China and UN to Set Up Carbon Exchange

“China and the United Nations are working to set up a carbon trading exchange in Beijing, a move that could establish the Chinese capital as a center for the global trade in carbon credits, according to the UN's top official in China.

If successful, the exchange - the first in the developing world - would compete with private sector carbon exchanges in Europe and the US, and would help open further the lucrative Chinese market in carbon credits. … The Beijing exchange is to be set up as part of a carbon finance initiative agreed by the United Nations Development Program with China's ministry of science and technology and the National Development and Reform Commission, said Khalid Malik, the UN resident coordinator in China. ‘I hope we can launch it this year…, ’ he said. Malik said he hoped the exchange would also trade in special carbon credits that would be tied to the UN's eight ‘millennium development goals,’ which range from halving extreme poverty to universal primary education by 2015. While mixing the climate change goals with efforts to fight poverty, AIDS and the loss of biodiversity will make the certification of the credits much more complicated, they may appeal to groups keen to polish their reputation for social responsibility. However, UN officials said it could be difficult to design such credits before 2012, when the present provisions of the Kyoto protocol expire, although they could form part of an expanded carbon trading system if a successor to the treaty was agreed. …”

The Financial Times (UK)