COP27: Carbon credit revival a likely boon for developing nations

But 'greenwashing' fears abound

A decade back, the first and only global carbon-trading system collapsed with prices falling 85 per cent — from $20 to $3 in five years.

With buyers in the developed world hard to find and acute lack of emission-reduction projects in developing nations, the clean development mechanism, under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, suffered a slow death.

The world’s largest and richest economy, the US, has now pitched for a resurrection of the carbon-credit market. John Kerry, climate envoy for the US government, last week at COP27 announced a carbon offset plan, “Energy Transition Accelerator” (ETA), which, he said, would help