Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
(Self-Description : Edited August 2008)
THE central feature of the Kyoto Protocol is its requirement that countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. By setting such targets, emission reductions have taken on economic value.
To help countries meet their emission targets, and to encourage the private sector and developing countries to contribute to emission reduction efforts, negotiators of the Kyoto Protocol included three market-based mechanisms:
- Emissions Trading
- Clean Development Mechanism
- Joint Implementation
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
The CDM allows emission-reduction (or emission removal) projects in developing countries to earn Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits, each of which is equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
The CDM stimulates sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation targets.
Projects can only qualify for CDM acceptance after a rigorous and public registration and issuance process designed to ensure real, measurable and verifiable emission reductions that are additional to what would have occurred without the project.
The process is overseen by the CDM Executive Board of the United Nations. The CDM Executive Board has held a meeting on average five times per year since its inception in 2001. The CDM board is composed of 10 individuals and is answerable to the countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
The CDM Executive board is currently chaired by Mr. Rajesh Kumar Sethi, whose term comes to an end at the next meeting of the board in February 2009.
In order to be considered for CDM registration, a project must first be approved by a Designated National Authority(DNA).
The CDM became operational at the beginning of 2006. More than 1,000 CDM projects have already been registered as at August 2008. It is anticipated that these 1,000 projects will produce CERs amounting to more than 2.7 billion tonnes of CO2, which is the amount by which the Kyoto signatories said they would reduce CO2 emissions during the period 2008–2012.
Criticism
The UNFCCC has come under increasing criticism for the way in which it is handling the Clean Development Mechanism. For an objective view of how CDM and carbon offsetting is working, read the analysis produced in April 2008 at Stanford University.
The study found that “between a third and two thirds” of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism to generate emissions reductions in developing countries — do not represent actual emission cuts.
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