COP markets failure may see UN by-passed

Independent efforts may gather their own momentum after deadlock in Madrid

UN-led efforts to craft a new set of rules governing international emissions trading failed for a second time at the COP25 meeting in the Spanish capital in December. But, while countries will again attempt to agree the guidelines at the next summit in Glasgow at the end of this year, there is a growing sense that many signatories may not need to wait for a UN rulebook to get involved in supra-national schemes.  Negotiations over international carbon trading after 2020 were meant to have been completed in 2018 as part of a wider agreement on implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which will succeed the Kyoto Protocol next year. But the lack of agreed procedures is not proving an insurmountab