Separate to Scale: How individual targets can increase investment in decarbonization and carbon removal

Article 6 mitigation and accounting frameworks currently treat “mitigation outcomes” as a single, interchangeable unit. In practice, that unit is being asked to cover two physically and economically distinct activities: reducing emissions from an existing source, and removing carbon already in the atmosphere; and to exclude avoidance. Each has a different mechanism, a different baseline logic, and different risk, demand, and cost profiles. These categories were identified at COP29 in Baku, but not defined. Bilateral agreements, corresponding-adjustment methodologies, and emerging market infrastructure are being built right now on the working assumption that these three are fungible — not because anyone has argued they should be, but because no one has yet drawn the line. Without clear definitions, the mitigation distinction from Baku categories can't be upheld. Why This, Why Now Article 6.2 and 6.4 are in their formative implementation window. The agreements, registries, and pricing conventions being set today will be difficult to unwind once host and buyer countries have built policy and portfolio decisions on top of them. This is the moment when a definitional gap is cheap to close — and the moment after which it becomes a vested interest to defend. The Core Argument All three mitigation types — avoidance, reduction, and removal — are necessary. No one is a substitute for the others. At a system level: avoiding prevents emissions from occurring at all, reducing emissions is what keeps an active emission source from growing, while removal is what addresses the stock of emissions already in the atmosphere. The point is not to rank them, but to create the conditions for all three to progress in parallel individual markets, matched to the corresponding policy targets and incentives. Collapsing them into one accounting category forces avoidance, reduction, and removal to compete for the same demand signal, price, and claims language — creating ambiguity that serves none of them. Leaving them undefined is incoherent for policy: demand-side mechanisms — obligations, procurement targets, corresponding-adjustment rules — can't be calibrated to create demand for a specific kind of mitigation if the category they're written against doesn't distinguish it from the other two. A first-principles definition — physical mechanism, baseline logic, and durability characteristics, rather than commercial convention — can create this distinction and allows each mitigation type to be: Structured as its own asset and policy category, so markets can scale each on its own terms rather than in zero-sum competition with the others Claimed accurately, so a corresponding adjustment or corporate claim reflects the specific mitigation mechanism behind it — not a generic 'mitigation' label Priced for its actual risk, so durability and reversal risk — which differ sharply between removal and avoidance/reduction — are underwritten rather than averaged away Signaled clearly enough that investment and innovation can target the specific mitigation type that needs them CDR is where this gap is most acute, but the argument is broader than CDR: it is that no mitigation type can be the object of deliberate policy demand until it is defined well enough to be pointed at.