Isa Mulder is a policy expert on global carbon markets at Carbon Market Watch.
In recent months, industry players as well as some conservation groups have been pushing to effectively lower the integrity and ambition of carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
However, the need to finance nature does not excuse creating a carbon crediting mechanism devoid of environmental integrity, just to keep carbon projects commercially viable. The bar set by the Article 6 crediting mechanism must be high, as the price that nature will pay if we opt to rely on hot air credits to offset ongoing emissions is much higher.
Carbon credit markets have been a controversial feature of international climate politics since the establishment of the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol, and later adoption under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
Although the Article 6 rulebook was finalised at last year’s COP in Baku – albeit with many worrisome gaps – the nitty-gritty of its carbon crediting mechanism is still being developed. That work is overseen by the Supervisory Body (SBM), a de facto regulator accountable to the signatory countries of the Paris Agreement.
Permanence rules weakened
Between July and September 2025, the Methodological Expert Panel (MEP) – the technical advisory committee reporting back to the SBM – produced draft rules on permanence, intended to spell out the steps that carbon market projects must take to guarantee their emission reductions or removals are permanently and securely stored on climate-relevant timeframes (centuries to millennia).
The MEP’s final recommendation introduced requirements for carbon projects considered at risk of losing their achieved results. This included requiring projects to monitor their claimed mitigation until it could be reliably demonstrated that the likelihood of re-releasing sequestered CO₂ (e.g., carbon stored in trees) into the atmosphere was negligible, such as through events like fire or logging. In essence, high-risk projects would need to keep a watchful eye on emission reductions or removals for as long as that risk remains significant.
The rationale behind this is that carbon credits are often used for offsetting purposes as a means to supposedly compensate for ongoing fossil fuel emissions, of which the negative impacts are nearly permanent.
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It is therefore reasonable to expect that the carbon credits designed to compensate for this damage also guarantee positive impacts over a comparable duration. Failing to do so would mean that any apparent short-term benefits of offsetting would eventually become harmful and lead to net temperature increases, even before considering the broader environmental and social concerns related to offsetting.
However, this seemingly sound rationale rubbed many market actors the wrong way.
Whereas such documents typically attract only a handful of stakeholder responses, this one received over 170 reactions during the first and second rounds of consultations on the proposed rules.
Carbon Market Watch found that in the second round, three-quarters of commenters held direct or indirect financial interests in carbon markets and most of them strongly opposed the draft requirements. Their efforts were successful, and, as a result, weaker rules were adopted.
Carbon credits cannot save nature alone
Now turning their attention to COP30, many of the same market actors, along with some conservation organisations, are asking countries to further erode the integrity of the carbon crediting mechanism under Article 6.
Efforts to dilute these rules further risk derailing Article 6 at COP30, a conference which is meant to place nature front and centre. The misconception at the heart of this dangerous campaign is that stronger rules would negatively affect nature-based projects.
While it is undeniable that financing nature is essential for reaching our Paris Agreement goals, the need to finance nature is no good reason to create a carbon crediting mechanism lacking in environmental rigour, motivated by market actors’ desire to keep carbon projects commercially viable.
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Those in favour of weakening the rules often seem to conveniently overlook that most credits approved and circulating have been of very low quality and that they are used – mainly by big oil – to excuse business-as-usual emissions.
The scientific consensus holds that finance for nature must be scaled up to protect the natural world, but not by linking it to the offsetting of fossil emissions, whose climate impacts last for millennia. In fact, scientists have warned time and again about the serious shortcomings of relying on offsetting as a climate solution. If the credits used to compensate for fossil fuel emissions can’t make good on their promise, then climate change will worsen, and nature will end up being worse off.
The choice ahead of us is clear. Countries at COP30 will have to make a decision on the direction of travel for this discussion. The question is not how to bend carbon market rules to create a financing mechanism for nature-based offsetting projects, but how to uphold and strengthen those rules to protect nature itself.
The post Carbon market supporters risk cheating the nature they wish to protect appeared first on Climate Home News.
Carbon market supporters risk cheating the nature they wish to protect
A report from Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Springmount Advisory reveals the untapped green economic opportunity for Western Australia in a declining Asian gas market, which also offers a genuine solution for decarbonisation in Asia.
