SEOUL, September 01 (AJP) - Students from five South Korean universities will train inside the international carbon market under an agreement signed Tuesday in Seoul, opening a route into a Qatari crediting program whose credits airlines buy to meet United Nations emissions obligations.
That program, the Global Carbon Council, won full approval from the International Civil Aviation Organization in October 2024 to supply credits under the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, the U.N. body's global offsetting system for air travel. In May it added eligibility under the Core Carbon Principles set by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. The council says it is the only carbon crediting program based in the Global South holding both accreditations.
What makes the arrangement unusual is who is being sent. The consortium that signed the deal is funded under a Ministry of Education program for humanities and social sciences students, not for engineers or climate scientists.
The agreement was signed at Kookmin University's main administration building by the environment consortium of the Humanities Utmost Sharing System, a program run by the ministry and the National Research Foundation of Korea that pays universities to build joint degree tracks across institutional and departmental lines. Kookmin leads the consortium, which was selected in the program's environment category. Officials from the four other member universities attended, those being Duksung Women's University, University of Ulsan, Inha University and Chosun University.
Carbon markets reward a humanities background more than the label suggests. A carbon credit represents one ton of greenhouse gas emissions reduced or removed, and its price depends less on the technology behind the reduction than on whether the reduction can be verified, whether it would have happened anyway, and whether two countries have both claimed it. Those are questions of rule-writing, auditing, contract law and public policy.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, named in the agreement as one of the training areas, governs how countries trade emissions reductions among themselves and count them toward national targets. Its operating rules were settled only at the 2024 U.N. climate conference in Baku, after years of deadlock over double counting, and the market built on them is still taking shape.
The other party is the Gulf Organization for Research and Development, a Doha non-profit established in 2009 by Yousef Alhorr at Qatar Science and Technology Park and held under Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company. Its work runs from applied research in carbon, energy efficiency, renewable energy and water to professional training and carbon neutrality advisory services, framed around Qatar National Vision 2030, the development plan the government launched in 2008. The Gulf Organization for Research and Development (GORD) also operates the Global Sustainability Assessment System, a green building rating scheme adopted this year as the regional Gulf standard. Every stadium built for the 2022 World Cup was certified under it.
The carbon council began in 2016 as the Global Carbon Trust and is one of two affiliates GORD operates alongside its accreditation bureau.
Under the agreement the two sides will expand training and practical experience in the voluntary carbon market and Article 6, run teaching and research exchanges with GORD and Qatari universities, link student research and startup projects in climate technology, and build career networks in the Middle East.
Internships and hands-on programs tied to the carbon council sit at the center of the plan. Kookmin said it expected students to see the international carbon market directly and build professional skills through them, and that cooperation would later widen to Qatari universities and related bodies through joint teaching programs, research and overseas links for student ventures in climate technology.
Qatar has been building climate technology into a national strategic industry, and Kookmin cast the agreement as a way both to widen student access to the region and to push South Korean environmental teaching and research outward.
The environment consortium works under the theme of coexistence and shared growth in an age of climate crisis, developing coursework that crosses departments and campuses so that students trained in the humanities and social sciences can read environmental problems through those disciplines and propose workable answers.
Kookmin has designated water, energy and environment as one of eight fields marked for concentrated investment under its long-term development strategy, KMU VISION 2035: EDGE.
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