Carbon trading will play a vital role in any global deal on emissions reductions, it has been claimed.
Richard Gledhill, global leader for climate change and carbon markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), believes that the trade in emissions offers businesses an incentive to act on environmental issues.
Mr Gledhill said: "Questioning the effectiveness and stability of carbon markets at this stage of the UN climate negotiations is an unhelpful distraction and could undermine business confidence in climate policy which is critical to delivering the scale of investment required to transition to a low-carbon economy."
His comments come after environmental group Friends of the Earth warned that carbon trading could spark a financial crisis.
According to the organisation, carbon markets are now dominated by speculative traders and credits are packaged into complex financial products similar to those seen before the subprime mortgage crisis.
However, Mr Gledhill stated that rather than being a cause for concern, secondary trading is actually a sign that markets are working.
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