Article 6 of the Paris Agreement
The legal basis for transferring emission reductions between states, whose decisive contribution is the rule forbidding one tonne to be counted twice.
Glasgow, November 2021: COP26 finally settles the rulebook for Article 6, open since 2015, starting with the corresponding adjustment. The article governs cooperation between states in meeting their national contributions, through bilateral transfers of mitigation outcomes (Article 6.2) and through a centralized mechanism that succeeds Kyoto's clean development mechanism (Article 6.4). Kyoto already had a market. What Article 6 adds is an accounting rule: a country that transfers a reduction takes it off its own inventory, so the same tonne cannot be used twice. That rule separates a credible market from double counting across the board, and it is what held up the talks for six years. For voluntary credits bought by companies, the effect is indirect but heavy. A credit from a country that makes no adjustment stays in that country's inventory, and the buyer cannot claim it exclusively. Carbon neutrality claims ignored the point for years, and advertising regulators now penalize that omission.
The implementing rules for Article 6, open since 2015, were settled at the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties, in Glasgow in November 2021. Among them is the corresponding adjustment, which stops a transferred reduction from being counted twice.
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