This dynamic risks allowing countries to claim progress while actual emissions remain unchanged — or even increase.
The Net Zero Tracker, the world’s only register of mitigation targets and strategies from all nations, large cities and companies, and major sub-national regions, reveals a gaping accountability gap on the use of carbon credits. Currently only 16 national governments have climate targets that include separate targets for carbon removal.
The path forward: prioritising durable removals
To fix this, governments and companies should:
1. Set separate targets: Climate strategies should distinguish between emissions reductions (nature-based removals such as reforestation) and durable geological-based removals, for example through DACCS. Without separation, countries can misuse cheaper, low-quality mitigation outcomes.
2. Scale up durable Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR): Investment in high-integrity removal solutions like biochar, BECCS, and DACCS, must increase to balance out hard-to-reduce emissions. Durable removals are vital, but currently account for only a tiny fraction of global carbon crediting activity.
3. Reform Article 6 rules: Durable removals should be the standard for crediting under Article 6, while nature-based removals and emission reductions should be managed under separate frameworks — such as Article 5 , which is focused on providing finance for nature, and Article 9 on climate finance.
A net zero-aligned path forward
If Article 6 becomes a tool for cheap, low-integrity offsets, it will severely undermine trust in net zero. Worse still, it will lock in higher levels of heating — making global temperature goals harder, if not impossible, to achieve.
Article 6 was designed to make climate targets more ambitious, and their implementation faster, and more affordable. It must not become a backdoor for weak pledges and fake progress. We cannot let countries “NDC wash” as we have seen corporations greenwash.
The world’s governments face a choice: reform Article 6 to ensure it drives high-integrity, durable climate action, or risk turning one of the Paris Agreement’s most powerful tools into its Achilles heel.
The credibility of global climate cooperation depends on getting it right.
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