In his assessment of the recent agreements struck during the COP 17 negotiations in Durban, November 29th to December 9th, Andrei Marcu concludes in this new CEPS Commentary that global climate change is approaching a new crossroads. In his view, the outcome of Durban will influence whether the initial Cartesian vision of a global carbon market and one single price for carbon, which emerged from the Kyoto Protocol but was never accomplished, is to receive a new impetus, or whether we are heading towards a long period of building through a bottom-up approach, which may or may not lead to a unitary carbon market in the future.

Andrei Marcu is Senior Advisor and Head of the Carbon Markets Forum at CEPS.