European Capacity Building Initiative

Share of Proceeds: An Innovative Source for Multilateral Climate Finance

The issue of predictable finance is once again on the negotiation table at the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP26) in Glasgow. Relevant – and highly contentious – is the issue of the applicability of Share of Proceeds (SoP) to the operationalisation of the different forms of market-based cooperation under the Paris Agreement (PA). 

Levying a Share of Proceeds (SoP) on mitigation units transferred on international carbon markets can be an important instrument to raise finance for adaptation measures in developing countries. An SoP was first introduced for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and under the Doha Amendment expanded to all market mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol (KP) – both for adaptation as well as for the funding of administrative costs. Now, notwithstanding that SoP is mentioned in the PA Article 6, how it is applied is a contentious issue in the negotiation in Article 6. 

This Policy Brief, funded by DANIDA and produced on behalf of ecbi by Oxford Climate Policy and Perspectives Climate Research, assesses the current debates surrounding SoP and its potential forms of implementation and makes recommendations for Article 6 negotiations regarding effective and efficient forms of SoP for adaptation and administrative costs. The final section considers ways in which funding predictability could be addressed through applying the idea of earmarking an SoP from the sale of mitigation units or carbon taxes at the regional, national, and sub-national level. North American and European examples are discussed, and it is concluded that multi-billion Euro funding could be generated by applying an SoP comparable to that of the KP mechanisms in this manner.

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