Ghana has not been successful in registering projects to benefit from the global carbon market, after almost seven years of implementing the mechanism. The carbon emission trading came about following the enactment of the Kyoto Protocol, which compelled industrialized countries to impose on themselves legally binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets – measured in carbon credits – to bring down their aggregate emissions to 5.2% of 1990 levels by 2012. In order to achieve these targets, flexible market-based mechanisms were designed to facilitate implementation, including the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), where heavy polluters that are unable to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions buy them from developing countries that emit less. This is part of measures to reduce global warming and its consequent devastation on the environment. A World Bank report says the total value of the global carbon market grew by 11% to $176 billion in 2011. According to the report titled “State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2012”, transaction volumes reached a new high of 10.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) during the year. Ghana has endeavored to participate in the market, but only a couple of projects have reached the state to be credited. The "waste to compost project" by Zoomlion Ghana Limited is the most advanced project that is almost ready for registration in the carbon market using CDM standard, observed Daniel Tutu Benefoh, Senior Programme Officer at the Energy Resources and Climate Change Unit of the Environmental Protection Agency. There is however the voluntary market standards, where corporations, philanthropist, multinational companies, also go to buy carbon credit as part of their social and corporate responsibility initiative. Under this market mechanism, one project on improved cookstove has already been registered in Ghana. Mr. Benefoh noted the slow pace of Ghanaian ventures trading in carbon can be attributed to the high risk and huge investments demanded in the project registration processes. “Before you can get your carbon credit done, you need to go through a long process and the risk is that investors would like to see the credit yielding as much as possible, so they don’t intend to bear that risk of going through the process and not getting the projects registered”, he stated. Ghana is however looking at scaling up projects to tap into opportunities under the new mechanism called REDD+, which stands for Reducing Emission from Deforestation, Forest Degradation from Developing Countries. The plus signifies additional activities on forest conservation, sustainable forest management and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. The scheme was introduced in attempts to incorporate the larger role of forests in fighting future climate change and targeted at providing positive incentives for using forest sustainably. As part of the REDD+ process, the country has been selected by the World Bank to participate in REDD+ readiness project under the Forest Carbon Facility Programe (FCPF). The Bank provided a $3.6 million grant for REDD+ implementation in Ghana. The country would need to critically address legal and policy challenges including allocation of forest carbon rights and benefits for REDD+ projects implementation to thrive. Meanwhile, Ghana is to benefit from Climate Investment Funds, which are unique financing instruments designed to initiate transformational change towards low-carbon and climate-resilient development.