The Durban conference decided to establish a new market based mechanism that is to cover a broad segment of a country’s economy. The question is, however, which developing countries would actually be able to implement such a mechanism. The introduction of the EU emission trading system highlighted the many challenges that even advanced developed countries face when establishing a carbon market. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the essential prerequisites for the implementation of new market mechanisms (NMM). In addition to a theoretical discussion it considers the cases of China and Mexico.