COP fudges market mechanisms

UN climate talks shy away from key implementation issue

Delegates at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Katowice in December reached agreement on how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement, the global climate treaty that will supersede the Kyoto Protocol from 2020. But one of the key implementation issues — the market mechanisms that govern various regional and global emissions trading and credit schemes — went largely unresolved. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries hammered out a set of rules that will govern global climate action until well into the century, with the ultimate aim of restricting temperature increases to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration