On 1 April this year, it was announced that Norway and Pakistan had signed an agreement on closer climate cooperation. The date notwithstanding, this news was hardly intended as an April Fools’ joke.

We are partnering with Pakistan to reduce emissions! Today, we signed a bilateral agreement under the Paris Agreement’s article 6. We will be working closely & with partners, GGGI, World Bank & ADB, to develop programs that cut emissions & generate high integrity carbon credits. pic.twitter.com/iVft3Fwhn4

— Norway in Pakistan (@NorwayinPak) April 1, 2026

In the spring of 2025, the government was busy submitting new and ambitious climate targets in accordance with the Paris Agreement. This ahead of the EU, which it otherwise tends to follow compliantly. It did not take long before it was equally eager to run away from its commitments. Already in last autumn’s state budget, the government requested authorisation to purchase emission quotas in developing countries for 15 billion kroner up to 2030 in order to cover the gap in the emissions budget.

Pakistan is merely the latest addition to the countries with which Norway has a “climate cooperation”. This makes it possible to report measures in other countries as fulfilment of Norway’s climate obligations, against appropriate remuneration, of course. The most important of these countries are probably a number of tropical countries with which Norway has a “forest cooperation”. This consists in reducing or reversing deforestation, which in turn contributes to forests binding more carbon dioxide than they otherwise would have done. The gain can then be credited as a reduction in Norwegian emissions, again against appropriate remuneration.

Many of these forest cooperation countries are among the most corrupt in the world, so it is hardly surprising that the Ministry of Climate and Environment repeatedly uses the expression “challenging” in its budget proposal when this cooperation is discussed. What this means in plain terms, the reader must use their imagination to understand.

The purchase of climate quotas from abroad is not a new phenomenon in Norwegian climate policy. This also took place under the Kyoto Agreement. The achievement of Norway’s climate targets under the Kyoto Protocol was reported to the UN in the publication “Status report as of December 2022, resubmitted in March 2023: Norway’s Eighth National Communication under the Framework Convention on Climate Change”. Despite a text of several hundred pages, there is no overview in this publication of where these quotas came from, what they cost, and what they entailed.

Here there is scope for improvement. The government has begun to publish a separate appendix to the state budget on climate policy, called the “Green Book”. So far, this publication is as rich in rhetoric as it is sparse in content. Otherwise, this is a natural forum for reporting how many climate quotas are purchased each year, at what price, which countries they come from, and what these measures entail.

Are these measures equivalent to real and permanent reductions in greenhouse gases, certified by credible institutions? What effect did they have on the development of the countries concerned? It is indeed stated in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement that such measures shall contribute to sustainable development in the countries concerned, and that they shall ensure “environmental integrity and transparency, including in governance”.

For once, both climate sceptics and climate activists have a common interest in better reporting, the sceptics because they suspect fraud and waste of public funds, the activists because they wish to see measures that make a difference and that are not merely a fig leaf to cover a lack of action at home.

Rögnvaldur Hannesson is Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).