Florencio Quintero
Yet again a project by
AES, one of the world's largest power companies, didn't manage to make it past the validation stage in the
CDM approval process. International Rivers is very pleased, as this project, the
Changuinola Dam in Panama, is particularly damaging. The project is located in the buffer zone for the La Amistad UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and has resulted in the forcible displacement of 1,000 Ngobe people. If this project would have been registered, it would have legitimized a project rife with social and environmental abuses. The fact that this project is being built without receiving any income from the CDM shows that it is clearly not
additional (see the
extensive comments submitted to the CDM from International Rivers and others).
Two earlier hydro projects submitted to the CDM by AES Panama, Bayano expansion
and Esti were also non-additional and failed to get approval by the CDM. AES's attempt to get CDM credits for
its notorious Bujagali Dam in Uganda also floundered
(AES later pulled out of the dam, but construction is now proceeding
with another developer – and without CDM approval).
It could of course be argued that the
failure of AES’s projects to get CDM validation shows that the
system is working, because non-additional projects are getting
rejected. But a more realistic interpretation is that dams that
attract a lot of attention are likely to get turned down, whereas the
hundreds of internationally obscure, but non-additional, dams in
China are likely to get approved. AES has got involved in
particularly controversial dams that have attracted a lot of
controversy, and so there were a number of informed and motivated
observers wanting to submit comments to the CDM on the projects.
But if the CDM wants to claim that the
AES dams are an anomaly, and that most dams submitted are indeed
additional, surely AES should be sanctioned for repeatedly wasting
the CDM’s time and money.While the CDM Executive Board has been scrutinizing validators more closely (which of course we support!),
we believe it should develop a
'no-submit' list of project developers with a record of submitting
blatantly non-additional projects. These developers, including AES,
would be are banned from submitting any further projects for the CDM.
