Opening Remarks by Axel van Trotsenburg at the Raising Finance for Climate Action through Paris Aligned High Integrity Carbon Markets

Excellency, distinguished panelists and guests, thank you for joining this discussion about the catalytic role high-integrity carbon markets can play in providing non-debt finance and leveraging private capital for climate action in developing countries.

At COP28, the World Bank launched the Carbon Markets Engagement Roadmap, showing a path to help overcome the barriers to scalin up high-integrity carbon markets.

Over the past year, we have brought together partners and have worked with them to identify a couple of the most important things we can do together.

With them, we realized two things:

• Voluntary Carbon Markets have enormous potential to provide much-needed funding for developing countries.
• But there is no trust. Trust, based on transparency and integrity, is the most crucial ingredient to realizing this potential. This is a critical entry point for the World Bank Group.

Building trust means fixing the global architecture, along with key market players but also shaping a common narrative for carbon markets - one that is clear and convincing and shows the true potential of carbon markets to advance climate action.

We have also continued to work with our clients - developing countries-to help build their capacity in carbon markets - and have worked with them on strategies, regulations, and projects - in fact, we have worked on every aspect of carbon markets with them.

And we also have been working on finding ways for carbon markets to usher in economic and social benefits to vulnerable communities most impacted by climate change.

We have some very clear deliverables, ones that we think all countries can use and benefit from:

• We have developed a Country Guidance Note for Navigating Carbon Markets, which helps countries develop their carbon markets strategy. This note answers seven strategic questions that help countries choose the direction of their carbon markets work. A detailed guidance note will follow in May next year, outlining the tools, modelling approaches, and template documents to develop a coherent approach and well-structured strategy.
• We have also developed a Roadmap for Safe, Efficient, and Interoperable Carbon Markets Infrastructure which provides recommendations on governance, information security, transaction integrity, and system interoperability.
• We have also developed template documents and guidance for acknowledging or authorizing carbon market activities. This Letter of Acknowledgement and Authorization package details essential terms and conditions to optimize investment and value for selling countries and highlights elements that facilitate insurance for authorization.
• Finally, we have also contributed to IOSCO's work to develop Good Practices for financial integrity in carbon markets, including regulatory clarity on carbon credits. We are excited to co-launch a joint Report on Financial & Market Integrity with IOSCO at COP29.

All of this work will eventually come together in a comprehensive country guidance package for navigating carbon markets. We are proud to work with many of those here on this effort.

Today we are here to listen to practitioners and their perspectives on integrating carbon markets into climate mitigation strategies, and to discuss the efforts of different organizations to uphold integrity and transparency. We also welcome insights on how we can work together to deliver finance for climate action in our client countries.