The Dual Aim in the Paris Agreement's Article 6.4

The Paris Agreement emphasises the intrinsic relationship between climate change and sustainable development (SD) and welcomes the 2030 agenda for the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, there is a lack of assessment approaches to ensure that climate and development goals are achieved in an integrated fashion and trade-offs avoided. Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement introduces a new Sustainable Mitigation Mechanism (SMM) with the dual aim to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and foster sustainable development. The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has a similar objective and in 2014, the CDM SD tool was launched to highlight the SD benefits of CDM activities.

The article "Learning from CDM SD tool experience for Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement" by Karen Holm Olsen (Technical University of Denmark), Christof Arens and Florian Mersmann (both Wuppertal Institute) analyses the usefulness of the CDM SD tool for stakeholders. The authors come to the conclusion that the Paris Agreement's Sustainable Mitigation Mechanism has a stronger political mandate than the CDM to measure that SD impacts are "real, measurable and long-term". The article discusses solutions to the challenge of designing a robust SD assessment system for the new SMM based on lessons learned from the CDM SD tool.

It was published in Climate Policy and is available for free download.