UN carbon market forces cookstove projects to protect against forest loss

Share: X (Twitter) Facebook LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Print 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 . 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. Log in here → Lots of our articles are free. This one isn't This story is exclusively available to paid subscribers. A free account gets you a selection of our reporting and our Climate Weekly . But a subscription gets you every story in full, our Bulletin emails from negotiations and conferences, two subscriber-only newsletters, and our monthly Editor’s column. £40/quarter → Or £130/year — best value. 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 . 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 , 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”.  Exemption push rejected More efficient cookstove projects earn credits based on the amount of carbon they save . 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”.