"Analyzing the Deforestation in Colombian REDD+ Projects"
FCDS and CCAP analyzed the behavior of deforestation in areas where REDD+ projects funded by the voluntary carbon market have been implemented, yielding several recommendations to improve their effectiveness.
Our Vision
Countries, communities, and companies each have significant opportunities when it comes to carbon markets, but the decision-making process is complex, due to different kinds of markets that can potentially play a role in private and government climate action. Still, these groups need a strategic approach to maximize welfare through the interactive implementation of the cooperative mechanisms within the Paris Agreement, carbon prices (taxes and ETS), and voluntary carbon markets.
CCAP offers a holistic vision by understanding markets and their uses beyond serving as single and homogeneous tools. We see this ecosystem as a set of instruments that can work in specific situations according to national capabilities, emission profiles, and the challenges that organizations face in a changing world. Understanding that diversity and functionality is the secret to successfully implementing a carbon market system and changing carbon-intensive behaviors, CCAP centers its action around the critical role communication plays amongst governments, the private sector, and local communities, focusing on co-benefits in markets as a pillar for climate action.
Maximizing Social Welfare
CCAP contributes to the creation of local
carbon markets knowledge and governance
through:
-
Studying the state of the local communities
regarding the carbon markets in Latin
America and the Caribbean by recognizing
and understanding the challenges, risks,
needs, and opportunities for the ambitious
and transparent implementation of Article
6 of the Paris Agreement and other carbon
markets, ensuring the protection of social
and environmental safeguards.
-
Examining the state of play regarding
the agreements between intermediaries
and local communities, assessing
communities’ experiences, understanding,
perspectives and needs for carbon
markets, and evaluating the level of
transparency and mechanisms that could
affect or promote community governance.
-
Creating capacity-building workshops and
governance-strengthening models for
carbon markets.
-
Providing recommendations to decision-makers to promote best practices for projects with an emphasis on environmental and social safeguards, including recommendations for governments, international certification
programs, and frameworks to improve markets. CCAP advises decision makers on social components regarding
environmental integrity and nature base solutions, maximizing community welfare.
Article 6 Advocacy
Activities involving removals under the Article 6.4 Mechanism of the Paris Agreement
Requirements for the development and assessment of mechanism methodologies
Our Mission
CCAP works with stakeholders in the United States and around the world to understand the pros and cons of different market-based approaches and design effective solutions tailored to the target pollutant(s) and policy context.
Specific area of work with market-based instruments includes:
-
Providing input into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations
-
Producing analytical products that identify priority issues and consider the role of ITMOs in meeting countries Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
-
Convening stakeholders to socialize best practices in the design of instruments that involve transfers of mitigation outcomes.
-
Supporting partner institutions in efforts to design effective, Paris-compliant ITMO strategies to help achieve their goals.
.png)
Our Work
CCAP has helped advance international thinking on ITMOs through a series of submissions papers and policy briefs, including the following:
-
CCAP’s most recent ideas illustrating three alternative types of ITMO designs, including tradeoffs between design flexibility, the fundability of the instrument, and the needed level of international oversight. This piece also identifies additional strategies to ensure that ITMOs generated from outside the NDC will support environmental integrity and higher ambition.
-
CCAP’s widely-read brief, Using Transfers to Enhance Ambition over the NDC Cycles, offers a general approach by which internationally transferred mitigation outcomes can contribute to strengthening ambition through the NDC cycles to meet the goals elaborated in long-term climate strategies. This work particularly focuses on mitigation outcomes that would be transferred from sectors that are not yet part of a developing country’s NDC.
-
earlier submission describes the requirements and characteristics of ITMOs and makes recommendations for the forthcoming guidance and negotiation process, and for countries that might consider generating ITMOs.
-
In partnership with the Swedish Energy Agency, CCAP is also advancing Virtual Pilots aimed at better understanding different ways this new mechanism can meet the Paris Agreement requirements and support higher ambition.
Track Record
U.S. Clean Air Act
At its inception, CCAP helped design and pushed for inclusion of the market-based Acid Rain Trading Program as part of the U.S. 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. A few years later CCAP undertook economic analysis and built a coalition that paved the way to development of a rigorous and flexible regional NOx control program.
Kyoto Protocol
In the international arena, CCAP provided advice on the development of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other flexibility mechanisms, and served as lead designer on a team for the European Commission that helped define the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS) and the associated monitoring, reporting and verification guidelines that were established to help meet Europe’s compliance obligations under the Protocol. When the need for reform of Europe’s system became clear, we provided critical analysis of reforms needed to strengthen it, similar to the modifications the European Commission would later propose.
California Gas Cap-and-Trade Program
CCAP’s sector analyses and support for trading system design in California helped shape the state’s AB32 mitigation goals and multi-sector California Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program. More recently, CCAP’s stakeholder engagement aimed at addressing concerns raised by environmental justice organizations helped support the extension of this pioneering program to 2030. CCAP also helped China’s Hubei province prepare for implementation of its ETS.