Is Western Australia clinging to a fading gas industry while a thriving green future passes it by? As major Asian trading partners rapidly pivot away from volatile gas imports toward cheap solar and battery storage, this report exposes a high-stakes choice: risk becoming stranded in an oversupplied fossil fuel market, or harness WA’s unmatched sun and wind to lead the global clean energy transition.
Summary
From Gas to Green: Building Western Australia’s Future State reveals that Western Australia (WA) faces a critical juncture as falling Asian gas demand, geopolitical gas supply volatility and accelerating renewable energy deployment undermine the long-term economic viability of gas exports. By harnessing its world-class wind and solar resources, the report demonstrates that WA can execute an orderly phase-out of gas and pioneer a green commodity export economy that could generate $987 billion in economic value by 2060, create 24,000 ongoing jobs, and drive a 9.6% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Key Findings
- Gas demand is falling in Asia – WA can no longer rely on gas exports: Gas demand in core Asian markets fell in 2025 and is projected to continue to decline in 2026. Legislated energy plans in Japan, South Korea, and China now prioritise renewables and nuclear over gas.
- Asia is increasing renewables, importing gas just gets in the way: Evidence from markets like Thailand suggests that gas imports are increasingly crowding out cheaper renewable energy investments and battery storage rather than displacing coal, locking in more emissions over time.
- Green commodities offer a real solution to decarbonise Asia – this is a major win for WA: With world-class renewables, WA can lead Australia’s green commodity exports, which by 2060 could be worth almost a trillion dollars ($987 billion) and support a genuine 9.6% reduction in global emissions.
Recommendations to WA government
Recommendation 1: Plan an orderly gas phase-out aligned with a trading partner pivot plan
Implement a managed, orderly phase-out of gas exports aligned with trading partners’ decarbonisation pathways, rather than waiting for demand to collapse, by:
- Developing and implementing a staged phase-out of gas facilities aligned with feedstock supply expiry or typical end of facility lifespans.
- Committing to no new gas development for gas expansion, including Browse and Kimberley fields.
- Developing new, reciprocal trade relationships with existing gas trade partners, structured to progressively replace gas exports with green commodities – integrated with recommendation 2.
Recommendation 2: Develop an integrated green commodity export strategy, positioning WA as a global green iron manufacturing hub
Establish an integrated green commodity export strategy that immediately prioritises green iron development, positioning WA as a global green iron manufacturing hub, by:
- Committing to green commodity export targets to give industry and investors a clear demand signal.
- Prioritising green iron as the lead sector within the broader green commodity strategy, given WA’s iron ore endowment and first-mover potential.
Recommendation 3: Reject false solutions such as carbon dumping (CCS) and blue hydrogen
Reject carbon dumping (also described as carbon capture and storage, or CCS) and blue hydrogen as viable decarbonisation technologies, and prioritise green hydrogen and proven renewables for clean energy and fuel production by:
- Excluding blue hydrogen projects (and CCS-dependent projects) from all government support programs.
- Requiring existing hydrogen-based production (including ammonia, methanol, synthetic fuels) to have clear, near-term transition timelines to switch to green hydrogen production.
What you can do
Together, we can push for a prosperous green future.
You can help by:
- Sending an email to Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, calling on them to reject Browse.
- Sharing this story to help more Australians understand what’s at stake.
- Encouraging your friends and family to take action.
REPORT: “From Gas to Green” Building Western Australia’s Future State
Cleaner cooking projects in the UN carbon market will have to set aside a share of their credits to insure against the risk that the trees they save are lost to fire, drought or logging, after the market’s regulator rejected calls to exempt the sector.
The requirement is part of a new rulebook that the Paris Agreement carbon market regulator – the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body – approved last Friday for programmes that aim to cut emissions by distributing new and cleaner cookstoves in regions that still burn wood or charcoal for cooking.
These are the UN mechanism’s first rulebooks for cookstoves, one of the carbon market’s most popular credit types and also one of its most criticised for overstating climate benefits.
