Operationalising an overall mitigation in global emissions under Article 6

The report evaluates mechanisms to ensure that international carbon market credits under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement result in a net reduction of global emissions. It identifies 'automatic cancellation' and 'discounting' as the only options that meet the necessary criteria for overall mitigation, recommending 'automatic cancellation' due to its ease of implementation and precedent in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Analysis of 18 scenarios suggests that while costs for credit buyers may increase, the overall mitigation principle provides various benefits for transferring countries across a broad range of rates.

• To achieve overall mitigation, three criteria must be met: the portion of emission reductions used for overall mitigation must be quantified, accounting provisions must prevent this portion from being used by any country toward their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and the implementation approach must be mandatory for Parties.
• Among the options in the negotiation text, only 'automatic cancellation' and 'discounting' satisfy all three criteria for overall mitigation. Options such as 'limiting the crediting period' and 'conservative baselines' fail because they do not guarantee that non-credited reductions are excluded from a Party's NDC achievement. The report recommends 'automatic cancellation' because it can be managed by the mechanism's supervising body and has a precedent in the CDM.
• An assessment of 18 different scenarios using a simplified model of supply and demand curves indicates that implementing overall mitigation can provide various benefits, including for transferring countries, despite causing moderate increases in costs for credit buyers.

APA

Schneider, L. (2018). Operationalising an overall mitigation in global emissions under Article 6. NewClimate Institute. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/operationalising-an-overall-mitigation-in-global-emissions-under-article-6

Chicago

Schneider, Lambert. Operationalising an overall mitigation in global emissions under Article 6. NewClimate Institute, 2018. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/operationalising-an-overall-mitigation-in-global-emissions-under-article-6.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Schneider |first1=Lambert |title=Operationalising an overall mitigation in global emissions under Article 6 |publisher=NewClimate Institute |date=21 November 2018 |url=http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/operationalising-an-overall-mitigation-in-global-emissions-under-article-6 |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{schneider2018operationalising, author = {Schneider, Lambert}, title = {{Operationalising an overall mitigation in global emissions under Article 6}}, institution = {NewClimate Institute}, year = {2018}, month = nov, url = {http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/operationalising-an-overall-mitigation-in-global-emissions-under-article-6}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }