UN Climate Change News, 15 September 2023 - Meetings in Singapore this week advanced work on a framework that will allow countries to cooperate in mitigating emissions to address climate change.
Members of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body met in Singapore this week to progress work on standards and procedures to operationalise a robust carbon credit mechanism from the start of next year.
The Supervisory Body is tasked with overseeing a mechanism to actively contribute to the global mitigation of greenhouse gases and support sustainable development, as mandated by Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement.
While the rulebook on carbon markets under Article 6 was agreed in Glasgow in November 2021, work is continuing to finalise the regulatory framework within which the Article 6.4 mechanism will operate. The Supervisory Body has just a few months left to get the framework up and running from the start of 2024.
During the Supervisory Body's 7th meeting, which was held this week, the Body finished considering the key document framework that will regulate the cycle of submission and consideration of project activities under the Article 6.4 mechanism. It will open this document framework to final public consultation before adoption, to ensure its robustness, appropriateness, and ability to uphold the highest environmental integrity standards for its users.
The Supervisory Body is actively seeking feedback on these documents from a broad range of stakeholders, including potential project proponents, market experts, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities, to road-test the document package before it is finalised.
Equally large amount of effort was spent on advancing two further critical pieces of the Article 6.4 regulatory framework:
- The Sustainable Development tool, which will enshrine the environmental, developmental, and social safeguards of the activities implemented under the Article 6.4 mechanism,
- The appeal and grievance procedure, which will enforce the implementation of environmental and integrity safeguards.
These documents will be finalised at the next meeting of the Supervisory Body in October, after which they will also be opened for extensive public consultation.
Crucially, the Supervisory Body made considerable progress in deliberations of recommendations to the Parties of the Paris Agreement (CMA) related to development and assessment of Article 6.4 methodologies and the treatment of activities involving removals.
Commenting on the meeting, Olga Gassan-zade, the Chair of the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body said: "We had some very big issues to unpack: we focused this meeting on discussing the concepts and exploring what the many decisions we need to take mean. We also needed to distill a large volume of feedback from stakeholders and to consider how to translate the concepts we discuss into clear, robust and implementable guidance. I feel that after five days of intense discussions in Singapore, we've made a quantum leap in terms of the preparedness of the documents as well as the quality and depth of our discussions. The stakeholders reading the draft documents will now be able to clearly see both the concepts we are trying to explore, and the options we are considering to operationalize them. We are now in a stronger place to finalise these recommendations."
The Supervisory Body will be refining the recommendations further at their next meeting, with the aim to provide them to the CMA for adoption at COP28.
A detailed breakdown of key outcomes from the meeting are included below.
Outcomes
1. Stakeholder input sought on key regulatory framework documents
After agreeing on draft versions of key regulatory documents this week, the Article 6.4 mechanism Supervisory Body will seek input from a diverse range of stakeholders.
Contributions from organizations, market experts, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and other interested stakeholders are welcome on the following regulatory framework documents:
- Activity standard for projects (AS-P)
- Validation and verification standard for projects (VVS-P)
- Activity cycle procedure for projects (ACP-P)
- Accreditation standard and procedure
