NGO activists discuss international carbon market rules, 'fail' to recall India's role

By Our Representative

An NGO-sponsored international webinar on the “role of international carbon markets in India” has regretted that negotiations to agree on rules to govern international carbon markets have “failed”, and uncertainty remains as to whether or not countries will be able to agree on such rules by the next UN climate conference (COP26), scheduled to take place in November 2021.
Organized jointly by Paryavaran Mitra, based in Gujarat, and Carbon Market Watch, a Belgian environmental NGO, the one-and-a-half hour webinar reached the conclusion that in the “absence of rules”, international trades will continue like before, with markets having “failed to truly reduce emissions, and existing offsetting mechanisms riddled with loopholes.”
Both Pavyavaran Mitra and Carbon Market Watch hold observer status at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They agreed, currently, carbon markets are not trustworthy, insisting, a strong grievance mechanism and improved rules to stimulate public participation are needed as a precondition for these systems to work.
A Paryavaran Mitra communiqué on the webinar, however, does not recall loopholes and uncertainties, if any, with regard to steps the Government of India might have for reducing carbon emission with an eye on the COP26 meet. The communiqué confines itself to stating the “different forms” carbon markets can take.
It refers to what it calls an “increasingly popular type of market” – the so-called “baseline and credit” market – which is “used by countries and companies to purchase carbon offsets, which allow them to claim emission reductions even if they have not achieved these through their own actions.”
According to the communiqué, those who participated in the webinar included civil society activists, experts from academic institutes and policy institutes, researchers and other interested stakeholders, including Carbon Market Watch’s Policy Officer, Gilles Dufrasne, and Mahesh Pandya from Paryavaran Mitra, though omitting what they said about India.

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