Under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, countries can cooperate with each other to achieve their climate targets: they can buy emission reductions in the form of carbon credits from other countries, and count these towards their own emission reduction target.

Climate Action Tracker CAT), in launching its Article 6 assessment series, has undertaken its first qualitative assessments of the carbon credit arrangements under Article 6 for four countries: Switzerland, Japan, Brazil and Kenya.

"The Paris Agreement requires Article 6 activities to increase climate action and not replace it at home. Therefore, buyer countries should only count carbon credits under Article 6 towards their targets if their domestic climate target is in line with the 1.5C limit and they have delivered sufficient climate finance to developing countries. This is certainly not the case for Switzerland or Japan," said Janna Hoppe, CAT Article 6 lead, of NewClimate Institute.

"This is not what we would call responsible use of Article 6," she said.

CAT has warned of a real risk Article 6 poses to overall progress in climate ambition. For rich countries, there is a real risk that engagement in Article 6 delays domestic emissions reductions. For developing countries, the risk is that they sell easy-to-abate emission reductions to rich countries, leaving them with more difficult and costly emission reduction challenges at home to meet their own target.

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