Where the world – and Switzerland – stands on carbon offsets after COP28
Switzerland has doubled down on its strategy to offset its emissions abroad. But after the latest round of UN climate talks in Dubai, questions continue to swirl around the details and effectiveness of carbon markets. A look at where things stand.
What is Article 6? And what’s the fuss about?
Within the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, Article 6 set a basis for regulating carbon offsets. It was meant to answer among other things the following questions: how should offsets be governed? And when a company funds a project to offset its greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere, what are the rules to make sure it happens?
The two main provisions, known as Article 6.2 and Article 6.4, address the way that inter-governmental agreements and voluntary carbon markets, respectively, compensate carbon emissions.
Article 6.2 allows governments to trade emissions reductions with one another bilaterally or multilaterally. It requires such agreements to promote sustainable development and respect environmental ecosystems, while ensuring that only one of the partner countries counts the emission reduction as a credit towards its national target.
But the United Nations agreement lacked detail on how the mechanisms woul( article continues at SWI swissinfo )