Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on cooperative approaches can be considered a major success, and a minor miracle, on behalf of the UNFCCC climate negotiations. It paves the way for international cooperation to play an important role under the new climate regime. Making the article operational will however require a lot of technical and political work. This paper focuses on the issues that emerged from previous discussions and submissions and which the author believes will require further examination as part of the effort to make Article 6 operational. Specifically, the paper identifies a set of questions that need to be defined before negotiators start work. While this is not to be seen as a complete list of issues and questions associated with each item, the paper shows that as complete a list as possible should be developed in the contact group before proceeding with the substantive work.
Written by Andrei Marcu