With COP30 about to open in Belém, Brazil (10th November, 2025), one of the most pressing questions hanging over global climate negotiations is whether Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the world’s framework for international carbon markets, can finally move from policy drafting to large-scale implementation. Ahead of the talks, the Project Developer Forum, a coalition of more than 60 organizations responsible for designing and financing carbon mitigation projects, has issued a forceful call for negotiators to “finish the job” and create rules that unlock investment rather than obstruct it.
The stakes are especially high for Africa. The continent is poised to become one of the world’s most consequential suppliers of high-integrity carbon credits, from Congo Basin forests to regenerating grasslands, from mangrove restoration to improved cookstove programmes. Yet recent uncertainty in carbon market governance has cooled investor enthusiasm and left many African projects in limbo.
Without clear rules, millions of tones of carbon-reduction potential, and the corresponding finance that could support communities on the front lines of climate change, remain stuck on paper rather than generating revenue or real mitigation.
As the Forum’s chair, Nick Marshall, framed it, Article 6 is shifting from “the rulebook to the real world,” and decisions taken in Belém may determine whether international carbon trading remains an abstract promise or becomes a lifeline for climate-vulnerable economies. He and his colleagues are pressing governments to ensure that market design does not collapse under bureaucracy and that finance can flow efficiently to the Global South.
For African nations, this conversation is not academic. Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Gabon have all positioned carbon markets as pillars of green industrial transformation. Zimbabwe has gone even further, authorizing projects at the national level to accelerate participation. Yet developers warn that unclear procedures for project approvals and profit-sharing arrangements still deter private capital, particularly in countries with limited administrative capacity. They argue that robust environmental safeguards and community-level benefits are essential, but so is a process that does not take years to navigate or shift unpredictably with every policy adjustment.
The Forum highlights examples demonstrating what credible Article 6 implementation can look like. One is a bilateral agreement between Switzerland and Thailand, which has already produced internationally transferred mitigation outcomes with fully applied accounting adjustments. Another is Zimbabwe’s authorisation model that allowed carbon credits to be traded immediately under aviation-sector compliance frameworks, giving investors confidence that national reporting systems would secure the permanence of credits and avoid rule reversals. These approaches, developers say, should not be exceptions but templates for broader replication.
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For Africa, the potential prize is enormous. Analysts estimate that by 2030, if integrity conditions improve and political risk is reduced, carbon markets could mobilize more than US$25 billion annually for African mitigation projects. Such flows could transform rural livelihoods through revenue-sharing schemes, support new conservation jobs for young people in regions with few alternatives, and finance clean cooking technologies that currently advance too slowly because of cost barriers.
However, without legal clarity on “corresponding adjustments”, the accounting mechanism that prevents double-counting of reductions, developers warn investors will continue to treat African jurisdictions as too risky, especially where governance reforms are incomplete.
Behind the technical language of registries and authorizations lies a more human concern: whether communities who steward Africa’s ecological assets will directly feel the financial benefits. The Forum stresses that benefit-sharing must move beyond symbolic pledges to become binding, transparent and adaptive to local contexts. Strict one-size-fits-all models could hinder progress by overlooking how community land tenure and local governance vary across regions. For African negotiators, this is a balancing act, to secure equitable flows of climate finance without discouraging the very investors holding the capital.
COP30 also arrives at a delicate moment for the continent’s reputation in carbon markets. The rapid expansion of voluntary crediting in countries like Liberia and Kenya has been dogged by criticism of opaque contracts and community exclusion. Civil society groups increasingly insist that carbon finance must reinforce, not undermine, land rights and Indigenous knowledge.
Success at COP30 will depend not only on satisfying investors but also ensuring that regulatory structures command public trust. African leaders attending the talks have an opportunity to shape outcome documents that protect community sovereignty while driving investment into well-designed projects.
What the Forum is ultimately asking negotiators to recognize is that climate finance cannot be unlocked through policy perfectionism alone. Without stable teams in ministries, without operational national registries, and without clear approval pathways stretching from project inception to credit issuance, even the most elegantly designed rules will fail. Consistency, not constant revision, is now the commodity project developers value most.
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As the summit convenes in the heart of the Amazon, Africa enters the room with both vulnerability and leverage. The continent’s natural ecosystems are indispensable to global climate stability. Its young population and expanding renewable capacity make it a compelling destination for future-proof investment. But opportunity becomes reality only if Article 6 is built to function where climate finance is most urgently needed, rather than where administrative systems are already mature.
