LocationsTurning Climate Ambition into Action: Insights from the UNDP’s Accelerator for Decarbonisation
September 9, 2025
Held across four sessions from May to July 2025, the Accelerator for Decarbonisation Programme: Harnessing Innovation in Decarbonisation Policies saw the participation of 58 UNDP staff from 37 countries.
As countries accelerate progress towards their net-zero commitments, they are experimenting with a range of policy tools to reduce emissions while sustaining economic growth. Yet, making these approaches work at scale requires more than technical expertise. It calls for shared learning, adaptation to local contexts, and strong collaboration across sectors, countries, and intergovernmental organisations.
To support this effort, the UNDP Global Centre in Singapore launched the Accelerator for Decarbonisation Programme: Harnessing Innovation in Decarbonisation Policies. The programme sought to strengthen the decarbonisation efforts of UNDP country offices and units by providing tools, insights, and opportunities for mutual learning. This was achieved through a series of learning sessions, peer-to-peer exchanges, and a shared pool of practical resources.
Held from May to July 2025, the Accelerator convened 58 UNDP staff from 37 countries, each addressing climate challenges within diverse national contexts. It provided space for reflection and knowledge exchange, surfacing practical insights on how to translate climate ambition into inclusive and effective action. In this article, we outline the main takeaways from these discussions and explore the themes that emerged across the sessions.
Carbon Taxes as a Tool to Drive Decarbonisation
Carbon taxes play a critical role in accelerating the adoption of clean technology and advancing ambitious climate goals. These policies are shaped not only by traditional socio-economic and environmental factors, but also by the emergence of a dynamic and rapidly evolving carbon economy – encompassing systems, markets, and technologies that value, trade, and manage greenhouse gas emissions.
As highlighted in the UNDP Carbon Tax Report, effective carbon tax policies should be tailored to a country’s specific priorities. The design of such a tax must align with national goals, institutional capacity, and readiness for implementation. Political endorsement and climate leadership are essential for adoption. While there is no single formula for success, certain design patterns have emerged. Strong political commitment to addressing climate change while ensuring a just transition is a key enabler. Policymakers have mitigated public opposition to higher prices by offering immediate and tangible benefits through tax reduction, rebates, revenue redistribution, financing for climate action, green investments, economic diversification, and job creation – all of which enhance policy durability.
Digital technologies are transforming the design, implementation, and evaluation of carbon tax instruments by enabling new levels of transparency, efficiency, and accuracy. Many countries are also incorporating carbon offset frameworks, supported by Digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (D-MRV) systems, to finance climate action. For developing countries, combining carbon taxes with digital innovation and well-targeted revenue use creates an opportunity to decarbonise, support development priorities, and build long-term resilience.
“You can’t just take a textbook version of carbon tax and assume it will work. You need to look at your institutions, your political economy, your data systems. That’s where the work really begins.”– Maitreyee Mukherjee, Research Fellow, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, LKYSPP, NUS
Preparing for CBAM: Protecting Competitiveness and Climate Revenues
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is reshaping how countries view the relationship between climate ambition, taxation, competitiveness, and trade. By recognising only explicit carbon pricing tools, such as taxes or emissions trading systems, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity for developing countries that have yet to implement such mechanisms.
CBAM is sending a strong global signal. It is pushing governments to fast-track overdue fiscal reforms, strengthen MRV systems, and adopt carbon pricing as a strategic tool to protect the competitiveness of carbon-intensive sectors and to finance domestic climate action. Without such mechanisms, potential carbon revenue could flow abroad, missing the opportunity to support national energy transition and climate adaptation.
For developing countries, the priority is to act early: to design robust carbon pricing mechanisms with meaningful tax rates, align these policies with targets set under Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and use the data generated to strengthen national mitigation strategies. Through this approach, the impact of CBAM can be mitigated by accumulating revenue streams that support domestic programmes.
“A crucial point for developing countries impacted by the CBAM going forward, is whether or not to impose a corresponding carbon price at domestic level. Introducing an explicit carbon price such as a carbon tax or an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would be advisable both to generate additional revenue resources and to meet the country’s NDCs through fiscal policy alignment.”– Tatiana Falcao, Technical Expert for Tax and Environment, UNDP
Making Carbon Markets Work
Carbon markets are an increasingly important pathway to financing climate action, offering opportunities for countries to attract investment while accelerating emissions reductions. Their effectiveness, however, depends on environmental and social integrity, robust governance, and countries’ ability to engage on equitable terms that contribute to broader sustainable development goals.
While demand for high-integrity carbon credits is rising, many developing countries face challenges in building the systems, safeguards, and expertise needed to participate meaningfully. Establishing national frameworks under Article 6 is an essential first step. This includes setting robust baselines, ensuring transparent reporting, and implementing credible authorisation processes to prevent double counting and secure international recognition of mitigation outcomes. Equally important is the introduction and enforcement of environmental and social safeguards to ensure that carbon market initiatives do not cause harm and simultaneously contribute to broader sustainable development goals. With these foundations in place, countries can better attract climate finance and trade mitigation outcomes more effectively.
Data and independent ratings are also shaping the evolution of carbon markets. Tools such as project registries and analytics platforms help governments and investors assess the credibility of projects. As markets mature, high-integrity credits command higher prices — making integrity not just an environmental and social necessity but also an economic advantage.
For developing countries: building early readiness with robust laws, reliable data systems, and transparent governance will be critical in determining their ability to participate and benefit from carbon market opportunities over time.
“High-integrity carbon markets require more than just carbon accounting. Countries need credible baselines, independent verification, safeguards for indigenous and local communities, and transparent registries to build trust and ensure benefits flow back to host countries.”– Celina Yong, Senior Regional Technical Advisor, UNDP
Looking Ahead
Across the sessions, the Accelerator for Decarbonisation underscored a central insight: effective decarbonisation is not only about adopting the right tools or frameworks, but also about ensuring they are suited to national contexts, institutional capacities, and political realities. Peer exchanges throughout the programme showed that while solutions are not always directly replicable, learning from one another accelerates progress. Countries can avoid starting from scratch by drawing on the experiences and resources of others, adapting what works to their own contexts.
This programme was developed at a critical moment. Around the world, countries face growing pressure to meet near-term NDC targets, navigate new climate-related trade measures, and unlock finance for transformative action. At the same time, rapid technological advances, evolving carbon markets, and rising public demand for transparency are reshaping the landscape of climate policy. This Accelerator contributed to this effort by amplifying country-led solutions, creating safe spaces to share both breakthroughs and challenges, and building connections that make climate action more collaborative and impactful.
The work ahead will require countries to integrate innovative thinking into policy design, align global goals with local priorities, and ensure that climate action delivers inclusive benefits. UNDP will continue to work alongside countries to address these challenges — turning ambition into measurable progress and building the systems needed for lasting change.