The Paris Agreement, signed in December 2015, changed the discourse of the climate agenda, bringing the need to increase ambition in relation to emission reduction targets and a much greater participation of society, increasingly encompassing subnational governments (this is, including city and regional initiatives) and with the inexorable participation of the business sector.
To avoid reaching the level of global warming that will bring about the collapse of the global climate system, a decarbonization process at a planetary level is needed.. Countries, Business, people: everyone counts. How is it possible to encourage the reduction of emissions given unpromising political positions in relation to the climate emergency?
Carbon pricing is one of these incentives. It is basically a mechanism that allows placing a monetary value on greenhouse gas emissions (GEE). It is a way of signaling the importance of considering the emissions of products and services we choose for, for example, meet our day-to-day needs, provide inputs for companies and "clean up" a country's investments.
By setting a value for emissions, they are now considered as an externality that needs to be internalized. That is, a price is placed to meet the social and environmental costs of emissions, and makes people, Businesses and Governments Seek Less Environmentally Harmful Options, lowering emissions and global warming.
In an urgent scenario like the one we live in, effective initiatives that do not depend on a government resolution, how is the pricing example, can be a solution. For that, it is necessary to advance the debate on the Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, that creates a global carbon market and allows companies and governments to invest in innovation to combat not just climate change, but social problems that directly contribute to global warming.
Carbon pricing is a “collective need to advance the climate agenda”, in the words of Dominic Waughray, head of public-private partnerships at the World Economic Forum. It allows us to give direction at scale to accelerate the reduction of use of carbon-intensive alternatives. And she is already adopted, voluntarily, by thousands of companies (and some governments already) no world everything, including Brazil.
The Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS), in partnership with CDP Latin America and support from WWF-Brasil, consolidated good initiatives of companies operating in Brazil regarding their contribution to the climate emergency, including the carbon pricing models adopted by some of them. Learn more in the publication available online: "How companies have been contributing to the Paris Agreement" (link).
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