THE WASHINGTON POST: Turkey says carbon markets to take ‘rightful place’ at COP31

Governments will be pressed at the annual United Nations climate conference to help boost demand for carbon credits and unlock more than $50 billion in additional annual finance for developing economies to tackle tasks like reducing emissions, according to the summit’s host.

Elevating the use of carbon markets will be among objectives for the COP31 meetings in Turkey in November, Murat Kurum, the country’s environment minister and president of the talks, said in an interview.

“Mobilising private capital at the speed and scale required means ensuring every available tool is being used effectively, and carbon markets are one of the most underused,” Kurum said. “We want to see carbon markets take their rightful place in the climate finance architecture.”

To facilitate this aim, Turkey confirmed Thursday it had joined the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, an initiative formed last year and led by countries including the UK, Kenya and Singapore to bolster corporate demand for high-integrity carbon credits. The move builds on the enactment last year of the country’s first climate law, which provided the legal basis to establish a domestic emissions trading scheme.

Projects that generate credits by sequestering carbon are seen by advocates as a critical vehicle for raising climate finance. However, that theory has been tested in recent years amid a series of integrity scandals that deterred potential buyers and declining ambition from companies in many regions to curb emissions.

Carbon credit purchases, or retirements, fell 28% in July and are at the lowest year-to-date level since 2021, BloombergNEF said in a report last week.

While several initiatives to grow the carbon market have been advanced in recent years, the Coalition represents the first time that governments “have come together specifically to intervene and build the market,” said Kurum. That’s an important distinction because governments “bring unique market-shifting abilities,” he said.

Not only do they “provide the political and regulatory direction that can instill business confidence,” but the governments in the coalition “are creating the conditions to grow carbon credit demand,” he said.

If governments can establish “a genuinely demand-enabling policy environment,” growth in the voluntary carbon market could deliver over $50 billion in additional, debt-free finance annually by 2030, much of it flowing to emissions reductions, removals and nature protection in emerging and developing economies, said Kurum.

Brazil last year set up a network focused on strengthening global compliance carbon markets, as it hosted the 2025 round of UN-convened climate talks.

Turkey also plans to make boosting clean energy adoption a key focus of the COP31 presidency, Kurum — whose portfolio includes urbanization and climate change — said in an interview in April. “Efforts to unlock the potential of carbon credit markets” will help to deliver on that goal, he said this week.

Kurum said COP31 should also help move an international carbon credit mechanism overseen by the United Nations “firmly into full implementation.” He expects ”constructive process on the remaining operational issues” of the system, which will allow country-to-country trading of credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Another important carbon markets outcome at COP31 will be the launch of the Coalition’s policy playbook, which will set out “the most impactful policy options” governments can use to give investors the confidence they need to scale up purchases, he said.

In a statement Thursday, the Coalition said Ghana and Luxembourg have also joined the initiative alongside Turkey, bringing the total to 14 members, which also includes France and Indonesia.

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