Not Getting to the Heart of the Matter

What are the delegates saying about the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) at the UN Climate Change Conference? Well, we don't really know what's on the table post-2012 because the discussion has been postponed to the next intersessional meeting in Bonn in March. But working papers that were released earlier this year contain a host of suggestions ranging from increasing the types of projects that could be eligible for credits (scary things like nuclear and carbon capture and storage) and shifting away from proving additionality on a project by project basis to sectoral approaches. These are all proposals aimed at increasing the scope of the CDM.

Procedural reform of the CDM is being discussed for the pre-2012 period. Some of the proposed changes include having a full time Executive Board with a code of conduct and terms of reference. Other proposals are to monitor the performance of project validators and sanction/penalize them for non-compliance of CDM eligibility rules. It is good to hear that the proposals are focusing on improving governance, but the fundamental problems of the CDM are not addressed. See the insightful article from Kevin Smith of carbon trade watch about this.

The CDM essentially provides subsidies to business as usual projects that result in neither emissions reductions nor support small scale, cutting edge, low-carbon emitting projects. Wouldn't it be better to scrap a flawed structure and build something that really does provide financial funding for sustainable, innovative projects in the developing world? Now is the chance to see that they do not go down the same dirty, fossil-fuel path that the North has taken.