COPENHAGEN - First draft proposals to scale up global carbon markets, under U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, would soften the rule for project developers to prove their emissions cuts are tougher than normal trends.

December 7-18 climate talks in the Danish capital are meant to agree the outlines of a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.

Under Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism, rich countries can earn carbon offsets by paying for emissions cuts in developing nations, under a scheme which deployed $6.5 billion last year.

Many countries want to scale up that model to try and reach an estimated $100-$300 billion needed annually by developing nations to cut their planet-warming greenhouse gases.

In addition, many project developers in that carbon market complain that the rules proving their emissions are additional are too onerous.

The draft proposed a positive list of sectors for which conservative criteria could be used to assess additionality, initially for small-scale projects in renewable energy and energy efficiency, as an alternative to using the (present) additionality tool.

It also proposed the consideration and development of baseline and monitoring methodologies that are applicable to certain sectors -- code for a new carbon-cutting approach which would apply to entire sectors such as electricity generation, rather than individual wind and other projects.

One developer welcomed those proposals and another suggested projects could continue to be processed when their advisers were suspended, as occurs occasionally under a closely monitored U.N. process.

Four development organizations on Thursday launched an advocacy group to promote social, economic and environmental benefits in least developed countries through carbon trading.

The Advocacy Body on Carbon Development (ABCD) is formed of the United Nations Development Programme, SouthSouthNorth, Germany's GTZ and carbon offset certifier The Gold Standard.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn and Michael Szabo; editing by James Jukwey)

Climate change