The origins of carbon markets

In the past decade, great achievements have been made towards climate action. However, the origins of carbon markets were not always so successful. As scientific evidence of the GHG emissions impacts raised, policymakers and environmental activists started exploring ways to reduce emissions and promote sustainable approaches. The first pioneering market-based mechanisms that put a price on carbon and created economic incentives to emissions reductions appeared in the last decades of the previous century:

Yet, we had to wait until 1997 for the first global agreement to set binding emission reduction targets in the form of the Kyoto Protocol.