Assessment and challenges of carbon markets

Résumé

Global warming, with its harmful effects, is one of the most crucial issues of the 21st century. States of the international community have responded to this challenge by resorting to an original instrument: tradable emissions permits for carbon and, as a direct consequence, the pollution rights markets. This article deals with the study of this hybrid instrument and is divided into three parts. The first part concerns the description and an assessment of the initial framework enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol (I). The second part provides an overview of the reactions triggered by the consecration of the approach put forward in the Protocol (II). On the basis of the various adopted measures, an outline of the alternative and feasible solutions will be drawn in the last section. In this regard, we will recommend an approach that would start from the carbon markets as they exist today but which would integrate them and coordinate the available social and institutional actors (civil society, NGOs, federated and local entities, etc.) through a mechanism of fungibility that would make the markets compatible with each other. From an operational point of view, this fungibility could occur by using new technologies such as blockchain (III).