An analysis by Carbon Market Watch of the 15 UN Technical Expert Reviews (TERs) published to date indicates that every participating country under Paris Agreement Article 6.2 has failed to satisfy mandatory reporting criteria, raising environmental integrity and human rights concerns ahead of COP31 in Antalya.

The technical evaluation cycle covers initial submissions from one buyer country (Japan, across two reviewed reports) and nine host nations, including Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mongolia, Palau, Tunisia, Cambodia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

Conducted by designated Technical Expert Review Teams (TERTs), the audits assess whether bilateral cooperative approaches meet the reporting standards established in the UN Article 6.2 rulebook. The review findings indicate that foundational operational structures for international carbon credit trading remain deficient across all evaluated initial submissions.

Environmental integrity and baseline setting faced universal flags. All 15 reviewed submissions contained inconsistencies regarding transparent rationales to prevent a net increase in global emissions (18.H.1) and conservative baseline establishment (18.H.2). 

Multiple host countries asserted that applying corresponding adjustments was sufficient to ensure integrity. The review teams rejected this assumption, noting that corresponding adjustments serve as accounting mechanisms rather than proof of baseline rigor or leakage mitigation.

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Human rights and social safeguard disclosures were similarly incomplete. Most participating nations cited general domestic legal frameworks or narrow gender guidelines rather than establishing explicit monitoring protocols for indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, and vulnerable populations as mandated under the 11th preambular paragraph of the Paris Agreement.

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