COP30 panel: Catalysts for Climate Transition

Ambassador André Aranha Correa do Lago (President COP 30) and Prof. José Alexandre Scheinkman (Columbia University; Princeton University (emeritus); Chair of council of economists): Opening Remarks and brief introduction of the panel

Catherine Wolfram (MIT): Climate coalitions

Rohini Pande (Yale) and Robin Burgess (LSE): Credible carbon markets

Juliano Assunção (PUC-Rio & CPI): Integrating tropical forests into the global climate agenda.

A ton of CO2 emitted or removed has the same atmospheric effect regardless of location. With finite resources, an efficient path to Global Net Zero requires channeling finance to the lowest present cost per ton of avoided or captured emissions. This session presented three practical catalysts to operationalize that principle across firms, sectors, and jurisdictions: (i) standards and institutions for credible carbon markets (including forest carbon), (ii) a climate coalition design that aligns carbon pricing and trade while protecting competitiveness and broadening participation, and (iii) an integrated forest–climate architecture that rewards standing forests, halts deforestation, and scales restoration.

1. Present a unified framework for measurement, accounting, risk management, and verification to ensure integrity and trust in carbon markets.
2. Introduce a pragmatic climate coalition model coordinating sectoral carbon price floors and border measures to reduce leakage and scale ambition.
3. Set out a fit-for-purpose forest finance architecture linking REDD+, the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), and a new Reversing Deforestation Mechanism (RDM) to unlock high-integrity removals via restoration.
4. Align partners on pilots, governance, MRV/safeguards packages, and financing pathways for 2026 delivery.

A ton of CO2 has the same atmospheric effect regardless of where it is emitted or removed; with scarce finance, the efficient path to Global Net Zero is to channel resources toward the lowest present cost per ton of avoided or captured emissions while guaranteeing environmental integrity and development co-benefits. Delivering this principle in practice requires a unified architecture that (i) measures and accounts for emissions and removals consistently, (ii) prices and governs industrial decarbonization in a way that preserves competitiveness and broadens participation, and (iii) integrates tropical forests as a core mitigation asset through protection, avoided loss, and large-scale restoration.

The proposed MARVIN framework (Measurement and Accounting of emissions, Risk mitigation, and Verification Institution) provides the integrity backbone: standardized accounting to attribute emissions and prevent double counting; remote sensing and econometric methods to track emissions avoidance, reduction, and removal (EARR); and independent third-party verification to ensure additionality and credibility. Risk is explicitly managed through pooled instruments for exogenous shocks (e.g., fires and storms), performance-linked contracts for endogenous underperformance, and compliance-based access to address regulatory risk. MARVIN is designed to scale in stages (foundations → pilots → consolidation), is financeable via modest market transaction fees, and coordinates with jurisdictional development plans where mitigation may constrain local activity.

To complement this integrity layer with scale and predictability on the demand and policy side, a pragmatic Climate Coalition focuses first on carbon-intensive traded sectors—steel, aluminum, cement, and fertilizers (together >20% of global emissions)—where member countries commit to sectoral carbon price floors and apply border carbon adjustments to level the playing field and reduce leakage. Modeling suggests such a coalition can deliver emissions cuts of roughly ∼1.5% of global annual GHGs (about Canada’s total), mobilize on the order of ∼$200billion per year in revenues (primarily from domestic pricing rather than border fees), and keep output losses in covered industries below 2%. Crucially, the coalition is designed for broad participation by low- and middle-income countries through integrated incentives: technology transfer, concessional climate finance, capacity building, preferential market access, and a share of revenues capitalizing a multilateral trust fund to de-risk green investments. Governance emphasizes transparency, robust MRV, and mutual recognition of national pricing mechanisms, aligning carbon pricing with trade rules to turn cooperation into an engine for growth and innovation.

Within this coherent market-and-policy envelope, tropical forests become a cornerstone of least-cost mitigation and resilience. Tropical forests span 1.27billion hectares and store 593GtCO2, yet more than 10million hectares are cleared annually; since 2001, 180million hectares were deforested areas that could recapture 49GtCO2 if restored. A fit-for-purpose forest finance architecture links jurisdictional REDD+ (to halt deforestation) and the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (to reward standing forests) with a new Reversing Deforestation Mechanism (RDM) that pays for net removals at jurisdiction level—the balance between restoration gains and any ongoing deforestation. RDM pairs a flexible jurisdictional fund with a dedicated permanence fund to safeguard restored carbon stocks. At full speed, RDM could remove up to 2GtCO2e annually in its first five years; at $50/t, that implies roughly $100billion per year in results-based finance.

Together, MARVIN’s integrity systems, the Coalition’s coordinated pricing-and-trade framework, and the REDD+/TFFF/RDM forest architecture operationalize a high-integrity, least-cost route to rapid decarbonization that is scalable and investable, fully compatible with an effective transition.