In the Paris Climate Agreement, Parties agreed on the ambitious goal of limiting the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C, and if possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Ambitious climate action must be accompanied by a development path safeguarding sustainable economies, diverse environments and healthy societies. Aligning of both the climate and development agenda offers more synergies than trade-offs. This applies especially to market-based international cooperation, where aligning sustainable development and NDC ambition raising can support the transformation required to achieve both the 2030 agenda as well as the Paris Agreement’s objectives.
With the adoption of a robust set of Art. 6 rules in Glasgow, the rules for dealing with sustainable development issues in Art. 6 activities have now become much clearer. However, applying them in concrete activities will take some time due to the complexity of the rules and their translation into best practices.
Crucial questions in this context include how actors take sustainable development assessment into account in practical Art. 6 (Pilot) activity implementation. Do buyers regard the issue as important? How do host countries approach the issue, is there an alignment of SDG and climate mitigation processes in the countries? What framework for SD assessment is used? How are practical issues regarding governance being solved? What are countries’ experiences, and capacity building needs?
To this end, an online workshop and a series of interviews were conducted to collect the views and contributions of experts and representatives of individual Parties. The results of this exercise were synthesized in a policy brief, which now available for download. The paper starts with depicting the SD-related provisions in the Art. 6.2 guidance and the rules, modalities and procedures for Art. 6.4. It then presents the insights gained from the interviews, the workshop and the literature. Based on this, recommendations are developed for the next steps, structured according to the different actors.