In the negotiations of the COP26, UN climate change conference, the countries signaled this Friday (12) that they are confident that they must conclude the regulation of the Paris Agreement by Saturday (13) —with a delay of one day in the original calendar of the event.
The decision must come out in a plenary scheduled for the end of Saturday.
Until mid-week, the Paris regulation texts showed few significant advances, but new proposals appeared on Friday (12) and were well accepted by countries.
Brazil may have contributed to changing the game, with an idea that unlocks the understanding of the regulation of the carbon market, provided for in article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
Presented on Thursday (11), the solution proposes that the carbon credits traded internationally pass through the scrutiny of the countries involved in the purchase and sale and also through the UN climate convention, which would intermediate the transactions.
Thus, the definitions of criteria for transactions must be taken in the institution of this process, analyzing the different types of projects submitted to global carbon trading.
The method should also serve to verify the conditions of each transaction: if the carbon credit is sold to a country that intends to count it in its Paris Agreement climate target, the value must be proportionally discounted from the result of the target of the selling country .
On the other hand, if the credit is sold to a project that will not meet the national target of the buyer country, the adjustment would not need to be made.
Although observers recognize that the mechanism can still leave room for the double counting of climate results –by the credit buyer and seller–, the proposal was well accepted as a solution to the multilateral impasse, which now must be resolved in an executive instance.
Bypassing the insurmountable technical divergences between the countries, the solution would be a shortcut to completing the Paris Agreement’s rulebook.
A sheet he found that the proposal was formulated by Brazilian diplomacy, but brought to the negotiating table by the Japanese.
The Brazil-Japan articulation sought to convey greater credibility and acceptance by the countries, after Brazil was appointed as the main responsible for the obstruction of article 6 in the last edition of the conference — COP25, in Madrid.
For not yielding to the position that insisted on not deducting carbon credits from projects sold abroad from the national climate target, Brazil was accused of undermining the environmental integrity of the agreement and was marked as the villain of the 2019 negotiations.
In the interpretation of observers, Brazil’s intransigent stance –and misunderstood by the rest of the world– may have been used to guarantee, at another point in the negotiation, an important issue for the country: trade, in the new carbon market, of created credits at the time of the Kyoto Protocol (which ran from 2005 to 2020).
In the previous climate agreement, only developed countries had mandatory climate targets, which led developing countries to invest in the sale of carbon credits – with the Paris Agreement, developing countries must deduct from their targets the credits they sell to outside.
According to Ronaldo Seroa da Motta, PhD in Economics and professor at UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University), the new global carbon market must accept a transition period for the most recent credits certified in the model of the previous agreement.
“The texts under negotiation propose as a deadline [para aceitar créditos de Kyoto] the years 2013 –which imply credits equivalent to 800 million tons of carbon– or 2016, which would carry credits of around 100 to 200 million tons”, he calculates.
“Rural electrification in Ghana, for example, has a social and sustainable development advantage, that would pass. [no mercado] a small amount, which does not significantly affect the results of the NDCs [sigla em inglês para as metas climáticas nacionais, chamadas de contribuições nacionais determinadas]”, says the professor and former director of the Ministry of the Environment.
In his view, a good part of the Brazilian projects would not fit into the transition criteria that are on the negotiation table.
Upon arriving at COP26 with the announcement that it would be flexible, Brazil did not intend to give up its positions, but rather to find intermediate solutions.
“We don’t want small climate clubs, we want a global community that shares our concerns and is willing to move forward. Brazil has been working to build bridges between extreme positions,” said Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde, Brazilian diplomacy representatives at COP26, in this Friday’s plenary at COP26.
“We support the package based on the proposal that is the basis of the cooperation operation,” stated Athayde, who heads the environment department at the Itamaraty.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of Instituto Clima e Sociedade.
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