Accreditation of Major CDM Auditor, DNV Suspended

The Executive Board (EB) of the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) must have read our recent report, Bad Deal for the Planet or my recent blog - we called for the EB to strip auditors of their accreditation to work for the CDM if they fail to apply the CDM's rules. On Friday at the Board Meeting, the EB came one step closer to doing that - it suspended the accreditation of DNV, an auditor that validates approximately half of the CDM projects that apply for registration. International Rivers is no stranger to the poor performance of DNV.

The official reasons cited by the EB for suspending DNV's accreditation include not assigning staff with the required technical expertise to evaluate projects, lack of internal audits and lack of documentation of decisions for projects. If DNV adequately addresses these issues within the next six months, the suspension will be revoked. Auditors from other companies that were watching the proceedings were visibly upset. Were they worried that they, too, would be penalized for their shoddy work?

International Rivers and our allies have submitted a number of formal comments to the CDM questioning the additionality of hydros undergoing validation by DNV. Examples of these projects that have been positively validated by DNV include El Gallo in Mexico, El Canadá in Guatemala, and Allain Duhangan and Jorethang Loop in India.

We've also submitted comments on clearly non-additional hydro projects being validated by DNV for which they have not yet issued a final opinion: Campos Novos in Brazil, Sondu-Miriu in Kenya and Tala in Bhutan. DNV may have rejected one or more of these projects. One of the problems with the CDM process is that while positive validation reports are listed on the CDM web site, negative reports are not. You can do a search here for the projects validated by DNV that have been registered by the CDM.

For more information on the DNV accreditation suspension, read the Reuters report. Interesting commentary can be found on the Reuters Carbon Market Community web page (reg. req'd).