The establishment of the Clean Development Mechanism has been one of the successes of the Kyoto Protocol. It has helped to build experience, capacity and comfort with the use of market mechanisms to reduce emissions. This will be useful when implementing future market mechanisms.

China has embarked on one of the largest endeavours in climate economics ever, to establish a national carbon emission trading system by 2015. As a first step, carbon-trading pilots have been initiated in seven provinces and cities.