingly contributing to an imminent climate breakdown (Just Atonement Inc., the sponsor for Human Rights Pulse, is one such group).

Dave Inder Comar is the co-founder of Human Rights Pulse and a practising attorney.

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