GLASGOW, Nov 13, 2021 — Following the outcome at the 2021 UN Climate Conference in Glasgow (COP26), countries of the San José Principles Coalition for High Ambition and Integrity in International Carbon Markets commit to fully operationalize their principles in order to further support the rules agreed in Glasgow and ensure environmental integrity.

The San Jose Principles, originally agreed at COP25 in Madrid, are designed to represent a high-integrity way to operationalize international carbon markets to catalyze greater ambition, with the aim of keeping alive the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement.

The San Jose Principles Coalition worked constructively with the UK COP26 Presidency before and during COP26 with the aim to deliver a robust and ambitious outcome for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

In Glasgow, we achieved an outcome that secured comprehensive accounting for international compliance and an new ambitious mechanism aligned to the Long Term Goal of the Paris Agreement, provided a route for the voluntary market to use this mechanism to address double counting and double claiming  through corresponding adjustments, and to use the mechanism to contribute to emission reductions in host countries through results based finance.

Despite the hard work by the Presidency and other Parties, these positive results we achieved  do not pass the bar set by the San Jose Principles, as they do not deliver the clarity, robustness, and integrity needed to guide international market-based approaches towards the goals of the Paris Agreement.

In the light of that, the San Jose Principles Coalition vows to go beyond what was agreed in Glasgow and the Coalition’s members will start work to operationalize the Principles and more formally establish the Coalition.

Among these, we highlight the following actions and urge all other Parties to do the same:

1. Applying corresponding adjustments for all compliance uses, regardless of their final use. This applies to international mitigation purposes such as the use of credits under the ICAO Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) and other similar mitigation commitments.
2. Applying corresponding adjustments to support voluntary corporate climate commitments in mitigation outcomes used by corporate actors for voluntary climate goals through international voluntary carbon markets, as also requested by participants in the voluntary market.
3. Supporting transparent and credible corporate claims. In many cases, national governments will need to provide corporate claims guidance or other protections to support consumer understanding. In the absence of guidance on corporate claims such as “carbon neutrality,” we stress that use of the voluntary market should not lead to displacement of ambition by host countries, nor to misleading claims.
4. Avoid transacting pre-2020 units, including Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) from the Kyoto Protocol carried over into the new Article 6.4 mechanism, among others.
5. Engage with Parties and stakeholders that equally uphold the San Jose Principles in their participation in cooperative approaches.
6. Constructively engaging in the Article 6 technical work plan under the UNFCCC’s SBSTA to finalize additional technical details before 2023.
7. Working to ensure the protection of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and other local communities particularly when engaging in carbon markets.

The San Jose Principles Coalition will report regularly on the progress made towards these actions.

Finally, the San Jose Principles Coalition reiterates the invitation to other countries, multi-national and sub-national entities and multinational institutions to join us in the full operationalization of all the above principles, to support the highest possible ambition and environmental integrity.

Endorsed by (the list is being updated during the evening)

Colombia

Costa Rica

Fiji

Finland

Marshall Islands

Peru

Switzerland