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The Paris Agreement (PA) emphasizes the intrinsic relationship between climate change and sustainable development (SD) and welcomes the 2030 agenda for the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, there is a lack of assessment approaches to ensure that climate and development goals are achieved in an integrated fashion and trade-offs avoided. Article 6.4 of the PA introduces a new Sustainable Mitigati on Mechanism (SMM) with the dual aim to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and foster SD. The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has a similar objective and in 2014, the CDM SD tool was launched by the Executive Board of the CDM to highlight the SD benefits of CDM activities. This article analyses the usefulness of the CDM SD tool for stakeholders and compares the SD tool's SD reporting requirements against other flexible mechanisms and multilateral standards to provide recommendations for improvement. A key conclusion is that the Paris Agreement's SMM has a stronger political mandate than the CDM to measure that SD impacts are 'real, measurable and long-term'. Therefore, recommendations for an improved CDM SD tool are a relevant starting point to develop rules, modalities and procedures for SD assessment in Article 6.4 as well as for other cooperative mitigation approaches.

The report examines the role offset approaches can play in the post-2020 climate regime. For this purpose, the report first develops a conceptual approach and a normative vision of what should be viewed as successful offset use. It then proposes tools to operationalize this vision. Lastly it derives overarching policy recommendations for the integration of offsets in carbon pricing systems.

Investors are paying more and more attention to the co-benefits of climate finance. Financing activities aimed at emission mitigation must not only result in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the enhancement of mitigation, adaptive capacity and adaptation strategies, but should also produce additional outcomes on other environmental, social or economic aspects of sustainable development. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was created precisely to cover these two aspects: firstly, to achieve cost-effective mitigation of greenhouse gases and secondly, to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development based on their national development priorities and strategies. However, complying with the second objective turned out to be problematic. Registered projects appeared that had no proven sustainable development benefits, or even perceived negative impacts. Consequently, critique was raised that the current set-up is weak due to the lack of clear and transparent sustainable development criteria in many host countries, and whether the intended sustainable development benefits are actually achieved in the absence of standards or monitoring, reporting and verification procedures,. To strengthen the current system for assessing the impact of sustainable development within CDM projects, even the High-Level Panel on the CDM Policy Dialogue recommended introducing monitoring, reporting and verification schemes for measuring the outcomes. The accent was to enhance safeguards against the risk of negative impact and to support host countries with capacity-building and sharing examples of best practice. The issue was raised to the highest political level when the CMP to the Kyoto Protocol in Durban requested the CDM Executive Board to develop voluntary measures with the aim of highlighting CDM projects' co-benefits, while preserving the right of host parties to determine their sustainable development criteria. This decision instigated the UNFCCC Secretariats development of the voluntary Sustainable Development Tool, which was approved by the CDM Executive Board in late 2012. A robust assessment of the impact of sustainable development in CDM projects is important to ensure the social and ecological integrity of the mechanism and compliance with the objectives of sustainable development as stated in the Kyoto Protocol. Research and best practice experience into how sustainable development issues are integrated into mitigation actions through the CDM Sustainable Development Tool and other respective standards can help inform the development of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions and future mechanisms on sustainable development assessment methods. As sustainable development is a complex multilayer process covering environmental as well as social and economic aspects that can be affected both positively and negatively, there is a variety of possibilities of how to assess the impact an intervention may have. The high number of approaches analysed by this study reflects this. The contractors assessed the Sustainable Development Tool against international standards for sustainability assessment by comparing it with other mechanisms such as voluntary carbon offset schemes as well as emerging policy frameworks.

To support the development of CDM Standardized Baselines, the German Environmental Agency commissioned the Wuppertal Institute and GFA Consulting Group in 2012 to investigate implications of Standardised Baselines on least developed countries and their utilization in national MRV systems. A case study was conducted to make the case for the utilization of standardised baselines to promote rural electrification in least developed countries. This study is based on the approved Small Scale Methodology (AMS) I.L 'Electrification of rural communities using renewable energy'. It sketches a possible standardized emission factor for a rural electrification program in Ethiopia. The study is accessible under: Furthermore, the project team conducted a series of qualitative expert interviews focussing on the Guidelines for the development of sector-specific Standardized CDM Baselines.

Standardised Baselines (SBs) shall improve the opportunities for least developed countries and other underrepresented regions to participate in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). SBs allow for shifting the effort of developing baseline scenarios and additionality testing from the individual project to the sectoral level. This research project followed two separate approaches in order to gather experiences with the development of SBs and to contribute to the advancement of the SB regulatory framework. Under the first approach, an SB for rural electrification in Ethiopia was developed in cooperation with the Ethiopian Designated National Authority, which submitted the SB to the ⁠UNFCCC⁠ Secretariat. In the second part of the project, a scoping study assesses how SBs can be developed to cover complex integrated production processes. The Indonesian cement sector was chosen as case for this study.

