Our Vision

The Paris Agreement represents countries’ commitment to strengthening the global response to climate change and raising ambition. Countries set out their individual climate pledges by submitting nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the UNFCCC that outline the actions they would undertake for low carbon economic development. A key challenge, however, is the financing required to bring about this global transformation while also recognizing that countries must meet and exceed their NDCs in order to meet the temperature goals of the Agreement.

With limited public and concessional finance available, there is a need to leverage private capital intelligently. Climate markets and carbon pricing offer the opportunity to increase the resources mobilized from the private sector, reduce the burden of NDC implementation, and increase global ambition.  Over half of the NDCs submitted by countries reference the use of climate markets to meet their targets. 

Leveraging International Carbon Markets under Article 6 to Unleash Private Capital

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement recognizes that countries may voluntarily cooperate with each other to deliver on their NDCs and raise ambition. Effectively, this Article introduces the use of carbon markets globally. Article 6.2 signals flexibility for and permits direct bilateral or plurilateral cooperation for the generation and transfer of mitigation outcomes (MOs) from one country to another under a variety of mechanisms. Article 6.4 will likely be governed by the Parties through the UNFCCC process. The ‘Paris Rulebook’ – the implementing guidelines that will operationalize the landmark Agreement – is still under negotiation. In this context, focused piloting efforts are essential for providing practical experience on the use of climate markets post-2020.

There is a clear need to lay down the foundation for climate markets in the next few years, given that the Paris Agreement left much of the definition and architecture for markets to future negotiations. These rules must be written clearly and be fair so that they don’t undermine the incentive structures for taking climate actions and undercut progress.

Supporting Countries by Building the Next Generation of Climate Markets

Against this backdrop, the World Bank is working to support client countries through analytical and technical work to participate in post-2020 climate markets. The Bank has four complementary work streams:

• Piloting the creation of an initial supply of Mitigation Outcomes (MOs) for post-2020 climate markets from the World Bank’s lending programs. These MOs are units that have been generated either to be counted towards NDCs or for international transfers under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement;
• Demonstrating the use of new technologies and infrastructure to track MOs and avoid double counting;
• Development of financial and risk management products that allow climate market transactions while managing regulatory and market uncertainty; and
• Facilitating discussions between policymakers, the private sector and expert groups regarding the regulatory framework and enabling environment for operationalizing post-2020 climate markets.

These pilots form the basis for dialogue with governments on key institutional and capacity building requirements that need to be met for decision-making on Article 6. Together, this range of services will support our client countries’ participation in the next generation of climate markets, including capacity building and the development of institutional and governance processes.