29 November 2022

On 16 November 2022, the National Climate Change Secretariat (“NCCS”) announced that Singapore has joined the Article 6 Implementation Partnership (“Partnership”) as a member country at the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“COP27”).

The Partnership was launched by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment at COP27 and seeks to serve as a platform for implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (“Article 6”), build on the Article 6 rule book (“rule book”) and provide the support required to pilot Article 6 initiatives. Article 6 allows countries to voluntarily cooperate with each other to achieve emission reduction targets set out in their Nationally Determined Contributions (“NDCs”). It governs the market and non-market cooperative mechanisms to facilitate the transfer of carbon credits between countries. It also serves as a stepping stone that helps countries meet their NDCs through the transfer of emissions reduction, while ensuring high standards of environmental integrity.

The rule book was finalised at the 26th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP26, following negotiations co-facilitated by Singapore and Norway.

The Partnership aims to advance the implementation of high integrity carbon markets through the coordination of international capacity building efforts around the world. The NCCS press release notes that, as a carbon services and trading hub, Singapore can contribute to the development of baseline methodologies for carbon markets and the promotion of the use of transparency tools and national frameworks for carbon markets.

Reference materials

The press release referred to above is available on the NCCS website www.nccs.gov.sg at this page.