The International Carbon Action Partnership’s Status Report 2016 shows emissions trading is gaining ever more importance in the fight against climate change.

Trading volumes on China’s seven emissions exchanges increased by 86.5% last year, but the financial value of the transactions rose by just 50% due to falling prices, an annual report on China’s carbon markets said.

The idea of a global carbon price has been a recurrent theme in debates on international climate policy. Discarded at the Conference of Parties (COP) of Copenhagen in 2009, it remained part of deliberations for a climate agreement in subsequent years.

Countries should set targets to increase public investment in low-carbon research and development (R&D) slowly and steadily beyond 2020, according to a report published by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science.

The report Analysing the status quo of CDM projects concludes that under current market conditions, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is currently not able to provide sufficient incentive for the continuation of mitigation activities and identifies a general risk of mitigation activities to discontinue.

How is China shifting to a low-carbon economy? What is driving the transition, and how will it affect global climate negotiations?

This paper compiles nine in-depth case studies of sub-national climate mitigation programs that exceed or lead national policy directives. From California to Rajasthan, India, these case studies reveal a range of local partnerships that exhibit strong climate leadership.