Climate 411

Article 6 At A Glance: A Decade of Progress and What’s Next

Aerial forest landscape photo

Johnny Lye. iStock

By Pedro Martins Barata

The world needs every effective tool to cut pollution quickly and fairly – and Article 6 is one of them. It’s the Paris Agreement’s framework for countries to cooperate through carbon markets.  

Over the past decade, carbon markets and carbon credit integrity have significantly increased, rules have aligned, and this UN carbon crediting system has officially come online. This year in Belém, COP30 isn’t about renegotiating those rules; it’s about making them work – and making sure nature is part of the picture so finance reaches the people and ecosystems that can deliver near-term climate wins.  Read More »

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COP30 in Brazil Must Deliver for Nature and Forests – And the Stakes Have Never Been Higher

By Roselyn Fosuah Adjei  

Roselyn is a senior expert in REDD+, forest governance, and climate policy and a Distinguished Humphrey Fellow of the U.S State Department. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor to EDF’s Forests team. 

Waterfall in tropical rainforest

Photo: Leslie Von Pless/ EDF

Most of us working in nature conservation think of the quickly approaching COP30 in Belém, Brazil, as the “Nature COP.”

The last time that title was used was at COP26 in Glasgow — a post-pandemic gathering that re-energized climate action after a year of global lockdowns. Glasgow gave birth to the Lowering Emission’s by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition’s first Letters of Intent with tropical forest countries, signaling unprecedented forest-finance momentum in the voluntary carbon market through an unusual blend of public and private finance. It also saw the launch of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, endorsed by over 140 countries pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, and the UK-led Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, which charted a path toward deforestation-free commodity supply chains.  

But even with these gains, the world has been falling short in recognizing and financing nature’s role in sustaining a livable planet.  

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Importing international carbon credits to the EU: How to make it work?

By István Bart and Pedro Martins Barata

EU flags waving

Join EDF on Monday, October 20 for the webinar EU Pathways for International Carbon Credits on Zoom

As the European Union sets a new climate goal for 2040, a key question is whether the EU should use carbon credits from outside Europe to help meet that goal. The European Commission’s July 2025 proposal intends to reopen the door to credits for the first time in over a decade. Still, it remains vague on exactly how importing should be done – that is, who should import, how much and where should the imported credits be used? Now is the time to get the design right. 

EDF’s latest publication, International Credits in the EU: Strategic Choices & Practical Implementation’, explores these questions.  It argues that if done well, importing credits could be a practical way for Europe to keep target compliance costs manageable, protect its climate ambition, and increase its influence in international climate policy. But the details matter – doing it right means we’d need strong rules on quality, clear conditions for if/when credits would be used, and a coordinated EU system to manage purchases and credit use.  

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Advancing affordability through climate ambition: How states can cut costs while cutting pollution

While the federal government rapidly undermines climate progress, new analysis from EDF shows that state leadership is more important than ever. Our analysis finds that if leadership states deliver on their climate commitments, they could make a significant impact on the overall U.S. emissions and collectively cut the gap to the nation’s Paris-aligned 2035 target by a third.  

What’s more, implementing the comprehensive and powerful policy tools state leaders have at their fingertips to meet these commitments would both slash planet-warming pollution and deliver household savings and economic benefits for communities. Now is the time for governors and state legislators to get the job done.

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Also posted in California, Cities and states, Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, News, Policy / Authors: , , / Comments are closed

Washington state’s cap-and-invest program continues to deliver for communities

Cap-and-invest continues to be Washington’s best tool for cutting pollution and delivering investments to communities. As linking with the California-Quebec program comes closer to being a reality, the continued success of Washington’s program demonstrates how a larger, linked market will benefit all involved.

The program just completed its third auction of the year. Here are the results and what they mean:

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Also posted in Cities and states, Economics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, News, Policy / Authors: / Comments are closed

Increasing consistency in the biochar carbon marketplace

Photo by Sophia Wojkowski

Excitement around biochar is growing, as is interest in its role in the Voluntary Carbon Marketplace (VCM). Biochar is a carbon-rich form of charred biomass or other organic material. Its primary climate benefit is that it decomposes and releases carbon dioxide much more slowly than its parent material (also known as feedstock, the original biomass used to create the biochar).  

Importantly, this climate benefit hinges on the feedstock’s other potential uses. If the feedstock has an alternative use with a greater climate mitigation potential (e.g., bioenergy, in certain contexts), then biochar production may not be the best use from a mitigation perspective. However, where the feedstock would have been left to decompose or ended up in landfills, climate mitigation via biochar may be the best end use.  

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