Conference Agenda

Over the past decade, carbon pricing has attracted growing attention across both developed and developing economies, accompanied by increasingly diverse institutional designs. China’s ETS is transitioning from an intensity-based to an absolute cap-based framework, while India and Brazil are exploring and refining market-based carbon pricing approaches suited to their national contexts. These evolving policy choices reflect distinct economic structures, development priorities, and governance capacities.   

 

At the same time, carbon markets in the Global South are increasingly shaped by global economic integration and evolving climate–trade linkages. Policy developments in advanced economies, such as the EU CBAM, have intensified concerns over competitiveness, carbon leakage, and cross-border policy interactions, with direct implications for emerging and developing economies.  

 

Together, these developments raise a central economic question: how do differences in carbon pricing design affect efficiency, cost effectiveness, and mitigation incentives, and which design features may offer transferable lessons for other developing and emerging economies as they consider carbon market development? They also prompt further inquiry into where international cooperation can add value, whether through market design principles, policy coordination, or cross-border mechanisms.  

 

This session examines carbon markets from a Global South perspective, focusing on how emerging economies design and adapt carbon pricing instruments and what these experiences imply for international coordination. The session explores when and how cooperation may be economically justified, and how alternative forms of coordination influence mitigation costs, competitiveness, and equity across countries at different stages of development. By bringing together insights from economic research, policy practice, and real-world implementation, the session highlights the Global South’s growing role in shaping the future of carbon markets and international climate cooperation.