One of the objectives of the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) which is strongly embedded in the Kyoto Protocol, is to contribute to the sustainable development of the host countries in addition to climate protection. However, some non-governmental organisations have signalled the poor implementation of this requirement. The independent High-Level Panel on the CDM Policy Dialogue has also considered the need for improvement. Subsequently the Conference of the Parties serving as the meetings of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) 7 at Durban called on the CDM Executive Board to develop a tool for voluntary use in order to highlight the contribution of CDM to sustainability. As a result, in late 2012 The Sustainable Development Tool was developed and adopted. The fact that CDM projects should support sustainable development in the host countries is a key element of the CDM, which is why past experience suggests that a strong approach to the assessment of projects is important. Meanwhile, many innovative approaches taken by Designated National Authorities (DNAs) have superseded the restraint that was prevalent in earlier sustainability assessment with rather general sustainability criteria, superficial examinations and difficult stakeholder consultations. Such new approaches include scoring of indicators, priority sectors, checklists as well as improved documentation requirements for verification, municipal approval or on-site visits by DNA staff. When developing the Sustainable Development Tool, it is important not to neglect or bypass the needs of the users. Accordingly, the paper at hand looks into user-friendliness and the suitability of the sustainability tool from three perspectives - DNAs, governments with a programme of buying credits from projects with high sustainability contributions, and project developers. Host countries of different size and various levels of experience with CDM and sustainability assessment and project developers with expertise for various types of projects were interviewed in a survey about their experiences. Subjects were the sustainability assessment of CDM projects by the host country, the applicability of the Sustainable Development Tool and the national sustainability assessment. The results were evaluated to see how closely the Sustainable Development Tool matched the needs of project developers and buyers. As one main conclusion the study sees the need to further include safeguards against negative impacts of CDM projects on local communities or the environment into the Sustainable Development Tool and to elaborate methods to quantify and monetize benefits. In addition the experiences with the Tool for the CDM may be further explored to enlighten potentials of simplification and unification for new mitigation mechanisms.

Die 26. Konferenz der Vertragsstaaten des Rahmenübereinkommens der Vereinten Nationen über Klimaänderungen (Conference of the Parties, COP26) fand Anfang November 2021 unter britischem Vorsitz in Glasgow statt. Die COP26 markierte die symbolische Halbzeit zwischen der Verabschiedung der UN-Klimarahmenkonvention (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) im Jahr 1992 und dem Jahr 2050, wo laut IPCC weltweit netto null CO2-Emissionen erreicht werden müssen. Bis heute steigen die CO2-Emissionen jedoch stetig an. Vor diesem Hintergrund war das Pariser Abkommen (PA) von 2015 ein zentraler Durchbruch. Es ist das erste internationale Abkommen, das von allen Ländern ehrgeizige Klimaschutzmaßnahmen verlangt.

Das Forschungsvorhaben "Evaluation and development of recommendations on the CDM EB's Sustainable Development Tool including the sustainability requirements of other flexible mechanisms' hat zum Ziel, mögliche Unzulänglichkeiten des CDM SD Tools zu identifizieren, und strukturierte Vorschläge zu seiner Verbesserung zu machen. Erkenntnisse aus diesem Projekt sollen Leuchtturmcharakter für die Entwicklung von Nachhaltigkeits-Bewertungsinstrumenten in anderen Kohlenstoff Mechanismen inner- und außerhalb der UNFCCC besitzen. Dieser Bericht spiegelt die konsolidierten Erkenntnisse aus den drei Arbeitspaketen des Vorhabens wider. Das erste Kapitel erläutert den Hintergrund und leitet in den Bericht ein. Das darauf folgende Kapitel bewertet und vergleicht Vorgaben zur Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung verschiedener Flexibler Mechanismen und multilateraler Standards. Das dritte Kapitel beinhaltet einen Literatur-Überblick sowie Erkenntnisse aus Interviews zur Nutzbarkeit des SD Tools mit Regierungsvertretern aus Gastgeberländern, Projektentwicklern sowie einer Käuferperspektive. Im vierten Kapitel werden die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse über die Vor- und Nachteile des SD Tools im Vergleich zu anderen Mechanismen, vor allem aber in Anbetracht der Bedürfnisse seiner Nutzer diskutiert. Diese Analyse dient dazu, Empfehlungen für die Weiterentwicklung des Tools zu geben. Die Vorschläge sind aufgeteilt in solche, die relativ leicht zu implementieren sind, und solche, die das Tool zu einem echten Instrument zur Bewertung von Nachhaltigkeitseffekten transformieren würden. In einem letzten Schritt wird ein Ausblick auf Möglichkeiten gegeben, wie die Erfahrungen und Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten des Tools genutzt werden können auf dem Weg zu einem global harmonisierten und dennoch flexiblen Instrument zur Bewertung von zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung beitragenden Treibhausgas-Minderungsmaßnahmen.