The UN's December Copenhagen meeting on climate change ended with draft text of an agreement that left many provisions undecided. The subsequent uncertainty about the future of international action on climate change suggested that interest in carbon trading and carbon financing could be depressed (FT). But Joelle Chassard, manager of the World Bank's Carbon Finance unit, sees hopeful signs in the February 1 submissions by more than fifty countries on their voluntary emissions reduction actions (PDF) under the Copenhagen Accord. "We feel quite encouraged, but from an outsider's perspective, it may not be as meaningful because there still is so much work to be done to translate that political commitment into the nitty-gritty of implementation," Chassard says, arguing the overall demand for carbon trading will continue to rise. "[If] you talk to companies, all the economic actors working on future development, it's almost now a given that you have to take into account the impacts of climate change." She notes that movement on a U.S. carbon market is also playing a role in improving the outlook for global carbon markets. "We do hope if there is a legislation adopted by the U.S., it will include some sort of cap-and-trade scheme," she says. "That will create a lot of demand for emissions-reducing projects in developing countries."
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