Implementing ambitious voluntary action under the Paris Agreement

Background and Objective

There has never before been as much corporate interest to invest in climate mitigation as we see today, both within and beyond companies’ value chains. This corporate investment is critical to achieve the commitments by governments through their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and limit global warming to 1.5C. At the same time, corporate finance for climate mitigation is not enough. It is important that deployed finance delivers additional, transformational climate impact, and that tools and guidance are available to enable responsible climate action, to track progress and to protect against ‘greenwashing’. While the Science Based Targets Initiative and emerging protocols for corporate action beyond their value chain provide a basis for companies to set targets, no framework currently exists to track and robustly assess progress in their implementation. Meanwhile for companies to invest in climate impact outside their value chain that goes beyond the ambition contained in governments’ NDCs, a functioning market is needed under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with credits that governments will not count towards their national targets. Building on past work supported by BMU, and Gold Standard’s strengths in carbon market innovation, certification and assurance, Gold Standard has taken on a programme to enable ambitious voluntary action under the Paris Agreement, delivered through two complementary initiatives: the first enabling initial applications of Article 6 to support the scaling of high-integrity market-based action, and the second to develop a performance framework for high ambition corporate climate mitigation.

Implementation 

Publications: Gold Standard has worked closely with an inclusive group of first-moving actors – host countries, project developers and other stakeholders – to enable some of the first examples of the transfer of mitigation outcomes under Article 6.2. This experience resulted in several publications:

• Implementing Article 6 - An Overview of Preparations in Selected Countries: which summarises the status of Article 6 preparations in 20 countries across the world.
• Supporting authorisations under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement: which draws conclusions from the direct support provided to three project developers and relevant host countries with authorisation preparations under Article 6.
• A blueprint for engaging in cooperative approaches under Article 6: prepared for workshops for the public and private sectors in Uganda, which was later converted to a general guidance.

Webinars and outreach: During 2022 and 2023, Gold Standard hosted eight public webinars diving into different elements of Article 6 implementation, each of which reached an audience of between 150-300.  Webinars from 2022 and 2023 are still available on the Gold Standard website. 

In addition to these, Gold Standard participated in over 25 externally-organised events to build understanding of Article 6 implementation.

Newsletters: The team shared regular newsletters with a mailing list of over 600 participants, to inform interested actors of Article 6 developments within and outside of Gold Standard.

Corporate framework: In 2023, Gold Standard published a framework and supporting paper to build understanding and provide a basis for companies to fairly contribute to global net zero through their organisational climate mitigation strategies, supported by extensive outreach.

Results and Outlook 

In addition to publications and events, Gold Standard provided extensive technical support to project developers, governments and other market actors to build understanding of the implications of Article 6, through our Article 6 Early Movers Programme. The Gold Standard team also sought to collaborate with other organisations, such as the East African Alliance and GIZ among others, working towards similar goals across the world. The programme has reached and supported hundreds of stakeholders from both the public and private sector over a period of 18 months, and it has helped to build understanding and capacity for the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, as well as towards credible corporate strategies.