The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday defended carbon markets as essential to combating climate change and said that, without this mechanism, decarbonization will not be fast enough.

"Without a fair and properly functioning carbon market, decarbonization will not happen fast enough, so we have to encourage this model, as Mother Nature herself is helping us, because rich and poor countries are already feeling the devastating force of climate change," said Kristalina Georgieva in an interview with CNBC on the sidelines of the United Nations conference on the environment, COP28, which ended yesterday in Dubai.

The carbon market is an international mechanism that allows the most polluting countries or companies to exceed the targets agreed in the Kyoto Agreement by purchasing a permit issued by countries that pollute less than the limit they have committed to under that agreement, or that launch projects that offset the emissions of another country or company.

The IMF recently raised the price forecast for this license to issue from 75 to 85 dollars per ton, but so far the price has only been 20 dollars per ton, which shows that this market is still in its infancy.

For the Fund's leader, COP28 was a good opportunity for countries to evaluate the policies that encourage the use of fossil fuels, namely subsidies for coal, oil and gas, which reached 1.3 trillion dollars last year.

"We have to do away with this, gradually, and replace it with other incentives, like putting a price on decarbonization; I want to tell everyone who is willing to listen to me that carbon pricing works," said Georgieva, giving the example of the European Union, which through the Emissions Trading System has seen "not only a rapid reduction in emissions, but also an increase in revenues, to 175 billion euros".

In addition to reducing emissions and increasing revenues, deepening the carbon market "is also fair, because whoever pollutes the most pays the most, and the less someone pollutes, the less they pay, and many countries can earn some money and reinvest in the most vulnerable people," Georgieva argued in an interview with CNBC's Dan Murphy.

Mozambique is one of the countries that has already entered this market, having taken 45 million carbon credits to COP28, according to the President, Filipe Nyusi, in a speech in Dubai where he recalled that in 2018 the country saw 1.9 million credits certified for sale.

Meanwhile, asked about the role of oil and gas companies and how to convince them to adopt the carbon pricing mechanism, Georgieva replied: "One of the good news stories from the COP was the commitment to triple renewable energy in the next few years, and I think the oil and gas industry has already seen what's coming; we see many oil-producing countries diversifying very quickly and we also see investment coming from the money generated by the migration from oil to renewables on a large scale."