They consist of two methodologies: one for programmes that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves that burn less wood or charcoal, and a separate methodology for projects shifting households to lower-emissions cookers running on electricity or liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
Mkhuthazi Steleki, the South African chair of the Supervisory Body, said “this decision gives cleaner cooking projects a new pathway under the UN carbon market, with clear rules to ensure that each credit represents a real and credible emission reduction”.
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Exemption push rejected
More efficient cookstove projects earn credits based on the amount of carbon they save by preserving trees that would have otherwise been cut down and burned for fuel. But if those trees later burn in a wildfire or are logged, the carbon stored would be released anyway, erasing the climate benefits of the credits.
Several carbon credit developers, conservation NGOs and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) disputed that cookstove projects face this risk, in what critics described as a “coordinated lobbying campaign”.
They argued that, unlike forest protection schemes, this type of credit represents a “flow” of avoided emissions rather than a “stock” of stored carbon that can be released. They also warned that requiring a buffer would impose disproportionate costs and undermine the financial viability of these activities.
But the UN carbon market regulator was not persuaded by the argument. It decided that projects would have to protect against this reversal risk by handing over a percentage of credits to a so-called “buffer pool” instead of selling them.
‘New paradigm’
The amount of credits to be given up is calculated by applying different methods for natural risks, like wildfires, droughts or hurricanes, and human-caused ones, such as logging or land clearing.
For natural risks, project developers will need to apply local risk values derived from new modelling published by a group of independent scientists.
Campaigners have broadly welcomed the decision. Federica Dossi, an expert at Brussels-based advocacy group Carbon Market Watch, said it sets a new paradigm for calculating reversal risk based on empirical data. “This approach is grounded in science and we hope to see this now being adopted by other carbon crediting mechanisms in the voluntary market,” she added.
Backers claim this method is more rigorous than current practice in the voluntary carbon market, which largely relies on expert guesswork.
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Pushback over science
As Climate Home News previously revealed, the same industry and NGO groups that sought an exemption from the “buffer pool”, along with some corporate buyers, criticised the use of a study backed by the UN carbon market’s experts that recommended the new risk assessment approach.
The groups pushed for more flexible rules that would have allowed natural risk values drawn from other sources, including national databases, or from the project developers themselves.
While the Supervisory Body rejected this approach, it gave project developers and countries the option to propose alternative values that would first need to be vetted by the mechanism’s expert panel and then approved by the regulator.
A carbon market expert told Climate Home News that, while it is too early to say how this provision will be used, they expect requests will have to be backed up with solid scientific evidence, lowering the risk of unfounded claims.
Policy discounts questioned
To guard against human-caused risks, projects will need to apply a flat 20% value set by the Supervisory Body, at the bottom of the 20-45% range recommended by its technical experts ahead of last week’s meeting.
That value can be further reduced by up to two-thirds if the host country has an emission-reduction plan covering forests, a long-term climate strategy and a framework for the UN’s REDD+ forest protection scheme.
Injy Johnstone, senior research fellow at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute, said that, while these are important governance measures, their existence does not necessarily demonstrate that the underlying risk of forest carbon loss has been reduced.
“It is important to distinguish between evidence of actual risk reduction and assumptions about the effectiveness of policy commitments,” she added.
Moving target
A UN source told Climate Home News that, under the approved formula, improved cookstove projects must set aside at least 9% of credits linked to saved wood if they operate in the lowest-risk areas and the host country can claim all available discounts. The share of credits rises significantly in regions with high natural risk values, such as Guyana, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste, or that do not have REDD+ programmes.
These factors could change in the future as the Supervisory Body asked its technical experts to recommend revisiting the risk values “should credible new evidence arise”.
Climate change is likely to make forest destruction events, such as wildfires or hurricanes, more frequent and more severe in certain regions. Meanwhile, national policies on forest protection can shift significantly depending on government changes.
Johnstone said the UN carbon market needs periodic reassessment to respond to new evidence showing that previously assumed levels of risk were too low.
“The integrity of credits is not guaranteed simply because a reversal risk tool exists,” she added. “The real test will be whether the mechanism provides equivalent atmospheric protection over time, rather than simply introducing another layer of accounting requirements”.
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UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss